Here I Go Again

Thats hello in Cook islands maori which is slightly different to New Zealand maori so there.

Rarotonga is like the main one of the cook islands and is where the government which only looks after a few matters before the New Zealand government takes control.

Getting here was a laugh, after spending 3 whole days on a bus we checked into a hotel in sydney and had a shower! Ahhhhhh.  Then had a look around, we walked half way across the harbour bridge got a good view of the opera house (it looks a lot smaller in real life).  We didn’t walk down to it though, it was miles away and we were naffed. 

Then the flight took us back 20 hours so we’re now 10 hours behind you lot,  actually 11 i think coz of daylight savings or whatever.  So we landed ( a little to quick for my liking) and in the airport was a guy in grass skirt singing and playing the guitar ha ha.  Apparently they give you those flower necklace things when you arrive and leave but we didnt get one so I will make sure I get one when we leave

Its very relaxed here too, and to pass our test for a scooter licence we had to ride the scooter through town and back with the police man behind us but I set off, didnt stop for people on the pelican crossing and carried on, the rest of them in my group stopped though and then got caught in traffic, I thought I’d have to do it again but he gave us a pass he he.  The scooters are cool and a good way to get around on the island, we did rent mountain bikes for a few days when we got here but coz most of the cars are old, you get a lung full of old exhaust fumes whenever you get overtaken.

 We’ve been swimming in the lagoon right by our hostel too, well, we walked most of it, its really shallow, theres a few tiny islands off our beach so you can walk to them.  We had a go at swimming though and I bashed my knee on a big lump of coral then stood on some which I had to pick out of my foot, add that to the bug bites, oh yeh and burning my leg on the exhaust of the scooter and you could say the island is leaving an impression on me.

I went to church last sunday too, (the advertised free lunch had nothing to do with persuading me to get up for it) it was interesting, most of it was in maori and they had a bit where the choir did some songs which were cool and the sermon was for about 10 minutes lol.  In the hall where we had lunch, there were a school group over from new zealand and they did a performance for everyone which was cool too, and they finished on the hakka - wicked.

 I’m taking pictures of the island and stuff but I havn’t got a way to upload any here so you’ll have to wait till im in new zealand which should be next thursday woo hoo!

Out.

Haloooo, its me again, well who else could it be eh?

 I’m in Darwin this week which is the Northern Territories capital.  Its very nice compared to some of the towns we’ve seen on the way up, there’s some stories to tell there!  Its been an adventure travelling up the west coast and through the Norther Territory and Ive uploaded the photos see below.  On the way up we’ve swam in the sea a few times and noticed the weather getting hotter and hotter, at the moment here in Darwin its about 20 something degrees at 00:45 and in the day its up to its 40’s, all the time!  We’ve also slept in the car, avoided the sharks, sleep in the car, nearly swim with Dolphins (or at least be in the water knee deep and see them being fed), avoided stonefish (they’re really nasty!), sleep in the car, not get eaten by crocodiles that were only meters away, swim under waterfalls not get attacked by Aborigines and make it here to Darwin alive.  Aaaaaah.  All will be explained in more detail I promise.

Oh yeh, you know I said that we were going to get a flight from Darwin to Sydney?  Scrap that, all the flights are booked up to all the major cities which left us wandering if we were going to make it to the cook islands and have had to resort to getting a bus! A bus! to take us from here, to Sydney via Alice Springs and Adelaide (See route) which is 4403 kilometres and will take us 3 days (fun) meaning that we’ll get to Sydney a day before our flight giving us a few hours to take as much of Sydney in as possible.  However, because me and Jonny have worked out that it takes at least a week to suss out most of the cities we’ve sort of kinda roughly planned our next visit to Oz where we’ll cover the east coast.

Photo update:

Perth to Darwin

Apologies for being so rubbish at blogging, I’ve got loads to tell you but no time to write it all up. I have written it down though so I wont forget and will try to blog it all when I can.

Basically over the last few days we came back from Albany and we’ve been to the Pinnacles and yesterday we went to the Wave Rock which was 360km east and its a crazy rock that looks like a wave funnily enough which was cool.

We’ve checked out now and are gonna start the next leg up to Darwin. We were originally going to get the Indian Pacific train from here (Perth) to Adelaide and then from there to Melbourne then Sydney but now we’re gonna drive up to Darwin with our new buddy Jelle (pronounced something like yeller, but I call him Jelly) which should work out cheaper and we get to see the north of Australia.

So, I’ll let you know how we get on, I don’t know when I’ll next get online, hopefully sooner rather than later.

The Wave Rock

This is the Albany Highway ^ and nice it may look, soon gets a bit boring after about 100km and we were on it for 400. The road kill is different here, whereas back home you’ll get the odd hedgehog or maybe even a squirrel, down here its kangaroos, I was quite excited to see my first kangaroo I didn’t expect it to be a dead one, in fact I haven’t seen any live ones yet.

We reached Albany just before it was getting dark so by the time we got checked in to the hostel and moved our bags in the sun was going down and we had a look around. My first impressions of the town were good and were heightened after the pizza. We played some pool then back at the hostel for a bit then saw a listings sheet for the local cinema that was showing Transformers! This was a no-brainer so set off. The cinema didn’t look anything special, from the outside it looked like a fairly standard small town cinema and the foyer was only big enough for the sales desk thing, some sweet shelves and a small queue but the actual screen was actually quite big fair play so I was pleasantly surprised. Transformers is awesome by the way!

The Australians seem to like their films though, they’re very vocal when watching them, there were a lot of ‘yay’s and ‘boo’s at the appropriate parts which I found quite funny, back home people are usually quite quiet until there’s a funny bit worth laughing at.

We found this bar last night (Thurs 28/06) called Mustangs which is cool, it plays Fox sports on the projector and always has mountain biking videos playing on one of the TV screens. They were running a pool and table tennis competitions that night too, we joined the pool one which cost $5 and you get a free beer (which we actually worked out that it was cheaper to keep buying into the pool competition than to buy beers on their own - and you get a game of pool). Jonny was up first and did quite well against a guy called Ralph, he managed to get to the black but Ralph ended up getting it first. Then it was my go, I was playing a guy called Jerry. I lost, quite quickly actually, I started chatting to Jerry afterwards and he told me he knew he was going to win as soon as he saw the way I held the cue. He also told me that he’s been winning the pool competition there for 3 weeks and has won 491 competitions altogether… I should have know my chances were low when he pulled a nail file out of his pocket to smooth his cue tip before we started the game. Later on he pulled me aside and showed me a few things like how to hold the cue and a few other secrets I won’t share so that I can try and have some sort of advantage next time I play. We didn’t have time to join the table tennis one though which was a shame ‘coz I’m sure I could have won a few matches there after watching some of the other players, maybe next time. Jerry’s the guy in the read Coca Cola tshirt, and later on his hands and knees trying to break dance.

Well Its been a busy few days so havn’t had chance to blog and still havn’t really so thought I’d just do a little update with links to all pics from the last few days. Enjoy.

See all the pictures in the album >

Day 3

We were going to go out again last night but Jonny wanted a little 30 minute kip first and collapsed on his bed and told me to wake him up again in 30 minutes. I didn’t feel that tired so ok’d it. Then I sort of kinda fell asleep too and told him to wake me up in 30 minutes which I think he sort of groaned (agreed) to. The next thing we know is our dorm mates comming in at 11 saying ‘Hey what happened to your big night out?’ So we both looked at each other in confusion and needless to say we didn’t bother going out then. Apparently Jonny went to the kitchen for a bit and came back asking me if I wanted anything but didn’t get a response so decided to shout at me that there was a fire but I all I remember is him waving his arms about and yelling, and me trying to say ssshh, leave me alone, I was out of it. So because we had gone to bed at 20:30, I was awake at 5.00 so just stayed there for as long as I could trying to get back to sleep so I could get up at about 9.00. The girl who snores like a bore got up at about 6.00 for work, without a crash landing this time, then I went to the toilet out of boredness after which I did manage to fall back to sleep and then didn’t wake up till about 13:10!! Sleeping patterns are all over the place!!
Anyway so then we ready on the double and drove down to Fremantle for a gander, I’m used to driving now, its not very different to home thankfully. There wasn’t much to do there so just had some food then drove south a bit to find a beach which we did but by now it was getting dark so didn’t stay long.
Bigger plans for tomorrow though, we’re checking out of here and gonna drive down to Albany and stay there for a night then come back up past Perth onto the Pinnacles, then further up again to Geraldton then North west to Mt Magnet. Then we’ll come back down to Perth to give the car in and jump on the train to Melbourne.

Out.

So we’ve just spent the first night in Perth, It was a mostly sleepless night after the girl in the bunk above mine stopped falling out of it ha ha. We had all just settled down and fallen asleep then BANG - really loud so we asked if she was alright and she said yeh but you could tell she was in pain lol so then she’s fiddling about with somthing and she went round the top end of my bunk for some reason which is where my bags are so I was suss but it was just to plug her phone in. Then she climbs back up then what seemed like only minutes later she fell out again! Jonny told me today he saw her fall out the first time and had to bite his arm to stop himself from laughing. Then we had to put up with her snoring!

Then today we didn’t go out till about 13:00 coz Jonny decided to stay in bed till gone 12!! tut tut. So we went for a drive in what we discovered was completely the wrong direction for anything so brought the car back and walked to the city centre which we’ve also just discovered was the incredibly long way - It took us about 30 mins to walk there and actually find the main part of the city so had a look round and went to a book shop and found some maps. I had a self-service chinese which was nice, Jonny got a subway and then the power went off which was quite funny. We decided to try a different way back and found even better shops and nearly got run over by police on mountain bikes. It only took us 5 mins to get back! We got soaked too from the rain which made it feel a lot like home.

Out.

Me again. Im in Perth now so someone please pass that on to Mam so she doesn’t get worried! Which she probably has already. Im having a good time here in the future. We’re in the hostel and are in a four bed dorm, I had to wait for this one guy to go coz he was still using my bed when he shouldnt be here and some girl is still using my cuboard, apart from that the showers are good and we’ve got the car after spending 20 mins looking for it this morning at the airport. We just had a walk round Perth to see whats about and had a meal in this itallian(i think) place. Very nice. Im gonna sleep tonight though, time travel is weird. I am taking pictures but will have to find a creative way to get them up here somehow, im using one of the hostels computers at the mo and don’t think they let you connect cameras or whatever. I’ll let you know!

*Update*

21:08 here 14:20 your end.

Out.

Hello! I’m in Singapore airport, we just landed and I found this Internet terminal thing and our flight has been delayed an hour so i’m taking advantage! I’s good the flights been delayed though because we were late taking off from heathrow so would have had to just run the length of this airport in 5 mins!!

Its really weird coz its 8.30am here 1.30am where you are and we took off at 1.30pm yesterday so where 7 hours ahead and the flight was 12 hours…. the mind boggles!!

Anywho, I’ll post again next time I find a connection to the interweb.

Out.