Kiwi Country

Somehow we have managed to time our arrival in the southern hemisphere with the beginning of the southern winter. However it isn't really very cold, just a bit wet, and on the plus side there aren't many tourists around and everything is cheap in the low season. We also arrived in New Zealand just in time to watch the English rugby team getting destroyed by the All Blacks, which was probably for the best for us as we found the dodgiest pub in Auckland in which to watch it.



Despite the cold (and partly because it is so cheap in winter) we decided to hire a campervan for our trip around New Zealand. We survived the cold so far, with a little help from our sleeping bag, three duvets and hot water bottle.








Ours is quite a small van, a converted Toyota Hiace who we have named Topsy after the rugby player Topsy Ojo, because he is going to take on New Zealand single-handed. The back of the van has been converted into a living area, with a table and chairs that convert into a bed, a little kitchen, and a roof extension where we store our rucksacks and blankets.

We have been driving all over the north island, mostly sleeping for free in picnic areas by the sides of the roads but occasionally stopping at proper sites in order to wash (ourselves and our clothes) and to recharge electrical equipment. The only problem we have had so far was when we parked on a grass verge one night, then woke up the next morning to discover that everthing was frozen over, and that when we tried to drive back onto the road the wheels couldn't get any grip on the icy grass and we just skidded instead. We finally escaped by collecting bits of gravel from the road and arranging them in front of the wheels to give us something to drive on.

Heading south from Auckland, our first stop was Rotorua, an area of volcanic and thermal activity. Close to the town there are several thermal reserves, each with its own selection of crowd-pleasing smoking craters, geysers and boiling pools of mud. There were also some hot springs where we soaked for far too long and emerged looking like red prunes.


No tourist attraction in New Zealand is complete without its own kiwi house, where one or two of the birds are kept in a special darkened cage. They have really long beaks and apparently they are the only bird in the world to have nostrils at the ends of them. They prod the ground with their beaks before every step, and they remind us of blind people walking with white sticks. They aren't blind though, just really stupid. While it is of course very sad that they are facing extinction, part of us suspects that that this is the inevitable result of natural selection rather than anything that humans have done.

Next we headed to one of our favourite places so far, the Waitomo caves, where you can take an underground boat trip through the caves which are lit by millions of tiny glow worms hanging just above your head.
Finally, we headed to Wellington, aptly described by someone we met as the most pointless capital city in the world. From there we drove Topsy onto the ferry for the journey to the South Island.

Beach Bums

Debbie spent the flight to Fiji wedged in a seat next to a rather large Tongan rugby player, which wasn't as much fun as it sounds. On top of this she also lost a whole precious day of the last month of her 20's when we crossed the international date line.

We spent the week in Fiji living in a little thatched hut on the beach, lying in hammocks all day drinking rum and coke, and occasionally going for a swim or a snorkel around the coral reefs that were just off the beach where we were staying.

We managed to stir from our hammocks a couple of times, once to go snorkelling with manta rays, which were as big as Debbie, and another time to go snorkelling with sharks. They swam within a foot of us which was a bit unnerving although apparently they only like to eat little fish.


Another night we were forced to join in with a Bula Dance which was like the Fijian Macarena , only worse (if that's possible), followed by a Kava ceremony, where we drank bowls full of the disgusting stuff to little effect.


On our last evening we went out on a fishing trip along with about eight other people, and Graeme was the only person who caught a fish. Unfortunately it was a beautiful coral reef fish and he had to throw it back. No fish and chips for dinner for us.

Be sure to wear a flower in your hair

Our first reaction to San Francisco was one of relief to be back somewhere relatively normal after three days in Las Vegas, even if Graeme was a bit scared of all of the hippies. However he even made it to their main hangout, Haight Ashbury, where we saw the Grateful Dead's and Hunter S Thompson's old houses. The main attraction there for Graeme was Amoeba records, the biggest record shop we have ever seen, and Debbie finally dragged him out after about two hours, before he could spend the rest of our travelling funds on records. Debbie got revenge by spending hours in the City Lights bookshop, which was famous for publishing Alan Ginsberg's poem Howl. Much scarier than the hippies was the Bushman, a local character who likes to hide at the side of the pavement behind a piece of tree branch and jump out at unsuspecting passers-by. Hilarious!

San Francisco has a really cool public transport system that uses old European trams, known here as cable-cars or street-cars. We used them a lot, as although San Francisco is quite small there are lots of very steep hills. We also witnessed a bell-ringing competition which took place in an actual cable-car in the main square, and the competitors were all cable-car conductors. Some of them had obviously had a lot of time to practice.

On our first night in San Francisco we found an interesting little pub that had around fifty different kinds of beer on tap. We sampled quite a few of them. The next day, despite our hangovers, we decided to hire bikes and cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. On the other side of the bridge is a quiet little town called Sausalito where we ate the local speciality, Clam Chowder, then caught the ferry back to San Francisco.

Close to the dock is a pier that has been completely taken over by sealion squatters. As they are a protected species the dock owners are not allowed to evict them and the pier has become a mini sanctuary, with sealion squat parties every evening.

The following day our livers had recovered so we went on a tour of the local Anchor Brewery (free beer!). This was in a cute area of town with some interesting shops including one that sold supplies for pirates and another that sold stuffed animals, our favourites being the mice dressed up as fairies and ballerinas.

On arrival at Vancouver Airport we were taken by surprise by a crack team of US Immigration Officers, cunningly positioned on the Canadian side of the border. Caught unawares, they managed to catch us red-handed with two apples we had bought in the supermarket that morning and had planned to smuggle into Las Vegas. However after a close inspection by America's finest, it transpired that the apples were in fact grown in the USA and we were therefore permitted to have our irises scanned and fingerprints taken and enter the Land of the Free.

We stayed at the Stratosphere Hotel, which is the tallest building in Las Vegas. Like most Vegas hotels it also contains a casino, which covers the whole ground floor of the building and is designed to be labyrinth from which guests will find it impossible to escape to the outside world. We therefore got hopelessly lost every time we left our room. Luckily this was not all that often, as we had been upgraded to a suite after Graeme slipped the receptionist $20 at check-in.

At the Vegas casinos, most of the space is taken up by slot machines, where gamblers feed their money into a machine and win or lose at random. The rows of gamblers sat there night and day, with identical dazed looks on their faces like those of B-movie zombies. Many of them had special casino credit cards which plugged directly into the slot machines via a cable from their shirt pockets, givng the impression that the machines were feeding on their life force and not just their bank balances. They say that Vegas is like disneyland for grown-ups, but in fact it is all about instant gratification, the most childish of impulses, and ...ooh look! a pirate ship! Our favourites included the casino with flamingoes in the garden, and the one designed to look like a Parisian market-place – except one with slot machines on every corner. The MGM casino has lions in a glass enclosure, which are apparently descended from the original MGM lion that roars at the beginning of the movies. However our overall favourite was Bellagio's, with its fountains that danced in time to a beautiful song called 'Proud to be an American'.

We also made a pilgrimage to Circus Circus to see the merry-go-round bar from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Unfortunately it was closed for the day, but we persuaded security to let us in for a photograph.

In the evening, we went to see perhaps the cheesiest show in Vegas, a girly vampire musical called 'Bite' which consisted of topless women with fake vampire teeth shaking their implants around to Guns n Roses and Motley Crue. No one else in the audience seemed to find it as funny as us, although the 99 cent margaritas might have helped. The following night we splashed out and got tickets to see the legendary cheesemeister David Copperfield! bite pic More worryingly, another attration popular with inebriated tourists is the Gun Store, where for $20 you can pick out a gun and shoot it at a target of your choice. Debbie chose to shoot Osama bin Laden with a Smith & Wesson. After announcing that she had shot him in the heart, the instructor helpfully informed us that this was not possibe as Osama does not in fact have a heart!


On our last day in Vegas we took a coach trip along route 66 and out to the Grand Canyon. The Canyon was utterly spectacular but also utterly overcrowded with thousands of other tourists. Luckily, this being America, we only had to walk half a mile from the visitor centre to get the view all to ourselves!

Last days in Canada

For our last couple of days in the Rockies we had to hire another car, as public transport doesn't seem to have been invented yet here. We noticed that the rental company had given us a brand new car with only 400km on the clocks – the fools! Debbie drove us out to a tiny hostel in a cabin next to the Maligne Canyon, a deep gorge filled with waterfalls, which are currently frozen into icefalls. We were the only people staying the night, and the owner had warned us that he had seen a grizzly bear in the area the day before. Luckily we didn't bump into him (although a visit to the outside toilet in the middle of the night was quite a nerve-wracking experience), but the next day while we were trekking in the forest we ran into a spot of bother with the local wildlife when we were chased down the path by an angry grouse. Stop laughing - he was vicious!



The following day we embarked on a two-day train journey out of the Rockies and back to the west coast. The skies were blue and cloudless and we had spectacular views of the mountains for the whole journey, including Mount Robson, the highest peak in Canada. We also saw around 15 more black bears, including a mother with two tiny (and almost unbelievably cute) cubs. We broke our journey in a real hick town called Prince George, where we stayed in a motel straight out of 'My Name Is Earl'. We then continued onto Prince Rupert, just below the border to Alaska.



On arrival in Prince Rupert we discovered that our ferry south had been cancelled and that we would be stuck there for an extra two days. On our first day we went out on a boat trip and saw lots of grizzly bears up close (but still from the safety of the boat!). They were a lot bigger than the black bears and we saw a mother with cubs which was really amazing. After that there was nothing else in town to do and the other local attraction – the Halibut Cannery Museum – didn't really appeal, so instead we passed the time by getting drunk with other travellers in our hostel. The two people we got on best with were another couple, also from Brighton, and it turned out that the guy used to live in the house next door to us! One of the great things about travelling is meeting new and interesting people...then reminiscing with them about the Big Beach Boutique!



The ferry journey south was cold and rough but we did spot a couple of killer whales and a pod of dolphins. We headed straight to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Tofino turned out to be one of our favourite places yet but unfortunately due to the ferry problems we only had one day there. It has a gorgeous long sandy beach and low tide creates hundreds of little rockpools filled with starfish and sand dollars. A short boat ride takes you to a rainforest with some hot springs. Eagles fly overhead, and Graeme is sure it must have been one of them, and not a seagull, that scored a direct hit on him – seven years good luck, apparently.

On our return to Vancouver we stayed at a strange, dodgy hostel that looked like a squat, and had porn magazines hidden behind the toilet cistern. Vancouver has a large Japanese population, so we lived off delicious sushi made from fresh fish and Canadian smoked salmon. On our last night, we went to see Jamie Lidell (who incidentally also used to live in Brighton). He played an amazing set in a tiny venue that sold cheap maple beer in real pint glasses.


The next day, we headed off to the airport for our next stop: Las Vegas.