El Scook Y Natalia

In the 3 hour journey from Tokyo to Kyoto it didn't even seem like we'd left Tokyo's suburbs. Japan may have some amazing countryside, but we certainly didn't spot any from our window. Mount Fuji should have been visible, but the weather wasn't playing ball, and you could see about 3 feet out the window. I've dived with better visibility. Whereas Tokyo was mostly muggy and cloudy, we arrived in Kyoto about the same time as a tropical typhoon. Fortunately the city was mostly on the outskirts, so the typhoon mostly manifested itself as torrential rain (albeit the heaviest rain I've ever seen), thus neither of us where whisked off to Oz followed by an annoying yappy type dog. Kyoto though, is absolutely amazing, one of our favourite cities of the trip. It always improves things ... read more

Since being in Australia is about as culturally exotic as spending a weekend in Bluewater , we've decided to cut down on the blogging somewhat. I mean, you can get Bitter here, and they won't let you drink on the buses... which kind of detracts from the Indiana Jones spirit. The one exception really is the critters. Australian animals are bonkers. If the loony Intelligent Design brigade were based here and not Rednecks-ville, America, they'd probably have concluded that Jesus T. God had been licking the backs of psychedelic toads (well surely he invented 'em for a reason, eh guys?) before he came up with the Duck Billed Platypus. Since leaving Sydney we've been lucky enough to spot a fair few trademarked Aussie critters. Witness: * The Platypus himself: About 1/3rd of the size you'd expect, ... read more

Melbourne: capital of the state of Victoria and Australia's second most populous city, is probably most famous (in Australia) for various sporting events such as the Aussie Grand Prix and the Melbourne Cup, and (outside Australia) for long running daytime soap Neighbours (bet you get the theme tune stuck in your head now... I have). Having never really got into it for more than a couple of weeks during my finals when it was a good excuse for a tea break, we decided to give the famed Ramsay St set tour a miss, but we were assured that none other than Harold Bishop was a regular in the pub under our hostel... exciting eh?! Ahem. Lots of people seem to really love Melbourne, so we were looking forward to seeing it. By all accounts it's a ... read more

Sounds are a bit like Fjords, apparently. That watery bitch, the Sea, invades the land, flooding river valleys, drowning bunnies, and leaving cows stranded. But it's not all bad! The fish are happy, and you end up with some quite stunning terrain. Like the Queen Charlotte Sound. Just ask Captain Cook. The rum soaked old sea dog spent more time around the Marlborough Sounds than anywhere else in New Zealand, stopping here on 4 separate occasions before coming to a sticky end in the cooking pot of Hawaiian natives. A seasoned explorer, indeed - ba dum! Our own landing in the Queen Charlotte Sound was slightly less historically significant than Captain C's, but I bet he had better weather. We took the boat over from Wellington in the midst of a pretty nasty storm that had ... read more

Well, we're still alive. The record time period between the last blog and this has nothing to do with kidnapping, murder, being caught in bear traps whilst hiking, or turning on each other with swiss army knives in a fit of travel rage over who got the window seat in a 23 hour Andean bus epic. The explanation is far more economically based. Internet in New Zealand is freaking pricey. For New Zealand is where you find us. I was intending to start this blog with the rhetorical question "where have the last 10 months gone?", but really, the whole point of keeping a blog is that I could quite easily go back through the last 60 or so entries and tell you. For the short of time, here's a summary: 10 months murdering a language, ... read more