Heading for a nervous Breakdown

Bugger. Sorry. I´m getting slack at this bloggage and there´s still so much to tell. There is a reason but we´ll come to that later.

So, then, where we we? Oh yes, dogging! Right well, we moved on from that nonsense and continued our journey north towards Abel Tasman which is a very pretty place on the north coast of the south island. With a day before we got the ferry to the north island we decided to stretch our legs on the Abel Tasman coast walk which was all jolly nice...a few too many trees meaning we couldn´t see the beautiful coast, but hey ho, we were only doing the one dayer and I think we must have looked a smidge happier than the poor buggers who had signed up to the three day extravaganza which meant carrying enourmous rucksacks along what was effectively a pavement through a wood with the occasional glimpse of the sea. Us lazy one dayers however, got to experience the remarkable sight of amphibious tractor taxi things. Hard to explain but essentially these were tractors that drove trailer fulls of people out into the sea to meet boats which would take us along the coastline. Quite a bizarre sight, especially as the drivers had the ruddy skin and wirey bugger grips of a feral Cumbrian sheep farmer, giving the impression that we´d stumled across a community of lost shepherds tentatively driving their tractors seawards in the hope of returning to more familair and less wet fells. For any travellers, a trip to Abel Tasman is worth it for the trippy tractors and kayaking, but not IMHO, for the walking.

IMHO by the way, is geek speak for In My Honest Opinion. I won´t be using it again because it´s GAY.

So, we did that, then we got a ferry, then we did some driving and stuff. That´s what we know, that´s what we could prove if we needed to. By speaking to shop keepers, viewing CCTV at service stations etc etc we could piece together the PHYSICAL journey that Ant and Jenny were making. But none of this could give any clue as to the journey that Jenny was making in her head. All the while, cogs were turning, questions were being asked, calculations were being made.... On the outside we travelled to Tongariro National Park. Stunning, yes, dramatic also. We KNOW that´s where we were. But where was Jenny, really? What was going on in that mind of hers? Why was she gazing out of the window all the time? Why, when Ant was positively bursting with excitement about climbing a real live volcano, was Jenny´s forhead fixed firmly in a thoughtful furrow? To find the answer you would have to go back a week or more. To understand the time bomb that was ticking you would need to go back to Queenstown, a place that we had physically left, but where scars of impulsive daring began to burn through Jenny´s very soul like the fuse to a very large box of dynamite.

But minds with criminal intent cannot keep their secrets for long. Any darer, be they genuis or fool, cannot keep their secrets to themselves. And so it was that as we drove away from Tongariro and towards Taupo, Jenny announced that she would, she thought, do the unthinkable, and jump out of an aeroplane at 12,000 feet!

I know, I know. Who´d have thought it? But she did. And after a visit to the airfield which nearly yielded a change of heart, she booked herself on a jump first thing the next morning. And then, although she denies this still, I suspect she broke wind, which in the circumstances was just about forgivable. And so, just like in the last blog, the evening of nervous drinking and sleepless anticipation ensued. That was followed by a curiously sullen breakfast, possibly akin to dining with Captain Scott just before he ´popped out´. Honestly, it was like spending the morning with someone about to walk to the chair. But credit to the lass, she´s gone there to do a job, she´s pulled her socks up, and her overalls, and she´s only gone and bloody done it. Much like Ant, Jen was comforted by the knowledge that the pea brained adrenaline junkie to whom she was strapped had made the same leap umpteen thousand times, and if someone with such buffoon-like qualities can survive, then so might she. There is a video of the event, to which we´ll all be treated at some point soon, but be warned, Jenny is so determined to study the ground, that there are only two moments when you can actually see that it´s her, and they occur when her ´tandem´ has to physically yank her head in line with the camera, using the kind of ferocity usually only seen in the Godfather movies.

So yes, Jen´s jumped too and we´re both jolly bloody proud. If you don´t mind, I´d like you all to take a monment to reflect on the bravery and sheer dogged bloody determination of these two massive cowards.









Ok. Thanks, no really, thanks. And so from above ground to underground, we headed north again to the caves of Waitomio. I should also point out that we DID go to Rotorua, which is the town built on sulphuric blobs of bubbley mud. However, on arriving there we couldn´t remember why we´d bothered and since the whole town stank of sulphur, we left immediately. So, Waitomo then. That´s where there are some caves with glow worms in and like the adventure seeking duo that we are, we booked ourselves onto a caving expedition. But what should have been fun turned into a disaster when a freak flood filled our cave, sweeping three of our group to a watery grave.... Oh no, sorry. No, my mistake. It was all lovely and dark and tight and safe...not a hint of Michael Buerke about it. And apparently they´re not glow worms, they´re larvea and the stuff that glows is their jobbies.

Actually, thinking about it, had we gone caving the following day we might well have died hidiously, as the world´s biggest recorded rainfall ever emptied itself all over New Zealand. Yet again, our eye for a storm saw us cowering in our van, clambering over one another as we attempted to cook, eat, make the bed and go to the toilet without actually getting out of the van. We pulled up at some lovely spots, apparently, but the visibility was 2 feet, and if you actually opened your eyes they would have been blown into the back of your head, such were the gusts. This was a shame as we were heading to the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland, for a boat trip which was, sadly and predictably, cancelled due to bad weather. This did give us time however for one final memorable and altogether unplanned event, the complete, utter and final deadly throes of our van. This is the van, it must be remembered, that we never even christened because we never trusted it. Unlike Hercules and the other one whose name we can´t remember, this van had pissed us off from day one. The problem was the gearbox, an automatic one to boot, and it was to be the gearbox which killed it. It was a fitting end, though it did leave us a tad stranded. We were forced to spend our final night on the road, camping in the forcourt of a mechanics workshop...not the white sandy beach we had seen earlier in the day and which, in the end, proved a beach too far. As luck would have it, the town we were stranded in, Manaka, turned out to be a little gem. It was totally disproportiante to the rural surroundings, constising of boutique shops and an arthouse cinema, with coffee shops and herbal health centres. Where people buy their spuds and pile cream I just don´t know, but if the farmer wants a manicure he´s well sorted. But it was delightlful, especially as we soothed our souls with an evening in the art deco cinema which we had all to ourselves (we still whispered though). Paying to see a film helped justify the fact that we kept nipping back to make use of the cinema´s toilets all night, they being the only ones in town we could find.

The following day the hire car company managed to get another replica van out to us. It was almost exactly the same, but had some lovely ´go faster´stripes down the side. We then went to a fabulous little place called Goat Island, where you can snorkel off the beach and see lots of smashingly large fishes. All terribly delightful.

And so, finally to Auckland, where, in our replacement van, we downed our sleeping bags and stove for the home comforts of the McCallum´s; Sarah and family. We were delighted to be shown a comfy bed and gatecrash a couple of social evenings, all the while experiencing things we´d only ever dreamt of over the past month, like showering and using a flushing toilet. As ever, it was great to be shown a town with a local, as Sarah turned tour guide for the afternoon, driving us up an extinct volcano and then to the pub. Marvellous. It was sad to say goodbye to Sarah, but hopefully we´ll catch up again soon in London. But for us, we had a new and utterly untrodden path to travel. February 28th was the day of our flight to Santiago and the beginning of our epic South American Adventure. We´d put in the hours learning Spanish, we´d planned the beginning of our trip and we´d allowed ourselves to get excited. And then we had to wait another 24 hours after our flight was delayed. This wasn´t so bad, as we got put in a hotel for the night. The trouble was that the following day was February 29th, the day that men fear, the day that women get it into their silly little pretty heads that they can propose. And for us, going backwards over the international dateline, Feb 29th would be a 40 hour day.

What would happen to our intrepid time travelers? Would Jenny pop the question? Would Ant pop to the toilet? Or would the plane pop its tyres on the runway in a burning fireball of destruction? Well, obviously none of the above, but you knew that already. But tune in anyway for the next, thrilling episode, if you fancy, like.

T´daaaaaaaaa f´now.

x

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