In My 24th Year I Jumped Off A Building!

Yes, we had boarded our last traveller's Magic bus in an altogether somewhat sombre mood, back to the dazzling city lights of Auckland and back to where we started three months ago. It was our last few days in New Zealand and so it was time to do something big, something crazy!

A few days after my 24th birthday, me and Jen therefore decided to take the plunge and do the Sky Jump from the Sky Tower. The weather looked good, there were free slots, I'd put my contact lenses in and so on the spot we decided to do it! All kitted up in our "Sky Suits", we headed to the platform. I was to go first.

After the safety checks, I headed out along the lonely platform. I hanged over the edge at the end, joined to my base wire that would stop me before I hit the ground...hopefully! Holding onto the platform sides I looked over the edge and saw the city far below me. I was bloody nervous but managed to totally detach my mind and so when they told me to let go that's just what I did.


I let go and fell off the Auckland Sky Tower 192 metres down at 85 km/h. It was an unbelievable experience, totally exhilarating! The wind rushed by your ears and there was a great view of the city before it all suddenly became bigger! But there was no lurching sensation in your stomach, you just fall through the air and then 11 seconds later you gently touch ground and want to do it all again!

That's just what we did, they let us go a second time for free so that we could record each other from below which was great as you can hear us screaming and see the ridiculous smiles on our faces! Great fun! So there it was, our last hurrah as we prepare to leave New Zealand behind us. It is going to be really sad saying goodbye to New Zealand as its such a fantastic place and the kiwi's are crazy in a good way. But go, we must...next stop: Fiji!

My Birthday!!!!

Dawn came and with it came my 24th birthday (also the 124th anniversary of the Krakatoa eruption)! I had been awake for a while so the day began with a morning walk on the beach before we wondered around town with an ice cream in the rain! We came back to the hostel with a apple pie birthcake - I stuck a lit match in it and we sang Happy Birthday (I joined in, as just Jen singing would have been strange!) Another walk on the beach and soon it was time to head off to dinner.


Yes we had dinner out! It was pizza and lemon cheesecake for dessert which the staff of the restaurant brought out with a candle and sang me Happy Birthday! Full up of the sublime cheesecake we headed to a bar near the hostel for a cocktail bought with the $10 my friend Karen (thanks Karen!) had gave me in a birthday card I'd been carrying around with me for the last 5 months. It was a grand birthday in New Zealand!

Cruising with Dolphins!

Well, my 24th birthday was nigh upon us and I wanted to do something fun while we were up in the Bay of Islands - so we took a cruise aboard the Dolphin Seeker! The weather was a bit worse for wear on the boat but I prevailed, standing on deck for as long as I possibly could, even though the wind was biting at my ears and my eyes were streaming, I refused to give up my place. I was rewarded for it when the pods of dolphins came swimming up in front of the boat. They had fun swimming along and leaping out of the water in turn! The wind picked up and soon I had to sit inside - defeated, as we sailed up to and through the famous "Hole in the Rock". The water got a bit treacherous as we went through to the other side so maybe being inside was a good idea in the end. Afterwards, I bought myself a little birthday present: a keyring with some dolphins, the bay of islands, and my name too!

Cape Reinga -the very top of New Zealand!

We made it to the tip top of New Zealand! After driving along the many bays up to the top and along the 90 mile beach in a special bus that drives on the sand. We went sand surfing down a giant sand dune on a body board. Climbing up as people whizzed by you - it was a bit of a thrill seekers activity as you start sliding down from the top and suddenly pick up so much speed, sand flying everywhere, all you can here is a whoosh in your ears and can only see the bottom getting nearer pretty quick! Then you dig in your feet and coming to a graceful stop! Marvellous!

We finally made it to Cape Reinga a the top. I posted a last minute postcard to my parents into the postbox up there before walking up to the lighthouse to see the meeting of two seas: the Tasman Sea (between Australia and New Zealand) on the left meeting the Pacific Ocean to the right in a Battle Royale! Well no, but it was cool as you could actually see where they met as a bunch of waves going up against each other! There was just time left for a banana lunch on the beach before the long journey back to Paihia.

Coromandel Peninsula, Cathedral Cove and on to Bay of Islands

Back on the road, but aboard a much smaller magic bus for a extra trip to the Coromandel peninsula (getting nearer to Auckland again). We stopped off at Cathedral Cove on the way, before arriving in the very small beach town of Whitianga for the night. Then it was back to Auckland for one night before on to magic bus to the bay of Islands. We stopped off that morning to see "Tane Mahuta", the "God of the Forest" Kauri tree - a prehistoric-looking famous 200o year old tree, part of the Kauri Kingdom of trees in the Waipoua forest. A type of thick trunk-ed tree that grows in only a few places in the world -one of which is the north of New Zealand! With trunks widths up to 13 metres and 17 metres in trunk height, Kauri trees are perfect for hugging!
A stop in Opononi Bay to see a 50year old video of the region's famous friendly dolphin, "opo" before we arrived in Paihia -The Bay of Islands and into a fantastic little hostel where we had a dorm room all to our selves! Bless the winter season!

Mount Maunganui: Defying gravity, My Helmet and a Crazy Man!

Next stop after Rotorua was the coast town of Mount Maunganui named after the mountain that loomed over the time. Our first day was spent walking to the top, it didn't take long or wouldn't have except we spent loads of time lazying along the way and stopping to take fun photos of defying gravity in a what I now call my Superman Stance. The views from the top were fantastic, over the town and over the sea. On our way down a crazy man with a crazy beard and a crazy stick approached us and asked where we were from. He then began a whole speech relaying the sequence of events that would lead to the world ending on December the 23rd - when the button would be pushed! He told us to be here in New Zealand in December (i'm guessing this year) and we said ok and let him pass. We passed groups of people on the way down that looked like they had had the same speech! I'll look out for the events he talked of, but really I was left annoyed...as if it does, we miss christmas! How annoying that would be!

The next day was a hot one so we took out the hostel's bikes, mine was complete with a snazzy multicoloured, fluorescent, stripy helmet! The manager handed it over in a jokingly sort of way but I immediately made an enthusiastic grab for it and refused to swap it for the other run-of-the-mill blue hemlet he then offered me. So off we went, my helmet firmly clamped on my head for the remainder of that day as we rode along the beach and did the base walk around the mount. Later we took a leisurely walk out onto a lookout over the sea. Perched up on rocks hanging out to sea it was a very peaceful place to be.

Rotorua Again for Traditional Maori Haka and Hangi!

We had returned to Rotorua and its unusual smell to visit the Tamaki Maori Village for a traditional Maori cultural experience. It began with the welcome dance ("Powhiri") before we entered the meeting house, "Wharenui" where the dancers performed welcome dances and songs, showed war movements with traditional weapons and even performed the famous "Haka" war dance, complete with sticking out tongues!

After the dances it was time for a traditional Hangi meal that is cooked on hot rocks under the earth. It was unfortunately an all you could eat buffet. I say unfortunately, as it was so tasty I ate too much which I only realised later that night! Carrots, Kumara (sweet potato), stuffing, potatoes, egg salad, coleslaw, lettuce, mussels, salmon, chicken, pasta salad, lamb in mint sauce and gravy....all on the one plate! A mistake I will remember always. All too soon it was time for the closing ceremony, it was a shame to leave as it had been such a worthwhile experience and really showed you the soft, friendly yet powerful and strong culture of the Maori people.

My Two Nights Behind Bars!

In Napier Backpackers Prison!

We'd heard along our travels of people staying in a hostel that used to be a prison, we'd also heard that it was suppose to be haunted but thought it'd be cool to stay in a prison cell all the same!

When we got there, the realisation hit us...this used to be a prison! You entered a big wooden solid door to get in the place being shown to our cell (cell 18) on the south wing, where the door that was bolted from the outside. Inside the cell itself was quite confortable! All around the place were clues it used to house criminals...a room called Death Row, messages and names carved into the walls, out the back there was the Hanging Yard and graveyard where those executed were buried standing up!

I wasn't that freaked out on my first night but then we did the Prison tour the next morning and learnt that the prison used to be a lunatic asylum before it was a prison. I suddenly got the shivers...if I had learnt anything from films, it's that ex-lunatic asylums spell trouble! I started watching where the hostel's cat's eyes lingered in the hanging yard (on a bird's nest as it turned out) and that night after dinner while watching Black Adder, a fellow traveller told of how people have heard voices and seen a ghostly woman walking through the corridors. It was not so easy to get to sleep that night, especially as I was straining my ears to hear something!

The rest of Napier town was rebuilt in the 1930's after the big 1931 erathquake so all the bulidings are Art-deco...very pretty!

Wellington Movie Tours: The Final Installment of our LOTR Tours!

Yes, our third and final Lord of the Rings tour took us out to the outskirts of the city and up on Mount Victoria. Our tour guide, Ted first showed us a plateau to overlook the city that also was the location of two scenes from the movies. The great thing about Ted's tour was he carried a laptop around with him (even in the rain that day) and showed us clips of the film so you could look at the scene, then look at the scenery and actually see it, instead of just pretending I could remember the scene they're talking about, it was right there in front of me!

So we saw a lot of scenes filmed on Mount Victoria from the first film used as the outer woods of Hobbiton: where the four hobbits tumble down and land in a heap on the road from the "Shortcut to Mushrooms" scene, the path where Frodo shouts "Get off the road!" (see picture above but have to imagine the hitchcock effect) and the scene where they all hide under a tree root from the black rider (did our own version - minus the tree which wasn't there)! We also did our own photo version of the tumbling hobbits with the provided handy props (including a well crafted broken carrot)! and directed by Ted. Such fun!

We also had time to see the boat used in King Kong where they had painted rust on to it, and now all that's left is the rusty-looking boat. We were told about up coming film projects and even had time to skulk outside the Weta Studios and take stalker-type pictures of the figurines (a mighty lifesize one of the orc Lurtz) they had up in the windows...including one from the film "Labyrinth"! Me and Jen saw it and squealed..."Labyrinth!", the two younger girls on the tour had no clue what the 80's film was! It was a sad, sad moment!

There and Back Again.

Well, soon...all too soon it was time to say goodbye to the beauty South and head up back to the North Island. After passing many a sheep (with their little lambs) as we cruised through the Marlborough plains, it was a hop on to the four hour ferry journey back to the looming cloud of Wellington city! Luckily the sun was out so I could enjoy the Marlborough Sounds along the way and once in Wellington we had a free meal to look forward to in the bar next to our Normads hostel: Nachos...yum!

Christchurch & Kaikorua

Back on the road and with a crazy, loco bus driver to boot. We spent the journey to Christchurch all doing the driver's crazy music quiz. It was tough with the likes of "Right Said Fred" popping up but me and Jen did pretty well or so we thought. Christchurch is basically the UK. It's a large uni city so we spent our time shopping!
Then it was on to Kaikoura, which was a sweet little town. We decided to spend a day walking around the Kaikoura Peninsula. The strangest thing happened...it was sunny and 18 degrees so we had to de-layer! The first time since arriving in New Zealand. Still nothing can get me to give up my cosy thermals yet! Well, perhaps Fiji will.

It was another long but really nice walk in the countryside and also by the pacific ocean. There were lots of sheep and some of them had cute little bouncing lambs. You could keep hearing these tiny little pathetic "baa's"...they were so sweet! Then we turned a corner to see the sheep walking by the sea shore - seemed a bit of an irregular sight and that was followed by looking beyond the sheep to the white rocks that were completely covered in fur seals! They looked like a load of black leeches from where I stood so out came the binoculars! It was cool to see so many of them and see them having fun in the sea! After that seal colony we came across another but before that I had another encounter with a cow...this one had a crazy look in its eye and not much separated us one I'd gone over the fence into it's field....But I think I successfully stared it down!

After a hard days walk, the next day was spent on the beach enjoying Kaikoura's famous Fish n'Chips! Now, my dad had told me about New Zealand's gangs, but he didn't tell me about the "Seagull" gang that surrounded us once they'd seen our food.

They edged nearer, flapping their wings menacingly but it seemed like a standoff that was going nowhere until one took the chance and swooped at Jen's fish and got some. She went crazy and ran at them, screaming! I looked on in shock - but it did the trick! That was until I took pity on one with a bad leg! I'll never learn!

Snow in August!

It was time to leave Dunedin behind for Lake Tekapo, which is on the other side of the Mount Cook we had previously been seeing from the west side. We stopped on route to see a very strange pale blue lake apparently the result of "rock flour" from glaciers but to me looked like blue bath milk.

We stayed in a little hostel along the lake front and the next day we woke up to snow! So we decided to climb the thus snow-capped Mount John (1031 metres)! Armed with muesli bars, an orange and cucumber sandwiches we began our ascent up through the snow! It was really pretty with the snow resting on the pine trees and the surrounding mountains now completely caked in snow. We took our time, finding fresh snow to tread upon, to have a snowball showdown (where we both missed each other...so useless!), making two miniature snowman by the path side plus there was even time to make a couple of snow angels! Then it was up the slippy, powdery snow to the top view point but with all the snow we'd gone off the path a bit - if only we'd had a sledge and huskies! But we soon made it up and had a fantastic panoramic view of the mountain range and lake to eat our sandwiches by.

It was then a more relaxing tramp down along the lake edge back to the hostel for a nice Sunday dinner of salmon, potatoes and broccoli spouts...all free thanks to a peculiar but generous woman from South London that off loaded her food on to us!

"Carla and The Chocolate Factory"

One last day wandering around Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown and a special treat to the fudge shop to pick up some Creme Brulee Fudge (yes it is as good as it sounds) then it was on the road again...this time to Dunedin via the Otago central region where we passed a lot of fruit and a lot of sheep! The scenery changed from the brown grasses back to fresh green fields. Dunedin is a very Scottish city and it's name actually means "New Edinburgh". It's a massive uni town set amongst hills but more importantly it's the land of Chocolate! It has the Cadbury World Chocolate Factory and does visitor tours which we of course were obliged to go see. It was great, the smell of it, the free chocolate, seeing them make Easter eggs (made June to January), more free chocolates and the finale...a 1 tonne water fall of Cadbury's milk chocolate. If it fell on you, it really would be death by chocolate. It was also an educational tour. I learnt loads, can't remember much now as the free chocolate probably rotted my brain...but I remember it was very interesting!

The next day it was time to walk off all the chocolate with a very long walk to Otago Peninsula, home to lots of wildlife! It took a few hours to actually walk there before we began the nature walk that went (to much of our dismay) up along a long muddy path with scattered sheep droppings, up through thorny, spiderweb infested bushes and up a steep, steep hill! But I really enjoyed it as the weather was gorgeous and views were lovely, if not a bit confusing; with a very English-looking countryside one side but the pacific ocean on the other. Its the only place you'd see Penguins walking amongst Sheep! After a close encounter with a crazy looking cow, we made it up to the War Memorial for lunch and a windy view of Dunedin before making our way down and a long walk back to the hostel with aching feet and covered in what I can only hope was just mud!

The next day was a mighty, brisk morning walk up the Steepest Street in the World: Baldwin Street, Dunedin, NZ. All this walking is going to make may legs drop off. We had heard it was a popular street the students raced each other down in shopping trolleys...idiots!

LOTR and Milford Sound!

Whilst in Queenstown it was also time to do a couple of trips. The first being another Lord of the Rings tour which turned out to be a great way to see the scenery out and about. It also turned out to be a personal guided tour as me and Jen were the only ones on it that day!

It was a fab little day spent driving to the various filming locations such as where Aragon fought the Orcs, where Sam and Frodo saw the Oliphants, where Isengard and Lothlorien where, where the flight to the ford and the kings pillars on the River Anduin were situated..plus so many more. If you don't know Lord of the Rings well, just be assured it really was a day of "oh yeah, I can see it now" for us film fans, as well as plenty of "ahhh's" and "oooohhh's"! It was great to see a bit of Glenorchy and Arrowtown that lay a little outside of Queenstown. Arrowtown was strange as all the streets were named after counties in the UK so I hunted down "Berkshire Street" and got a snapshot! Result!

We must've saw over 10 locations as well as seeing the lands that Peter Jackson and Sam Neill (from Jurassic Park) owned...I shouted out "Hello Mr Neill!" as we on drove past. They both bought land to conserve it's native plant life and make sure it's not built up on...always nice to see Hollywood doing it's part!

The next day was a early trip out (7am) to Milford Sound...a bloody long way away as it turned out but with a few stops here and there for photos whilst driving into Fjordland National Park (NZ's biggest). We went to Lake Te Anau (2nd largest NZ lake) which meant I'd paddled my muddy boots in all the top 4 largest lakes in New Zealand! Quite an achievement for my boots. At one stop we even saw another cheeky, "Kea" Mountain Parrot. They're such funny creatures as they bound about and come right up to you looking for food. But you shouldn't give them food as it makes them crazy as we saw when someone gave a Kea a cookie....it went hyper! We finally got to the cruise boat at 1pm ready for a free lunch! Brilliant! Then went outside to enjoy the mesmerizing sights of the most famous Fjord. A Fjord is a valley carved by glacier and encroached by water. So it meant you sailed through sheer cliff sides dotted all around you with freshwater falling down them directly into the ocean. It really was pretty as they sailed the boat right into the waterfalls. Also we saw more fur seals!