Back to New Zealand

(Some photos from New Zealand below)

Finally, after all these ramblings, I am back in NZ, and all is good. The cheapest flying option from India to New Zealand was with budget airlines Tiger, Jetstar, and Pacific Blue, via Singapore and then Melbourne. This made for a few stops and minor adventures en route, where we loved the air-con and swimming pool of Rowan and Mie’s complex in that “Disneyland with the death penalty“, Singapore, and exploring Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road with Dave and Nic.

Then we arrived in Auckland on Dec 15. And it is amazing what a changed perspective can do for a place. Previously Auckland had always been this nasty big city full of businessmen perpetually on their mobiles and stuck in traffic, buying and selling stocks and being rude to each other. But arriving back there it was… nice. Just nice. There is even free coffee and tea at the international arrivals terminal! And the city is full of things I hadn’t exactly missed but was very happy to see again, like pohutakawa trees and Maori place names and people throwing rugby balls round being friendly even when not trying to sell you something. Lovely. After a few days of wandering round and catching up with old friends I bussed (Naked Bus were cheap and good) down to Wellington for more of the same. All good times there, even went to see the local pro soccer team (times have indeed changed), then on the ferry with my sister Katrina and we hitch-hiked home to Christchurch. But it was so easy it didn’t even feel like proper hitching. We stood at the stairs on the ferry as the drivers were getting off and were offered a sly “wanna ride in a truck?” within seconds. Prior to that one of the ferry staff had organised me a ride in another truck, just to be helpful, but unfortunately it turned out there was only room for one person. Then in Chch while waiting in a petrol station for our parents to come meet us we got approached by someone who’d misread our sign and offered us a ride to Picton, without us even doing anything! I’d heard repeatedly that hitching in NZ is easy and from that trip it seems to be true.

So I was home. No fatted cows were killed but there were whitebait fritters which were even better. After the usual xmas festivities, including cricket games and bbqs and large family dinners, we headed up to the Malborough Sounds, to a little slice of paradise known as Mistletoe Bay. Camped there for a few lazy days, then back home and off again, down to Glenorchy (near Queenstown) with my folks to tramp the Rees-Dart. The weather didn’t fully cooperate but we still managed five days of tramping through the bush, following rivers and spotting glaciers, and being surrounded by mountains. On the way home we stopped in Omarama and then at Mount Cook for a quick look round. So all in all I am very much enjoying being home and enjoying a kiwi summer once more. It’s only about a month since I was writing from India but already seems a lifetime ago.

Ngauruhoe volcano (out the bus window)

Pohutakawa in Auckland

Mission Bay (Auckland)

On the Dart River, looking back upstream from Cattle Flats

Glaciers above Dart River

Me and Mum, just about to start. The track starts in farmland.

NZ beech forest.

Shelter Rock Hut, end of first day.

Mt Cook

Finally a particularly stupid thing from NZ politics. Not very new now, but still shocked me. The editor of the National Business Review, that ostensibly respectable national newspaper, has equated Greenpeace and animal rights people with jihadists on national TV (video here). Not that I read the NBR anyway.

Back to Scotland

Me and the Isle of Skye

The bridge to the Isle of Skye.

Loch Ness and a castle.

Old wall I stumbled across on Skye.

On Skye.

On Skye.

On Skye.

On Skye.

Scottish eh?

Yep, Scottish.

En route to Skye. What a beautiful place to wait.

View from Skye of other Islands.

Skye.

Immediately upon my return from Roskilde I lost my job. The project I’d been working on for the past eight or nine months got canned, and so therefore did I. It was not much of a surprise and the freedom of unemployment was most welcome. With all the world before me I decided to go to India, but didn’t count on waiting more than two weeks for my visa to be processed. It was great though, first enjoying the Brighton sunshine for hours at a time, and then when my lease expired, going (back) to Scotland. (Read here for last time.) Scotland! Land of my sirname. I’d always planned to go for a longer trip there and had never made time previously. I’m glad I got forced to though, because it was incredibly beautiful. Originally I stayed in Glasgow, had a large and late night out with some couchsurfers, which ruined my plans for hitch-hiking the next day. Instead I took the train to Fort William and spent the next three days walking around there. The weather was too bad for an attempt on Ben Nevis but there were plenty of other good options. I then left for the Isle of Skye, hitching with a guy who’d also been staying with. We didn’t have much trouble getting the first lift, but then found ourselves in a quiet carpark on a little-used road. After a while a vanload or Germans drove into the carpark, circled round once, yelled something at us in German as they exited, drove off on the wrong side of the road, pulled back into the carpark, circled back to us and the driver said “Come round to the right side of my van boys. We are a German folk music ensamble. I am the driver with no eyes”. Him and the spectacular scenery kept us entertained thusly for the next couple of hours and they took us all the way to Kylakin where I was staying.

The Isle of Skye was awesome. Just like parts of NZ, mountains, lakes, rivers, changeable weather, islands, lots of good walking trails and lots of nice people. I had a brilliant time there, spending three days walking round all the beautiful places. It was the kind of place where you got to know the other tourists too and was all very friendly. When I left it took approximately 20 seconds to hitch a lift all the way to Inverness with two elderly Japanese men, and we even stopped to take photos of Loch Ness on the way. Living the dream eh? And the best part was that this wasn’t even the real dream, this was just a way to fill in time while waiting for it. Think about how sweet that makes life. Pretty freakin’ sweet.

The Road to Roskilde

After Hurricane I was back at work for a week then off again for festival number two: Roskilde. Lucas and the other guys flew from London but I decided on the more interesting method, ferry first then hitch-hiking of course. Saturday morning I set off to Harwich, took the ferry across to the Hook of Holland and continued to Groningen, a small city in the north of the Netherlands. (You can get the ferry ticket and a train ticket from anywhere in East Anglia including London to anywhere in the Netherlands for a pretty OK price from Stena Line).

Groningen was a like I’d expected a little Dutch city to be, full of bikes and canals. Check it out, no parking sign:
And (road) traffic stopping for the bridge. I saw this a few times in my short stay, it seems to be quite normal:

After a couple of nights there, including watching the European cup final, hitched out towards Hamburg the next morning. Initially got told off by a policeman for crossing a highway, then annoyed him by asking for good hitching spots, but found one quickly enough and was shortly after joined by a Dutch couple. We found a ride together to the German border, but got stuck in the very quiet petrol station for a while. Eventually I got a lift with a Polish guy, who I momentarily convinced that I was Polish, and he gave me a lift all the way to Hamburg. But unfortunately he forgot to stop when we got there and I found myself someway out of town and on the wrong side of the autobahn. A 4km walk later and I was on the other side of the road and had a life easily enough into the city proper. Hamburg is a cool city. Look at its twin spires:

And its beach… facing one of the busiest shipping lanes in Europe… Hamburg got rich as part of the Hanseatic Alliance years ago and I guess has carried on trading since.

The nightlife district also seemed cool, suitably ‘alternative’ (strange word for something so popular…) though on Tuesday night was more Foosball-focused than anything else. I stayed with my friends Denys and Kiki, originally they came and stayed with us through couchsurfing and it’s always cool when you can return the favour or have the favour returned. Though perhaps strange to be sitting in suburban Hamburg discussing London tube stops…

I spent a couple of nights there then got back on the road to head up to Copenhagen to meet up with the festival crew. Had a frustrating day hitching, especially the first half of it, with a few very long waits and of course when you’re hitching solo you cannot stop for a break like you can when there are two of you since you might miss the crucial ride. But the weather was beautiful throughout so I can at least say that hitching in Germany is good for your sun-tan. Or sun-burn, in my case. The very northern part of Germany before the port of Puttgarden was very beautiful, windmills and water and small villages galore. My truck took me as far as the port and I got on the boat myself (even paying for a ticket…) On the Danish side I was tempted to take the train but with a two hour wait in front of me went out where the cars were getting off the next ferry and immediately got a sweet ride all the way to Copenhagen central train station. My personal lesson from that: man up, even late in a long day. I had to remind myself that I didn’t decide to hitch because it’s the easiest way, I decided to for the challenge and mild adventure.

And in the end I had time for an enjoyable few hours wandering the city before the others arrived and we headed out to the festival the next day.

The fun way to Milton Keynes: Hitch-hiking!

Last weekend Tony and I went to visit our old friend Nick in Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes has a terrible reputation; I guess its close to home equivalent would be Canberra. It is not a real city, it was made by bureaucrats. So we were in no desire to get there too quickly, but were keen to get a little adventure into our white collar lives. So we decided to hitch-hike. It is not far, the fastest train takes just over half an hour, but we managed to make a day of it.

We started from the same place as our hitch to Scotland (recommended by the fantastic hitchwiki.com) and got off to a good start. A young Irish Traveler picked us up early on and got us almost all the way there. But luckily he dropped us in a pretty hopeless place. Look at the sign beside Tony:

But it wasn’t beyond our lateral thinking:

This didn’t work very well though so we walked for a bit and found the quintessential village of Soulbury. The friendly barmaid told us of a nice canal side walk towards Bletchly (just outside MK, of Bletchly Park fame).
It took approx 3 seconds to get a ride there: we just stepped out of the pub and stuck out a thumb and we were already in a car. They took us to three locks, where there are three locks. We watched a boat go through them, and it was very interesting. Look, they just open the gates and the water goes down so the boats can go downhills. To go up they do the opposite: go inside then close the gate behind them. Genius.
We almost hitched a ride with the owner but he was staying the night and wasn’t going to Bletchly till Sunday. So close! Hitching on a boat would surely, finally, be living the real dream. So we tried some more:
Unfortunately no boats went past so this wasn’t much of a success. We walked the last few kms along the canal into Bletchly, stopped for another pint, and caught the local bus into MK proper where we had a great night out, full English breakfast in the morning, then hitched back to East London without incident. Good times indeed.

Halfway around the world in 366 days

Today is exactly one year since I left on this trip so I thought I’d do a quick review of it – with photos of course. It’s been a series of fantastic adventures and experiences. I started from Sydney where I’d just finished a six-month job there. First stop was Australia’s top end:

Oz is a dangerous place!

Then there was time for a month crashing round Indonesia’s rainforests and volcanos:

Orang-utans at Bukit Lawang

Mt Sibayak volcano (3800m)

Before meeting Tony in Istanbul then Cam in Athens and heading to Crete for a long walk from here:

East coast beach

via here:400km of hard walking and hot weather

to here:

West coast beach

The aftermath was almost as long as the walk. A blurred week or two’s partying on various Greek islands:

Santorini

Then we returned to the mainland, saw a few sights, Cam went home, and Tony and I continued – with a stray Australian – through southern Italy across the sea and to Africa!

Tunisian Sahara

Then back on the boat, and on the train up to Perugia via Rome.

I lived for a month in Perugia, studying Italian.

Perugia is the capital of Umbria, Italy’s “green heart”. Very bello.

Then travelled round the north of Italy for a month. (During these two months I barely spoke English. It was quite an experience.)

Venice

Trieste

Then a two week skip to Poland by way of Llubjana, Ptuj, Budapest, Debrecen, Bratislava and Vienna:

Slovenian countryside

Vienna

And I spent about two weeks tramping there:

In Beskid Newski, Poland. Slovakia behind me.

Polish Tatra, late summer!

Then met up with Tony once more and we spent around a month in Poland and the three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia) as Autumn arrived. Most notable is how we started to hitchhike during this time.Estonian lakefront park

Then it was back to Poland for me and some more travels, then fast-tracking it to France in time for the rugby world cup semifinals, which didn’t feature NZ. Still good times though:

Everyone was there!

By this time I was well and truly broke and it was time to get a job. So we hitched in the back of a van over the channel and I remarkably quickly found myself with a job, a girlfriend, and a flat with about eight varieties of tea in the kitchen… So I am still living the dream.

Tower Bridge

Having a very good time in London and managed quite a few small travels from there. Highlight was nine days in Egypt:

Egyptian Sahara

There was also a Christmas trip to Scotland:

Cricket on the beach anyone?

And a number of weekend trips. Including Canterbury:

Cathedral

And Ghent:

Castle

As you can see it has been quite a year. The world is a very beautiful place full of amazing things and people and I’ve been lucky to have seen a little of it and met a few of them. These photos and words don’t in any way do justice to “all the sights sounds smells friendships jokes fun frustration life colour and experiences of travel” but I hope at least give you some idea of what I’ve been up to. I have a lot of plans for the coming year, far more than I can ever fit into 12 months, so you’ll have to keep watching this space to see what happens.

There are many more photos of most of these trips on Facebook. You can also read about them individually with the links on the right. Enjoy!