h and n
hayley and neil Joined: July 14th 2007
Logged in: November 23rd 2008
Logged in: November 23rd 2008
Travel Blog Posts
Maori figure with moko (facial tattoo)
Hi guys! Sorry this last blog is horrifically late - we have been a bit sidetracked with jobs, apartments, and life in general, anyway here it is... the New Zealand and Australia blog! We arrived in New Zealand in March, flying into Auckland, which is located at the top of the North Island. After the usual hassle of finding somewhere to stay, we decided to check out some of the night life, and found the 'Kerouac effect poetry slam' at a place called the Wine Cellar. It was really good, quite 'jaaazz-club' like, with sofas, wine and a resident Jack Kerouac wannabe. We heard some great spoken word and poetry pieces, and got chatting to a kiwi couple, Ben and Heather, who were really nice, and took us on to a bar on Karangahape Road (AKA ... read more
Bellavista cloud forest, Ecuador
Hello everyone, sorry we have been a bit slack in the blog department, but here it is... it's a long one... (click on one of our beautiful photos to see them all in a slideshow!) So... after our New Year's celebrations in Quito we took a trip down into the Bellavista Cloud forest in Ecuador for a few days, sleeping in a geodesic dome up in the canopy, spotting toucans, humming birds, and yellow breasted chat tyrants, all whilst trying to keep dry. We then went on to Otavalo to stay with neil's friend Michaela for a few days at her farm up in the highlands surrounding the town which is home to a world-renowned artisan market; selling handicrafts from all over Ecuador. We then took some dubious bus journeys overland up into Colombia, the safety ... read more
Me and a giant tortoise at the Charles Darwin Station
Flying over the Galapagos as you arrive is a little disconcerting as the islands just appear to be big, uninhabitable volcanic rocks jutting out of the sea. I was living on Santa Cruz, the most inhabited island, with a lady called Aureola, who is the Avon lady of the Galapagos (no joke!) and is completely 100% off her rocker!! But in a very funny good way (for example I got rudely awoken on xmas day by her bashing me over the head with my christmas present and laughing to herself - luckily it was soft!). I would describe her as a cross between an owl and the Godfather. For the first month I lived with two other volunteers Claire and Alex, and started my teaching english position at the Colegio Nacional Galapagos, teaching kids from 11 ... read more
Sun Dial on the Equator
Said goodbye to Hayley in a taxi, she got out in some dodgy, down town part of Quito, in the poring rain; which we still haven’t escaped, and that’s the last I saw of her. We’d spent the day at "Mitad del Mundo" (middle of the world); the correct one calculated by GPS a few years ago, where there is a small ethnographic/astrological museum called "Museo Solar Inti Ñan". There is another big stone monument called "Mitad del Mundo", it´s 240meters south, and the park it’s in also serves as a homage to all the scientists who had (falsely) calculated the equatorial line in the past. We saw some really interesting experiments, including water being pored down a drain! This was to illustrate the Coriolis Effect (?) (different rotations in the two hemispheres, clockwise in ... read more
Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala
We arrived in Antigua, Guatemala, at night, in the rain, to a dark, empty house; mortar bombs and what we thought was machine gun fire kept neil from sleeping, but Hayley managed to nod off! It was the night before the local elections, and Guatemala is known to be politically unstable (notably one genocidal dictator in the 80´s) so we were feeling quite sketchy the next morning. However, we discovered that mortars and fire crackers where what we heard, and are actually used by the Guatemalans to celebrate, any time, any place, for any reason! Anyway, we met our family, Chochi (mum), Alvaro (dad), a son Paul (14 - who would play his one techno record, "dance with the devil," at volumes which made bits of our ceiling flake off onto the bed) and three beautiful ... read more
Flippin' Elk
Hello everybody, sorry we have been a bit rubbish getting this going, but here it is... A lot has happened since the 6th August so we might be brief about some bits! We landed in Calgary and only stayed a matter of hours as it was bleak and quiet (it was a bank holiday), we got a bus straight to Banff - a mountain town in the middle of a beautiful national park, the mountains rose up each side of the road as we approached, like gnarled teeth. Banff turned out to be very expensive, all the hostels were booked up days in advance and the hotels were extortionate. we thought about sleeping rough until someone pointed out that black and grizzly bears and cougars come down from the woods at night looking for scraps of ... read more
