Travel Trouble

The journey from Queensland to Indonesia wasn't the most obvious route. Jetstar decided to cancel my original flight and reschedule so that I would arrive at the layover destination 2 hours AFTER my connecting flight would have already left! As a result I now found my self connecting via Melbourne meaning I first had to fly 2 hours in the wrong direction. I finally arrived in Denpasar on the island of Bali at 1.30am. At least that's what I thought. I jumped in a taxi only to be told by the taxi driver that although the airport is called Denpasar it is in fact much closer to Kuta, a popular beach resort. Deciding to avoid DPS, I went on the search for a room for the night in Kuta. Making my way through the narrow streets ... read more

Overall I ended up spending 3 weeks in Sydney which have been great. It has all been about chilling out and making a long U-turn back to the shores of little Britain. First thing I noticed was that I could add Australian dollar notes to the list, alongside cockroaches, of the only things that would not be destroyed in the event of a nuclear bomb. In gives some perspective as to how seriously the Aussies take their outdoor life, and particularly surfing, when they can persuade the national mint to make waterproof currency which is impossible to tear. I spent the first week (prior to Mel's wedding) familiarising myself with the city and making daily use of the outdoor swimming pool in the Botanic gardens. Suddenly the Olympic distance traithlon I was coerced into a agreeing ... read more

Aotearoa meaning Island of the Long White Cloud, as New Zealand is known in Maori, was always going to be memorable. It would be the first time I would see Sheena in 5 weeks, Mel & Roly were getting married, we would sky dive, bungy jump and base jump our way around this most beautiful country. We started in Christchurch. It started well picking up the rental car from a company called Jucy and filling in the paper work with Lucy. Yes, within seconds of arriving in NZ I had met Jucy Lucy. That evening I met up with two of the three NZ girls we had met in Bolivia earlier in the year. It was great to see them albeit briefly because the bride & groom to be were in town. Like a scene gone ... read more

Days 7-9 (The Hard Graft) Having acclimitised in Namche Bazaar for the past 24 hours, it was good to get going again despite the route taking us up a steep incline at 7 o'clock in the morning. We were rewarded after about 2 hours with absolutely breathtaking views of Lhotse, the snow capped ridge of Nuptse and our first glimpse of Everest in the distance. Despite already being close to the treeline in altitude, and the mountains we were viewing being in the distance, it was still possible to appreciate the sheer size of Chomolungma (as Everest is named by Sherpas). One fact I find fascinating is that a computer (as human analysts were referred to a while ago) first announced that they thought they had found the highest mountain in the world in the late ... read more