Hong Kong - gateway to Europe

Chris and I are on our way to London. This is the first proper international transit on an international airline we've had together, all our other adventures having come courtesy of Jetstar or other budget airlines (no meals, no entertainment and certainly no good quality plastic cutlery to steal for picnics). I've done the big Euro trip before, but not for a long time, and obviously never with Chris. As John Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction notes - 'it's the little differences'. Here I could note being woken at an unreasonable hour to eat 'supper' and then, not too long after in the scheme of things, 'breakfast', and feeling stuffed to the gills as I curled into complementary blankets and pillows. It's the feeling that, in a bigger aircraft, you aren't getting shaken around quite as much as you would in Mr Budget airliner. Of course, one great thing about being in transit in a place like Hong Kong is the free unlimited internet access while we wait at the gate.

Another difference entirely unrelated to the choice of destination and airline is that I am pregnant. More news on how that's going later, but I have discovered that Chris and I can no longer curl over, one on the other's lap, the other on the other's back, to sleep in a tight space - my growing gut just won't allow it. Apart from that, things seem to be going well. He's kicking around a fair bit and seems to be appreciating me shovelling airline food indiscriminately into my mouth and, by proxy, his.

HK looks exciting from the floor to ceiling glass windows of the transit lounge - mountainous, watery, neon-lit. We'll be here for three days at the end of our holiday, and we're looking forward to what can only be described as yum-cha-arama. At present though, we're looking forward to our next destination - London, where old friends will be met, familiar sites will be seen, and I will enjoy filtering it all through the new perspective of someone who has never been - Chris. I can't wait to hear what he thinks of it.

Nelson

We were really glad to leave Queenstown - "WHERE GRAVITY'S A TOY!!!" as the tagline screams. We spent the next day in Wanaka, where we recharged our batteries, eating and sleeping well and doing some washing and other admin.















We chatted for a while with a lovely German girl in a laundromat and almost secured a lift with her in her campervan up the west coast. But, as Chris pointed out, coming out and asking for something like that is like asking someone on a date. Very tricky unless you're sure you're going to be able to seal the deal. On this occasion she seemed keen - she was enjoying improving her English through our banter about the weather and would probably have appreciated being able to split petrol costs, and it's pretty obvious why we would also have been happy with the arrangement... but after a lingering goodbye with the question hanging in the air, the moment had passed, lost in translation. We got on the Intercity bus the next day.

There are a number of characters we've spotted on our journey who seem to be following a similar path to us. There's an Indian Kim Beazley lookalike (I'm embarrassed to mention him twice on this blog) and his wife, a posing princess for whom every rock, every waterfall, is an opportunity to look like a smouldering mermaid while Beazo clicks away.

There's a very tight lipped, bearded American who is travelling with an equally bearded Japanese man. Both are dripping with expensive camera equipment and attitude. We've worked out that it's true love. Chris and I made the mistake of sitting opposite the Yank at a table at one of the stops. There was still room next to him, and his friend seemed happy enough to squeeze in. But he sighed and huffed until we got up, whereupon he moved to sit opposite his friend so they could gaze into each others eyes. Their matching pastel sports coats were very cute though.

On the trip up from Wanaka there was also a willowy blonde Canadian girl, appropriately called Rose, who was being courted (again appropriately) by a German called Wolfgang. On that journey there was an interloper though - a guy from Colorado (Americans never tell you they are from America because they assume everyone, including those who don't sound it, are also American) called Adam who was sharing a dessert with Rose by the time we hit the afternoon cafe stop, with Wolfgang loitering nearby looking forlorn. When we left them at the Fox Glacier we knew we'd bump into them again somewhere up the coast, and we wondered how this three ring circus would play out. Sure enough, a few days later and many hundreds of kilometres from where we'd met her, we spotted Rose walking along the end of the Abel Tasman track, alone.

We spent an afternoon at the Franz Josef glacier:

and then travelled all the way up the gorgeous West Coast in pristine weather, marvelling at the dramatic mountain scenery. We wended our way through the spectacular Haast Pass and out to the open coastline. We had not completely left the Queenstown vibe behind though. On our bus to Nelson was a group of North Americans who were perplexed by, amongst other things, NZ supermarkets ("But they don't sell Covergirl makeup! I thought they were like Walmart"), roll-on deoderant ("like, who USES that stuff?" - perhaps people who don't wish to spray a big fat hole in the earth's layer every time they need to mask their own offensive odours love), boysenberry-flavoured icecream ("what's a boysenberry - is it like a strawberry?") and Kiwi bus drivers ("what a boring job they have - like, 'oh, there's that tree, AGAIN!'"). I took particular issue with this last one, only because the guy who'd brought our sorry arses up from the deep south had chatted so knowledgeably and lovingly about, amongst other things, the NZ countryside, the political landscape, history, gealogy, agriculture and distance education, while at least one of the twits in question was plugged into a portable Playstation, oblivious. And it was clear he absolutely loves driving his bus. As he said to Chris - how could you not, with scenery as beautiful as this. Our photos prove his point. I can't believe I took this shot:
















We've had absolutely stunning weather since we left the south of the south. And we've hiked like never before - to the top of Bob's Peak, to the "Centre of New Zealand" in Nelson, all around the Franz Josef Glacier and, most spectacularly, we've spent a gorgeous, clear blue (but not sweltering) day on the Abel Tasman track, where we walked for three hours and dipped in vivid emerald water.














On Monday Chris checked his results in a tiny internet cafe in Nelson to discover what most of us knew already, which is that what we're dealing with here is a genius. We celebrated by going to see Borat (we were screaming in a rather unruly fashion at some bits of it - I challenge anyone not to if they go and see that film) at the State Theatre in Nelson (less grand than it sounds).
















We stayed at a gorgeous place called Shortbread Cottage while we were in Nelson, and met some lovely people who heartily cheered for Chris when we told them his results. We chatted about campervanning the North Island (which is what we're up to next) and exchanged details.

We're now in Wellington, which is pleasingly rough and urban with a few crazies - everything thus far has been very orderly and pristine, and a grubby city (if only for a couple of days) is going to make a nice change. More soon.

Taieri Gorge Railway to Queenstown

We took the Taieri Gorge Railway from Dunedin to Pukerangi yesterday. It was utterly breathtaking.



















The track is cut into the side of a mountain range with a sheer drop into a gorge (hence the name) where a river rages hundreds of metres below. The train was built in the 1920s and is very 'Murder on the Orient Express', and who knows when the track itself (which goes over these sickeningly rickety viaducts) was built - suffice to say that quite a few lives were lost. We fell into the trap of taking millions of photos of the same thing. Very beautiful, but impossible to capture on film.














Still eating bananas!




















Chris was warned 'away from the edge mate!!' when he scaled a rock face with his SLR in search of a good shot.

We then travelled on to Queenstown via roads running through dramatic mountainous terrain. Unlike Australia, NZ has no drought problem at all. It pisses down constantly here, and the dams and lakes are overflowing with fresh blue water. If only there was some way of taking it home with us.

Queenstown is gorgeous, but surreal. Every shop in the town centre is dedicated to the thrillseeker, or the hedonist, or the idle rich. We found ourselves missing the dusty bookshops, supermarkets, tailors and op shops of Dunedin. Queenstown is all Oakley sunglasses and cheap bandanas. And no-one seems to notice how amazingly beautiful the place is - or at least, not without paying a hell of a lot of money to be told. The older tourists sniffing around the jewellery shops and restaurants certainly don't seem to pay much attention to it, and nor do the adrenalin mainlining 'booms' who come here and pay a fortune to swing from bridges and hoist themselves over the landscape in as many different ways as possible. It's just a prop for each to film (or buy the t-shirt of) their own narcissistic 'personal challenge'. It's a bit depressing. It's as if all nature has to offer is a bit of height and an advantageous precipice for rigging up the dare-devil jump and a good current for the jetboat. It all feels like a big sell, and nature is the hooker.

We just wanted to get a bit closer to it - not to suspend ourselves from it, not to be driven over it in a four by four, not to strap on paraphernalia and be dragged through it by boat. So this morning we clambered up the face of Bob's Peak, a mountain overlooking the town, on foot. The air was so clean and fresh, and there was a misty rain falling on us as we walked, which kept us cool. The view on the way up was astonishing.



















It took us an exhausting hour to get up there, and the only way down was the gondola. I am not great with heights, I will confess, and Chris took some photos of me shitting myself as the little pod we were in shook in the breeze - with a little help from my mischievous companion. Not pretty.














We don't know where we're going next - which is part disorganisation, and part freewheelin' Easy Rider-esque beatnik road trip sentimentality. You'll find out as soon as we do.

By the way Chris's take is on his blog. It doesn't work having us both blog about the same thing at the same time on the same site. The photos remain a joint effort.

Christchurch to Dunedin

A late night visit to a convenience store on the night we flew into Christchurch revealed that bananas - $12 bucks a go back in Oz due to a storm last year - could be procured for $3(NZ) per kilo. Bugger the pub, we thought. We stood outside on the street ramming bananas into our faces instead. This was a bigger moment than it may sound, as it has been so long since I had a fresh banana. They are like gold.




















Apart from that Christchurch was fairly uninspiring - we were only there because that's where JetStar had dropped us off. We did a quick circuit of the Gallery (some pretty cool lithographs and an inflatable plastic bag installation) and the Art Centre (some very expensive wood carvings - $300 for a coaster), and had a nice photo taken in front of a sculpture by a lost-looking South Korean dude in search of his passport. I am proudly sporting my bright red 70s op shop raincoat. It is incredibly useful and practical, thank you very much! And I think it rocks.
















Now we are in beautiful Dunedin, which looks like West Hobart.















We took a midnight stroll on the first night and got some brilliant photos of its undulating hills, lush scrub and some of the spectacular gothic weatherboard architecture - all lit up by the full moon. We're staying in this creepy looking Victorian house which used to be a hospital. It's creaking with atmosphere, as you'd expect from a building with such a past; and there are spectacular views out to the peninsula, a large, clean kitchen and a pretty clued up Swiss-German host. As for the lost souls of its former incarnation, I slept like the dead myself on the first night - so they didn't get a look in.




















In terms of food we've been pretty economical, as is to be expected with Muir running his squeaky ship. We went to 'New World', a mammoth NZ supermarket and bought some tuna, some baked beans and some rolls (along with the requisite 50 bananas which we still have not tired of) - and we'll be eating this shit for the next five days if it kills us (or Chris anyway). Boo. I know we're having the leftovers of a really average tuna pasta tonight, and the thought of it is making me a bit grizzly.

We spent half this morning trawling around the Op Shops looking for a belt for Chris - he'd left his at home and his jeans were dragging in puddles. The weather has been overcast for virtually the entire time we've been here, with non-stop drizzle and cold wind, but we both agree that it's better than sweating lethargically through each day and getting burnt. We popped into an internet cafe to check that the Australian Labour Party had not taken leave of its senses and kept the hapless Kim Beazley on as leader, and, once satisfied that this was not the case, walked up Baldwin Street, officially the 'World's Steepest Street', which was worth the effort for the view. Chris rolled an orange down it, but the momentum was too great for my soft, pathetic hands, and it blasted through them and down to the bottom where it smashed to a pulp. Cool stuff. I also proved to Chris my assertion that NZ school children go barefoot to school and back, as a couple of little bare footed hobbits boarded our bus.

All the Kiwis we've met have laid on the friendliness, as expected, except for an arking bus driver who snarled 'I'm not Citibank' at me when I dared to present him with the grand sum of $20 for my bus fare. Later, he barked at the hobbits who were spending too long squabbling with one foot on the bus, and not enough time paying their exact fares to him. Chris and I, inspired by the bus driver's bad humour, then had a little blue ourselves, just a silly one, and we now find ourselves having a rather sour coffee at a free internet cafe before we go home to force down yesterday's tuna pasta bake.

Coming soon - Chris and Suze musing on the land of the wrong white crowd. Three sleeps, a Christmas party and a wedding away.