Pass me the Vegemite

So I went to the Opera House. Check me. I saw Pericles, mainly because it had an Italian name, so if I said "I saw Pericles at the Opera House, darling." People would assume I was well operatic. I have a feeling that the people just in front of me may have been gazzumped in such a manner, as they walked out about ten minutes in, evidently disappointed at the lack of sopranos.

The play was acceptable (although my middle-class sensibilities were put into disarray hearing the Bard ripped apart by Ozzie accents) but the theatre space itself was surprisingly shoddy, all a bit Eleanor Rathbone.
I went to the aquarium, like a proper tourist, and loved it. They had dugongs there. I never really thought they were real. And platypuseseses. And lot's of uberpoisonous beasties - why is everything in oz so very deadly? - even platypi are venomous.

Haven't eaten vegemite. Have eaten kangaroo and a Harry's pie in Woolloomooloo. Can anyone guess the other reason I went to Woolloomooloo? Answers on a postcard marked "How many 'O's do you want in your name".

The Cynic Sleeps

I was completely unprepared for how much I'd like Sydney. Who'd've thought, Mr Cynical being all sincere about somewhere as obviously obvious as Sydney. But I really like it. It's like Auckland (Harbour setting - check; Harbour Bridge - check; Sky Tower - check) only better. I like that they couldn't be bothered to think of their own names for things so they just used London names instead. I like that Parliament House looks like a mediocre Italian seaside resort.


I really like the harbour. I like how on the Manly ferry I got carried away as the skyline came into view and I took the same photo as everyone else. And then, on the way home at sunset i was still excited about the view and took the same photo as everyone else again. I like that there are seclude beaches and bits of jungle in pretty much the city centre. It's like Paraty, but it's a proper city.


I really like the Opera House. I like how it looks spectacular from far away but if you get up close it looks a little bit Arndale.


I really like the Botanical Gardens. I like that there are trees and trees full of big, furry, winged apples and that no one seems to care. I like the birds. I like that the two most common birds here are both bonkers: one looks like it was made my Nike in the late eighties; the other looks like a mutant stork that feeds on your happy thoughts.


And I like that I know a whole heap of people here. I like that when Stacey took me to a Thai restaurant she got served a sea sponge. I like that yesterday I met up with Lana and tried to drink like we were back on Jack. I like that I'm gonna be meeting Craig and Lauren tonight.

I really like Sydney.
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For those people following from the start that's Country No. 10 across two continents. And that's been about five months so we're not even half way. Bring it on.

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Shouts
? - Dirty Thirty. I know you're still telling people you're 26 so I'm not gonna name names. Have a fab party this weekend and see you in Singapore, yeah?

Three weeks? Well that won't be long enough.

Before I came away a lot of people asked how long I was planning to stay in New Zealand for, then followed my answer up with the sentence "Three weeks? Well that won't be enough." No one ever said that about any other country despite my planning to whizz through, say, Brazil - a country the size of Europe - in about the same time.

So yeah, I admit, you were right. I didn't get to Milford Sound or Bay of Islands; I didn't climb Mount Cook; I didn't see a kiwi or a whale and I'm still not entirely convinced that pukekos even exist; I didn't walk the Routeburn Track; I didn't learn a haka or eat a hangi and I didn't - despite the whole country's best intentions - have a helicopter ride. But ultimately I feel like I've seen a fair chunk of New Zealand (enough to know I prefer sky-diving to bunjy-jumping, wekas to keas, Route 8 to Route 6, Energy Scroggins to Pinkys, Dolphins to Seals, Fox to Franz Joseph and Auckland to Wellington; enough to know that they do City settings better than they do leftturns; and enough to know that, essentially, it's Britain with better scenery and worse heating) whereas I feel like I've seen none of Brazil.

I left Fi in Wanaka yesterday morning. She's all set up for the ski season with a house and a job and an arthouse cinema (The Paradiso - possibly the best cinema I've been to - we saw Bottle Shock there and it came with a free wine tasting. Not that that influences my decision). Whilst she was sorting herself out I walked up to the Rob Roy Glacier. It was a great little walk, well Lord of the Rings and probably the first time since I've left South America that I had the whole this-probably-isn't-an-especially-sensible-thing-to-do feeling in the back of my throat. A feeling that proved well founded when I discovered that the brakes on the car had frozen. Which is nice.

I drove back to Christchurch the Mount Cook way. The first half of the drive was properly road trip - open planes and telegraph poles, snow capped mountains reflecting in lakes, falcons ripping rabbits apart at the side of the road. The second half was very bland but it did have radio reception which meant that I could complete the "songs you hear a lot of on New Zealand radio" tally. The results were painfully obvious, which means it's competition time.

Answers on a postcard, please, for the Song and the Band I heard most in New Zealand. First person with both correct answers wins a High Five when I see them next. And if that's not an incentive I don't know what is.

EXTREMEly Pretty Setting

Between arriving in Queenstown and parking the car we'd seen two paragliders and a parascender. EXTREMEsportstastic.

We're only here for 24 hours or so, so we've not fully embraced the EXTREMEness of the town. We have been jetboating down the Shotover River though (I didn't think sounded that EXTREME before I came here, either - but it's one of the AwesomeFoursome, so there - that's us told). The whole 360 degree spins down a narrow canyon was made more EXTREME by the fact that the water was -5 and froze on impact. Which is nice.

Everyone talks about Queenstown for its EXTREMEness, no one really mentions that it's next to a massive lake and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It's not the glamourous location of the Chelmer-Can confluence but it's not too shabby.

Lake Wanaka

We've finished our West Coast drive, through Haast and the back country wilderness, much to Fi's relief.

We're now in Wanaka. It's a tiny skiing village (which Fi's hoping to make her home until sometime next year) but the ski season hasn't started so the town's full of people in colourful bobble hats pacing about aimlessly.

By the by, this New Zealand place doesn't really seem down with the old central heating, which is a bit weird for a ski resort.

Fox Glacier Mince

We're in glacier country. So, I did what you do in such places, strapped on my third pair of crampons of the trip and did some yomping over the Fox glacier. I'd like to say that we chose Fox because it's less mainstream or more picturesque, but really I just thought there was more pun potential with Fox than Franz Joseph. Either way the whole glacier into rainforest thing hit all the right geography geek buttons and it provided me with ice tunnels - a promise which Patagonia never delivered on.

We stayed in Christchurch for a couple of days (good art gallery, mediocre art) then crossed the South Island at Arthur's Pass. We stopped at a viewpoint and had to stop keas eating the seal on the windscreen - the rotters. We swung by pancake rocks (it's a misnomer - the rocks look like pancakes, they're not made of pancakes. Rubbish) before trying to stop at the (near legendary) Blackball Hilton. Fi vetoed it as she didn't want to be the only lady in a desolate frontier town full of gnarled prospectors, which is a shame as I reckon I could have traded her in for three seives and a really good shovel.

Seal of Approval

We've just arrived in Christchurch.

We drove down from Picton today, stopping in Kaikoura for fush and chups (really good fish, really bad chips. Odd). We didn't go whale watching, as I believe is the done thing in that there neck of the woods. We opted instead for a bit of a peninsular walk. We walked back along the shore, I'm not sure that that was where the path went as we had to walk through a seal colony. Fortunately Fi didn't see the signs saying that they can bite your face off until after we were off the smelly, slippery, tide-fast-coming-in, seal-infested alternative route that I'd suggested.

For the record, seals on land make sealions on land look properly elegant. The fat, furry slugs.

The Long Clouds

My guess was right, Wellington was suitably lovely. I was all cultural and went to museums and learnt about Maoris and stuff.

I'm on the South Island now. It's a bit rainy. It meant yesterday we were forced to entertain ourselves with a winery tour. Which was unfortunate.

We walked the first leg of the Queen Charlotte Sound track today - turns out Fiona and I have different ideas regarding the amount of technical clothes you need to wear whilst walking. She was a bit bemused that I was only going to wear happy pants and a t-shirt; I didn't know the names of all the clothes she was wearing.

The walk was all beautiful and, at ponts, had Robinson Crusoe levels of remoteness. The boat back to Picton was kind of cool: we stopped at a salmon farm to watch the seals trying to break in and, for ten minutes or so, a tumbling mass of dolphins were playing in our wake. Well Charlotte Sound.

Duke of Boots

I'm in Wellington, I'm sure it's lovely but I've not seen a fat lot of it yet, just the inside of this internet laundry place (internet and laundry in the same place - how very y2k?).

Spent yesterday road tripping; pretty good road trip scenery, within a few hours we'd gone from crystal lakes and conifers, through scrubland and snow-capped mountains into choppy, green, Hobbiton hills under a Transylvanian moon and all the while we were passing big logging trucks. Well road trip.

We stopped at Lake Taupo, I did a 12,000 ft skydive - doing my best to live up to all the New Zealand cliches. I enjoyed it rather a lot, if I'm honest. I liked the plummet. I liked the way my face went all wobbly and I couldn't move my arms very easily. I liked the bit where the canopy opened and we could have a chat about the pros and cons of the New Zealand road network and the new Taupo by-pass. All told skydiving = good.

What I don't really understand is why I found the whole jumping out of a plane thing a lot less scary than jumping off a bridge - some kind of bungyphobia? Odd.

Sulphur City

I'm in Rotarua and it stinks of eggy death. Which is nice. Geothermal steam seems to be eeking out of the ground all over town. Toxicsteamtastic.

And Fiona's here. She's come to the other side of the world to meet up with me - which is flattering. We've hired ourselves a station wagon (it was automatic, we had to get the cardude to give us a lesson) and have roadtripped down from Auckland, via Fi's Stepnan in Tauranga. Turns out New Zealand Nans feed you biscuits just like British Nans.

We went mountain biking this morning. Turns out Fi's technical, Eurocentric view of biking is a bit different to my South American influenced sensibilities. She spent a fair amount of time grumbling about the responsiveness of the suspension whereas I was singing the virtues of the bike because the saddle wasn't coming off. We went up to some proper mountain biking tracks, surrounded by redwoods and silver ferns, well New Zealand.

Spent the afternoon on the luge, that was nowhere near as sore on my bottom as the bike was.

Well Cliche (Pt 2)

I've been in New Zealand about twelve hours and I've already done a bungy jump. Clichetastic.

New Zealand seems suitably pleasant. Cars don't go when the green man shows, taxi drivers don't circle round you pecking at your eyes and you don't have to put toilet paper in a seprate bin.

So yeah, I jumped off the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Quite enjoyed it, didn't love it - being honest, probably due to the old nerves (Keil's advice of not looking down would have probably worked better if I hadn't had to spend the previous ten minutes walking over a grill). I'm hoping the old adrenaline stuff is going to punch my jetlag square in the face.

By the way, did anyone see what happened to June 2nd? It kind of disappeared on me. The sneaky rascal.
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Shouts:

Matt and Ann: You're getting married in the morning, ding dong the bells are gonna chime. Although I've not really got my head around the time difference thing and as I'm in the future now I guess you're already married. In my time. Right? Either way - future or past - have a great day / marriage / honeymoon / life together.