Where's Waynem?

Farewell Canadia!

2008-12-03T16:12:00.009+10:00

With the end of my time in Canada coming to close, I decided I would spend the month of October on a bit of a farewell tour of the place, checking out a few places I hadn't made it to yet and catching up with a few friends. My travels down the Inside Passage had brought me to Prince Rupert, in British Columbia. After being on the move so much around Alaska I ended up spending a week here to relax a little bit, and the fact they were feeding us free cookies and seafood dinners at the hostel didn't hurt. Being on the coast it was raining a lot of the time I was there, and I didn't really get up to too much. Did go on one more whale watching trip though, and that proved to be well worth it, with some of the best sighting of whales I've seen. We travelled up to a spot near the Alaskan border and spotted a family of orcas, which came right up within a few metres of the boat. Nearby there were also about 5 or 6 humpback whales hanging around too so we got to watch them for a while. The only disappointment was they all refused to breach, and as exciting as it is to watch them swimming and breathing I know they're capable of more.

Once I was feeling sufficiently relaxed it was time to hit the road again, my next stop being the fabled Prince George. Many people had told me about this place, most of them said it was a bit of a hole basically, so I was delighted to get the chance to see it for myself. Turns out it wasn't that bad. It's nothing spectacular, but with the fall colours underway pretty much the whole city is bathed in shades of yellow so it's quite pretty, and I think distracts from the fact that there's not much to look at otherwise. But at least I can say I've seen it now, although I was a bit annoyed I didn't get a chance to sample one of the cinnamon rolls there, I've heard they're pretty legendary.

From Prince George it was south to Kamloops, to quickly catch up with my friend Tom there. Could only stay one night but that was enough to catch up with him and meet his girlfriend, and debate where I should go the next day. After considering a few options I decided on Lake Louise, partly because the weather was supposed to be pretty good over there and I needed to get some work done. It kind of says something about how good my life is these days that I go to a place like Lake Louise to work. And hike of course, but there isn't much to do at night so that helps you be a bit more conscientious. The weather was magnificent as promised, and even though this was about the fifth or sixth time I've visited the place I'd never quite managed to get perfect weather there any other time, so it was great to see it like that. The snow was just starting in the Rockies so the mountains were looking great with a bit of a light dusting, but some of the trails were getting a bit icy and slippery if you went too high so I stayed pretty close to the lake. Did make it up to Lake Agnes which is in the hills beside Lake Louise, that was just starting to freeze up and looking really pretty, and also over to Moraine Lake, one of my favourite places in the Rockies.

Next it was a short ride over to Banff where I stayed with fellow Aussie Jess, who I'd met over on the east coast and went on my road trip across Newfoundland with. I got there just in time for Thanksgiving, and Jess cooked a delicious dinner of turkey with vegetables and gravy followed by chocolate tart. I contributed to festivities by fixing her computer so she could use the internet again. I ended up staying in Banff just over a week, wandering some of the familiar trails there and making it to a few new places like the Mt Norquay bald spot.

Even though I've come to know the place pretty well it still managed to surprise me, returning around dusk from a walk out by the Vermilion Lakes I was lucky to see a bull elk and his harem of females (it was rutting season). Watching him herd them along and bugling (they make a really weird squeaky sound for such an impressive animal) in the fading light was pretty special. I also heard from my Kiwi friend Victor who I'd met in Whitehorse that he was going to be passing through town, so it was good to get a bonus chance to see another friend before I left. He was on his way home so were both lamenting the fact we were on the last stretch of our trips and wondering how we'd get used to normal life again after everything we'd done.

That's a question for later though, next it was off to Nelson next to visit another friend, Sally, who I'd met a year ago in Halifax and had moved to Nelson to study Chinese medicine. Nelson's a very alternate lifestyle kind of place, and BC being famed for it's marijuana almost everyone there is stoned half the time. Or maybe not, but a lot of them look like it and if you see anyone smoking in the street it's more often a joint than a cigarette. It was highly appropriate then that the local theatre group was putting on a performance of the musical Reefer Madness, which Sally and I went to see. The show's a musical satire of a movie made back in the 1930's to warn of the evils of drugs. It was actually really funny, and the kind of production which was helped by the low-key feel of amateur theatre.

Nelson's actually quite a nice town, it has a bit more character than a lot of other small towns in the region (probably because everyone's so stoned) and quite a nice setting tucked in the hills beside Kootenay Lake. The fall colours were on show here as well which made the place look quite picturesque. I really envy the Canadians their fall but they have a lot to put up with in the winter so I guess they deserve some pretty colours beforehand. There's some quite nice architecture too with some interesting old buildings downtown and of course BOB, the Big Orange Bridge. Which is what they call their bridge, because it's well, big. And orange. And they were probably stoned when they named it.

As nice as Nelson is I'd seen Reefer Madness and what can happen if you start smoking pot - I didn't want to start selling babies or become a cannibal so figured it was time to get out of town after a few days. And I had a flight to catch in Calgary. So it was back on a Canadian Greyhound bus one last time (a trip which I'll always remember for the mouse which ran over my feet twice). Spent just one day in Calgary to do some last minute shopping and then it was time to go. It was kind of strange that even though I'd been saying my goodbyes to my friends over the past month I was still leaving my adopted home of the past year and a half with very little fanfare. It's not like I was expecting fireworks or anything, but... no I think I was expecting fireworks actually. However my flight was early in the morning so there was a quite spectacular sunrise which was almost as good as fireworks. Seeing the city bathed in golden light as we took off, with the Rocky Mountains off in the distance was certainly quite memorable and a fitting end to my time in Canada.

I've grown quite attached to the place in my time there and will miss it terribly, but I know I'll be back many times in my life, there's still a lot of places for me left to see (I'm looking at you, Nunavut). And my travels weren't quite over yet - I will admit I was happy to escape the winter, which had been following close behind me the past month and looking forward to the final leg of my North American travels, Las Vegas and the Southwest US deserts.

Glaciers, Grizzlies and Ghost Towns

2008-10-17T17:52:00.013+10:00

Alaska. Of all the amazing places I've visited in the past 16 months of travelling, there are still few which can compare with Alaska. After the few weeks I'd spent there at the end of winter I was looking forward to seeing it in the summer and fall, which that far north starts in late August. It's about 16 hours from Whitehorse to Anchorage on the Alaska Highway, a trip which involves many long hours bouncing along roads corrugated by the yearly cycle of freeze and thaw. A lot had changed since the last time I travelled this way however, landscapes which had been stark expanses of snow were now lush and green and valleys which seemed like any other under the snow now revealed to hold enormous glaciers. And there was no dog throwing up next to me in the back seat this time which was a bonus. Even so I was pretty glad to finally reach Anchorage, not just because it's a long day sitting in a van, but after all those hours of amazing vistas it was almost too much to take in.

After 2 nights in Anchorage to catch my breath I caught the train south to Seward, on the shores of Resurrection Bay. My main purpose for coming back was one of the major draws of Alaska - glaciers. There's something like 100,000 of them in the state so you can't go too far without seeing a few. Just outside Seward is the Exit Glacier, and here I joined a Park Ranger-led hike here which climbed the hills beside the glacier to the Harding Icefields - a 1,800 square kilometre expanse of ice and snow up to 3kms deep. It's almost impossible to grasp the sheer size of it.

There's something like 40 glaciers which extend from the Icefields, many of which are tidewater glaciers which terminate in the ocean. I went on a cruise around the bay to see some of them, but apart from the glaciers themselves we also spotted just about every animal which lives in the bay, from a bunch of porpoise playfully swimming alongside the boat, to a group of 3 orcas, one of them even obliging us by breaching (although it was a fair distance away). We also came across two humpback whales and got to watch one of them feeding, as well as puffins and countless other seabirds, sea lions and of course sea otters. The glaciers themselves were stunning, and although I was hoping to see a huge chunk calve off I had to make do with just a few small pieces falling off. Although when I say 'small' I mean they were the size of cars or so.

After Seward it was back to Anchorage, where I spent a bit of time actually looking around the city itself, which is much more of a typical big city than you would perhaps expect from Alaska. But you're quickly reminded exactly where you are any time you wander along the Coastal Trail and encounter a moose, hear stories of grizzly bears wandering onto the main roads and getting hit by cars or the fact that the street vendors' hot dogs are made from reindeer (which I really took a liking to, they're pleasantly spicy, if somewhat chewy). I quite like Anchorage, with the Chugach Mountains on one side and the gorgeous sunsets over Cook Strait on the other it has a lot going for it, but you don't really go to Alaska to spend time in a big city I ended up staying longer than I would have liked. Transport options in Alaska are unfortunately somewhat limited so that meant a bit of waiting around to get transport to where I wanted to go.

And my next stop was quite literally at the end of the road, at the old Kennecott copper mine. Getting there involves another marathon trip from Anchorage, the last 100kms or so on a dirt road, to the town of McCarthy in the heart of Wrangell St-Elias National Park. Or at least to the carpark across the river from McCarthy, from where access to the town itself is by footbridge. The town has a population of about 300, and 'downtown' consists of 2 dirt streets featuring one hotel (with a backpackers' annex where I stayed, without heating or lights), one store, a gift shop, two bushplane operators and a pub. I loved it, even if I was sleeping with 3 blankets and my longjohns on. The old Kennecott township and mill complex is 7kms down the road, set in a valley which sees the junction of two huge glaciers, the Root and Kennicott (yes, the spelling's different, the township's name was a spelling mistake). The mines themselves are set high in the hills and were connected to the mill by a system of cable cars. The township had it's own hospital, schoolhouse, store, bunkhouses (both in the valley and up at the site of the mines) and the mill buildings themselves. Most of the structures are falling apart to some degree, the Parks service is restoring some and letting others decay. I went on a guided tour through the mill buildings, the Concentration Mill is the focus of the site and the largest wooden building in America. it was fascinating to see and actually much nicer inside than you'd expect looking at the exterior; it had a musty, woodwork shop kind of feel to it. It would be a striking building anywhere, but when you take into account the glacier-side setting and all the rain and mist around at the time it really was one of the most atmospheric places I've been.

I had time to see a bit more of the valley on a hike along the moraine wall beside the Root Glacier. This led to great views of the Stairway Icefall, a wall of ice hundreds of metres high where the glacier flows down a mountain side; but at the same time I was very much aware that the track was lined with brightly coloured, berry-filled bear scat every few metres pretty much so I was loudly singing my way through the Beatles back-catalogue to announce my presence (although I shut up when I had to pass a Ranger - think I scared the hell out of him when I kicked some stones and he thought I might be a bear coming up behind him - good thing he didn't pepper spray me). I would have loved to hang around McCarthy a bit longer but had to get back to Anchorage to get some work done, along with a bit more moose and sunset watching on the Coastal Trail.

Hopping on the train again it was north to Talkeetna. As you will be told often enough this town was the inspiration for the show Northern Exposure, which I personally never watched but felt obliged to pass that information on. Everybody raves about how nice it is, but I'm not really sure what the fuss is all about. I mean it's nice, it's got some interestingly quirky shops, you can get not just reindeer hot dogs but corn dogs (which are also delicious). The best thing about the town is the view you get on a clear day of Denali, at 6,194m the tallest mountain in North America and centrepiece of Denali National Park, my next stop (just so you know the mountain's also called Mt McKinley but compared to the native name, which means 'The Great One', just sounds kind of lame so I never use it).

So Denali (I'm talking about the Park now)... Damn. Just damn. The place is incredible. The fall colours were in full swing so the whole place was just a riot of colour; depending on the light it could look either ridiculously garish or ridiculously beautiful, almost otherworldly at times. The Park is huge, it covers about 24,000 square kilometres and is accessed by just one 145km road. Public vehicles can only travel on the first 24km of that, so there's a brilliant system of buses which you can use to travel the rest of the way - I travelled the entire length of the park road on the first day, and then chose the best spots to go back and visit again the next few days.

One of the best things about the buses is that anytime you see an animal you just yell 'Stop!' and the driver will pull over for everyone to take a look. Although some people can be a bit overenthusiastic about it and will yell stop every time they see a distant speck which may or not be a grizzly bear. I mean I appreciate their enthusiasm but really, unless you can see it's actual limbs it doesn't really count as an animal sighting to me, and we saw enough animals up close that we didn't need to be wasting our time trying to decide if a distant shape was actually a bear or just a rock. Over the few days I spent in the park I managed to pick up what they call the Grand Slam, seeing moose (including a massive bull with huge antlers), something like 30 grizzly bears (mostly at a distance but some a few metres away), gray wolves, caribou and Dall Sheep, not to mention getting a good look at the mountain itself which is hidden by clouds most of the time.

I had my closest and funniest wildlife encounter in the Savage River area. I was following the trail alongside the river, moving fairly quickly so I could cover as much ground in the time I had. I was perhaps a bit too focussed on moving fast though as I completely failed to see an enormous Dall Sheep ram until I was pretty much right on top of him (although in all fairness he did have his head down and looked kind of like a bright white rock... with legs) and was somewhat startled when he suddenly looked up at me. Revealing his rather large horns. Needless to say I backed off pretty quickly but he seemed unfazed fortunately. The people behind me who'd been watching it feed from a more sensible distance (I thought they were just enjoying the scenery) thought I was a crazy person who was going to try and ride it or something and were probably disappointed not to get some Funniest Home Video footage out of it. I resolved to pay a bit more attention to my surroundings (I usually do, honest), not wanting the next 'rock' to turn out to be a grizzly.

Fortunately I didn't have to worry about anything bigger than ground squirrels the next day when I went hiking out at the Eielson Visitor Centre. This was my favourite spot in the Park. There's an awesome view of Denali itself from here (when it's visible), which is probably one of the most impressive mountains in the world. The Nepalese call Everest Chomolungma, the Goddess Mother of the World, which would have to make Denali it's Father. In fact from base to summit Denali is actually a bigger mountain (by almost 2,000m - Everest starts at a higher elevation) Although I'd seen it from here on my first day in the park, Denali wasn't out when I hiked to the top of the mountain behind the visitor centre. It's probably just as well as the view up there was incredible, if the mountain had been out as well I would quite possibly have just exploded with joy. There were times when I would turn around and catch sight of another stunning vista and I would just laugh at how utterly amazing it all was. I was getting a bit of a cold so may have been a bit tired and over-emotional.

Moving on from Denali I continued north on the train to Fairbanks. I'd met Anne-Marie at the Denali hostel who was catching the same train, and warned her not to expect too much from Fairbanks. It was a pretty bleak place to be in the winter and it looks really quite ghetto when you come in by train, even I was kind of taken aback. After showing her around Fairbank's downtown area (such as it is) we decided to be a bit touristy and try the riverboat ride which is one of the main attractions in Fairbanks. It was actually a pretty slick operation, you visit a little village and learn all sorts of stuff about traditional Alaskan life and it was quite pretty on the river, and definitely improved my opinion of Fairbanks. Both of us were keen to make it to the Arctic Circle so we took a day trip up there along the Dalton Highway. We only went to where the circle crosses the highway, so there's pretty much just a sign saying you made it, but still, it's nice to say I've been there and they gave us cake and a certificate to celebrate. As much as I would have loved to go further north and really explore some of the Arctic I just didn't have time that late in the season, so that will have to wait for another summer.

Getting back to Fairbanks we were able to enjoy the single best thing about the city - the great view it often gets of the Northern Lights. The nights were just starting to get dark enough to see them again after the summer and while we'd seen some muted lights the previous nights the sky cleared up completely and the aurora put on a fine show for us. I was entranced all over again, they really are breathtaking to watch, and it definitely helps when you only have to worry about getting cold instead of maybe losing fingers and toes.

With that as a fitting send off it was back to Whitehorse for me, just long enough to catch up with my friends there one last time and enjoy the fall colours around town before heading back to south-east Alaska this time to start heading south again. I took a bus and train from Whitehorse to Skagway, with a brief stop in the really neat little town of Carcross. The train crosses the White Pass, and was originally one of two routes used by prospectors during the Gold Rush. It's a nice trip, but much shorter than I expected - I guess after all the marathon journeys I've made over here I don't feel like I've gotten anywhere after just 4 hours.

Skagway's a pretty nice little town in a great location at the mouth of a river surrounded by tall mountains, and like most of the towns along the Inside Passage is a major stop on the cruise ship circuit. The whole cruise ship phenomena is somewhat strange - they pull up, the passengers pile out, stroll through the souvenir shops for a few hours an then disappear back onto the ships, often without really having seen anything of the places they're visiting. I know not everyone has the time to travel like I do but it doesn't seem very satisfying to me. Once they disappear back onboard though you pretty much have the towns to yourself, particularly in places like Skagway which only has a few hundred residents.

After a few days in Skagway I started my own cruise of sorts on the Marine Highway - the US ferry system which runs from Alaska all the way down to Washington state and connects many communities which can only be reached by sea or air. Sure the ships were only a third as big as the cruise ships, and the cuisine is probably pretty ordinary by comparison, but it's all the same scenery so it suited me fine, and definitely made a nice change from bus travel.

First stop for me was Juneau, the capital of Alaska, which I'd really been looking forward to Juneau but didn't enjoy as much as I'd hoped. Mainly because I had to share the hostel with a bunch of middle aged Americans who were quite frankly, completely mental, having loud discussions each night about how Obama is the anti-christ and will bring about the fall of civilization as we know it. The fact that it rained every day and I spent the whole time with damp feet didn't improve my opinion of the place. Fortunately Juneau did have one redeeming aspect - the Mendenhall Glacier on the edge of town, my first visit out there was postcard perfect. The sun finally broke through the clouds and there was a perfect rainbow hanging right beside the glacier, all reflected in Mendenhall Lake.

It was a beautiful place, and turned out to be a bit of a wildlife hotspot too. I saw my first porcupine there (that wasn't roadkill anyway) and was surprised to see how high they climb trees, they're just like really spiky koalas. I was also very excited to finally see two beavers, which I'd frankly started to think were mythical (well come on, those lodges and dams they build seem way too sophisticated for rodents). Then while I was watching the beavers a black bear wandered along and I got to watch it rummage through the undergrowth from a few metres away. It was probably the only time I wouldn't mind being that close to a bear, but they hang around the area all the time and are pretty much oblivious to people now, in fact the main job of the rangers is to keep people from crowding the bears too much.

So with my opinion of Juneau slightly restored, it was back on the Marine Highway for an overnight trip to Wrangell, an island community of about 2000. Becuase it's not on the cruise ship circuit and a lot of tourist services had finished for the season I may have been the only person actually visiting the place. It was nice to be somewhere a bit quieter and the weather was fantastic, another welcome change after Juneau. It was quite idyllic, and the highlight there was visiting Petroglyph Beach, which has rocks carved with designs by the Tlingit Indians hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

My last stop in Alaska was Ketchikan, a town known for it's many totem poles, and rain (I know the whole Inside Passage coastline is rainforest, but it does get a bit tiresome after a while). The centrepiece of town is the boardwalk-lined Ketchikan Creek, known as Creek Street, where all the buildings (souvenir shops mostly) are elevated over the water on pilings. It's quite nice, but because I'd only ever seen pictures of that part of Ketchikan before I'd always expected the town to be smaller and more rustic, but it's really just the one street unfortunately. Anyway, the creek itself was chock full of fish at the time, as the Pink Salmon were running. That of course brought a collection of seals which were after an easy lunch, they'd just cruise along and snap one up whenever they felt like it. I'd missed all the salmon runs elsewhere in Alaska so was glad to finally get to see one, and watch them jumping up waterfalls and everything.

And that was it for Alaska, one last ferry ride south took me to Prince Rupert and the beginning of my last few weeks in Canada. Despite everything I'd seen I've still barely scratched the surface of Alaska and the Yukon, it's definitely somewhere I'm going to have to get back to and really explore more thoroughly. Some other summer though.

Mountain Peaks and Pow-wows

2008-10-02T04:32:00.007+10:00

So I last wrote when I flew from Halifax to Calgary about 2 months ago. I'd been there a few times before so my main goal was to figure out where I was going next. This is the one part of traveling which I'm really starting to get tired of, considering all the options for things to do, places to see, working out the logistics of getting there, where to stay, and so on. It means a lot of time looking at guidebooks, the internet (I don't know how people ever managed to travel before it was invented) and calendars, but once it's all figured out and I'm on the road again I'm happy. With my plan decided it was back to Canmore first - I hadn't had a chance to do any hiking on my previous visits here so was looking forward to that. As soon as I arrived I headed straight up Mt Lady McDonald (sometime in the last few years I've become a person whose idea of an afternoon stroll involves a 1200m vertical gain). It was a stunning reintroduction to the Rockies, somehow you always forget just how impressive and, well, big mountains are when you've been away from them for a while.

After a few days in Canmore, and an overnight stop in Banff I travelled up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. This is probably one of the most spectacular stretches of road in the world, so I took a tour bus up so I'd be able to stop along the way, and it also included a trip on specially designed snow coaches onto the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefields. It was kind of neat, if a little brief, but there's certainly a great view from up there and given my track record with ice it's nice to travel on the ice without much risk of falling on your butt.

Jasper was another place I'd never had much chance to go hiking in the summer, and it was really interesting to see the difference in places where I'd been snowshoeing or cross country skiing a few months before. After a few days hiking up and down hills and mountains, around lakes and alongside rivers my legs were in need of a bit of a break so on my last day I took the boat ride on Maligne Lake to Spirit Island again. It was something I'd already done on my first visit here a few years ago but that one spot is ridiculously picturesque and really epitomizes everything about the Rockies so I think it's always worth a visit. Was also rewarded with a sighting of a black bear mother and 2 cubs on the way back, only the second time I'd seen bears in my whole time over here. Although given the amount of time I've spent hiking alone I'm not exactly complaining.

After Jasper it was on to Kamloops, where I was really excited to attend the Kamloopa Pow-wow. A Pow-wow Native American gathering which revolves mainly around dancing competitions. Kamloops has a specially built arena for the annual event, which lasts for 3 days and attracts participants from tribes all over the plains regions of Canada and the USA. Each days' events are kicked off with the Grand Entry, a pretty impressive spectacle where all the dancers, in really elaborate, brightly coloured costumes enter and circle the arena.

After that, there's generally a series of dance competitions in different styles, traditional dances such as the grass or chicken dance (not the one you're probably thinking of), jingle dress and shawl dances for the women, and fancy dances (they're really called that, and the performers are referred to as fancy dancers which I think is great). In between each competition there are also intertribals, where anybody who feels like it can get out on the field and dance, and specials, which are usually sponsored by a particular tribe or family in honour of a particular person. I was only there for one day and it was a fantastic experience, and something I've always wanted to see so I was very glad to have made it to that.

After another day chilling out and seeing a bit more of Kamloops (and luxuriating in my own hotel room for a change) it was back to Vancouver again, bringing me completely full circle from where I'd started in Canada. I'm very fond of the place, it's absolutely beautiful when the weather's as perfect as it was when I was there. I revisited some of my favourite spots, wandering along English Bay, watching the raccoons in Stanley Park and sampling the donuts from the Maple Leaf Bakery (probably the best donuts I know of anywhere in the world) and also caught up with fellow Aussie Mike from my Newfoundland road trip. We did a day trip to Bowen Island on the Western outskirts of Vancouver and hiked to the top of the island. I'm not sure why but this was one of the most physically and emotionally draining things I've done in my whole time over here (although it's probably because we got slightly lost and took the most strenuous route to the top and so used up all our water too quickly). We went through all of the mental states of hiking - from initial enthusiasm to grim determination, fatigue, exhaustion, desperation, anguish and finally degenerating into complete hysteria. We survived obviously, but only just, if we hadn't been able to fill up on soda and ice cream while waiting for the ferry I don't know if we would have lasted the 20 minute trip back to the mainland. It left me with deep mental scars for some time - we'd planned to tackle the Grouse Grind the next day, which involves over 1000 stairs, so when the third person we were meeting cancelled we almost wept with relief that we wouldn't have to go through with it.

Traumatic hiking experiences over with, it was time to hop on another plane (a refreshingly pleasant flight where they were even offering second helpings of cheesecake) to head back to Whitehorse, in the Yukon. Whitehorse is another of my favourite places in Canada, on the one hand there's the sense of the Gold Rush days you get standing by the SS Klondike sternwheeler on the banks of the Yukon River, while on the other they have a Pizza Hut, 2 Tim Hortons and you can get Tim Tams in the supermarket. Add the Northern Lights to that and if it didn't get so damn cold there in the winter it would be pretty close to perfect. My French friend Vianney is living there now so it was good to be met by familiar face at the airport. I spent most of my few days in Whitehorse frowning intently at my computer trying to figure out exactly how to tackle Alaska, which is not an easy place to get around on your own, but did find time to tag along with Vianney on a hike along the summit of Grey Mountain just outside town (it was a pleasant change to be with someone who had a car and could drive to the top of the mountain instead of having to get there the old fashioned way). The landscape of the Yukon is quite different to the rockies, while there's still some impressive mountains they're much more gentle and rounded and the overwhelming impression is of vast untouched space stretching out all around you. Which it is, really - the human population of the Yukon is about 30,000, 20,000 of them living around Whitehorse, compared to a population of about 70,000 moose.

And then it was off to Alaska again, to see what it's like with a bit less snow around, and that's a story which really deserves a separate entry.

Puffins and humpbacks and icebergs, oh my, eh

2008-07-24T15:18:00.020+10:00

So in the last thrilling installment I was poised to return to one of my favourite parts of Canada. Catching the ferry from Bar Harbor, Maine, I arrived in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. There I caught up with a new Aussie friend of mine, Jess, who's just starting her year-long visa and as something of a grizzled veteran I feel it's my duty to tell all these new arrivals a few horror stories about the winters here, just so they know what they're in for. I was glad to have a familiar face around to help me celebrate my one year anniversary of arriving in North America, and had some Nova Scotian lobster to celebrate (well a lobster roll anyway because it's cheaper and you don't have to dissect it yourself).

Yarmouth's a pretty quiet place, and I only hung around long enough to walk out to the lighthouse there. It was a long but pleasant walk through fields and fog shrouded fishing villages. While I've become quite used to my seemingly supernatural influence over the weather even I was impressed with myself when the fog which had been hanging around for the past hour or so lifted within seconds of me stopping at the lighthouse. And remained clear right up until I decided to leave. Spooky, eh.

From Yarmouth it was back to my east coast office, Halifax, probably my favourite Canadian city. I took the opportunity to broaden my knowledge of the town, which in Halifax means visiting some of the pubs I hadn't made it to last time. There was no question where I'd be the first Sunday night I was back though, I pretty much dragged a couple of girls from the hostel down to the Lower Deck with me for Signal Hill Sunday. They agreed it was a good night out, but I think were a bit freaked that I knew all the words to (and loudly joined in with) all the songs, including the local sea shanties and folk tunes. When I wasn't hitting the pubs (and learning valuable lessons about drinking with the Irish) I did find time to revisit a few of my favourite spots, and went to the Open Day at the Naval base, where we got an awesome free zodiac ride around the harbour and a short ride in an armoured transport. What with that, the jumping castles and fairy floss I was briefly tempted to join the Navy myself, but figured the real thing probably had less fairy floss and more shooting so gave it a miss.

Soon it was time for another anniversary celebration, Canada Day, and I think it was appropriate that my first Canada Day was in Vancouver while my second was on the exact opposite side as I do like the either end of the country the best. It was a very early start that day for a river running trip out at the Bay of Fundy with Matt (the guide for the Salty Bear tour around Nova Scotia I'd done last year) and some of his friends. This Bay of Fundy has the highest tides on Earth, at about 17m. When the tide flows into the Shubenacadie River it actually forces the river's flow to change direction, creating a series of short-lived rapids. So river running is something like white water rafting, but you're in a zodiac so you don't have to paddle, just hang on for dear life as you are repeatedly buffeted by cold, salty, silty water. By the last set of rapids we weren't so much riding on the waves as just plowing through them, pretty much submerged up to our waists in the now submarine zodiac. It's a lot of fun, you get to run through each set of rapids a few times and then as the tide moves further upstream you move on to the next set which is forming and afterwards they give you a steak dinner with hot chocolate, an odd combination but it works for me. After that was done it was back to Halifax for the Canada Day fireworks and the big party down at, where else, the Lower Deck, with a big group from the hostel.

With the festivities over I was off to Newfoundland, along with Jess along with Mike and Sina who'd just done a Salty Bear trip with Jess. The four of us ended up renting a car together to drive across the island and had a brilliant time, we all clicked right from the start. Before starting out though we spent a few days in the capital, St John's, a really nice city with a beautiful little harbour. We wandered around the town admiring the multi-coloured houses, visited Signal Hill (the actual geographic feature, not the band) and sampled local delicacies such as Cod Tongues. We also went out to Cape Spear, the eastern-most point of North America and from there hiked about 20ks back to the city on the East Coast Trail. The Newfoundland coastline is gorgeous, lots of dramatic rocky cliffs dotted with the occasional seabird colony, and we were even greeted by a humpback whale waving to us from the sea while we were having lunch. We thought it was anyway.

Setting off on our road trip we started at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, a marine sanctuary where we took a boat trip to an island which is home to thousands of kittiwakes, murres and puffins. The murres and puffins in particular were hilarious to watch, as the boat approached they'd go whirring away across the surface of the water, barely looking as if they could lift off at all, and would often stay so low they'd smack right into any large waves. We also saw quite a few humpbacks on the way, one was pretty much right under the boat although they all refused to start breaching despite our shouted encouragement. After a brief lunch stop in a town called Hollyrood (where we had some delicious chips and gravy - the Newfies really appreciate good gravy bless 'em) we headed down to see Bird Rock at Cape St Mary's. This was on one of the southern peninsulas of the island (the whole island is pretty much a series of peninsulas really, requires a lot of driving up and down to get to the good bits) and like the name implies, is a big rock jutting up just opposite some very high cliffs. It's home to lots of gannets, and was particularly impressive shrouded in fog, only just letting you glimpse the sea far below. We spent the night in a little town called Placentia - when Mike asked at our hotel where downtown was we were given a funny look and told we were in it . So we spent the night playing pool and playing the few songs we knew on the jukebox (we may have been the first people to ever choose the theme from Disney's Aladdin).

The next morning saw us make a short detour out of our path to visit the town of Dildo. I'm sure you can figure out why. We had our statue taken with Captain Dildo the fisherman and searched in vain for a decent breakfast (Newfoundland was the first place where you couldn't be assured of finding a Tim Horton's on every corner and we were all in withdrawal by the time we found on one on day 4). We headed north to the Bonavista Peninsula, stopping at the town of Trinity and for a short hike along the Skerwink Trail (supposedly one of the best in the world according to some magazine but I've seen better). We stopped in Bonavista for the night, a beautiful fishing town with probably my favourite lighthouse in the whole world and our first iceberg sighting, which we were quite excited about. They tend to drift down past Newfoundland from the Arctic Circle throughout the spring and early summer so we were lucky to just catch the end of the season. After watching a gorgeous sunset there we spent the night at a great little B&B run by a guy called Albert and his wife, who were hilarious to talk to.

The next day saw us go back down and then up the next peninsula, passing through Terra Nova National Park on our way to Twillingate. We only stopped in the park briefly for a short hike to a place called Malady Head, relelntlessly pursued by mosquitos the whole way there and back. Twillingate, also on the north coast, was yet another stunning little fishing town set amongst rocky coves and the site of our second iceberg sighting. We took a boat out to see this one up close, kept busy on the way there trying to decipher our tour guide's thick Newfie accent (which sounds like a cross between Irish and southern US). The iceberg itself was pretty cool to see, pardon the pun, particularly seeing it in the light of sunset, sitting there bobbing away and occasionally letting out a short whipcrack sound. We got to taste a chunk we scooped out of the ocean. It tasted icy. We'd lucked out with our accommodation, staying in a few rooms at the office of an RV park (man the RV's over here are big, it was like being amongst a herd of elephants) so had our own personal kitchen to prepare a nice home cooked meal. Well the others did anyway, I was busy sorting out some of my clothes which were infused with maple syrup after bottle leaked in my bag, which left them all sticky but smelling absolutely delicious.

The next day we made it to the far west side of the island to Gros Morne National Park. That place was incredible, with glacial carved valleys and mountains situated right on the ocean. We stayed in a quiet little hostel which had only been converted from a hospital a few years ago, in fact our room pretty much still looked just like a ward, which was only slightly freaky at first. Moreso though was the rooms across the hall, which still had an extensive collection of surgical instruments sitting around, so we could have managed just about any crisis ranging from delivering a baby or conducting an appendectomy ourselves. There were more than a few references to the movie Hostel made that week too, and most of the others had quite strange dreams while there (I slept like a rock though). We were pretty keen to get out hiking straight away (that probably had a lot to do with the strange smell in our room too) so headed straight for the Baker's Brook Falls trail.

/>

Not only were the falls themselves quite pretty but we saw 4 moose along the trail, including 2 big bulls with a hefty set of still velvety antlers each and a mother and calf who we had to pass with a few metres of to get back to the car. I've seen quite a few moose by now (Mike and Jess were pretty much hyperventilating with excitement though) we were all glad to finally see some moose as Newfoundland has one of the most concentrated populations in the world and we hadn't seen a single one crossing the island.

Our second day in the park Sina and I decided to tackle Gros Morne mountain while Mike and Jess went sea kayaking. The hike to the 800m summit was the one I most wanted to do in the park, and while I generally keep a pretty good speed up when I'm hiking, with Sina setting the pace we were up and back in record time. The ascent includes a fun little stretch called The Gully, which is basically a scree slope of loose rocks and boulders you have to scramble up. It's not as bad as they make it sound but doesn't look like much fun when you're at the bottom looking up. The view from the top is well worth it though, particularly the view from the cliffs at the back of the mountain over 10 Mile Pond. After a frosty chocolate milkshake to celebrate we rejoined the others that afternoon for a final dinner at a nice restaurant, as the next day Mike and Sina had a marathon drive back to St John's to catch some flights. It was a very sad goodbye, even though we'd only spent a short time together we'd all bonded pretty quickly.

Jess and I decided to stay on in the Park a bit longer as there was still lots to see there, so we spent the next few days doing lots of hiking, including the Lookout Trail, a beautiful wildflower lined seaside trail called the Green Gardens and the Tablelands. These are hills made of rock from deep in the Earth's mantle. They're toxic to most plant life because of the minerals in them so are mostly bare and a delightful pumpkiny orange colour. For a bit of a change from walking we went on a boat cruise along Western Brook Pond (strangely enough they tend to call lakes ponds around there, presumably they call actual ponds puddles and so on). This is one of the most dramatic parts of the park, a long lake which used to be a fjord but it separated from the sea, so is now surrounded by steep cliffs along it's entire length except for one end. We also went sea kayaking around Bonne Bay one day, the first time I've done that. It was fun, but was windy enough to make it hard work rather than a relaxing paddle.

But eventually it was time to get going again, we spent one night in a place called Corner Brook, after all that time in the great outdoors we need a bit of civilization in the form of a trip to the movies and then it was time to head our separate ways. Jess was off to Quebec and I headed back to Halifax via 2 bus trips and a ferry ride. I had a quiet time there, caught up on some work and some more movies - man has this been a good summer to be a nerd, what with all these superheroes and cute robots and all that. Also did some catching up with more friends, Ben and his girlfriend Vikki, who I'd met on my Salty Bear tour and also seen in Jasper and Vancouver. They came with me to say my goodbyes to Halifax at the Lower Deck. While I'm sure I'll be back one day that will probably be my last visit on this trip at least. With that out of the way (and once I saw the Dark Knight, which completely blew my mind) it was on a place all the way west to Calgary. Boy was that strange to cover so much ground in such a short time, but I've after crossing the continent 3 times overland I decided it was okay to take the easy way for a change.

So that brings me up to date. Haven't done my travel map in a while so thought I'd better get that up to date. It's starting to get a bit crowded, need to fill in some of those gaps I think.

Life is like a box of emergency chocolates, eh.

2008-06-27T10:06:00.010+10:00

I had a moment of profound personal insight a few weeks ago, thanks to TV of course. Forrest Gump was on, at that bit where he just starts running from one side of the USA to the other, only turning back when he reaches an ocean. Given I've just completed my third crossing of the North American continent in a year I looked at it and thought, 'Hey, that's me!'. I have become Forrest Gump. Now, on the one year anniversary of my arrival in North America, I'm beginning to wonder about all the little ways I might have touched people's lives, the subtle ripples I've caused in the fabric of North American civilization which will one day have far reaching consequences. But that will be for history to deal with. Right now I'm only concerned with my travels throughout May, which took me from Portland, Oregon to the coast of Maine. I wanted to meet some friends in Chicago and Ottawa at the end of the month so I thought I'd cross the northern USA on the way.

Portland felt like the kind of city I'd imagined Seattle to be. They've got a nice downtown with a lot of old red brick buildings, and there was always something happening, like the Cinco de Mayo festival which celebrated the heritage of Mexican immigrants and had rides, mariachi bands, jumbo corn dogs and banana drinks with little umbrellas in them. Very festive. People in Portland were also surprisingly friendly, they'd smile and say hello in the street, which is so unusual for a city that size I was too startled to reply every time. Overheard a lot of conversations about drugs though, which probably explains why they're so cheerful all the time.

I also caught up with Geoff in Portland, who I met back in New Zealand in 2006. He and his girlfriend took me out to the Columbia River Gorge, just outside the city. There's heaps of waterfalls here, including the spectacular Multnomah Falls, the second highest in the US. It was a fantastic day, especially since it was early in the spring and seeing things like green plants and running water were still a novelty. Another highlight of Portland was Wahington Park, the Japanese Garden and Arboretum there are quite pretty with all the magnolias in bloom and the views of Mt Hood and Mt St Helens in the distance.

Twin Falls, Idaho, I originally chose just to have a break on the way to Wyoming, but I really enjoyed my time there. The downtown is typically small town America, a bit empty and neglected unfortunately. There's the usual strip of fast food chains, shopping malls and cheap motels (where I was staying - there were no hostels in most of the places I went in the States so spent a bit of time in budget motels, but it was nice to have my own room and TV for a change). Idaho is pretty much completely flat, farm country (famous for it's potatoes) but Twin Falls is situated on the edge of the Snake River Canyon which makes things more interesting. I hiked down into the canyon (refreshed with a free Coke from the folks in the visitors centre which I thought was mighty nice of them), along the rim and across the Perrine Bridge. This is about 500m above the river and is a major draw for basejumpers from all over the world. Most people I spoke to thought I was there to jump off it actually (especially when they found out I was Aussie), which was crazy. It was far too windy. Did make it out to Shoshone Falls though, which were well worth the long walk to get there.

Jackson, Wyoming, on the edge of Grand Teton National Park was next up. Jackson's a really Western town, with wooden boardwalks around the streets of downtown, plenty of Western style buildings and lots of people getting around in cowboy gear (I'm still really tempted to get a cowboy hat). I didn't really have much chance to get into Grand Teton unfortunately, was still a bit early in the tourist season for a lot of the transport and activities to be running. I did get a nice look at the mountains though from the National Elk Refuge, which is home to a couple of thousand elk during the winter, a lot of whom were still hanging around due to the unusually late cold weather, even got some snow around while there.

Onwards once again, to Yellowstone National Park, I stayed right on the western edge of the park in West Yellowstone, Montana, a tiny place which basically exists for people visiting or working in the park. Though there'd been a little bit of snow in Jackson I was stunned to see it piled up to over 6 feet by the side of the road, which meant it was time to dig out the longjohns and winter coat again, although not in time to stop my third cold for the year. D'oh! I only had a few days here, but went on 2 bus trips which cover most of the major highlights of the park. Didn't have much choice because surprisingly for the country's busiest national park there's no public bus or mass transit system unlike the ones in Yosemite or Denali. With my cold I wasn't in much of a mood for hiking anyway and considering a grizzly attacked a bison calf right beside one of the boardwalks in the Old Faithful area (the day after I was there) it wasn't somewhere I cared to be wandering alone. The tours turned out to be pretty good though, the first day concentrated on the geothermal areas in the southern half of the park; hot springs, mud pools, fumaroles and of course geysers including Old Faithful, and also the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which is an amazing spot.

The next day we covered the northern section, the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs and Tower Falls. There were heaps of wildlife sightings both days, hundreds of elk and bison - the bison in particular were great to see, they're such big, imposing creatures, I find it really sad how their numbers have been completely decimated. There were also deer, coyotes, pronghorn antelope, and finally, some bears. We saw 2 black bears, one way down in the bottom of the canyon, but another right beside the road so joined in one of the bear jams (that's where a bunch of cars stop to watch the bears, not where a bunch of bears sit around and play music) and got to watch it for quite a while, pottering around by the side of the road. They were actually the first wild bears I'd seen in a whole year over here, so was pretty happy about that, and also to have lots of other people around who I could outrun if I needed to.

Bozeman, Montana, is probably one of the nicest American towns I've been to, in one of the nicest looking states. Unlike Twin Falls they've managed to avoid having all the life sucked out of the old downtown area so it's quite a lively place. It's set in the middle of a huge valley and is ringed by distant mountains way in every direction. Were some interesting old buildings there too, old flour mills and stuff, and a really steep hike which practically killed me - will be more careful about tackling the routes which are described as 'vigorous' in future. Rapid City, South Dakota was next. It's situated between the Great Plains and the Black Hills, a gorgeous mountainous area which is where Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monuments are located. Did a day trip out there, they're both quite impressive, although there's decades of work left to be done on Crazy Horse (and I think it's a bit of a shame how much of the mountain they planning to blow up to make it) which also included a trip to a gold mine and Custer State Park, also very pretty.

I'm having a bit of a whinge in the next bit so you can skip it if you just want to hear the good stuff.

From Rapid City I was basically heading straight to Chicago. I could have caught the bus straight there but it would have been about a 24 hour trip. The Greyhound buses in the US are generally pretty full too (of very... interesting characters, it's definitely an insight into American culture) so instead of another marathon bus trip I thought I'd stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota to get a decent night's sleep, and also see the Mississippi River which runs through town. Turned out I should have just stayed on the bus because my whole experience with Minneapolis was pretty much a disaster. It started that morning, I woke up early to catch a bus which ended up leaving 6 hours after I thought it did, spent about 12 hours on the bus and didn't stop anywhere to get any real food until 10pm. Got into Mineapolis around 1:30, got a taxi to the hostel I'd booked which cost about 7 bucks. The driver said he didn't have change for a 20, I don't tip that generously so I said fine, I'll pay by credit card. He took my details, I hopped out of the cab, found the hostel reception was closed for the night and then realised I didn't get a receipt for the taxi which I had a bad feeling about, and figured I'd give up on Minneapolis so walked back to the bus station to see if there was another bus to leave. Turns out there wasn't so had to find somewhere to stay for the night, the security guard called a taxi driver friend of his though who took me to a slightly dodgy place he recommended where there was a man wandering the carpark (at about 3am) asking me if I could smell something burning. I couldn't, and wouldn't have cared if I could, finally hopped into bed for a few hours of sleep before I was up to get back to the bus station and out of town. Turns out my bad feeling was later justified as the first taxi driver took my details and had a party to the tune of about $650 before I could see what he was up to and cancel my card. Have since got a temporary new card, which works maybe half the time, and have got Visa looking into it to see if I get the money back, but don't exactly have fond memories of my visit to Minneapolis. And I never even saw the Mississippi.

Still, can't complain too much about one really bad day out of a whole year I suppose. To balance things out I did have a fantastic few days in Chicago. I caught up with my Mexican friend Priscila and her friend Juan (they make and sell robots, probably the coolest jobs in the whole world if you ask me) (and she's promised to give me one one day). Chicago's a great city, with beautiful old skyscrapers, the many bascule bridges crossing the Chicago River where it runs through the downtown and it's nicely situated on the shores of Lake Michigan. Then there's some great parks and public spaces (and a great Art Gallery, always good to see more famous paintings in person) and good nightlife too - we went to one really good bar with duelling pianos, lots of fun.

For a change of pace I flew to Ottawa next, wanted to catch up with another friend, Florence, who was one of the first people I met over here last summer in Victoria and was over here from France. It was also nice to see Ottawa in the summer rather than winter, it's quite a different place, but surprisingly low key for the national capital. Lots of good walking though, along the river or on the other side in Gatineau, Quebec, along the Rideau Canal, and a really nice market district in the downtown which is home to lots of bars too so always lively at night.

Had to decide which direction to head next from here, had originally planned to go back west but decided since I was so close I'd head east towards Newfoundland. And of course, there's the whole Forrest Gump thing where I can't stop until I reach the ocean. Anyway, thought I'd head down through New England this time, stopping by White River Junction, Vermont, which was nice enough, not particularly thrilling but I'm sure would be spectacular in the fall. Very dense forest around most of Vermont, was expecting more in the way of farms and fields. Anyway, was back to Boston, which was also quite a different experience in the summer. It was really quite warm here, 35 degrees and very humid, reminded me of summer back home but was unusual for them. I did enjoy exploring Boston a bit more, went to a baseball game with Helen, my Kiwi friend from back west, that was pretty neat to see, despite the extortionate prices for all the snacks. Also went up and saw Salem, the site of the witch trials, but was more interested in the waterfront and old houses rather than all that stuff. Lots of new age stores up there too, which I find odd given their track record.

Was getting kind of grumpy in Boston though, what with the heat, bed bug attacks (I really hate those things), really bad hayfever and troubles trying to use my temporary credit card it was a relief to get to Bar Harbor, Maine. It's a small holiday town on Mount Desert Island, most of which is protected in Acadia National Park. There's heaps of great hiking here, along the beaches and rocky coast, and through forests dotted with beautiful lakes and nice, easily hikeable mountains. Best of all, there's no bears to watch for. It was great to wander on my own all day without worrying about running into anything more dangerous than a deer or moose, which just kick rather than bite. Lovely place, thinking of getting back there later on if I can.

Think that'll do for this entry, congratulations if you made it this far. Will save my return to Nova Scotia for after I've made it up to Newfoundland next week.

Hooray for Spring, eh?

2008-05-22T02:03:00.011+10:00

Well, I had such good intentions about not letting my blog go for too long this time, but here we are, almost 2 months later. So much for that idea I suppose. Last time I wrote I was just leaving Whitehorse, heading for Vancouver with no clear idea where I was going next. Since I'd made it all the way back to the west coast I figured I might as well just turn around again and start going east once more, which is how I've ended up in Chicago.

But first things first. Leaving Whitehorse for Edmonton meant another marathon bus journey of 30 hours, but with one final lightshow from the aurora, some roadside wildlife (my first glimpse of some bison and a fox), my trusty ipod and a good book that wasn't too much of an ordeal. It was very exciting to be heading south towards some real springtime, and finally make it to places with (almost) no snow. It was truly wondrous to see grass again after so long, it may have been mostly yellow and brown, but it wasn't snow so I was happy. I spent a few nights in Edmonton mainly because I felt I should see a bit more of the place - I'd always just been passing through before. Turns out I hadn't been missing all that much after all. It's got the world's biggest shopping mall, and um, yeah. Did I mention the mall? I got a haircut there, it was pretty much the highlight of my stay. And I will remember it fondly for the concert I saw last time I was there, but at least I've given it a fair go now.

Next it was down to Canmore again, where I caught up with my friend Helen before she left to continue travelling. The Rockies were looking great in the springtime, nice and clear in the valleys but with just enough snow left up on the mountains to keep them looking pretty. Ventured back out to Drumheller and the Badlands again with Helen and her boss, I find that area fascinating so it was great to visit there again. Revisited the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum again, and the town of Wayne (woo!), wanted to check on the population but there's still only 30 people there. Bet you it's going to explode any day though. Yep, any day now.

I left just in time as Canmore was hit by more snow the day I left, but at least it meant the Rockies were nice and snowy for my trip westwards. I headed to Kamloops to catch up with another friend there, Tom, who I met last summer in Revelstoke and went hiking with in Yoho National Park. He's English but has moved to Canada to work for a few years, he's already got an enormous truck like a real Canadian so is clearly going a bit native.

I quite enjoyed Kamloops, there's not much in the way of specific attractions there, but it's in the drier, almost desert-like part of Canada so it was nice to have another change of scenery. Could get out and do some proper hiking too, actually working up a sweat for the first time in ages. I may even have worn shorts, although that may have been later, I can't remember now.

There were heaps of Marmots around town, which are like bigger, fatter squirrels which are always sitting up on their hind legs like little buddhas, or Rory Calhouns, so they're pretty cute. Except I heard they may actually have been responsible for the Black Plague in Europe - moreso than rats, so that makes them less appealing. They weren't spreading any plagues while I was there though so I won't hold it against them. Oh and I saw some woodpeckers. They were cool.

After almost a week in Kamloops (where the snow again caught up to me on my last day) it was back to Vancouver at last, where I first started out in Canada. It was actually kind of weird to be back, it didn't seem like it had been close to a year since I'd left, and I kept expecting to see my friends from my last stay there (especially seeing as I was spending a lot of time in my office in the hostel library). I had other friends to catch up with though, Matt, Jonathon and Ben, who funnily enough I'd all met on the opposite side of the country in Halifax. It was good to see them all again, and relive some of the Maritime spirit with visits to some east-coast themed bars and performances of Barrett's Privateers at an Open Mike Night (I only stuffed up one verse, but Jonathon covered for me). Went to a really good folk band concert Jonathon told me about too so I've picked up a few west coast Canadian folk songs to add to my repertoire.

Vancouver was looking great in the springtime, it was the first place to have actual green grass and flowers. I was getting a bit excited about the whole springtime thing by then, wouldn't shut up about how happy I was it was spring for weeks, and was so exhilirated to be seeing all those colours I was practically spinning around on hilltops Sound of Music style. But I managed to keep it to just taking lots of flower pictures instead. Like these.

I took the chance to explore a few corners of Vancouver I hadn't seen before, but I also got a bit of a cold while I was there so wasted a lot of time getting over that. Also had to plan where my travels would take me in May. As I'd mentioned I'd run out of west, and had some friends who were going to be in Chicago and Ottawa at the end of the month I figured out I might as well head over that way, and see some of the northern USA. Quite a bit to talk about there, so might save that for another post. Still sorting out the pictures too, now that it's warm enough that I can hang around outside pretty much all day (have I mentioned how happy I am that it's spring? I'm really quite pleased about that. It's so nice to have it only get cold enough to make you shiver, rather than make bits of you die and fall off). Anyway that means I've got a million bloody pictures of the same thing with different lighting conditions, different exposures and different compositions, then there's panoramas to be stitched together and touching up to be done in Photoshop. It's hard work this travelling business. No, really.

Back from Alaska, eh.

2008-04-01T11:58:00.014+10:00

I may have mentioned in my last post that spring was finally here. That might have been just a little premature but I'm happy to report that finally, over a month later, spring is here. No, really. In the meantime though I've had a brilliant time up here in the north. I met up with my Swiss friend Sandra again in Whitehorse, and she came with me to Alaska for about 3 weeks. Our first destination was Fairbanks, where we were hoping to see the Northern Lights. The bus trip up was a great start to the wildlife bonanza that was Alaska, on our way to the border we saw about 4 moose, and best of all, a family of 5 lynx right by the roadside. They're really shy animals so to get such a good look at so many of them in the wild was pretty special.

Fairbanks in winter is kind of bleak, it gets seriously cold up there (although it was only about -25 at it's coldest while we were there so not too bad) and Alaskan cities are kind of no frills places to begin with. It only took about 2 hours to fully explore downtown, and that was stretching it out quite a bit. They had a pretty good museum though which killed one day, and we also checked out some more ice sculptures at the World Ice Art competition.

But the aurora was what we were really there to see, and we weren't disappointed. It's a hard thing to describe, it's really something you have to see for yourself to appreciate. Each time it can behave differently, subtly fading in and out, rippling across the sky or curling in upon itself; it can just be low on the northern horizon or can stretch from one side of the sky to the other. It's really quite indescribably beautiful, and we happily endured the cold to enjoy it. Well, kind of happily anyway - I had 2 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of pants, about 4 layers under my jacket, 2 pairs of gloves on and still got cold hands and feet. I won't go into technical explanations about what causes it (the aurora that is, not the cold feet, that part should be obvious), if you're curious you can check this out: http://odin.gi.alaska.edu/FAQ/ . Otherwise, just enjoy the pretty colours.

Next it was south along the Denali highway to Anchorage. That was a nice drive, through the Alaska Range and past Denali himself, the tallest mountain in North America at about 6,200m, who can be difficult to see but we got a nice clear view. We arrived in Anchorage just in time for the ceremonial start of the Iditarod, one of the most famous sled dog races in the world. That was cool, to see, but you don't really appreciate what sort of endurance the full race takes, covering thousands of miles over more than 10 days. Anchorage was a nice enough city, very pretty when seen against the Chugach Mountains, and you can encounter moose right in among the suburbs - we came across 3 of them on a walk one day, so it was nice to be able to watch them so close somewhere they have no fear of humans.

From Anchorage we went south to Seward, in Resurrection Bay on the Kenai Peninsula. It was good to get back to the Pacific Ocean again, although a much colder part of it than I'm used to. Seward's a nice little town, very quiet in winter and we unfortunately we got lots of rain and snow (it just keeps coming back) so we spent a lot of time watching TV in our hotel room (a bit of uncommon luxury, but most of the hostels in Alaska are closed in winter so the hotels work out just as cheap with winter rates when shared between two people). We visited the SeaLife Centre, a research centre for sea lions, seals, puffins and other north Alaskan sea creatures (my favourite was the giant octopus).

While in Seward we went on a cruise around the bay, where we got to see orcas (killer whales), more sea lions, sea otters and Dall porpoise (a smaller relation to the orcas) and had sunshine, rain and snow all on the one trip so it was pretty good value for money. There were probably about 20 or 30 bald eagles hanging around town, which we were kind of excited about, but we were in for a much bigger treat in Homer, our next destination.

We only had one day here but were favoured with fantastic weather, and headed out onto the 10km spit which extends into beautiful Kachemak Bay. We'd been told that sometimes there could be up to 50 bald eagles gathered out there in the winter, which sounded like it was worth seeing. We saw about 30 or so on our way out there so thought they might have been leaving for the day, but at the far end there were at least 100 of them gathered together, so we would have seen well over 150 in the course of the day. They're big birds, and very impressive to watch so to see so many of them all together, sitting on every house, on light poles and even on the beaches was really great.

Unfortunately there wasn't a great deal more to do in Alaska in the winter, a lot of places and activities don't really get going until about May, so I'll be coming back to the north towards the end of summer to spend some more time. We headed back to Anchorage for a few days and then returned to Whitehorse, where I am now. I figured I'd have a break for a few days, but 2 weeks later I'm still here and will be for a bit longer. As I mentioned spring's finally arrived, we even had a bonfire celebration about a week ago to celebrate the fact, which was nice yet creepy in a Wicker Man kind of way. It snowed on the night of course, and most of the next day, just to show us winter would be over when it was good and ready.

But most of the time there's brilliant sunshine, and with the ice on the Yukon River starting to break up (well, it had started when we left but when we got back it was all frozen up again) you get an amazing combination of green pines, brilliant white snow and the deep blue of the river. Temperatures are up to a toasty 4 degrees during the day (you may laugh but it really feels great, especially being able to just sit outside in the sun), and it only drops to -10 at night so it's been a bit more pleasant watching some of the fantastic auroral displays this past week. A bit, still get cold feet.

So that's it for now, from here it'll be south once more, exactly how far though is something I haven't figured out yet. We'll see. For now though, here's a map of where I've been so far in North America. All the major legs of my journey are colour coded to make it easy to follow, and my current location is marked with my head (this is not to scale), will make sure I include it on all future blogs. Enjoy ; )

Slip-sliding away, eh.

2008-02-24T05:30:00.009+10:00

So, I've been in Canada just over 8 months now, and winter's starting to ease off a bit now. Temperatures have actually made it as high as 7 degrees lately, and I'm so thoroughly acclimatised I genuinely think that this feels warm. It's amazing what just one Canadian winter can do to you.

I've spent most of the last month in the Rockies, which were just as beautiful in the winter as you'd expect. I did stop briefly in Calgary on the way from Winnipeg, didn't do much there except go for a short 2 hour walk that ended up lasting 10. I couldn't help it though, I saw an interesting hill in the distance which I couldn't resist taking a look at. Turned out to be very distant and after all that walking I managed to strain my knee in some way which left me limping around for the next week or so. With all the ski-related injuries in the Rockies I blended right in though, it probably gave me some extra street cred too.

First stop in the Rockies was Canmore to meet up with my friend Helen, who I met way back in Vancouver. We picked up my other friend Sandra in Banff (who you might remember I'd travelled with a lot back east, and will be seeing yet again up north) and pop up to the Banff Gondola on Sulphur Mountain (Helen got us free tickets, yay) to see Banff all covered in snow. Then it was another hour down the road to Lake Louise for Ice Magic, the annual ice sculpture festival held at the Fairmont Hotel. This was really great to watch over the 2 days we were there, seeing the pieces being worked on right through to the finished products, which looked great lit up at night. We also got to walk (or limp, in my case) across the frozen lake, which is always novel.

I went back to Banff for a week after that. It was a beautiful morning when I arrived, one I won't forget in a hurry after missing the bus and hobbling up the hill with my bags in -35 weather as my whole face pretty much iced over (it's always a bit concerning when your nose starts to feel kind of crunchy when you move it). I tried to take it relatively easy that week and let my knee recover, but I also couldn't resist revisiting some of my favourite places to see them in winter - Bow Falls, the Hoodoo trail and especially the Vermilion Lakes. Caught up with some more friends too, in fact these days I hardly go any time at all without seeing someone I know over here. In Banff I ran into Sally purely by chance, I'd caught the train from Halifax to Ottawa with her, and also met up with Fiona from the Salty Bear tour back in Nova Scotia.

After Banff it was back to Canmore where I stayed at Helen's place for a week. Canmore's quite a nice town, it's just outside the national park so has less restrictions on development and is more residential in nature than tourist oriented Banff. A lot of the houses are only used as weekend homes by Calgary residents though so it's often pretty quiet and with lots of good hiking trails it's definitely somewhere I'll be revisiting to explore further. I actually did take it pretty easy here, only did a little bit of hiking (mostly trying in vain to track down the herd of about 30 elk that everybody else in town seemed to run into daily) so my knee finally got better.

Next stop was Edmonton for 2 nights, just to have a quick look on my way to Jasper. Edmonton seems largely unexciting to be honest (their main claim to fame is the world's largest shopping mall, but I'd already been there on my first trip over here). Plus it was -40 when I was there and it's just painful being outside in that weather, even my iPod refused to operate properly. I actually found myself bathing my hands in the relative warmth of inside a refrigerator at one stage because it seemed so much warmer to my painfully cold hands.

Anyway, it was a huge relief to be back to a more comfortable -10 (no, I really mean that) in Jasper, where I stayed with Ben, another Salty Bear alumni. With my knee only just back in action I promptly slipped crossing a particularly icy street and so was left with a very sore tailbone and bruised ass for the rest of my time in Jasper. I blame the fact that I'd talked to Ben about going cross-country skiing, it seems everytime I even think about going skiing I manage to injure myself or get sick beforehand. The first time I slipped on a glacier and hurt my knee, then I got the flu when I considered trying cross country last time I was in NZ. It was pretty annoying (I've still got my bruise), but I ended up doing some snowshoeing and cross country skiing anyway. Snowshoeing is great fun, when you first strap them on you feel invincible, almost like you're floating along on top of the snow. After a while it's hard work though, as you you've got the extra weight of the shoes and you do sink into the the snow if it's soft enough. We went up to Patricia Lake just above Jasper, and it was pretty special standing out on the lake in just total silence. Cross-country was alright too, it's definitely more my kind of skiing than downhill, and it doesn't hurt that much when you fall down as you're not going fast. Unless you've got a pre-bruised tailbone to fall on, which isn't fun. But even though I was hardly a picture of grace but I definitely enjoyed it.

One of the highlights of the Rockies was the icewalk I did in Maligne Canyon. I'd been there before in the summer and it's an amazing place, a very deep (up to 50m) and narrow canyon with about 5 waterfalls and really strong rapids. In the winter of course it's all frozen so you can actually walk right down through the bottom of the canyon. A lot of the water comes from caves in the area and so seeps out of the canyon walls, creating huge ice formations. It was pretty spectacular, being able to walk there in the first place but also going right up to and even around behind some of those huge formations. Saw plenty of elk around Jasper too, they tend to hang around town so between the elk and icy sidewalks you really had to be paying attention wandering the streets of Jasper.

After that it was time to hit the road again, this time to the great white north - the Yukon. Had another stopover in Edmonton on the way for a few hours - just enough time to make it to the Video Games Live concert, where a whole bunch of music from different games is performed by a symphony orchestra and choir - it was pretty awesome (and yes, probably just as nerdy as it sounds), they had everything from old stuff like Space Invaders and Super Mario right through to big orchestral pieces from Halo and Final Fantasy. After that little taste of culture it was back on the bus to head north though - 30 hours it took to get up here to Whitehorse. It was a really nice drive though along the Alaska Highway, which is surrounded on all sides by thousands of kilometres of complete wilderness. We also had to cross the northern ranges of the Rockies, and even though it meant 2 nights on the bus I was lucky enough to have an almost full moon again so could still enjoy the view at night.

Whitehorse is brilliant, it's exciting just to know that you're way up north (I just love mentioning that I'm in the Yukon and have been casually dropping it into conversation all the time), and it really feels like you'd expect to be up here. The first day I was here I caught the finish of the Yukon Quest dog sled race, a 1,000 mile journey over about 10 days from Fairbanks to here in Whitehorse, so that was pretty neat to see the first 2 mushers get in. Spring's almost upon us too so each day the ice on the Yukon River has broken up a little bit more, it's beautiful to see with the deep blue and turquoise water running over the ice. Tomorrow morning it's off to Alaska, Fairbanks first, which is one of the best places in the world to see the northern lights so I'm hoping they put on a good show while I'm there. Not sure how long I'll be in Alaska just yet, will be catching the start of the Iditarod (another big sled race) so will stay at least a few weeks and then probably come back here to Whitehorse for a bit so I can figure out where I'm heading next.

So this is what cold is, eh.

2008-01-18T03:17:00.001+10:00

Okay, I've let this slip for a long time so there's a lot to catch up on. I've been moving around quite a bit since I left Halifax on the 21st of November though and haven't had much time for writing. In that time I've been to Ottawa, Montreal, Mt Tremblant, back to Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa again, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and spent a month in the US in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC. Wasn't the most sensible schedule really, had to do a bit of backtracking, but I had to go to Ottawa first to vote for the Australian election. I've just been back to Toronto from DC and wrote most of this on the train to Winnipeg, had about 30 hours to watch the snowy vistas roll by and try and get this blog written. So here it is.

It was a pretty radical change on leaving Halifax, it was a 24 hour train trip to Ottawa when I left, no snow in sight, and by the time we reached Quebec the whole world was in shades of white and grey, and stayed that way for the next month pretty much. Now, a few months ago I would have said I'd experienced 27 winters so it was a bit of a surprise to find that this year marks my first actual winter, because what we get back in Australia does not even qualify. About the most you could call it is an absence of winter. It's COLD here. When you say it's freezing it is not a figure of speech. You learn to adjust though, and your definition of what is actually cold weather is constantly changing, I now consider anything above 0 warm. I've already had to revise my thinking about winter, I thought the first month of snow had gotten me used to it, but then I got to Winnipeg. It's generally been between -20 to -30 since I've been here, and with windchill it feels more like -40. If you want to know what that feels like, imagine the painful burning sensation of touching metal in a freezer. Now imagine that the AIR is that cold. It quite literally burns it's that cold. It's amazing, and I have to admit I'm kind of enjoying it, in a weird masochistic kind of way. Not so much that I spend every minute of the day in it. I did go for a 'leisurely' walk yesterday, think I managed to be out for about an hour all up, before I was forced inside to thaw out some of my more frozen extremities.

You also get used to dealing with snow, plodding and slipping around the place, but they're pretty well set up to deal with it over here and manage to keep the sidewalks and roads pretty clear most of the time. The main hassle is it blowing in your face, in your eyes and up your nose so you tend to spend a lot of time looking at the ground. And everything gets all wet when it melts and gets tracked inside. So that's one (and possibly the only) advantage of -20, it's too cold to snow anymore, and the existing snow is freeze dried so doesn't melt.

But enough about the weather, on to where I've been. Ottawa, the Canadian capital, is quite nice, but smaller than I thought. The Parliament buildings are impressive, and the hostel I stayed at used to be an old jail which was novel. It was supposedly haunted but the only thing I noticed was the pillows made a crackly sound. Apart from the National Gallery I didn't have time for much else, but I think Ottawa would be more attractive in the summer so will have to try and get back there again. Montreal I'd already been to, it was nice to see how it looked in the wintertime though, and there I met up with my Swiss friend Sandra (who I'd met back in Calgary and again in Halifax) to go back up to Mt Tremblant. This was the most spectacular place I'd visited back in the fall, it's a very picturesque area, and being a ski resort looks very nice in the winter. We hiked around in the snow for a bit (which is hard work, believe me) and caught the gondola to the top of the mountain to spend a very relaxed afternoon in front of the fire, leaving all the sliding downhill to other people. Back in Montreal I also caught up with Martin (or Uncle Swiss), who was one of the group of people I'd hung around with back in Vancouver. I now actually have a pretty extensive network of people I know all across the country (and the world) so I'm hardly ever without company for more than a few days anymore, which is handy.

I headed off alone though to visit Quebec for a few days, the Old Town of which is the only walled city in North America. It has a very mediaeval European feel to it, and is home to the impressive Chateau Frontenac, one of the Fairmont Hotels. It's a pretty place to wander around but there was a big snowstorm when I was there, which was actually kind of fun to be out in, but but did mean most of my memories are of Quebec's sidewalks (which were largely white). It seems to me snowstorms are much more inconvenient if you actually live there and have to drive - on foot they're really not that bad as long as you're dressed for them. Clouds have an insulating effect too so it's often much colder when it's sunny, which seems kind of unfair; I remember when the sun actually used to make some sort of difference.

After Quebec I caught up to Martin again in Ottawa (after a brief stopover in Montreal to retrieve the Vegemite I'd left in the hostel there) and we headed down to Toronto to meet Sandra again, as it was my birthday and I wanted to spend it with friends. It turned out to be a good day, Toronto was actually looking quite pretty with sunshine and snow, Sandra gave me some chocolate, I spoke to my family on Skype (they gave me some money which I used to buy a snazzy new iPod) and then I found out Signal Hill, the band I saw all the time back in Halifax just happened to be playing in town that night. I'm sure some people think I planned that but it was pure coincidence. So we went to see them and Sandra, having heard me go on about gravy a fair bit, even scraped the gravy off her dinner for me to have on my beef dip sandwich. I got quite emotional as you don't get good gravy much over here and it's one of the few things which can make me homesick. And Signal Hill rocked of course, so it was a top night.

After that, we said goodbye to Martin and set off for Niagara Falls, which I saw a few years back but wanted to see in winter. Wasn't much snow but everything around the falls was covered in ice from the frozen spray so that's pretty cool (I swear Sandra found the icy trees more exciting than the actual falls, which I found a bit odd). We crossed over the American side of the falls too, thought Sandra might have been getting deported when she got held up in customs for a while but once through we found the American side is quite nice. Goat Island, which sits between the two falls, is all parkland so it seems a bit more natural than the highly developed Canadian side, with all the casinos and tacky attractions.

After Niagara I went south on my own to Boston. It's always a little bit weird passing through US customs, you can't help feeling intimidated, like you're doing something slightly naughty and are afraid of getting caught, and it always takes a few days for that feeling to wear off and for me to feel comfortable in the States. Boston was alright though, I had another snowstorm here though which impeded my explorations again, and mainly just walked the Freedom Trail, a circuit of all the historic buildings (twice actually, but only once on purpose), humming the Boston Legal theme song as I went. Next stop was Philadelphia, where I stayed with Rico, a guy I went to university with. Was nice to have a local resident show me the sites, such as Independece Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell, and to stay in an actual apartment instead of a hostel for a change. It's very easy to eat well in America, and Rico pointed out all the local delicacies, which are essentially various kind of meat sandwich, like the Philly Cheese Steak (steak and cheese on a bread roll). It might not be stunningly creative but it's exactly my kind of food.

Then it was up to New York for Christmas, where I'd arranged to meet Sandra again, and Emily, who we'd met up in Halifax and is from New Zealand. New York was great, I liked it the first time I visited but I wouldn't have exactly said I loved it. After my second visit though I'm prepared to make that commitment. We spent a lot of time walking around the city, exploring all the different neighbourhoods, walking right from the Upper West Side down to the sourthern tip of Manhattan
(over 2 days). Revisiting all the well-known sights was just like seeing old friends: Times Square, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, Central Park; and with all the Christmas decorations around town, like the famous Rockefeller Centre tree, the city was looking particularly pretty. No snow, but it was such beautiful weather, up around 15 degrees and lots of sunshine we weren't complaining. We spent Christmas Eve at the Top of the Rock observatory watching the sun set over Manhattan and the Empire State building, it was really stunning.

On Christmas Day we were feeling the need to hear some Christmas carols so went to a church service in one of the cathedrals on Fifth Avenue. We got our carols but a lot of extra religion too, but I suppose it's their show so they get to call the shots. It was a really nice day so we went down to the Brooklyn Bridge and spent the afternoon there wandering across and watching the sunset. It's a very nice bridge. We went to dinner that night at a nice restaurant with some other friends of Emily's so there were 6 of us and although we had a really nice time, we agreed it didn't quite feel like an actual Christmas when you're not spending it with family.

We went to see a Broadway musical of course, got half price tickets for The Colour Purple, which turned out to be really, really good. We also spent a whole day in the Metropolitan museum (I lectured Sandra and Emily that if they saw any museum in New York had to see the Met, but it is one of the best museums in pretty much the whole world and they agreed later I was right). I made up for my harrassment by taking them on a carriage ride in Central Park as my Christmas present (they gave me more chocolate and some syrup, I think people they'd picked up my sweet tooth).

It was pretty sad to leave New York (and Emily of course) but Washington DC was next. Sandra came down for a few days and we checked out the National Mall and all the monuments and celebrated New Year's eve there. Was a pretty quiet one though as there were no fireworks or big celebrations in Washington, but we found a bar to count down the changeover and got party hats so that was alright. After Sandra left I ended up staying much longer than I planned in Washington, about 2 weeks, but after all the travelling of the last few months I needed a bit of a break.

I quite liked Washington, it's got a lot of very nice buildings and it's very quiet so it was relaxing, I could sleep in, get plenty of work done and could pop into a different museum all day as there's about 20 Smithsonian museums and they're all free. In all I visited the National Art Gallery (saw some good exhibitions on JMW Turner and Edward Hopper), the Gallery of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Natural History (disappointed in the dinosaurs but liked the mammal hall), the Museum of the American Indian (very interesting and a fantastic building), the Corcoran Gallery (great photography exhibitions with Ansel Adams and Annie Leibowitz here), the African and Asian art galleries as well as both Air and Space Museums (one's particularly cool, in a huge hangar out near Dulles airport full of historic planes, even including a space shuttle). Once you're done with all the museums there's not that much to do, but I think I left DC with my mind considerably broadened, and all up I really enjoyed my time in America. For some reason, almost everywhere in America reminds me of Disneyland (in a good way). Not entirely sure why. It didn't hurt too that it was about 20 degrees down there - I could wear actual shorts if I wanted to - and I knew I would be returning to the coldest months of the Canadian winter.

But I am glad to be back in Canadia. First stop was Toronto, where I caught up with some friends, Brad, a guy I've known through the Flickr photo site for years but had never met in person - he showed me around some of the outer regions of the Toronto area, and also met up with Laura again, who I'd met back in New Zealand. Now I'm on my way back to the Rockies, catching up with more people I know along the way, such as Darcie, who I met on the Salty Bear trip in Nova Scotia and lives here in Winnipeg. Looking forward to getting back to the mountains and will be staying there for a while before I go too far again.

SOCIABLE!!!!

2007-11-13T11:55:00.002+10:00

That's a cry often heard in Halifax pubs, and everyone's supposed to toast when they hear it, so if you have a drink handy (doesn't have to be alcoholic) feel free to take a swig. Now then, Halifax. Still here after about 5 weeks, and I'm not looking forward to picking up my backpack again after so long. It looks so happy there on the floor, I don't have the heart to disturb it. But it's almost time to get moving again.

I was just about to head off on the Salty Bear tour around Nova Scotia when I last wrote. We left from Halifax, a fully packed van with 14 people (with one more joinig us the next day), and we headed off to Cape Breton Island, which makes up about the top quarter of Nova Scotia. The first days was spent travelling mostly, and was filled with lies upon lies as we had to fabricate stories about ourselves in a get-to-know-you game. We took it very seriously so there were some pretty pointed interrogations and we'd continued to suspect each other of telling more lies long after the game was finished. If it did ever finish. We did stop off for lunch at Boston Pizza - something of a Canadian institution, and to toss a football around on a beach somewhere in L'Acadie (the Acadians were some of the original French settlers in Canada, who were deported and then came back and resettled). We had time for a quick hike up a hill near where we were staying at Club Cape Breton (as we came to call it) before returning for dinner and a night around the campfire. There were some experiments with marshmallow cookery and we discovered that Fabiana, a petite little Swiss girl in our group, could speak in a really creepy deep voice (much deeper than any of the guys could mange I have to admit) which sounded a bit like she was possessed. And when I tried to match her I found I can do a pretty good imitation of Gollum (precious!). So that's handy to know, in case they ever do get the Hobbit movie off the ground, could be in with a chance.

Day 2 was spent driving the Cabot Trail, through the National Park at the top of Cape Breton Island. We did quite a few hikes that day, the best being the Skyline Trail which had a great view along the coast. And I was lucky enough to spot my first moose here, I was by myself when he appeared out of the trees but was joined by two other girls in our group, so we were the only ones who got to see a moose on the trip. He was pretty big, and crossed the pathway just ahead of us so we got a really good look at him. Unfortunately he only had stubby little antlers, even though they should be fully grown at this time of year, so he was either still young or might have already lost them (they regrow them each year). On our way back to Club Cape Breton our driver Matt put on some local Nova Scotian music and started teaching us Barrett's Privateers, a sea shanty style song which gets everyone singing when it's played in the pubs here. We had to pick up Ben, our final passenger, who I think was a little bit bemused to find us all heartily singing along when he hopped in the van, and was then subjected to a full interrogation as he fed us even more lies. That night saw the inaugural Club Cape Breton Dance Party and the debut of DJ Wayne, picking the tunes to get everybody shakin' their groove things. It went off, with the Anne of Green Gables hat passed around with wild abandon and made-up games of Twister (we didn't have the spinner so we made up our own commands (left elbow blue, forehead green and so on) just to make things more amusing for the spectators.

Day 3 saw us off on the ferry to Prince Edward Island, whicheven though it's only a relatively small island is a separate province. It's very rural and quite charming - lots of well maintained old buildings and farmhouses - and is famous for being where most of McCain's potatoes are grown and Anne of Green Gables is set. We stopped in Charlottetown for a wuick look around in the afternoon, and spent the night at Cavendish on the north coast, right on a very pretty red-tinged beach (all the soil on the island is red because of the high iron content). That night saw another wild dance party (with DJ Wayne on the decks again) we all went out on the lawn at midnight to wave some sparklers around (provided by English Dave) for some reason.

When things finally wrapped up it was up in the morning for a bike ride, which we found quite funny given half of us hadn't touched a bike in years (myself included - I'd forgotten how uncomfortabel the seats can be). We went for a quick ride around the Cavendish area, some of us stopping along the way to check out the Anne of Green Gables house. Not me though - we had some readings from the book throughout the trip and I really think she may be the most annoying fictional girl in the world - so I went down to the beach with some of the others. Afterwards it was off on the long drive back to Halifax via the Confederation Bridge, which is really long and connects PEI to the mainland. That night we farewelled some members of our crew who were only doing a 4 day trip, so most of us went to the Halifax Alehouse to give Barrett's Privateers a spin in public - we were probably the most enthusiastic bunch there when they finally played it around 2am, and the second it finished, our duty done, we grabbed our jackets and were out the door.

Day 5 and we were headed south to Peggy's Cove, a popular little fishing village famed for it's picturesque lighthouse. It was very wet and windy when we were there so we spent most of our time huddled in the gift shop unfortunately, but it was impressive to see the ocean being whipped up by the winds. Next it was on to Mahone Bay and Lunenberg, two historic towns along the coast - lots of really nice heritage buildings here and quaint little churches. Very pretty places to just wander around. We then headed inland, stoping for a brief afternoon hike by a lake, finishing up in Annapolis Royal on the oppoite side of Nova Scotia (it's quite a small province). After catching a very pretty sunset over the river we headed out to our accommodation for the night, an old farmhouse which was somewhat rustic (a little bit too rustic some thought, but once you shook all the dead flies off the mattresses it was fine). DJ Wayne had to keep things a bit more chilled out that night, despite our initial plans to rock the farmhouse energy levels flagged early so most people settled in to watch hockey, sit around the campfire or were treated to more readings from Anne of Green Gables (I swear that girl needs a good slap. She's so annoying).

On our last day we looked around town a bit, including the fortifications at Fort Anne. Then it was off to the Gaspereaux Valley for a wine tasting at the vineyard there. They had some nice wine, the maple wine in particular was delicious, a very sweet dessert wine sweeted with, you guessed it, maple syrup. Then it was off to Wolfville for lunch, another nice little town where we assembled an enormous collection of tables on the pub patio for a delicious lunch. Afterwards we headed to Blomidon National Park, on the shores of the Bay of Fundy which has the greatest difference in tides on Earth, with a change of about 17 metres. It's very pretty coastline, rolling farmlands stopping suddenly at reddish soil cliffs and huge stretches of mud at low tide. Walking right out to the water's edge you can see the tide coming in if you watch carefully - pretty much every wave comes in slightly further than the last, it's kind of weird to watch actually. And then it was back to Halifax at last, where I've been ever since.

Quite a few of the Salty Bear crew stayed around for a few days afterwards, which meant we of course had to have farewell drinks as each person departed. Luckily there's no shortage of bars in Halifax and plenty of live music. Most of my time has been spent at The Lower Deck listening to Signal Hill, a great cover band who play lots of old favourites as well as some great local songs (including Barrett's Privateers every time, which I now know all the words to - hurrah!), so we'd usually at least start each night there.

There's been quite a few people who've stayed on the last few weeks, Emily, Cielle, James, Ben and Matt (our driver) from the Salty Bear trip, Kamila, John, Mel and Alexandra from the hostel here and even Sandra, who I met back in Calgary and we'd always persuade to stay just a few more days until she finally escaped again last week. So it's been great having a little bunch of people to hang around with all the time, and really settle into in a place in a way I haven't since I left Vancouver right over the other side of the country. We've been busy doing all sorts of things, checking out the museums (on the nights they're free usually), the Halifax Citadel, regular walks around nearby Point Pleasant Park, a few expeditions over to Dartmouth on the other side of the harbour, we attended a Remembrance Day ceremony the other weekend, and went to my first hockey game (i really quite like hockey, it was a lot of fun - our time won too, wooo!).

But the main highlight had to be Halloween. Since most of us come from countries which don't really celebrate it we decided we were going to make the most of it, so there was a lot of hunting around for costumes the day leading up to it, and I was getting slightly panicky because I wanted to be a cowboy and couldn't find a decent coat until the actual day itself (I did though and it was awesome). It was cool to see the houses decorated up with their pumpkins on the porch, and the groups of kids trick or treating. And to dress up ourselves of course.

Once we were all costumed up we went and met a bunch of locals for this game called Manhunt, which is esentially hide and seek, although we found that if you hide too well you just get cold from sitting around too long. Afterwards Sandra, Cielle, Ben and I thought we might have a crack at trick or treating ourselves. It was very exciting, we carefully selected our first house because they had a lot of pumpkins out the front, and the door was opened by a very nice lady who was only slightly surprised to find a fully grown cowboy, pirate and vampire on her doorstep, several hours after all the kids had finished and gone home for the night. She gave us chips and candy though, and pointed out that it helps if you bring a bag with you, but we explained we were new at this, and the copious pockets of my coat were big enough to carry our haul. We tried a few other places (at one we were actually older than the people who answered the door, which was slightly awkward - they gave us lollipops), but I wanted to go back to the first place and get my picture taken with the nice lady who gave us chips. The others thought that might come across as stalking, but luckily when we passed her place again she was outside putting out her jack'o'lanterns so we ran over and ambushed her. Got my picture and we ended up cahtting to her, explaining where we were all from, as the rest of her family, extended family and even friends arrived in the driveway so we ended up chatting to all of them for a while, before excusing ourselves so we could join the hostel pub crawl.

The bars in town that night were packed with people in costume, there were about 10 people all night who didn't bother (and frankly I don't think they should have been allowed in at all), so it was a great evening. We finally rolled back to the hostel at around 3:30 (which has been a bit of a trend in Halifax, I've barely ever made it to bed before 2 in the whole 5 weeks) - I wanted to get full use out of my costume to be honest, and was even persuaded by the others to wear it back to the costume shop in Dartmouth the next day. Not that I took much convincing.

Almost forgot, some weather news - we had our first snow the other weekend. We've been lucky enough here that it's been quite a bit warmer than the rest of the country, but winter's finally catching up with me. And after two summers in a row this year I'd forgotten how cold 0 degrees is. It's really cold. And snow doesn't always just cascade softly to the ground, it can be quite vicious and smack you in the face and get in your eyes. But it was exciting to see it again. The weather's been strange the last few days though - 15 degrees, we've all been complaining about how hot it is. Oh and we nearly got hit by Hurricane Noel the other week. Wasn't a hurricane anymore by the time it hit us - was just a big storm with lots of wind (up to about 100km/hr) and a bit of rain but we stocked up on emergency snacks and stayed in all night playing bingo and cards. Wild times.

So that's been Halifax. It's been a lot of fun and is definitely one of my favourite places in Canada - I'm going to miss it when I leave but it's time to get moving again next week. I'll be heading back west to Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City before travelling down to the States to have a look around thereand spend Christmas in New York, which should be lots of fun. Already got my fingers crossed for a white Christmas, so here's hoping.

Leaf Peepin'

2007-10-16T10:49:00.001+10:00

Well, I've completely crossed Canadia now, right to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast. I've covered a fair bit of territory since I last wrote, travelling through 5 provinces checking out the fall foliage as I go. The change of seasons over here in the east is one of the main things I wanted to experience during my time in Canada so I've been having a great time.

But back to Winnipeg first, where I last wrote. It was an okay place - to be honest I wasn't there for long and didn't have great weather so didn't really do that much. The highlight was probably the free breakfasts at the hostel (I'm pretty easy to please sometimes) but I did enjoy what I saw of the city - it was pretty much the gateway to the west back in the frontier days and some of that still shows in the old buildings dotted amongst the highrise. Oh and there was a really cool storm there which towered over the city, still lit faintly by the sun after it was dark down at ground level, but was completely silent as the lightning was so high up.

Toronto was my next step, I flew this leg for a change, even though it felt a bit like cheating since I'll be crossing the rest of Canada by land. I had to get there for a trip I wanted to do though, and it was nice to get a different perspective on the landscape - seeing all the lakes covering eastern Manitoba and Ontario from the air is pretty impressive (everyone back home wondering where all the water is, it looks like the Canadians have got it all). The trip was up to Algonquin Provincial Park, a really pretty place of rolling hills and lots (and lots) of lakes and rivers. This was my first good look at the fall colours, it's amazing to look out over the forest canopy and see a patchwork of greens, reds, oranges and yellows as far as you can see. It was a good weekend, did some hiking and canoeing, but you'd need a lot longer to really appreciate the place. But with only a few weeks to see the best of the fall colours I wanted to cover a big area so couldn't stay too long in any one spot. I think this is really the best time of year to see this part of the country. It would be nice any other time of year, but during the fall it's every bit as spectacular as somewhere like the Rockies.

Back in Toronto I caught up with my friend Laura, a Torontonian I met in New Zealand last year (we went up to Fraser Island earlier this year when she passed through Brisbane). She's just arrived home after her own year of travelling so we were swapping stories about our various exploits while she showed me around some of the nicer areas of the city, like the Toronto Islands and the Beach neighbourhood (there's a really, really good ice cream shop there). I'd already seen all the big attractions when I was here 2 years ago, Niagara Falls and the CN Tower, so this time around I was just checking out the city in general. It's okay, similar to New York in many ways, but I've been spending a fair bit of time in cities lately and they all start to feel the same after a while. I did like that ice cream shop though. And their city hall is cool.

From Toronto it was on to Montreal, and being in Quebec that meant into French Canadian territory. After spending so long in Canada and feeling quite at home here it was quite strange to be somewhere which still has all the same shops was still dramatically different. I don't know much French but I've been picking up some tips from various people I've met on my travels - my pronunciation is still pretty dodgy but with help from my new friend Priscilla (who I met on the Algonquin trip) I'm finally getting the hang of the 'r' sounds so it sounds less like I'm trying to cough something nasty up now. I didn't end up using much though, most people you encounter can speak English anyway, and while I could say a few basic things I couldn't really understand most of the responses, so there didn't seem much point starting to talk to people in French just to tell them you didn't understand as soon as they answered. And one of the key phrases I did learn in advance (Je ne parles pas Francais - I don't speak French) I hardly ever actually used because it just seems slightly illogical to say you can't speak a language, in that language. It makes me feel dishonest. Threw it out there a few times though, just to look more cultured.

I did like Montreal, it's one of the more attractive Canadian cities (Vancouver's still my favourite though), particularly the Vieaux Montreal, the old quarter of the city, which has some really attractive heritage buildings. Even better though was my visit to Mt Tremblant, a small village and nearby ski resort in the Laurentian mountains. The forests here were just gorgeous, and I spent several happy days walking through the forests leaf peeping, although with the amount I was doing it probably more like leaf ogling. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip though, particularly the hike to the top of the mountain itself.

It was back to Montreal briefly after that, and then on to the Maritime Provinces. I stopped by Fredericton in New Brunswick just for a day to check it out. It was a nice little town, has that typically north-east American kind of feel to it with lots of old houses, tree-lined streets and church steeples all over the place. And that brings me to Haifax. Immediately took a liking to it when I arrived yesterday afternoon - it's been raining a lot lately and cleared up just as I arrived so I went straight down to the waterfront, which looked great in the late afternoon sun. It's really nice to be back by the ocean again too, to have that smell of salt in the air. And to be back on an east coast again, which my internal sense of direction is more used to I think. I'm heading off on a tour of the area for the next week or so, after which I have no real definite plans. I've heard good things about this part of the country though so I'm sure I'll be hanging around for a little while at least.

Well, I've been to Paradise...

2007-09-22T14:24:00.001+10:00

...and now I've been to me as well.

Some people say we travel in order to find ourselves. Looks like I've got that out of the way. Welcome to Wayne everybody, located just outside Drumheller in the Alberta badlands. As you can see it's not exactly a bustling metropolis. In fact some describe it as a ghost town, although I prefer the term boutique myself. Or fun-size even, like those little Mars bars you get. Apparently I was a pretty big mining community back in the day, but things have quitened down a bit since then.

Wayne was the highlgiht of a 2 day trip around the prairies I went on after leaving Banff, finishing in Calgary. Ostensibly the main reason I chose it was to visit the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, as the badlands are one of the best sources of fossils in the world. But Wayne was a pretty good bonus, and I was waiting very excitedly to get there all day. The museum was fantastic, seeing pretty much all of the most famous dinosaurs I used to read about as a kid, T-Rex, Triceratops, Allosaurus, Stegasaurus, I was in geek heaven. They don't let you help out on the digs any more though which I found a bit disappointing, would have liked to do that.

The landscape's probably about as big a contrast to the Rockies you can get, looking out over the endless plains and gentle hills of the prairie you could hardly believe there could be anything as big as mountains out there. But every now and then you'll come across some dramatic feature of the badlands, winding canyons and river valleys carved out of the plains by the meltwaters of glaciers, banded with the remnants of ancient sea floors. And hoodoos too.

We also visited a place called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, used by the Blackfoot people to hunt buffalo. When the buffalo herds would gather in the right place, they would sneak up to them disguised as wolves and scare them into stampeding. They'd channel them towards certain spots where the buffalo couldn't see the cliffs ahead and would fall over, with obvious results. The museum there's really good, built into the cliff itself, you start at the top and work your way down just like the buffalo. But using the stairs. It's really interesting, but quite sad seeing how white people's arrival affected the area. The buffalo used to cover the plains in their millions, a single herd could take days to pass by. Now there's barely any left because they were recklessly slaughtered, people would actually shoot from passing trains and leave them to rot. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary also tells a lot more about the history of the Blackfoot, a depressingly familiar story of how the population was decimated by disease, alcoholism and generally screwed over by the arrival of the Europeans. Like New Zealand a lot of native cultures are starting to make a bit of a resurgence so hopefully things will get better for them over time.

Calgary itself is quite a nice city, I had planned to go back into the Rockies but felt I needed to take a bit more time in Calgary so stayed there for about a week and a half. It actually reminds me quite a bit of Brisbane, with it's setting along the Bow River (the same one which runs from Lake Louise and Banff), but there's enough grassy hills around town to remind you that you're near the prairies. The city always looks particularly nice in the late afternoon sun, with the yellow grass on the hills and the trees turning gold as fall sets in.

It's very modern though, and I'd really like to experience something a bit more of the old West, as this used to be real cowboy country. That will have to wait until next year though, I'd quite like to be here for the Calgary Stampede as well - it looks like a lot of fun. But now I'm heading east pretty quickly so I can catch the fall in Ontario and Quebec, where it's probablty the most spectacular. So here'll be less landscape shots of mountains from me for a while, but more macro ones of various coloured leaves to look forward to. Like this one.

I wrote most of this on the bus across the prairies from Calgary to Regina, capital of Saskatchewan (Regina rhymes with angina, so you have to be a bit careful using it in conversation - if people haven't heard of it they can completely misunderstand you. If you catch my drift.) It's an 11 hour trip and flat all the way so while I did enjoy the scenery I didn't think I'd be missing too much while I was writing. It's a pleasant enough town not much there in terms of attractions really but it has quite a nice small town kind of feel, and I was quite happy just wandering through it's streets and around the Wascana Centre parklands. There's a few lakes there which at the moment are pretty crowded with Canada Geese flying south for the winter (well, generally south, most of the time they seem to be going in any old direction). That's pretty cool to see. Saskatchewan is also known as the Land of the Living Skies, and I have to say the sunset I watched didn't disappoint. I had a good spot, on about the only hill in Regina (I could see another one off in the distance but I think it's just outside the city) it's maybe 20m high, if that.

So I spent a pleasant few days there, arrived in Winnipeg today and after a few days here will be flying to Toronto so I can go on a trip up to Algonquin Park, hopefully spot me a moose and do some leaf peeping.

(Oh and in case you're wondering, Paradise is in New Zealand, not far from Queenstown and Glenorchy. They filmed part of Lord of the Rings there. Like pretty much everywehre else in NZ)

The Rockies!

2007-09-10T03:24:00.001+10:00

Yep, made it to the Rockies, so lots of mountain photos to go with this blog. Last time I wrote I was in Revelstoke, from there I went to Field, a tiny town of about 300 people in Yoho National Park. It's in a really beautiful valley along the banks of the Kicking Horse River (named after a horse who kicked some guy in the head), with a great little hostel which is pretty much brand new. It's only small, only fits about 40 people so it's like having your own house for a few days. Being the Rockies it's generally a good idea to have a hiking partner, due to bears (on some trails it's even illegal to travel in a group of less than 4), so I was lucky that I'd already met Tom (from the UK) in Revelstoke. Our first challenge was actually getting to the trails, they're all at the end of long access roads which usually adds at least an extra 20km if you want to walk it, so we had to try our hand at hitch-hiking - I'd never tried it before (and won't be making a habit of it, it's kind of boring and you have to deal with a fair bit of rejection, which gets a bit depressing), so I was pretty impressed with myself when the very first car I signalled pulled over. To tell us they were full. You know, thanks and everything, but why bother? Anyway, we only had to try it a few times, enough to experiment with a variety of techniques though, looking hopeful, pleading, sad, tired etc - we had quite a dramatic range by the end of it all, and had even gotten quite picky about exactly wchich cars we would accept lifts from (no Chryslers thanks, they're ugly). Our record pick up time was about 8 minutes, which I thought was pretty good, but most of the people passing by were there to hike themselves and they're generally pretty nice people so it wasn't really that difficult.

So first stop was the Yoho Valley, with Takkakaw Falls (which means 'it is wonderful' in the Cree language) - they're the second highest in Canada and an impressive sight. From there we hiked up over the Yoho Pass and down to Emerald Lake, which was a pretty good day's walk, with a great view coming down towards the lake. The next day we just went back up to the falls and wandered around the valley up there. It's kind of funny, whenever you first set out on a hike you tend to have bears very much in mind (despite Australia's reputation for dangerous animals there really aren't many that will just leap out of the forest and attack you, so it take some getting used to) - even thought they're not generally a problem in Yoho you still have to make plenty of noise to let them know you're around. So you tend to talk UNUSALLY LOUDLY, to the point where you're shouting things at each other like, 'WOW, THIS IS REALLY AMAZING, IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL HERE - AND SO PEACEFUL!!' Or you wander around clapping and yelling whenever you approach a corner. It feels a bit ridiculous but you do get used to it, and once you've walked far enough you still go through the motions but you can't spare much energy to be worried about bears.

Afterwards Tom had to head off to Vancouver, but I was able to get a lift with a couple from Belgium who were heading out to a place called Lake O'Hara. It's a specially protected area - there's a bus (usually booked out well in advance) which will take in a limited number of people to a campsite or you can hike the 11km access road in there, which we did. That was a nice enough walk in itself, but Lake O'Hara itself was just stunning. We had perfect weather that day, and I don't think I've ever seen anywhere quite so beatiful before, and the others agreed that it was probably the nicest place they'd seen so far in all their travels.

We hiked a loop trail which climbed from one side of the lake, past 3 perched lakes to glacier-fed Lake Oesa, which sits at the base of some truly stunning mountains. From there we crossed some scree slopes beneath the cliffs of Yukness Mountain to the Opabin Plateau, which features a string of another 4 lakes which also feed into O'Hara, and then back down to O'Hara itself. The whole day was absolutely amazing, everywhere you looked was a picture-perfect vista, so I took pictures of them all obviously, but they don't come even close to doing it justice, there's just no way to communicate the sense of awe you get in place like that in a tiny little photo.

Once we got back down to the lake we just lay on the jetty taking in the view for about an hour, listening to a guy practising on the fiddle. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. And best of all, you can get the bus back down without a reservation so we were spared the 11km downhill walk.

After Lake O'Hara, it was on to Lake Louise for a few days, which while not as spectacular as O'Hara is still quite pretty. I hiked up to the Plain of Six Glaciers beyond the lake, which is pretty impressive (it's got six glaciers).

I also went up to nearby Moraine Lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, as the first time I came to Canada it was mostly hidden by clouds and it's a pretty iconic landscape. So I was lucky to have decent weather, saw all 10 peaks, and was there early enough to have the lake mostly to myself for a while before all the tour buses arrived. Will get back there at some stage as there's some really good hikes I'd like to do but it's one of those places you need a large group because of the grizzlies.

So that brings me here to Banff. I like Banff a lot, while it can get pretty crowded in the middle of summer it's not too at the moment. It's in a really beautiful setting along the banks of the Bow River and surrounded by some really nice mountains - Cascade and Sulphur Mountains, and my personal favourite Mt Rundle, which I've photographed from just about every angle. There's plenty of nice hikes accessible from right in town too, so I've done just about all of those - along the Bow River, out to the Vermilion Lakes, the Hoodoo Trail and up to Tunnel Mountain.

Banff's also a pretty good place for wildlife spotting - for elk in particular which often hang around town to get away from the wolves and bears out in the rest of the park (and who can blame them really). I've seen a few elk around town here, just passed another one on my way back to the hostel tonight actually and there's a young buck who I've seen around a few times. Yesterday though I was walking out to Sundance Canyon and I came across two big bull elk grazing beside the trail, was very careful walking past them (and to be honest I let some other people coming the other way go past first just to gauge what sort of mood the elk are in). They didn't seem fussed to have anyone around though, and we were all careful to keep as much distance from them as possible. So I had a look at the canyon and headed back down the trail, where I had to pass them again. Now around this time of year they're actually in rut so the males in particular can be quite aggressive - they're actually the most dangerous animals in the park. I got a great photo of me (very slowly and carefully) walking past one of them.

You can see he's looking up in this pic, right after this he wandered over to me and started following right behind me, pretty much right behind my shoulder. Now he was probably taller than me, not even counting his antlers, and started making this kind of clicking noise. I didn't know if he was curious, angry or horny and only one of those was going to have a happy ending. I was also painfully aware that I'd recently had a brownie and had wiped some crumbs off on the back of my pants and was hoping he wasn't smelling that, but luckily he lost interest and I went on my way unmolested, but it was quite exciting for a while.

It wasn't really scary (although I'm well aware it could have been serious if he'd decided he didn't like me after all) - I'd nearly had a heart attack a few days before when I was walking up the road to the hostel and saw a black shape on all fours rummaging around in the bushes right beside the road. It's a good thing I didn't have bear spray with me, as I probably would have given him a good dose right before I noticed his baseball cap and realised it was some guy picking up trash or gardening or maybe just doing it to give people like me a nasty shock. I mean really, what sort of person crawls around in the forest wearing dark clothing in known bear territory? You're just asking for a pepper spraying.

Anyway, don't want to end on a negative note, so here's a photo of Mt Rundle (he's got some fresh snow on) to wrap things up. I do like this mountain.

Heading east... to the west

2007-08-22T17:34:00.001+10:00

The Wild West that is. But first I suppose I should let you know what I've been up to the last few weeks. I headed down to Seattle at the end of July with Markus (Germany). It's a nice enough city, different to what I expected though, more like San Francisco than Vancouver. The mountains are a lot further away (Mt Rainier always looks nice to the south though) and I thought the waterfront would be more of a feature of the city. The weather was quite hot too which is a bit unexpected for a place as notoriously rainy as Seattle.

We started with some shopping at an outlet mall, it's always good to get new clothes when you're on the road, you get so sick of wearing the same stuff all the time (although if people keep pinching my t-shirts that's not going to be such an issue - at least they're only taking the old ones with holes in them). Afterwards we felt we should do something a bit more manly, so it was off to the Museum of Flight to watch the Blue Angels (the US Navy stunt jet team), who were in town practising for an upcoming airshow. The airstrip they were using was right beside the museum so we had a really good view, and then watched their afternoon flight from a hilltop park's water tower, where we could see them all around the city. They're amazing to watch and the noise as they roar past is pretty incredible as well. We went back the next day to check out the museum itself and for some more Blue Angel action, and (completely by accident, sort of) wandered onto a top level balcony so scored one of the best viewpoints in the place. We weren't really supposed to be there but luckily no one spotted us and asked us to get back downstairs until after they were done so it was all good.

It was all very educational in Seattle, as we also went to the Experience Music Project and the adjoining Science Fiction Museum (the EMP is probably one of the funkiest museums in the world, there's not many where you walk around tapping your feet the whole time - lots of stuff on the history of grunge, Jimi Hendrix and a live jazz band). Did the Seattle Undeground tour as well, which takes you, well, underground, to the original street level of the city - it was all built over after a big fire in the early 1900's levelled pretty much the whole city. It was interesting to hear the history but it was pretty much just at basement level, I'd hoped it would go down a lot further through dark tunnels, old sewers and we'd get to wear helmets with lights and stuff. Oh well. We stayed just across the road from the famous Pike Place Market, so watched them throw some fish around and visited the very first Starbucks store, where we learned the lady in the Starbucks logo (she's actually a mermaid) used to be topless, she must have gotten shy now that she's appearing all over the world. She also appears at the top of a tower on the Starbucks Centre, a big building which I guess is their corporate headquarters. Now I actually don't mind Starbucks (big fan of the frappuccino's) but the general effect is kind of... well, evil looking, they only show her from the eyes up on every side of the tower, so it's like she's keeping watch over her vast empire - it's all a bit Big Brother (in an Orwellian way, not the TV show).

But we escaped the clutches of the Starbucks lady and made it back to Vancouver, just in time for the finale of the Celebration of Light fireworks, which was phenomenal (and Canada won the competition which was good). Some of the other people we'd met (Ms Swiss and her newly arrived brother) suggested we head up to Whistler, so the 4 of us pitched in to get a proper hotel room and stayed up there for a few nights. Whistler's a nice little town, the main village is all pedestrian only which is nice. It's mainly a ski town but in the summer attracts lots of mountain bikers. We had a few rainy days so we spent a lot of time in the hotel, watching DVD's, making pancakes and just generally enjoying having normal beds and a nice bathroom. We did do some hiking though, and caught the gondola to the top of Whistler Mountain for a quick hike and the BBQ buffet (which was really, really good, especially the pork).

It was back to Vancouver one last time then, did the Grouse Grind a second time, visited Lighthouse Park and looked around Stanley Park and Granville Island a few more times. We also had a few more farewell dinners as everyone headed home or to keep travelling, which we would usually have at The Old Spaghetti Factory (remind me to tell you about them some other time). I finally left Vancouver (which is definitely one of my favourite cities in the world so far) on the 18th of August, and it was quite strange and a little bit sad to be on my own again after spending so much time with the same people. But that's the way it goes I suppose and it gives me even more reason to visit Europe soon to catch up with everyone and see what's so fantastic about this crunchy bread the Swiss keep talking about.

So first stop after Vancouver was Penticton, in the Okanagan Valley, an area well-known for it's fruit growing and vineyards. Penticton's in quite a nice setting, in between Okanagan and Skaha Lakes, and the countryside reminds me a lot of the Otago region of New Zealand, but with a more Western feel (they've got bears and rattlesnakes around). The weather was kind of gloomy most of the time so I took the opportunity to catch up on some work, but would always go for a walk at the end of the day when the sun would drop beneath the clouds for some really nice sunsets. The town itself wasn't as nice as I'd hoped, I thought it would be smaller and a bit more rural, but the trails around the lake were pretty nice. Kelowna was the next stop, further up Okanagan Lake, and it too was quite nice but not somewhere I felt I had to spend much time. Went for a walk up Knox Mountain in town (and copped a few blisters as I wasn't wearing the right shoes. Only meant to go get some breakfast but as I often do saw the mountain and couldn't resist going for a bit of a wander) but otherwise didn't do much. The hostel there was simed at more of a party crowd too, was full of lots of people who'd get completely drunk which caused them to constantly shout to each other (most of them were Australian too, there must be something we can do to stop all our bogans getting out of the country, it's embarrasing). Penticton was much more civilized, it had a nice little lounge so we'd sit up till late with people from Canada, Spain, France, Ireland and NZ, just talking about anything and everything.

So that brings me to Revelstoke, which I'm really enjoying. It's a small town in the Columbia Mountains, on the banks of the Columbia River and it's so nice to finally be amongst the mountains. Just been doing some hiking around here, down by the river, out to the nearby Revelstoke Dam, and at night there's been free music in the town square for their Railway Days festival. Went to that last night and it was great, sitting out under the stars listening to some good old fashioned fiddlin', with the freight trains and the 'ding, ding, ding' (ice cream man! ice cream man!) of the signals serving as the backing music, it all felt very Canadian. So I'm here for a few more days, then off to the Rockies and Yoho National Park, and the only thing greater than my excitement is the fear which my camera feels at the prospect.

Yes, we do have lifejackets. As well.

2007-07-31T04:51:00.001+10:00

So had a bit of a change of plans since my last entry. As often happens I met up with a bunch of people the night before I was meant to leave Victoria and had such a good time ended up hanging around for almost another week. We came up with a brilliant system to help make it easier to remember everyone's names where we actually wouldn't try, but just called everyone by their country (don't know how many shots it took to come up with this plan but it was a good one). So we had Canada, Mr and Ms Swiss (travelling separately but were married by the end of the night. And offered to adopt me as well so I could be part of the Casanova family. They've separated since though so i'm back on the market I suppose, anybody with the last name Powers take note). We also had 2 Ms Frances, a New York and of course Australia. It was a top night, and the next day Rod (Canada) took Flavio (Switzerland) and I up to his new boat on Cowichan Lake, a few hours drive from Victoria, to go sailing (except we used the motor all the time so technically it was probably driving, or motoring, but sailing sounds nicer). We made that our daily routine for a while - the weather was kind of rainy for a few days so we'd go back to the hostel every night to report on our adventures, but then head off each day, stopping by Tim Horton's for sandwiches and donuts, then cruise around on the lake for a bit.

It was quite cool, we all took on our own roles, of course Canada was the Captain, and became Chief - and only - Fisherman (it's a bit expensive for non-Canadians to get a fishing licence, and we didn't have high expectations for what we'd catch. I was probably First Mate I suppose, as I'd often take over at the helm (People seem to have a habit of thinking I know what I'm doing around boats and canoes, bless them. I can't imagine why), and also documented a lot of the trip (we're planning a documentary eventually), got to be DJ and was general ideas man. I've got a great idea for a marine pizza delivery service I think could be a winner. Just have to figure out a few details, such as whether we'd use people on jetskis or remote controlled boats (note to self - look into trained otters), how to deal with pirates and so on. Switzerland was also a co-captain and most importantly the ship's lifeguard, as he was the only person crazy enough to actually swim in the freezing water and because he floats really well.

We were all quite experienced sailors after a few days although some people seemed to have their doubts - everytime we'd go into a store to get supplies for fishing or would tell anyone about our sailing we'd always be asked within about 2 minutes - 'So, you do have lifejackets don't you?'. We even got a chance to prove our skill on about the third day - by this time we'd recruited Germany, our new deckhand (we mostly seemed to just swear at him) and had been hanging around while Rob fished and the rest of us did Sudoku or listened to music (fishing is so boring). Captain Rod noticed a guy in a boat in the middle of the lake waving to us, and after we'd waved back about 3 times and he still kept waving we thought he might actually be trying to get our attention, so we cruised over to see what was up and they'd run out of petrol. So we tied them on to our boat and started towing them back to their marina. Except they couldn't remember where it was. So we took them all the way back to the main marina (it was where we were headed anyway) so they could refuel, and felt quite proud of ourselves for successfully completing our daring rescue, mainly beacause I think we half expected it would be us needing rescuing at some stage. So it wasn't bad for only our second day's fishing we ended up landing a 12 foot boat, although like any good fishing story we don't have any actual proof - I really wanted to take a photo but we thought it might embarrass them, and now that I think about it, being photographed with them upside down on the dock might have been a bit much.

It paid off as the very next day when we coming into the dock a woman actually said we looked like we knew what we were doing. She actually said that. And this was before Switzerland had even bought his special boat shoes. So with all of this under our belts, once the weather started to clear up Canada, Switzerland and I (Germany had to go back to Vancouver, I think we'd yelled at him too much) headed up to the end of the lake to spend the night on the boat. We had enough supplies for at least a week - noodles, popcorn, Swiss Rolls and pretzels, I don't know what we would have done if we'd actually caught any fish. We found a beautiful little bay to anchor for the night, we watched the sunset and the stars were amazing (I saw the Big Dipper, and it is) but it was quite cool so we'd only pop out every now and then for a quick look.

On our way back the next day Switzerland launched his own little boat he'd bought to go with his boat shoes (it nearly killed him blowing that thing up, it took hours) and treated us to a fine display of boat-waterskiing. Then after one last stop at Tim Horton's for a final donut and to let the ladies behind the counter know we were still alive we returned to Victoria and sadly had to split up the crew so Flavio and I could come back to Vancouver. A lot of the people we'd met in Victoria were already here so it was good to catch up and recount our tales of adventure (I think some of the girls cried a bit they were so relieved to see us again. Or maybe not). We were just in time for the Celebration of Light (and the Simpsons movie, woo-hoo!), a big international fireworks competition which runs every few nights so we've made it a regular thing to go and watch those, and have farewelled some of the members of our little group, which is always a little bit sad but at least now I've got even more people to visit when I get to Europe.

Did the Grouse Grind here in Vancouver as well, a big hike to the top of the mountain which has like 50, 000 steps (or maybe just 4,000 I've been told but doesn't seem like it could be true). It was actually really good, hard work but not too unpleasant - I'm still amazed how happy Ms France and I looked in the photos we took on the way up, I'm sure I didn't feel that happy. It was funny too just how many people there were, it's pretty much an unbroken line all the way to the top, it's like going on a pilgrimage (or with all the panting and heavy breathing like listening to a very long obscene phone call). We even met up with Germany again - France and I were quite happy that he got to the top just after we'd had enough time to catch our breath so we could lauch at how exhausted he looked and pretend it was no trouble for us at all. Nah, it wasn't that bad (although we did get the gondola back down - it was only $5 after all) and I'll probably have another crack at it before I move on.

So next I'm heading down to Seattle for a few days next but will be back in Vancouver one more time next week before I go east. Really this time. Unless I go north. I'm hearing a lot about a place called Prince George, might be worth checking out.

We interrupt this blog due to technical difficulties...

2007-07-19T05:24:00.002+10:00

Haven't been able to write much in a while (will explain why shortly) so I've already been in Canada 3 and a half weeks now and it seems to have gone really quickly. Was really nice to arrive in Vancouver, get my visa and finally get started on my year here. I loved Vancouver the first time I visited here so it was good to get somehwere familiar and be able to explore it more thoroughly. Took things pretty easy at first, spent a fair bit of time wandering around Stanley Park, which is a fantastic place, essentially a little piece of forest right next to the city. Also visited the BC University Museum of Anthropology where there are lots of great examples of First Nations carvings and artworks. Arrived in town just in time for Canada Day, so I got myself a little free Canadian flag which I was quite pleased to carry around for the day and went down to watchthe fireworks on the harbour so it was nice to celebrate my temporarily adopted home.

Everything was going fine until my last day there when my laptop froze on me. Went through all the troubleshooting processes but had a nasty suspicion that the hard drive was dead, meaning I'd lost everything on there. Still I was able to remain pretty calm about the whole thing as I knew I had everything important backed up but would still have to get everything sent from back home and set up everything up again. By the time I'd exhausted all options it was quite late and I'd been too busy for lunch, so thought I'd grab something from the vending machine, and was pleased to find I had the exact change. This is kind of a big deal for me as it still takes me a while to rummage around and locate the correct change (mainly because it's so stuffed full of bloody useless pennies) and because tax isn't added until you get to the register you can't prepare the correct change in advance, so any chance to get rid of some coins is a good thing. But of course the vending machine would accept everything except the very last two coins so at that point I that I flew into a dark rage at all machines which refused to work properly, or transform into anything cool (I'd just seen Transformers the night before - I'm sure I'd be much more interested in driving if there was a chance I'd get a car which was really a giant robot in disguise) and went stalking around the city in a bad mood. And forgot my camera on a day with a particularly nice sunset which didn't improve my mood any.

So the next day I was off on a ferry to Victoria, on Vancouver Island where I dropped my laptop off to get a new hard drive and have been on an enforced vacation since then. Victoria's quite nice, particularly the inner harbour with some really nice heritage buildings like the Empress Hotel and Legislative Assembly right by the waterfront. Went to the museum here - they had a special exhibit on the Titanic with a bunch of artefacts recovered from the wreck and recreations of some of the rooms and stuff. When you enter they hand you a card with an actual passenger's details, mine was an Irish guy about my age travelling with his brother. So at first it was kind of fun - you could see what kind of room they would have stayed in, what they could have to eat and there were people dressed in period costume so it had a good atmosphere. But when I got to the iceberg room where they started talking about the crash (there was a big interactive piece of ice to touch, probably not a piece of the actual iceberg I'm guessing though) it occurred to me that being a single male second class passenger, things probably weren't going to work out too well for my guy, which was confirmed by the list at the end of who survived or not. So that was kind of depressing actually, at least until I got around to the next exhibit with the woolly mammoth which cheered me up again. Also in Victoria I went to the Butchart Gardens, which I wanted to see as they're quite famous, and they are quite pretty even if it is a bit expensive to get in and made me feel like I was going to sneeze the whole time I was there.

After Victoria I headed up to Tofino on the shores of Clayoquat Sound on the west coast. The drive's there really nice, actually passes through some very nice mountains which I wasn't expecting to see yet. Tofino revloves around 2 activities really, surfing and whale watching so there's some really nice beaches around there. Not being much interested in surfing I opted for whale watching, was a pretty good trip, a bit choppy though and we only saw one gray whale, but did see some Stellar's Sea Lions and sea otters (both of which are much bigger than I realised) and bald eagles, which I was quite excited about as they've always been my favourite birds. Also caught a ferry across to Mears Island where there was quite a nice walk through some huge old cedars.

Then it was over to Nanaimo on the east coast, which was kind of dull to be honest. I think it's going through a bit of urban renewal at the moment (the hostel I stayed in had been a brothel and shooting gallery a few years ago, but was quite a nice place now) so hopefully it will be a bit nicer in a few years. They do have some nice islands just across from downtown though, I visited Newcastle Island which has nothing but campsites, cycling and walking trails so it was good to really get hiking again. More bald eagles here, was brilliant to be standing around in the forest with one wheeling through the trees just above me, also blonde raccoons (raccoons are meant to be nocturnal but I keep seeing them in the middle of the day so I don't think they're very good at it) and a beach with literally millions of tiny little crabs, which is kind of freaky when you wander right into the middle of them and suddenly everywhere you look there's these little crawling things, but only a little bit.

So I'm back in Victoria now, just got my laptop back yesterday so have been busily reloading stuff onto it and catching up with posting photos and blogs and everything else. Heading back to Vancouver next to pick up my backup stuff being sent from home so I can do work again, and then I have to plan out my movements for the next few weeks, but will probably start heading east to the Okanagan region.

If you're going to San Francisco...

2007-06-29T06:05:00.000+10:00

Handy travel tip - the flowers in the hair business - not compulsary, and probably frowned on by customs actually. So now you know. No need to thank me - it's what I do.

So I'm all visa'd up and here in Canada at last. Had a good flight over to San Francisco, the timing worked out so I didn't have any jetlag to deal with. There was one moment of confusion on leaving the airport when one of the first signs I glimpsed on the highway I was sure said Brisbane, and I was thinking that can't be right, did I book a round the world ticket without realising it? Then the next one I saw was for somewhere called Cow Palace, after which I thought I had lost the ability to read properly and was just seeing gibberish, but after seeing them both on other signs I concluded there actually is a Brisbane in San Francisco (and a Cow Palace too - go figure) so was glad to have that sorted out.

The Bay Bridge at night.

So I spent a week in San Francisco to start with. It's a very pretty city and surprisingly cool for summer. I did the obligatory trip out to Alcatraz, the audio tour they give you is really good, very atmospheric. The rest of the time I mostly spent wandering around the city, walked across the Golden Gate bridge, something I've always wanted to do, and checked out all the different neighbourhoods, all with their own character - from the touristy Fisherman's Wharf, to North Beach (home of the Beat poets), the shopping district of Union Square (where I stayed), all the nice Victorian houses of Russian Hill and the Presidio, the piers lining the Embarcadero, Chinatown, Castro and the Mission, Telegraph Hill, it's quite a varied city.

San Francisco Bay.

I did two day trips out of the city, one down to Monterey and Carmel, which was great, seeing the coastline and ocean was the first time I really felt I was in California (although it's a bit weird to have the Pacific Ocean to the west now, it's throwing out my sense of direction a bit). Got to check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium, see the kelp forest and the giant octopus, as well as 17 Mile Drive, this private road which passes through this collection of golf clubs and expensive houses owned by people like Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Carmel was alright, but consisted almost entirely of art galleries and antique shops when what I really needed at the time was fish and chips so was a bit let down there.

Mmmmmm, fish and chips.

Also went out to Yosemite National Park for a day, somewhere I plan to go back and spend a lot more time later, but I couldn't stop by that close without at least going to check it out. It's an amazing place, with postcard-perfect views at just about every turn, and it was a great feeling to finally see familiar sights such as El Capitan and Half Dome in person and visit some of the ancient sequoia groves - the scale of the forests there is just phenomenal. Can't wait to get back there and explore it more thoroughly.

Lower Yosemite Falls.

As much as I did like San Francsico I was quite happy to leave by the end of it. I have a few issues with the layout - there's a few too many hills (all that walking gave me blisters), the Golden Gate is too far away from downtown to enjoy properly (and there's also the little matter of the San Andreas fault while we're on the subject of town planning). People in the street tend to be in your face a bit more too, whether it's canvassers (one guy followed me for about 2 blocks long after I'd stopped listening to him), people asking for money or just random crazy people, and then there were all the people who wander the streets all night screaming and yelling to show how much fun they're having, and of course the guy who'd always start singing Lean On Me at around 5am.

And then of course there's the saga of Escape from San Francisco. Firstly there was my room-mate on the last night, the 60 year old crazy naked drunk guy who called me all sorts of colourful things when I went to go to bed, among other things accusing me of dealing with demons and witchcraft (which kind of stumped me at the time, but I've since decided it might be some sort of resemblance to Harry Potter which triggered that) and decided making it down the hall to the toilet was too much trouble so instead got up periodically to pee in the sink (eeeewwwww). Which was near my bag. So that was a restless night, making sure we didn't have to try and overpower this guy if he went completely nuts, and making sure he didn't pee on my bag by accident. Next it was all the fun and games of the airport, where my booking hadn't gone through properly so I was sent wandering to all sorts of different counters which weren't the ones I needed. Then it was off to the security checks, and what do you know, I'd been randomly selected for a full check (probably on suspicions of witchcraft), so was put into a little corral with 2 other people to wait for processing (I think they forgot about us for a while too, and I never did see if the last guy made it out. He could still be there and one day they'll make a movie about him). Then it was into the air puffing machine to violated with multiple jets of air, and finally onto the plane where we had to sit on the tarmac for nearly 2 hours while they fixed some computer, while the guy next to me whined to his young son about having to wait.

(Would normally drop a picture in here, but unfortunately didn't manage to get one of the old guy peeing in the sink. Ah well)

So I was very, very glad to finally make it to Vancouver, where everybody seems much more normal and friendly, where I can actually use the money properly (do not even get me started on how angry American money makes me. I've ranted enough for one blog) and to be among forests and mountains again. The first time I heard someone say 'eh' I nearly hugged them, bless their little Canadaian heart. Will be staying put here for a while until I decide which direction I'm heading next, so it'll be either west to Victoria and Vancouver Island or east towards the Rockies.

Here's a nice happy picture of Half Dome to end on.

The NZ Good Food Guide

2006-12-21T12:15:00.000+10:00

Here it is - I've been promising this for a while but since I got back to Australia I've been really lazy so it's taken me a while. But it's now done, my guide to all the best places to eat I found in NZ. Since I was working while I was away I had a more generous budget than the average backpacker so I managed to eat very well indeed and this list has been researched with the same commitment and attention to detail as any Lonely Planet guide. Enjoy!

Best deal: Queenstown. No question here, the $10 breakfast from Coco cafe on Shotover Street. Pancakes with berries, maple syrup and a coffee - you can't go wrong with a meal like that, whether you have it for breakfast, brunch or lunch, and believe me, some days I thought about having it for all 3 of those.

Best breakfast: Queenstown. The Coco $10 breakfast again (see above), and also the French Toast (with bacon and maple syrup) from the Lakeside Cafe, also Queenstown.

Best Dinner/Tea/Evening Meal (whatever you like to call it): Speight's Ale Houses, Wanaka, Queenstown and Wellington I found you just couldn't go wrong with these. Speights is on of the major brands of NZ beer - it was my favourite beer (and I'm not much of a beer drinker so that's saying a lot) and pretty much wherever you went if there was a Speight's Ale House you could be guaranteed some good solid pub food at fairly decent prices, although Wanaka, Queenstown and Wellington were my favourites. My favourites were any kind of lamb dish and the drunken steak.

Best Meat Pies: Probably the Arrowtown Bakery, although I have to say that meat pies are of a generally very high standard throughout New Zealand, even, dare I say it, higher then the typical Aussie pie. Controversial I know but I'll stand by that claim.

Best Burgers: Nearly forgot this one, undoubtedly Ferg Burgers, a Queenstown institition. My personal favourite is the Cockadoodle Oink, even if you feel a bit stupid asking for one. Velvet Burger in Dunedin isn't as well known but they're almost as good if you ask me.

Best Pizza: Frank's Pizza, Paihia (North Island). The Old Mountaineer's Cafe, Mt Cook also does good pizza and has an unbeatable view as well. Was also pleased to see that there are still many Pizza Hut restaurants in NZ, as I still have a soft spot for them from when I was young. Best of these was in Taupo, although the Queenstown one's also okay if you go around lunchtime. They don't have any topping for the ice cream though, what's with that?

Best Fish and Chips: Several contenders here, and I can't remember any of their names. But there's one on the main street in Devonport, Auckland which is really good, one just as nice in Paihia, it's the next street over from the main street, near the water taxi offices. It gets bonus points because of the setting where I ate, the courtyard of the Villa Backpackers, while the sun was setting and a constant rain of pink blossoms falling off the trees very nice. Oh and the Loaded Hog, Christchurch and Old Mountaineer's Cafe, Mt Cook are worth a mention too.

Best other seafood: The Reef, Wanaka for their calamari, and Aromas, Kaikoura for their Moroccan spiced fish with potatos and the best pita bread I've ever tasted.

Best dessert/pudding: Enjoyed researching this one, although I had a bad habit of filling up on too much dinner and not saving enough room for dessert. Foolish, I know. In Queenstown, Brazz does a mean chocolate mudcake, and the Skycity Casino, a great chocolate brownie while the Patagonia Chocolate shop has a whole heap of good stuff. But hey, it's dessert, it's all good really.

Best ice-cream: New Zealand Natural, Christchurch (specifically the hokey pokey or chocolate ecstasy). The Rush Munro ice cream shop in Paihia is also excellent.

Best home-cooked meal: A few particularly memorable ones here, first the roast chicken dinner we had in Kaikoura, even though we were a bit worried about poisoning from melted plastic we all survived and it turned out to be a great meal. Also in Kaikoura, the next night we had a surprise meal of french toast and shepherd's pie prepared for us by one of our room-mates while the rest of us were watching a video, so that was great. Another standout was pasta night in Taupo, even though I contributed little except the choice of ice cream for dessert (it was damn good ice cream though).

Best cookies: I invented this category just to mention the ones in the Wanaka cinema. Go, see a movie, any movie, and at half time get yourself a cookie. Do it. Now.

Once more, with feeling

2006-11-30T15:33:00.001+10:00

Well this is it, my last blog entry written in New Zealand, although it’s not quite the last you’ll be hearing from me just yet. There’s still the NZ food guide I’ve promised to put together and I’m sure I’ll have something to say about being back home, complaints about how hot it is probably. And it’s going to be quite a shock, as despite the fact it’s on the brink of summer we’ve actually had snow down to 500m here in Queenstown, so it’s looking and feeling just like winter again. A lot of people are quite surprised by such unseasonal weather but I’m pretty much used to this sort of thing by now. I’ve joked on several occasions about my good fortune with the weather but it’s getting to the point where, frankly, I’m a little bit in awe of myself.

No, really, I’d wondered if even my influence could work on the legendary Fiordland weather, where it rains just about every other day, but although we had a slight drizzle on the first day after that it was 4 days of almost perfect weather. So I had a great time on the track, although it seems a lot better in hindsight than it sometimes did at the time. I ended up going on a guided trip as by the time I looked into it the track was booked out for independent hikers for the whole season. A terrible hardship I know, to not have to carry any food or a sleeping bag, but I did feel a bit lazy so took a second pair of boots with me as a penance (they’re really not very heavy though so it was only a small penance).

It takes most of the first day just getting to the track as you have to travel by boat to the head of Lake Te Anau, so I was getting pretty antsy by the second day to actually do some walking. It’s a pretty relaxed day, you spend it all in the Clinton valley following the Clinton river, which is extraordinarily pretty, and at this stage you’re still impressed every time you see a waterfall flowing down the steep valley walls (by the end of the fourth day you’re kind of used to it). I spent the day strolling along with Marc, another guided walker who also felt slightly uncomfortable with how easy we had it, and Laura, who was doing things the hard way (you should have seen the hunk of salami she had to carry around, if we had been snowed in on the track somewhere she could have saved us all from starving with that thing). We spent a lot of time joking about how different the experience was for each of us, her with her salami and us with our nightly showers and nametags to let the sandflies know we weren’t to be bitten (although longjohns and long sleeves help with that too).

Things were slightly less luxurious that night however as instead of being tucked up in my warm bed I spent most of it huddled on the toilet floor being really, really sick. Not sure what it was from but it wasn’t fun and left me really quite doubtful about doing a full days walking the next day, the third day being the toughest day of the walk with virtually all the climbing and descending. It was great weather though and once I got moving I thought I could manage it, if not be entirely enthusiastic about it. We’d just been discussing other people’s hikes the previous night where they’d had to deal with altitude sickness and food poisoning so I figured it would be good practice for that as I’m sure I’ll face the same thing eventually. So I made it, but I was completely exhausted by the end of the day, which is a shame because it’s the most spectacular day of the hike and even thought it’s the toughest I wouldn’t have had any trouble at all under normal circumstances. I was just too tired to do the side trip to Sutherland Falls (the world’s fifth highest waterfall) at the end of the day as well, so will have to go back and do it again someday.

The fourth day, after getting some actual sleep, I was pretty much back to normal again (although it was another few days before I could look forward to eating again) which was just as well as it was another beautiful day. This time we were following the Arthur River and there were more waterfalls, our lunch stop by the Giant’s Gate falls in particular was an amazing spot, and could have been almost tropical apart from the temperature of the water. Once the track was done we caught the boat across to Milford for a celebration there that night (and some of the worst pool I’ve played in my life). The next morning I got to watch the sun rise over Mitre Peak from a real hotel room for a change and went for a quick wander by the foreshore before our cruise on Milford Sound which although a bit shorter than I expected, manages to live up to the hype.

It was back to Te Anau after that and then on to Doubtful Sound for an overnight cruise. We got rain both days we were there, and no, my luck hadn’t deserted me, I actually wanted rain to check out the famous waterfalls it causes. And yes, there were lots of them and they were very nice, especially since I’ll be heading back to drought-stricken Australia and it could be some time before I see rain again. Back in Te Anau again I did a day’s walking on the Kepler track, just on the nice flat foresty bits, but it looks like a really nice track so will have to come back for that one for sure. Then it was back here to Queenstown to catch up with Katrin, Emily and Mayu who I’ve met here, as well as Lyn and Cec who I know from work back home. I’ve been doing a final round of all my favourite places to eat with everyone, and am due to catch up with the girls for dessert and hot chocolate one last time tonight before catching the bus back to Christchurch tomorrow. And then it’s on a plane Saturday and back home. It will be nice to have a break from travelling for a while, but I’ll miss the place terribly and as keen as I am to see new places I hope it won’t be too long before I get to come back.

A tale of two Roys

2006-11-17T07:28:00.000+10:00

Well The Lambing has finished (I don't know exactly what that involves but it sounds kind of ominous and I'm sure Stephen King could spin a story around it). I also managed to get 2 days of decent weather before I left Wanaka so I got to revisit Roy's Peak and head out to Rob Roy glacier (Roy seems to be a popular guy around these parts). Roy's Peak was a whole different experience without snow, didn't seem quite as high although it was still hard work getting up there. There were a lot more people up there too, it being the first day the track had opened after The Lambing. The view was still magnificent though, although I think the altitude might have been a bit much for some people - I took a picture of a group of Japanese people for them and then asked them to take one of me. When they did one of the girls asked if she could have her photo taken with me because she thought I was cool (no, really). I agreed because it would be rude to laugh in her face but I was bit worried that the effort of the climb might have been a bit much and sent her mad, the poor dear. Anyway, they were pretty cool as once I got back down and was walking back to town they passed me in their car and gave me a lift back, sparing my sore feet a little bit of extra effort, and I had a drink with them afterwards and bought them some Big 'Uns (they're chips).

Speaking of food, I'm back in Queenstown again now and have been eating far too well as there's just too many good places to eat over here. I"ve promised to put a proper list together at some stage of all the places I've discovered over here and the first place which is going on there is probably the pancake breakfast you get from the Coco cafe (pancakes with berries, maple syrup and coffee for $10 - they are so good). Should be able to walk it off though as tomorrow I'm hitting the Milford Track, which is a 4 day trip but only 3 days of serious walking, after which I'll finally make it to Milford Sound. Then it'll be back to Te Anau and down to Doubtful Sound trip before coming back to Queenstown for my last few days here in NZ before I head home, so it's not long to go now.

Wanaka Once More

2006-11-09T13:39:00.000+10:00

It’s been good coming back to Wanaka, one of my favourite places here in NZ. Things have changed quite a bit in a short time, with spring the countryside’s much greener and there’s suddenly wildflowers everywhere, which is keeping me amused taking lots of photos of lupins. The town itself is much quieter now that the ski season’s finished too which was a bit strange at first. The last few days have felt just like winter again though with some very unseasonal snowfalls, yesterday making it just down to the level of town briefly. I was just remarking the other day that I miss the snow on the mountains around here so I’m thinking once I get back to Australia I’ll have to start dropping hints about rain and see if I can get this drought business sorted out. Probably easier than my previous iceberg plan too.

Haven’t done all that much here, mainly been spending time checking out all the familiar sights and walking tracks around town, revisiting Mt Iron, the Outlet and Millennium Tracks and also venturing out to Diamond Lake and Rocky Mountain again. Went on a daytrip down to Glenorchy and Queenstown with some German girls from the hostel the other day, we went up to Deer Park Heights where they keep deer (obviously) and all sorts of other hoofed ungulates and where they filmed lots of Lord of the Rings scenes because of the great view of the Remarkables you get there. Had some pretty ordinary weather lately so I’ve rented a whole heap of DVD’s, as it sometimes seems like the only movies people ever watch in hostels are The Fellowship of the Ring and The Shawshank Redemption and I was desperate to see something new. Just waiting for the lambing season to finish and the track to re-open so I can venture up to Roy’s Peak before I go and then it’s back down to Queenstown again for another week before I hit the Milford Track.

Goodbye my headphones

2006-10-29T06:36:00.000+10:00

The last few weeks have been pretty varied, I’ve gone from the golden beaches of Abel Tasman to the very heart of the Southern Alps. There have been moments of sublime beauty as well as terrible loss. I started off in Nelson (home of the CENTRE OF NEW ZEALAND. I like to write it in capitals to make it sound more exciting), where in a shocking incident of crime I had my headphones ripped out of my iPod by some jerks driving around the corner in their car. All because I wouldn’t give them 50c to buy an ice cream at McDonld’s. Jerks. I’ve since found replacements (they don’t sound as good though) but my iPod has become my closest travelling companion so it was most upsetting to see him emasculated in this way. In a similar incident I was wandering around town later with my American and Canadian room-mates and a girl asked us for a cigarette, however when we revealed that none of us smoked she just slapped the Canadian guy. Shocking. So after all this I swear the next time someone asked me for something I would have punched them in the face and run away screaming, I don’t care if they were just asking for the time or for help crossing the road. Jerks.

So that was Nelson. Thankfully Abel Tasman National Park was much nicer. Did some good day walks there, getting dropped off each morning by water taxi, and covering around half the 50km Coastal Track. It basically meanders along what is some of the nicest coastline in New Zealand, travelling through the beech and fern forest from one secluded bay to the next. It’s all very nice, the best spot I found was this nice little stream which feeds into the Torrent Bay estuary with water this beautiful shade of green, surrounded on all sides by ferns and plants which were also green and giving the general effect of being really green. And nice. Lots of people miss it too as they usually take the shortcut across the estuary so it was good to have it pretty much to myself.

Afterwards I took the train from Picton back down to Christchurch. It was really great to stop by Kaikoura again as I have very fond memories of there. After resting up briefly in Christchurch it was on to Tekapo once more. It was such a nice day when I arrived I decided to take a flightseeing trip around the Alps, crossing over to the West Coast and the glaciers there, circling around Aoraki and back. It was a brilliant trip, was really good to get right up close to the mountains and see them from a totally new perspective.

Aoraki especially is an impressive sight, and I’ve built up quite a collection of photos of him from various angles, both on the flight and then on the ground when I went and stayed in Mt Cook village for almost a week. Aoraki (meaning Cloud-Piercer) is the Maori name for Mt Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand at around 3700m. I love that name, and I like how the Maori regard all the major mountains as having distinct personalities so I don’t usually call him Mt Cook (I mean come on, that sounds so wussy compared to ‘Cloud-Piercer’) and tend to refer to the mountain as ‘him’. This has confused a couple of people though who wonder who this guy is I keep talking about that I went to see. Check it out though, it even looks like he’s got a giant face, it’s the coolest thing. On my last day there I was the first one out to the Hooker Lake at the base of the mountain, where I got to sit around for a while and watch him do his cloud-piercing thing, slowly revealing himself over the course of about an hour, it was great.

The Mt Cook village is set in a beautiful mountain valley, and you can see ol’ Aorkai sticking up around the corner from the far end of the village. You go there to either walk or climb (I stuck with walking for now), but I also went on one of the boat trips onto the Tasman Glacier Lake where you cruise amongst the icebergs, eating and landing on ice which was laid down as snow about 500 years ago. Well, you get to break off a little piece of ice to suck on, confirming that water tasted pretty much the same about 500 years ago. Would have brought some ice home to help with the whole drought thing but hey, it’s a national park, you’re not allowed to take anything with you. Sorry.

Back in Wanaka now to revisit all my favourite spots and see how they’ve changed in the spring, everything being all green now and lots of wildflowers all over the place. Will be heading up to Mt Aspiring National Park at some stage to check out some of the walks there and get amongst the mountains and glaciers again. Beaches are all very nice for a while, but here, this is my kind of country.

Return to Te Wahipounamu

2006-10-16T12:52:00.000+10:00

Yep, I’ve come back to the south island, the place of greenstone, and it’s good to be back. I had a really good trip down the north island, I enjoyed it much more than the trip up even though I mainly visited places I’d already been. First stop was Waitomo, which exists pretty much to let people visit some of the hundreds of caves in the area. It’s set amongst some typical north island countryside, lots of green hills and sheep but gets really interesting underground. I only had the chance to visit one cave, Ruakuri; it’s only been outfitted for tours recently so it’s got all modern walkways and is entered via a huge shaft that’s got this cool spiral ramp leading down to some airlocks – if I ever get an underground fortress built it will be something like that.

Revisited Rotorua briefly, basically just to do one of the Maori cultural shows with the hangi (which had been recommended to me mainly on the basis that they served good lamb. It wasn’t half bad either, amazing what you can cook in a hole in the ground really). It was set out at this forest village and had a pretty good atmosphere, although it did have a bit of a Survivor feel to it and was a little bit rushed to fit everything in. Everyone had a fun night though, and a lot of us travelled on to Taupo together so it was one of those great times which only happen occasionally when you’re travelling, where you fall in with a great group of people for a little while before you all head your separate ways again.

After spending a few days waiting around in Taupo, the weather finally cleared and a few of us got to do the Tongariro Crossing, a one day walk which crosses the saddle between Tongariro and Ngauruhoe, two of the three volcanoes in the centre of NZ’s north island. It was an awesome day, there was still heaps of snow up on the mountains and while there were some serious looking clouds following us all day they didn’t catch up until we’d finished the hardest sections, but it did mean we had to keep moving pretty much constantly. At times we were walking across flat expanses of snow, with mountains rearing up on either side, no view of the world below and the only sound the thundering of avalanches on the slopes above, it might as well have been in Antarctica. It felt like it too when the wind was howling across the very top ridges, it was really, really cold (it would be hard to say exactly how cold, but taking into account the windchill factor if I had to guess, I would say bloody) and it was strong enough to make sure you kept well back from the crater rims.

Red Crater in particular was amazing, a gaping hole in the side of the mountain filled with steam and that familiar sulphur smell which will always remind me of Rotorua). The soil on the rim of this crater was warm enough to keep the snow off and the descent was so much fun (particularly after the attractively named Devil’s Staircase) and left me feeling so full of energy I wanted to sprint across the next flat stretch. That feeling disappeared pretty much completely the moment when we had to start the next uphill stretch, stepping literally in everyone else’s footprints as they were the only places on the icy snow you could actually get a foothold. The descent was quite long and a little bit on the ordinary side after everything we’d already seen, with stretches of tussock grassland and rainforest that seemed to go on forever. Once we got back to town and looked back across the lake at the mountains I was struck by a new sense of scale (they’re like, really, really big) and felt that usual sense of unreality you get coming back to civilization after that kind of experience, where you can hardly believe you’d ever been up there. Then I had pizza, which is easy to believe in.

Headed down to Wellington again after that, took tings pretty easy there (saw Little Miss Sunshine at the movies – it’s quite a good film) and caught the ferry back across to Picton. Did a day-walk on the Queen Charlotte Track, which was quite pleasant although I think as pleasant as the Marlborough Sounds are, it would all start to look the same after a few days so one’s probably enough for me. Heading across to Nelson next and up to Abel Tasman National Park from there, and that will be it for all these beaches and I can get back to my mountains again.

Hmmmm, can you smell something?

2006-09-25T19:24:00.000+10:00

Been a bit of a break since my last blog, and I’ve covered a fair bit of ground since then. Since leaving Wellington I’ve passed through Napier, Taupo, Rotorua, Mt Maunganui on my way to Auckland. I didn’t stay anywhere for too long but I’ll be passing through a few on the way back south so can see anything I missed then. Not much was happening in Napier (it was Sunday and nearly everything was closed). I didn’t find the Art Deco buildings there to be particularly exciting really, because there’s barely any nice modern buildings and some really dubious colour schemes it feels a lot older than is.

Taupo was okay, there I visited Huka Falls and the Craters of the Moon, a geothermal spot here with lots of craters (obviously) and fumaroles all venting steam and gas. It makes for quite a surreal landscape, even more so because it’s such an isolated pocket amongst normal forest. They have nice forests up here by the way, and lots of native birds. My favourite’s the Tui because it sounds like R2-D2. The lake, as people regularly point out, is big enough to contain Singapore, but it’s just a whole bunch of water really so it’s all flat and didn’t get me all that excited. Mind you the lake itself is also one massive volcanic crater so any excitement it might cause would probably be of the hot, explosive kind so perhaps it’s for the best.

There were more geothermal shenanigans in Rotorua, where you don’t have to go too far to find something interesting with gas of some kind. And of course there’s the smell, which I didn’t find all that bad although I don’t think I would ever eat eggs again if I had to live there. Visited the museum there too which is in a fantastic old Tudor-style building which used to be a bath house back in the day.

Mt Maunganui was really nice, and felt exactly like the beaches at Caloundra or Coolangatta back home. But with sheep. Yep they’re even at the beach over here, but I suppose they need a holiday too.

Anyway, I had to make it up to Auckland a bit ahead of schedule to meet my sister Karen, who decided to pop over for a surprise visit. Auckland’s a much nicer town when you’re visiting it on purpose by the way – I didn’t have fond memories of it at all but that’s because last time I was stuck here when I should have been in Vancouver. While Karen was here we went to the Coromandel Pensinsula, where we visited Cathedral Cove (my favourite place on the north island so far) and did some bone carving, and also headed up to the Bay of Islands, which is a really nice spot. We did the Hole in the Rock cruise (didn’t get to go through though, bummer) and visited Urupukapuka Island, which I try and mention whenever I can just cause it’s fun to say. It’s pronounced Uru-puka-puka, where the u is as in ‘put’. Try it, you’ll enjoy yourself. Karen also went dolphin watching while I visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and Hururu Falls, and we also did a day trip to Russell and went to a Maori cutural performance one night on the history of the area. Oh and we visited the Auckalnd Zoo as well, in case you were wondering what all the exotic animals on my Flickr site were all about.

Here's Karen in action.

So it was a nice change to have a travelling companion for a while, although I did have to make a few adjustments. I was at a bit of a loss at what to say at first, without the usual routine of finding out where people are from, where they’ve been and where they’re heading (and eventually their name, if it looks like they’ll be around long enough that you might need to use it. I also had to drop my usual walking pace a little bit (and then quite a lot) so Karen could keep up, or at least, not collapse. So she flew back home this morning to get some rest before going back to work, and I’m starting back down south again tomorrow to Waitomo and the caves there.

Call me Ishmael

2006-09-16T18:24:00.000+10:00

The past week’s had a bit of a maritime theme. After leaving Christchurch I headed up to Kaikoura, a nice little seaside town which is New Zealand’s whale watching capital. And watch I have, from the shore, by boat and by plane, and it’s been fantastic. I’ve always believed Giant Things are Cool, so have always liked whales and was glad to finally see some in person. The minute the bus arrived in town we got to see our first two, a Southern Right Whale mother and calf were hanging around just off the shore near town until the baby’s old enough to head out into the open ocean. So pretty much every day you could see them swimming, spouting, feeding or breaching.

Headed out that same afternoon on the boat trip which was really good. I was glad to discover I’m not prone to seasickness, which I’ve never put to the test before, although the woman beside me wasn’t so lucky and I don’t think she quite got her money’s worth on that trip. I did though, we got to see about 10 Giant Sperm Whales, 4 quite close up, a few seals, a few albatross flying (it’s cool watching them run across the water to take off – I thought they made that up in The Rescuers movie) and on the way back passed through a pod of about 300 Dusky Dolphins, so they were completely surrounding the boat, swimming underneath, jumping out beside it and even somersaulting.

The next day I went for a walk around the peninsula, where there’s a seal colony, so got to see lots of sleepy fur seals onshore for a bit of a rest. And was subjected to much shrieking and a few fly-bys from 100s of angry seagulls, who also had a breeding colony out there and were nesting at the time, and that didn’t really add to my already low opinion of them.

Also went up on a flightseeing trip to spot some whales from the air, because you are pretty much limited to seeing just their back and tail from the boat, so that was really good to get a full view of them and see them in perspective against some of the whale-watching boats. We see another 10 whales or so, a few of them swimming together in formation, but the view of the coast alone would have been worth the cost, it’s a really spectacular place with snow-capped mountains running almost to the sea.

There was a really great bunch of people at the hostel too, it was a small little house (with a fantastic view) and because there weren’t many of us there and we all got on so well it seemed like we‘d known each other for ages. We had a great roast dinner one night, which never seemed to go completely to plan but was the most fun I’ve had in ages. There was plenty of wine, 2 courses of roast chicken (with just a hint of melted plastic but we’re sure we got rid of most of it), plenty of dessert, good music, probably some pretty terrible singing and what I thought was at least reasonable table drumming to accompany PC’s (my French room-mate) guitar playing. The next day we were all a bit subdued, and while Amy and Yannik had to leave us to head to Fiji, the lucky buggers, we managed to entertain ourselves with vacuuming (which is apparently just about the most fun you can have, or so Gemma told us anyway and she seemed to be enjoying herself, bless her), we watched a few videos, and then found PC had cooked us all dinner so we had another great night. In all I was only there for a few days but felt so at home was just as sad to leave there as I was Wanaka, where I’d been for weeks. But we’ll all be catching up again at Gemma’s wedding, which we’ve been invited to or will quite probably come to us if we can’t make it to Scotland, which is very convenient.

Sine then I’ve caught the ferry across from the South Island to Wellington, which is quite a nice city really, but is far too windy, and I can’t say I’m crazy about the earthquakes either, even though there’s only been one so far I could even feel (it was barely anything, just like being near a big truck driving or train driving past, but still pretty freaky). Heading up to Napier tomorrow, which ironically is most famous for being devastated by an earthquake years ago and got a bunch of nice new buildings because of it. It should be nice just as long as they’ve got all that out of their system now and don’t feel the need for any more urban renewal while I’m there.

I'm beck. Beck in Christchurch

2006-09-08T16:47:00.000+10:00

Yep, finished my loop of the central south island and back in Christchurch now. You can really tell it's spring here, all the trees and flowers are starting to bloom, and Christchurch is really the kind of city which is best viewed in the springtime so I'll be glad to get back here again later when it's in full swing.

Left Dunedin on Wednesday and to be honest was pretty glad to get out of there. I quite liked it the first time I visited but this time around it just seemed grey and dreary and I couldn't wait to get back out into the countryside. And I've seen some of New Zealand's best since then - we drove up the coast (stopping by the Moeraki Boulders which are pretty cool, if you like round rocks. And I do), then turned inland through the Otago countryisde, which I love, and finally back to the Southern Alps, which I'd missed terribly in the few days I'd been away from them. Got my first look at Aoraki (also known as Mt Cook but i refuse to use such a dull name when I can refer to him as the Cloud-Piercer. that rocks) across Lake Pukaki, which along with Lake Tekapo are incredibly beautiful lakes, managing to combine mirror-like reflections with incredibly blue water.

Really enjoyed my stay in Lake Tekapo too, it was just one day but seemed much longer I enjoyed it that much. I've actually visited everywhere I've been on this trip at least once before, but only briefly, so it's been really interesting how my impressions of these places have changed after spending some time there. I only stopped at Tekapo for lunch on a bus trip before and thought it was kind of pretty but not really impressed, but after getting to explore the countryside around it I really enjoyed it. I've got a better appreciation for the landscape too - Mt John, which I'd barely even registered as a hill beside the lake, seemed much taller and impressive this time (Probably because this time I knew I was going to walk to the top, and have a better idea of the effort that involves. Which wasn't that bad at all actually, luckily Tekapo is already at 700m so it doesn't take long to get to the 1000m summit. Bargain ). The view from up there was fantastic, spent ages just sitting around on the summit enjoying the view, and then went back up again that night for the stargazing tours at the observatory there. It wasa full moon, which was a bit of a mixed blessing because the 360 degree view of the surrounding plains, lake and mountains was just unreal bathed in the moonlight. I could have stayed up there all night, but thought I should go down to recover some feeling in my hands and feet becuase it was cold up there and i'd lost my gloves. But unfortunately the moon did blocked out a lot of the stars, as they're supposed to be amazing on a clear night, so I'll have to consult the almanac to plan another visit when it's a new moon.

So that brings me back to Christchurch, after another great drive through the farmland of the Mackenzie Country, where I was almost reduced to tears of culinary joy on discovering first a carvery where I could get a roast pork sandwich for lunch (they're surprisingly hard to find over here, and we'd been passing sheep and cows all day and I was hungry. Notice I chose pork though - I'm not a complete monster. We didn't see any pigs at all.) and then, finally, donuts. Hot donuts. Which are virtually non-existent over here and which is why Mario and I plan to open a donut franchise over here. It's just the perfect climate for hot donuts, and yet they're nowhere to be found. i can't understand it. But anyway, it leaves a definite market opening for us, and don't worry Mario, they were only mini-donuts so if we move fast we can get set up before they discover the technology to make full-sized ones. So I took my donuts and went and sat in the gardens where all the daffodils are in bloom, and all was well with the world.

Man, that's a long post. I"m still on a bit of a sugar-high from the donuts I think. Anyway, here until Sunday, and then to Kaikoura to go whale watching. Hurrah.

Down to Dunedin

2006-09-04T18:24:00.000+10:00

Spring has arrived and it’s time for me to get moving again. I’ve left Queenstown behind after 3 weeks and will be on the go a bit more now for the next month or two. I used to really love Queenstown but I have mixed feelings about it now. In some ways I prefer Wanaka because it’s quieter and it’s much easier to get right out of town, and I met a lot of really cool people there. Queenstown on the other hand is a lot busier but that does mean there’s more to do, and it’s set right amongst the hills so it’s nice to be able to get up amongst the mountains really quickly. There’s a lot of development going on though and while I can’t really begrudge people wanting to live in a place like that I do think it’s definitely eating away at the charm of the place.

I didn’t do quite as much as I had intended but I still had a good time in my last week there. I finally made it up Queenstown Hill, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages, and spent a really good day out at Arrowtown, a nice little former gold-mining town. Checked out a few of the walking tracks out there, a lot of them take all day though so will have to spend a few days there sometime to explore more thoroughly.

Arriving in Dunedin was a bit strange. To start with I was pretty tired, Queenstown being the party town that it is I of course had about 4 hours sleep before the bus trip down here, having been up until about 2:30 the night before. Playing Monopoly. Because that’s the kind of wild and crazy guy that I am. It was good fun though, I was playing with 2 Germans and an Israeli guy and we were all heading our separate ways so kept deciding to have just one more game. I’ve never been particularly good at Monopoly, mainly because rather than using any kind of sensible strategy I tend buy places whose names I like and refuse to buy railroads or utilities because they don’t have a colour. I usually end up wandering the board paying other people rent, either by choice or just bad luck. I did finally get to own some hotels once though. See - I even have proof.

Okay so they’re on the cheap streets (or Slumville as we called it) but I did get some on the yellows later on.

Anyway, so I was tired when I got to Dunedin and it was really strange being back in the city after the last few months in small mountain towns. I felt like a bit of a hobo actually in my still-muddy boots and outdoorsy clothes, and while I’m a bit more used to it now I’m still glad I’m only here for a short while. Worst of all there’s no mountains anywhere (lots of hills but they don’t count) and the more time I spend around them the more I’ve realised how much at home I feel there. But I’ll be back to them soon enough – heading up to Lake Tekapo for 2 nights soon and then on to Christchurch and Kaikoura to watch me some whales. Here's a picture form the train trip I did from Dunedin through the Taieri Gorge to leave you with.

Funyakking

2006-08-25T14:19:00.000+10:00

Got 2 weeks to cover this time, between recovering from my cold and some fairly ordinary weather haven't been out and about quite as much while I'm in Queenstown so didn't have much to say last week. I've had a fairly quiet time here compared to what most people usually get up to here, I've been exploring some of the trails, wandering along the lakeshore and up to the gondola. There's been a few real stand-out moments, firstly we got a snowfall down in town the other day, probably the last one we can expect for the season so I was glad to see that. I did get caught a bit off-guard by it though, was up in town at the time and didn't have my longjohns or any proper waterproof clothes on. Seeing as it started with a little bit of hail and it's a fair walk back to my hostel I had to wait in town for it to finish, although I spent it in Starbucks with a hot chocolate, reading a book so I somehow managed to endure that. As soon it was over though it was back to the hostel for my longjohns and then back out to enjoy the snow.

The next day was a weird one, pretty much the whole day there were occasional snowfalls, but never enough to stay around for long, and also something which may have been hail but which I thought of more as granular rain as it wasn't big enough to hurt (although it did sting if the wind got behind it). It might have been sleet, I've never been exactly sure what that involves. Apparently this was only about the second snowfall in town in months so I was pretty lucky to catch it.

My luck with the weather got even better after that, as the next day I went on a trip around the lake to the Dart River. It was an incredible day, perfect weather, lots of snow on the mountains - we went on a one hour jetboat trip up the river from Glenorchy, then they dropped us off and we travelled back in these inflatable canoes they call Funyaks (I'm guessing because they're more fun than regular canoes). Being on my own I got to go with one of the guides, which made my day really easy as he could steer with just the current most of the time and I hardly ever had to paddle. So being essentially ballast, I could just sit there and take in the view, taking the occasional picture, and watch everyone else spin and narrowly avoid rocks and so on. On the down side, I didn't actually learn much about how to steer a canoe myself which is a shame as I'd love to do it again sometime. In fact looking at the pictures that night I was ready to go back out there again the next day.

Mind you I did get to man one on my own when I gave one of the guides a hand at lunch to move some of them downstream, but because I hadn't had a chance to actually try it beforehand it wasn't exactly a stunning display on my part. Nothing disastrous, I just ran aground once (well, only slightly, it was really shallow and I could push off again) and didn't go very straight exactly but I laneded it safely in the end. And by landed I mean, got the canoe close enough to the guide for him to grab it and drag it ashore (look, there were more rocks and they spun the canoe just as I was coming in, he was just saving me an extra walk to the lunch spot, I'm perfectly confident I would have landed at some point before I reached the actual ocean).

So there you go, no nudity this time, about the best I can do is a picture of me in my wetsuit, which didn't fit well enough to be even slightly revealing but it will have to do.

Moving Right Along

2006-08-14T11:52:00.000+10:00

Time to get moving again after 3 weeks in Wanaka. It was an interesting week, with some really great moments, like our little expedition to Diamond Lake and Rocky Mountain, a visit to the neat little cinema there (you get to sit on proper couches and at intermission they serve these fantastic fresh cookies which everyone races to get. Go for the double chocolate. You will not regret it), as well as a few of the usual walks and some really good dinners with the friends I’ve made here.

However this week has also seen me pick up my second dose of one of the various bugs floating around town, and then have a massive allergic reaction to the free backpackers’ dinner I went to at the local church, which proves there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or dinner for that matter. It made my last night here a bit of a mixed occasion – on the one hand I did get to enjoy one last drink with my fellow travellers, toasting among other things unexpected cows and decapitated sheep (don’t worry, it was a wood sheep, just in case you were wondering exactly what kind of church it was we went to) and all had a good laugh at a strange man with very misguided enthusiasm for dancing and also showing a sizeable amount of underpant. But I later broke out in hives over pretty much my entire body and spent a the rest of the night feeling itchy, nauseous and wondering if I was having some kind of plague visited on me because I didn’t take the free bible earlier that night. If a whole bunch of frogs and locusts start turning up, I’ll know something’s definitely up.

Anyway, thought I should share that unpleasantness with you just to point out this travelling business isn’t all snowflakes and sunsets. Although there is a fair bit of that too. Like this one.

And this one.

And very occasionally, even some full-frontal nudity.

So as you might have guessed from the bungie jumping (that was a guy off the Magic Bus who got it free for going naked. And I know it wasn’t really full frontal, I’m trying to maintain a PG rating here) I’m now actually in Queenstown. Had meant to post this in Wanaka but couldn’t, so seeing as I’ve had to change everything I’d written to the past tense I might as well bring things completely up to date. It was quite surprising how quickly Wanaka had come to feel like home, and I’d met a lot of really cool people from all over the world, so it was a bit sad to be leaving it behind. But it was good to be seeing new sights as well once I hit the road again, and hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with nearly all of the people I’ve met somewhere in my future travels. Queenstown never fails to catch me by surprise each time I come back here, my memories never really do it justice. Sure, it’s busier than Wanaka but it’s the traffic more than the people which is annoying, and it’s always balanced out by the incredible setting, so I’m definitely looking forward to my next few weeks here.

Another Week in Wanaka

2006-08-05T14:53:00.000+10:00

Things have been a bit quieter here this week – no mountain climbing stories of high adventure to report this time but it’s still been great. I’ve got a pretty good routine here, sleep in a bit after all the skiers and snowboarders clomp out in the mornings, have most of the days to myself so I do a bit of work in the mornings, then go for an afternoon walk around the lake or up Mt Iron, before heading back to the hostel to catch up with everyone once they return from the slopes. Yesterday we had absolutely perfect weather again so as I headed down to the Millennium Track, one of my favourite spots, I kept grinning to myself just thinking how lucky I was to be in a place like this. Mind you, I've caught myself doing some other pretty strange things too so it could be that too much time in my own company isn’t entirely healthy.

For instance, I’ve occasionally started singing aloud to my iPod when I’m walking alone, although I’ve justified this as legitimate practice for Canada next year when I’ll have to make sure I announce my presence to any bears in the vicinity. I got a bit of other practice yesterday when I came across some cows on the track unexpectedly, and cows are startling enough when you aren’t expecting them so I imagine bears are even more so. Of course you don’t really expect cows to be particularly savage, but they did significantly outnumber me, it was getting quite late, I don’t know much about cows’ nocturnal behaviour and while I know all about what to do in a bear attack I’ve never really studied up on what to in case of cows so wasn’t sure if I should play dead or not (which again could have been good practice), but decided in the end to just walk past, although we were both watching each other pretty intently as we passed by. On top of this I was already feeling a bit self-conscious around animals as there had been some rabbits (can’t remember the proper collective noun, a herd) watching me try to take pictures of myself with my own camera.

Anyway, this hardly painting a very impressive picture of me – the mountain climbing story was much better – so I think I’ll change the subject with some more pretty scenery.

And here's some of the people I've been staying with.

A Week in Wanaka

2006-07-29T12:56:00.000+10:00

Loving it here in Wanaka at the moment. It’s been really good staying put in the one spot for a bit you get a chance to get to know people a bit better, and I’ve been able to find some walking partners which makes a nice change. Been exploring the tracks around the lakes pretty thoroughly, wandering up and down both shores, along the lake Outlet Track by the Clutha River (a really pretty walk, the water was an amazing shade of clear green and there was a tiny bit of mist and frost around), I've been up Mt Iron a few times (which now seems more like a slight hill than a real mountain) and I try and make it down to the lake every afternoon for sunset because it almost never disappoints.

The highlight of the week, and definitely for the trip so far, was yesterday when I tackled the track to Roy’s Peak with Ian, another Aussie and some German guy we met along the way who's name I never thought to ask. It was one of the most exhausting but exhilarating things I’ve ever done – the top’s about 1550m high, and once you get to the top you can be sligging throgh knee-deep snow so it was a hell of a challenge. I did actually stop just short of the peak because after 3 hours walking without lunch I just couldn’t tackle the last few metres of really icy snow along the final ridge without some food, and by the time I'd eaten we had to start back down. I figured it was better than the alternatives, ie walking until I threw up, and t’s not like it was an actual mountain summit anyway, it just happened to be one of several high points along the ridge with some kind of marker on it to make it official, and I've always thought that's a little bit arbitrary. So I decided to declare the spot where I sat to have lunch Wayne’s Peak, and it was pretty special to have this spot all to myself to sit up there in complete silence, looking down on the other peaks below and know you’d made it there totally on your own steam. I know it’s the kind of view all the people at the ski fields get every day, but it’s not really much of an accomplishment if you drive and then take a lift up there. I mean, anybody can fall down a mountain, it’s getting up there that takes all the effort. Getting back down ain’t no picnic either come to think of it, although the snow does help as you can just point your leg in a general downwards direction and wait until you stop sinking.

It really was fantastic, although it's not something I'll make a habit of as there aren't too many places where it's safe to be tramping above the snowline like that, we're just lucky a fair bit of snow had melted in the last week and there was a pretty well-worn path to the top so we know we're not the only ones stupid enough to attempt it.

I was so excited I had really wanted to hop straight on the net when we got back and send some pics through, but the internet café I usually go to is up two flights of stairs and there was a good chance I would have collapsed, weeping, about halfway up if I attempted any stairs last night. It took us about 8 hours all up as the mountain itself is a 6km walk from town, and just about every part of me was sore by the time we got back. Even my mouth was aching when I was chewing my dinner last night, and I really can’t figure that one out. Even though I wasn’t sure if I’d ever walk anywhere ever again I’ve bounced back quite well today, although I’m still a bit creaky and it could be some time before I can face the prospect of cleaning my boots cause they are not pretty right now.

I’ll be staying here for at least another week though so I’m sure by then I’ll be able to move under my own power again.

From West Coast to Wanaka

2006-07-21T16:08:00.000+10:00

As the title suggests I’ve made it to Wanaka, where I’ll be based for the next week or two. It’s a nice place, not as flashy or busy as Queenstown. The lake is really pretty and is always changing with the weather and the light. Haast was a bit of a washout, the weather was pretty rainy and gloomy most of the time I was there. Still went on a jet boat trip up the river one relatively clear afternoon which was good – got to take things in a bit better than you can from the road and jet boats are always fun. Battled my way up the road through some insane winds on the morning I left to visit the information centre, just so I could say I went somewhere. Turns out I was lucky to have stopped there though as the bad weather was due to fresh snowfalls in the mountains, which cleared in time for a spectacular trip across the Haast Pass, which has got to be one of the best drives in NZ if you have the weather for it.

Will be doing lots of the walks around the area while I’m here, maybe head out to an island on the lake one day and might head out to some of the surrounding valleys for some serious tramping if the weather holds up. We had a really light snowfall down in town here this morning, which is awfully considerate given as I was just saying last night that I’d really like it to snow down here while I’m staying. So today I’m just casually dropping hints about how it would be lovely to have some showers of money tomorrow. That’d be nice. Yep. Showers of money. Any denomination, I’m not fussy. Or failing that, a bit more snow would also be good.

It’s cold here – I think it’s somehow involved with the snow – and I’ve been making a few discoveries about travelling in winter which I’m sure will serve me well in my future travels. For instance, you can’t operate an iPod scrollwheel with gloves on. Not enough friction. So if it’s too loud, deal with it or turn it off. I still keep trying though in the vain hope I'll discover some trick to it. also, if you’re outside and you want to clear dust off your glasses, do NOT blow on them, as you will have to wait several minutes or, in extreme cases, until spring, before the resulting fog evaporates.

I'll be sure to share any further pearls of wisdom with you as I discover them.

Okay so he's really not that bad

2006-07-17T11:38:00.000+10:00

Yep, I've had a bit of a change of heart after spending a few days in the company of Franz Josef, and I think we've reached an understanding. As long as we both stay on the aprropriate side of the safety ropes then neither of us will get hurt. I know I said some harsh things, but look at him, how can you stay mad at a terminal face like that?

My apologies for that shocking geography pun but I thought of it ages ago and couldn't resist. The weather since Friday has been absolutely perfect - so I've sent most of my days wander around glacier valleys and lakes, it's just been brilliant. I mean, everything up till then was nice, but dys like these are the reason I came here.

I've already moved on to Fox glacier, which is just as nice, and the valley's even more dramatic than Franz Josef. Also been for a wander out to Lake Matheson this morning, which is an incredibly pretty place. Probably due to my new understanding with Franz Josef my knee's now fine again, which is just as well because I've been covering around 10-15km each day lately. Although I was foolish enough to only wear my light boots out to Fox glacier and I'm still paying for that one. Never, ever again.

Moving down the coast again to Haast, which is pretty much smack bang in the middle of nowhere. There for two days (going on a jetboat trip up the river hopefully, then on to Wanaka for a while.

So, we meet again old foe

2006-07-14T15:46:00.000+10:00

That's right, I've returned to Franz Josef, home of my arch-enemy, the glacier. But first, better bring you up to speed with how I got here - caught the Tranzalpine across from Christchurch last Monday. It was a great trip - my experience was probably a bit different to most people as I spent the majority of the trip in the open-air observation car. So while everyone else enjoyed a sedate, leisurely trip, mine was a noisy, windy, cold, smoky test of endurance. Luckily after a while you become sufficiently numb that the cold doesn't bother you too much anymore, so you just grimly hang on and watch the scenery rush by. It's all very nice inside but the windows are too shiny to take decent photos (mind you they don't turn out too great if your hands are shaking every time you take them out of your pockets), and you kind of miss out on a lot of the atmosphere (which is probably the point. Because IT'S COLD). I did venture back inside for a bit (well, they make you while they go through the longest tunnel anyway) and I was at least sensible enough to wait until my circulation had resumed before going back outside (you can tell because your head stops tingling).

Anyway, spent the next few days in Greymouth, which was basically cold and wet. Fortunately, it doesn't so much rain there as constantly drip, so as long as you're all Gore-Tex'd up, you usually donÕt even notice it. Was enough to deter me from much sightseeing though so apart from a bit of aimless wandering I hung around the hostel and caught up on some work.

Started on the Magic bus tour Thursday, travelling down the west coast through Hokitika where I had a quick wander down to the beach. I love the beaches here on the west coast. I just think it's great that you can walk along these wild, driftwood-strewn stretches of sand with the surf pounding on one side, while on your other side you have the snow-capped Alps. I tell that to just about everyone I meet but I still love it.

Afterwards we continued on down to Franz Josef, who, as I mentioned, I have some unpleasant history with. It's ironic but as soon as I arrived on the west coast my knee (the one which I hit on the glacier last time I was here, and which had hardly bothered me in a year) started aching again. I think it knew it was drawing near to the site of it's maiming. I'm not doing another glacier walk this time (oh no, not falling into that trap again) but I'll probably wander some of the trails around here, walk down the valley to the terminal face and throw rocks at it or something. As long as it doesn't look like it's advancing too quickly that is.

Another glacier's next on the list (still got one good knee left after all), so it'll be down to Fox on Sunday, then on to Haast. Must go now, it's snowing in the hills above the village so it's a wee bit chilly - been sitting still too long and can't feel my hands again.

Here in NZ

2006-07-08T18:49:00.000+10:00

Yep, I’m finally underway, here in Christchurch at the moment. Beautiful weather so far, it’s colder than Brisbane (usually around 10 degrees, but it’s quite pleasant really. I tend to overdress actually and keep shedding layers. Haven’t been up to much yet – got in about 2 yesterday afternoon, by the time I got to the city and checked in it was almost dark here so I had a combined lunch/dinner (which would be what – linner? Dinch? Or I suppose here it would be lunner or dunch). Was pretty exhausted after lots of late nights so ended up crashing pretty early. Saw the art gallery and wandered in circles looking for some of the last minute things I didn’t remember or think to buy before I left.

Had a fantastic view of the mountains on the flight over so really looking forward to the train trip across the Alps on Monday.

Hostel’s in a good spot – my room directly overlooks the cathedral. Bit noisy outside tonight – the rugby’s on and apparently Kiwis are pretty keen on rugby, although you’d never guess. I’m making sure I wear my black jacket when I go out so they’ll think I’m on their side - there’s plenty of Aussies around in the Wallabies colours but they seem to move in packs for protection.

That's all the news for now, will write again once I get to Greymouth.

The Plan

2006-02-21T16:45:00.000+10:00

It's decided - I'm finally heading off for a serious look at the world.

It all begins the sometime around the end of June (no set dates yet), when I'm off to New Zealand for about 5 months. I"m planning on spending winter in the mountains around Queenstown or Wanaka, tour upwards to the north island in September (earlier if I need to escape the cold) and loop back down south by October/November to do some hiking in the spring and back to Aus by early December.

Next year I'm wanting to head off to Canada on a working visa, living and working in the Rockies for a year. After my visa's up I can stay on as a tourist for a bit so will probably be away for at least one and a half to two years. While I'm there I'll most likely head up to the Yukon and even Nunavut, over to Alaska, and at some stage would like to check out more of the US like Yosemite and some of the southwest desert parks.

Not sure when I'll leave for Canada yet - want to get over there for the northern hemisphere spring so I get two summers rather than two winters. I'm also considering stopping over in South America on the way for a few months - head down south to Patagonia (maybe do a cruise to Antarctica while I'm there), see all the major sights like Iguazu Falls, Lake Titicaca, the Amazon rainforest and walk the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

So that just leaves Asia and Africa as the only continents unaccounted for. Africa I'm saving up for last so I can do it justice, and I'll need to be in pretty good shape if I'm ever going to try and tackle Kilimanjaro. Asia I'll get to one day - got to get to the Himalayas at some stage, and India seems pretty interesting too.

So it looks like I'll be on the road pretty much as long as I can afford to be for the next few years. Will be getting a laptop so I can keep working from NZ, and to store the thousands of photos I'm likely to generate, so keep an eye out here and at my flickr site for the stories of my travels once I get going, and let me know if you're ever due to be passing through my part of the world, wherever that is at the time.

The Happiest Place on Earth

2005-10-14T17:54:00.000+10:00

That's right, it's last stop, LA, so that means Disneyland. Yet another place in America which turned out to be better than I thought, Disneyland is heaps of fun. there's some great rides - my personal favourites are the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (which we did twice, allowing me to redeem my abysmal performance the first time round. i'm sure I had a broken laser gun the first time) Soarin' Over California and the Grizzly River Rapids. We did pretty much the lot at both Disneyland and California Adventure, except the big rollercoaster, which was closed. My new friend Lou at the front gate told me the whole story, and many other things about his life and retirement plans which I didn't specifically ask for but was happy to find out anyway, but basically it was something to do with the brakes not working and causing an accident a few months back. Still, it looked like an awesome rollercoaster, and I totally would have gone on the test rides they were doing, if they were actually willing to allow humans on. Brakes, schmakes, just turn the power off and let it roll to a gentle stop I say.

Anyway, you would think Disneyland would be overly cutesy and childish, but once you get there it really isn't, and it's got such an iconic status it's great to see it for real, even if Karen was a bit disappointed with the size of the castle.

We managed to fit in all the classic rides, the teacups (which are pretty hardcore actually - they left me worse for wear afterwards than any other ride we went on), we somehow ended up on the Winnie the Pooh ride, after which we stopped letting Karen and Michael picking the rides. Trace enjoyed it though. We also saw Pirates of the Caribbean, and It's a Small World, which thankfully ends just before the point where you go mad from hearing that one song constantly repeating and start attacking the dolls and destroying the display. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the ride, it was good to see an important historical feature of the park, and I appreciated the whole kitsch, retro vibe of the thing, I just think that prolonged exposure could result in serious, irreparable mental damage.

The canoe trips round the Rivers of America lagoon are pretty cool too, but try and pick your team carefully, as we were stuck with a bunch of giggly girls who were absolutely useless. I also think special recognition should go to the mountaineers who constantly climb up and down the Matterhorn during 35-40 degree weather with no guarantee anyone's actually watching them. Make sure you give them a wave next time you're there - we did - it's the least they deserve.

We did Universal Studios as well - the Terminator 3D movie was super, Shrek in 4D was good too, but not as much as the Bug's Life one back at Disneyland, Tracy leaping out of her seat during the bit where maggots crawl under your butt was hilarious (if you haven't been to see it, that's actually much less gross than it sounds). Jurassic Park was okay, there's really not much to it except for the big drop at the end, which was admittedly pretty damn good. The Waterworld show was great too, especially when viewed from the part of the audience which wasn't getting soaked.

Did a day tour of LA too, saw all the usual sights, downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica Pier (I don't know how anybody could swim in water that brown) and Venice Beach. It was all good to see, nothing i'd really rave about though. And that's pretty much it. Spent our last day shopping, after a bit of a detour which saw us end up in the dodgiest shopping centre I've ever seen and getting lectured for it by the cab driver who rescued us and took us to some proper shops, and then it was back to the airport.

No more pat downs when we left, although I was glad to see Sipowicz there again. I don't think he remembered us, but we'll always have fond memories of the way the day he checked our torsos without alarming us. Would have liked to have gotten a photo, but somehow I don't think the security at LAX would have much of a sense of humour about that sort of thing.

The whole trip was pretty much brilliant. Aside from some of the days we were in transit, and even including some of them, we were saying world-famous landmarks pretty much everyday. Except the one day in Vancouver when we went to the crappy museum, which was almost entirely closed for refurbishment. That was a pretty ordinary day. But every other day - brilliant. So it's back home, to sort through all the photos, which takes some doing I can tell you, tell all the stories, and now that's almost done, start planning the next one. Don't know where that will be yet, but you'll be able to read all about it here eventually. Stay tuned.

Canyons and casinos

2005-10-14T17:02:00.000+10:00

So, Vegas. If there's one place which caught me completely by surprise, this would probably be it. I've never been particularly interested in casinos, and expected Vegas to be a pretty tacky place, but I've found it be pretty cool, but for reasons which have nothing at all to do with gambling. We only had about 3 full days so we never really had time to gamble, except Michael, who won $4 from $1, but never got around to cashing it in (the pokies pay out in vouchers so you'll be tempted to keep playing I suppose).

There's so much else to look at though the last thing you want to do is sit around for too long. We're staying at the Luxor, inside the pyramid, which we were pretty happy about. Don't have much of a view, the room Tracy and I are in looks out directly at the middle of a giant sphinx's butt, but still, we're inside the pyramid so that's the main thing.

You know you've arrived somewhere unusual when you're greeted almost instantly by slot machines in the airport terminal, and then have to catch a monorail a James Bond villain would be pproud of to get to the baggage collection. Walking down the Strip is pretty surreal, right next door to the giant glass pyramid of the Luxor is the Excalibur, styled like a medieval castle, followed by New York, New York, not to mention the desert palace of Aladdin, the Eiffel Tower at Paris, the pirate ships of Treasure Island and the canals of the Venetian, you would think it would be a complete mess, but somehow it just seems to work. Anyone looking for a hot tip: the buffet at the Excalibur is one of the cheapest and has some of the best food, the Forum shops at Caesar's are amazing to walk through, and you absolutely must spend some time watching the Bellagio fountain shows - these are just brilliant, except for the Celine Dion songs which are a bit wussy. Wait for one of the big dramatic ones which use the really huge jets - they're unbelievable.

One of the things I liked most about Vegas was the desert setting, the red dirt, the wide open spaces skirted by mountains, it's quite striking. And then of course the Grand Canyon. The first thing you notice about the Grand Canyon is that it's really big. Really. Big. Grand you might even say. It's so big you can fly over it for half an hour and still only see a fraction of it. That's pretty big. We were on a 20 seat scenic flight out to the South Rim, flying over Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, then went on a bus tour to Bright Angel Point to see the Canyon at it's widest point. The tour was good, but there's just way too much to see in a day trip. It changes so rapidly too, there was a constant procession of big, fluffy clouds overhead, which causes this constantly moving patchwork of shadows across the canyon walls, it's really something to see from the air, even if the flight's a bit on the bumpy side. An amazing place, one I'll definitely be going back to. Did I mention it's really big. Cause it is. Deep too.

Start Spreading the News...

2005-09-20T08:42:00.000+10:00

Well, our time in New York is almost up. It's the longest we've spent in any one spot so far, so it feels like we've been here forever. It's been good though, New York's turned out to be quite different to what I thought.

We've done all the touristy things, been on the sightseeing buses, did 3 tours in one day, Uptown, Downtown and the night tour so were so over buses by the end of it but they were good trips - even had a very minor traffic accident in the buses just to add that authentic New York flavour. Exerted our influence to ward off a looming thunderstorm on the night tour too. Some fantastic buildings here, both the Empire State and the Chrysler building never cease to take on a different appearance depending on the time of day and the weather. We went up to the Empire State observation deck at night, and with a full moon and the smog catching the glow from the city it's quite a beatiful sight.

Been to see two Broadway shows - saw the Lion King last night and it was fantastic, easily the best show I've ever seen at the theatre - Karen wanted to see Beaty and the Beast as well so we saw that the other night. It was pretty good too. Went to the Statue of Liberty this morning, she's smaller than you think but still impressive.

I've been doing the rounds of the art galleries - caught up with my friend Rico who's living in Philadelphia and we went to the Metropolitan Museum, the building was just as amazing as all the artifacts and paintings. Van Gogh's 'Cypresses' is shown there and it's an amazing painting to see in real life, there was also my old friend Matisse, Degas, Rembrandt and some great American art too. Also saw the Museum of Modern Art which had some great artwork, but I don't think it was presented as well as in the Met. My favourite painting from here would have to be 'Christine's World' by Wyeth, and another Van Gogh 'Starry Night' but it's just wrong putting a painting like that behind glass.

Wandered through Central Park a few times, the one place in New York where my sense of direction pretty much completely deserted me, as I found when I managed to walk about 30 blocks in completely the wrong direction. It's a bit of a maze until you figure out how to navigate using the skyscrapers visible over the tops of the trees, but it makes a great change from the city so it's quite a pleasant place to get lost in.

I've enjoyed the city more than I expected - I'm not usually a person who feels at home in big cities these days - and New York was somewhere I expected to be a bit overwhelming. Even though it's crowded, noisy and polluted it's so full of life you can't help liking it. Next top, Vegas, which should be a complete change of pace!

Water, water, everywhere

2005-09-15T14:40:00.000+10:00

hurrah, get free internet access in this hotel so can make another blog entry already. It's almost 1am here so will have to make this quick, but will be busy for the next few days once we arrive in New York so don't know when I'll have time for another update.

Went to Niagara Falls today, it was a great day. Bit smoggy here unfotunately so it probably wasn't at it's best but was still very pretty. Did all the touristy things, the Maid of the Mist, the tunnels behind the falls, the white water walk, so we got repeatedly soaked. Will put up photos later of us all looking rather fetching in our plastic raincoats. Went up to Clifton Hill for dinner before we saw the falls illuminated at night, got wet once again as we stood with all the other tourists in the spray from the falls and the drizzle trying to get decent pictures of the falls all lit up. Our poor cameras copped a fair bit of abuse today, we're lucky they're not short circuiting and exploding from all the water we've subjected them to.

The International Film Fesrival is on here at the moment too so got vague glimpses of a few celebrities last night on our long search for something to eat. Saw Kevin Bacon, Charlize Theron and Colin Firth from across the street, along with other people who we didn't recognise or weren't famous.

Going to the CN Tower tomorrow, then it's off to the Big Apple!

Snow in September

2005-09-14T03:56:00.000+10:00

So we've left the Rockies behind, which is a bit sad because they were just fantastic. We had a bit more rain for our drive up the Icefields Parkway, but that was okay because it also meant it was snowing when we passed through some of the higher parts of the roadway. We experienced our first real snowfall on the Friday afternoon when we drove up to Morain Lake, which is near Lake Louise. It's supposedly set in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, but we only saw about 2 of them because of all the clouds, so will have to go back sometime to see the rest of them. Karen was deliriously happy to see snow falling and managed to forget her usual apprehension of bears leaping out of the forest and attacking us. Even though we'd been to the snow in New Zealand we'd never actually been anywhere it was actually snowing at the time.

It's very pretty to watch, less pretty to stand around in as it it turns out snow's just like a heavier kind of rain, and it gets all over your glasses. But it's still pretty. So we took a very long time to traverse the Parkway, as we kept stopping at lots of lookouts and snowy places. We never took one of the bus tours onto the Coumbia Icefields - it was just too cloudy to see anything much, but we walked up to the toe of the glacier instead which was just as good. Jasper was a great little town, would love to spend a bit more time there. It's not as crowded as Banff so it's much more relaxing to stroll around. Spotted some wildlife on the way up too, two black bears in the forest and a group of elk.

On our day in Jasper we drove out to Maligne Lake where we went on a cruise down to Spirit Island. That's the picture of it above - it's one of the classic images of Canada. When you first see it from the boat it's nothing spectaular, but viewed from the right angle onshore it has to be the most picturesque place I've ever seen. Afterwards we stopped by Maligne Canyon, a 50m deep limestone canyon, very impressive. We then drove up to Mount Edith Cavell, a mountain I've always been particularly fond of and so was very glad to get the chance to see. It was great, we could drive quite close to the summit and visit a glacial lake. Even Tracy forgot her growing impatience with the constant visits to lakes and mountains when she found a chipmunk she could chase around trying to photograph.

Drove from Jasper to Edmonton yesterday, visited the West Edmonton Mall which a bit less exciting than we thought. The waterpark and ice rink and everything are impressive, but I think they cheat a little bit by repeating many of the stores, jusst to pad it out a bit. Tracy was very disappointed as it was a key highlight of the trip for her and she didn't buy anything at all. At Edmonton Airport at the moment, just about to fly off to Toronto and see Niagara Falls tomorrow. Can't upload any more photos yet, can't find a computer which will let me. There's plenty to see of the Rockies though trust me, went a bit nuts there, so been having a break yesterday and today so I don't cramp up.

Better go, boarding soon.

The mountains are calling...

2005-09-10T05:04:00.000+10:00

It's a toasty 9 degrees outside in Banff today and it's raining so not much sightseeing to be done today. Everything's going exactly to plan though because that also means it's snowing on the mountain tops, which will make for better photos tomorrow when it's sunny again. And with our supernaturally good luck with the weather it had just BETTER be sunny.

Didn't write too much about Banff the other day as there was so much to detail about our trip over. We're not here that long so we've been on a pretty tight schedule to see everything we want to. Although when I say 'we', I mainly mean 'I', as the others are pretty much just being dragged along in my furious quest to see all the places I've been waiting to see since I was a kid. We've been up mountains, around lakes, through canyons, seen even more mountins and then a few more lakes just for good measure. We're actually staying at Lake Louise at the moment, but Lake Louise isn't so much a village as a street so we came back into town for the day while we wait for our snow to be prepared for tomorrow, when we're driving along the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. That will be a big trip, it's at least a 3 hour drive and we'll be stopping off along the way several times at the various lookouts, waterfalls and also to take a trip onto the Columbia Icefields in the enormous trucks with tyres which are as big as Karen is tall.

Karen is actually a pretty useful unit of measurement as we discovered at LA airport that you can actually buy a King sized cup of Coke which is literally as big as her HEAD, which is just crazy. But don't just take my word for it - I've now added a few pics to my Flickr site where you can see I'm not just making this up. Oh and there's some pretty scenery too. You can see them at www.flickr.com/photos/waynem

We've been eating very well actually, none of our hotels have kitchens or anything so far so we've been eating out. I tell you these Canadians do damn good dairy, we've had some of the best food here I've ever eaten anywhere. Breakfast in particular is always great, pancakes or french toast with maple syrup, omelettes, hash browns, and the cheese, milk and butter is just delicious. It's so good we've been able to get by with just breakfast and dinner most days. Life's tough ; )

Greetings from sunny... Toombul??

2005-09-08T12:21:00.000+10:00

Okay, so things didn't start off exactly according to plan. I honestly couldn't tell you how many days we've been on the road, what with changing time zones and everything, but I'm in Banff tonight and this is the first chance I've had to get to a decent internet terminal where I don't have to spend two dollars for ten minutes of trying to get a webpage to load. So there's a lot to tell.

Let's go back to last Friday morning, bright and early at the airport, where we learned that due to fog in Auckland our Air New Zealand flight was delayed for 7 (and eventually 8 hours). So we spent a delightful afternoon at Toombul shopping centre, not wanting to go too far in case the flight arrived early and we had to get back to the airport in a hurry. It was truly bizarre, I hadn't actually been to Toombul in ages, and because we'd gone there form the airport it did seem like we were in some strange foreign country.

So after many hours wandering aimlessly and a very ordinary airport meal purchased with our compensatory $12 meal vouchers, we finally flew out at about 9:30 that night, and arrived in Auckland at about 3am local time. Needless to say we had missed our connections on to LA and Vancouver so we were told we'd have to wait in Auckland 24 hours for the next flight. The airline did arrange for us to be put up in a hotel for the night but as we had to check out that morning by the time we got there we had about 4 hours sleep max. Spent the day wandering around Auckland so it wasn't a total disaster - I probably would have liked to have gone there eventually anyway. Went up the Skycity tower, and that was about it really. Auckland's nice enough but there's not much to do in just a few hours, when you can't really go far, so I can at least cross it off my list of places to see.

Went back to the airport that night, plane was late... again, but not by much, so after all this the 11 hour flight actually wasn't that bad as we were pretty damn tired and extremely sick of hanging around airports.

So LA airport, what a delightful experience that was. We were all completely exhausted by this time and although we got to leave the plane early to make our connection, and so finally thought something was going right.. our baggage was the last onto the carousel so our headstart was completely wasted. Then we had the security checkpoints which involved a security guy who was a dead ringer for Sipowicz from NYPD Blue warning me he was going to touch my torso and not to be alarmed. The whole 4 of us got patted down and checked, and had shoes and belts removed, and I found out afterwards my bag had been randomly checked too so we were finally given the all clear and could at last proceed on to Vancouver! Where we got to the hotel at about 11 at night, wandered outside to get some dinner and found our hotel, which was quite nice inside, was actually situated in a neighbourhood we affectionately came to refer to as the ghetto, due to the proliferation of adult stores and sex shops offering 25c peep shows (which sounds like a bit of a bargain really), people wandering around trying to sell pot and dodgy board games and boots out of cardboard boxes on every street corner.

Vancouver actually turned out to be a really nice city despite out initial impresssions - it seems it's only the two blocks or so outside our hotel were the only dodgy ones. They have a really nice harbour with a massive park, so we wandered around the there, went to the aquarium and saw the beluga whales, went up to Grouse Mountain and the Capilano suspension bridge and wandered from one end of the city to the other several times.

Missed out on going to Seattle because of the delays, which was really disappointing, but flew from Vancouver to Calgary this morning and drove straight out to Banff, which is a fantastic town, completely ringed by mountains and probably my new Favourite Town in the World (although I'm still very fond of Queenstown).

So it's off to Lake Louise tomorrow to take another few hundred photos of the stunnning mountains and lakes.

Back to the hotel now, which should be fun, as I was so keen to get out of there and see the sights this morning I only have a very vague idea which room I'm actually in. I'm think it's somehwere on Level 3. Only one way to find out I suppose...

Weblog, eh?

2005-09-02T09:15:00.000+10:00

Hello world. So I've jumped on the blogging bandwagon. Thought this would be a good way to record all my globetrotting adventures.

First up it's Canada and America for 4 weeks with my sisters Karen and Tracy and brother-in-law Michael. After that... haven't decided yet but it will almost definitely be somewhere with mountains.

Well, that's it, head off tomorrow, so Vancouver and Seattle are first up. Hurrah!