Author: matt

Cruised across to the west coast in my trusty lawn mower, down a very beautiful stretch of coast and then into the Waipoua Kauri forest, a sort of rainforest place with loads of weird big trees. Then I drove down to Hamilton, one of the larger north island cities and decided to hole up there for the night. It seems to be a very happening place actually, more so than Auckland or Wellington as far as I can see. I’d forgotten, but the All Blacks vs. Argentina match is being played here tonight, as the prop had told me on the plane a few days back. So at vast expense as all the motels are booked, I’m staying one more night and have got a ticket for the game! At least I’m staying around the corner from the game so can crawl back with any luck.

Tomorrow then, I’m hoping to get to the caves as planned, then try and get to Wellington, if the car can make it that far. I’ve changed my flights again, now I only go to Sydney next Wednesday morning, but this is a good thing really as it means I can get to the south island here without having to rush too much now.

PS. Nice job, Greece!!!

Popped into “The Shakespeare” for a quick one before hitting the backpacker bar. Met some guys who were arguing about how thunder gets caused (after the big hits on the Sky Tower that morning), and had a $10 bet on it. They asked me for my pathetic opinion on the matter to try and settle it, and I ended up playing pool with them and their mates until 3am, so missed out on the backpacker night, never mind.

Picked up my quality car next morning, it’s older than me and has more dents than a golf ball, but it seems to go OK. The main problem is that it only has as AM radio, so all I can hear is Christian radio and talk radio. After just one afternoon of driving, I can recite much of the bible from my head, and I know considerably more about sheep than I did before.. Drove up to Paihia in the north, in an area known as The Bay of Islands, as it is a bay with 144 islands (so it’s not just a stupid name). It is absolutely beautiful, and I’ve splashed out on a lovely motel with a room with balcony overlooking the ocean, king size bed, kitchen, Sky TV, etc, to make up for 2 nights in the dorm!

Today I took a fast boat out into the harbour, this thing has 1400 horsepower and can do over 50 knots. They took us through the “Hole in the Rock” (also not a stupid name) and fairly deep into a cave and generally around the islands.

I’ve decided to cook in tonight, last night’s search for a restaurant ended up in true Matt-style disaster. There was a place which I liked the look of but was obviously closed, as there was some kind of sign in the door. Now, the street is not well lit so I couldn’t read it, so walked across the front yard to the door. After about 3 steps, massive floodlights came on and a ridiculously loud alarm system goes off which flashing blue lights and the whole works. I decided to do the decent thing and ran off. 5 minutes later I found a bar and went in there, I could still here the alarms from there when I went in! The floodlights did let me read the sign though, which said “Closed for annual holiday, do not enter yard or the alarms will be triggered”. Handy information. I wonder if they were on a beach in Bali or somewhere, when they got paged to say someone was trying to burgle their restaurant?

Will watch Portugal whip England in bed tomorrow morning, then head south back past Auckland towards the Waitomo caves.

Well I’ve suddenly remembered why I’ve not been doing dorms so far. At least they’re nice people and hardly snored, but still difficult to get a moment’s peace. The good side of that is without sleep I was able to get up in time for the 6:45am kick off of the England/Croatia match, which was a good thing given that it was such an entertaining game.

Breakfast was quite a shocker, literally. I was in the caff when two enormous lightning bolts hit down overhead, I assume hitting the Sky Tower which was about 300 yards from where I was. That’s the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. This was followed by marble-sized hailstones so was quite a spectacle.

I hit a couple of bars last night and finished up in the backpacker’s brothel bar in the basement of the hostel. Here is where you get 2 pints of snakebite for the price of one, etc. etc. You feel a bit like a ship trying to avoid mines in World War II when you leave the hostel in the morning, expect in this case the mines are pools of puke. Tonight’s special down there is “girls get your tits out” night, so me and these 2 German geezers from the dorm have decided to give it a second chance.

Oh I also forgot a new small claim to fame. The Argentinian rugby team were on my plane from Santiago, I got chatting to one of the props a bit who told me they are playing the All Blacks on Saturday. You have to laugh, these guys were crammed into the economy section, but of course they have no chance of fitting into the seats so they congregated in the galley instead and tried to pull the Lan Chile air stewardesses. Can’t blame them I suppose, they just got crushed by Wales I think so need to do something to cheer up.

Here I am in Auckland, a miserable long flight of more than 14 hours, but we were into headwinds of more than 150 mph. Luckily I was caning the wine and champagne in the airport lounge before take off so managed to get a good few hours sleep. I was right in a daze when I arrived here, and sat for at least an hour in the airport with no idea of what I was meant to be doing… Quite a relief to get to an airport where you don’t get assaulted by 500 taxi drivers as soon as you get out of the door though, although the way my brain was not working I could actually have done with some one whisking me away to their crap hotel. I’d lied convincingly to the customs and agriculture people, by answering “no” to all the questions about whether I’ve been on a farm recently, in rural areas, or in contact with any non-domestic animals. I think I’d destroyed all proof, the only thing that may have rumbled me is if they’d checked the pictures on my digital camera, for example the one of me riding a horse on a farm in a marshland, or the one of me handling a live alligator in the middle of a jungle might just have given the game away.

Now I’m in the town centre, and things all seem a bit more familiar as I did once spend an afternoon in Auckland for a business meeting. I’m going all out and doing the hostel thing here for a change, so we’ll see how that works out. I’m bound to end up with some bastard(s) who snore(s), but I should be tired enough to sleep through anything I expect.

Today I’ll make a plan or two, I’m erring towards the side of hiring a car, they seem reasonably cheap here and make my way gradually down to Wellington. But first, coffee and a shower…

I got to Valparaiso today, but it was rather cold today so not a great day for sitting about on the coast. It’s a very hilly place, and they have these unusual “ascencores” which are like steep funicular railway lifts everywhere. They’re dodgy looking to say the least, and ironically on one of them there is a set of stairs alongside it which are free to climb, or you can pay for the ascensore – I would pay extra for the privilege and security of using the stairs if they’d ask!

In the airport now and about to board for Auckland. It’s late on Saturday night and I’ll land on Monday morning, so Sunday will never exist for me, obviously a consequence of crossing the dateline which I’ve never done before. So if your birthday happens to be tomorrow, sorry, I’m going to miss it 🙂

Moved hotels last night, and am now in Las Condes area of Provedincia (thanks for the advice, Morten!) There’s a lot of nightlife up there as I discovered when cruising around a few bars until about 3am. Today was gorgeous T-shirt weather, and I went up the funicular railway that leads to yet another Christ statue thing on top of a big hill. Not anywhere as well presented as the Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro, as it’s surrounded by aerial masts and stuff, but you get a really good bird’s-eye view of things from there. There’s a disgusting thick layer of pollution hovering all over the city which is somewhat alarming, to know that I am now breathing that in. From the top, a gondola cable car thing leads down the other side across quite an impressive park. It leads through a lot of trees, but they don’t bother to trim them much it seems, so the car ploughs into branches as you go along which makes it very safe, obviously…

Tomorrow I think I will try to get to Valparaiso on the coast, my flight only leaves at 23:30 or something so I think I can do this and still get back in time to catch the flight. As long as I don’t have another 3am session tonight which is always possible…! If I get to the airport in time I might have time to watch TV, as I did in Manaus airport, another classic that slipped my mind. Whilst waiting at the gate they were showing the Discovery channel about an air crash investigation, then as we filed through the door, right under the TV, they showed the reconstruction of the two planes crashing head on, I kid you not…

I just about made it to the airport on time, and even managed to clear immigration without problems despite my dodgy entry/exit card. Nice flight to Santiago and I got in last night, and it’s not even as cold as I’d imagined. Everyone else seems to think it is, as they’re all wearing massive jackets and scarves and stuff, it looks a bit like you’re in Siberia, but I’m quite happy just walking about in a light sweater.

As everyone said it doesn’t seem to be an overly inspired city, today I’ve been walking around looking for hotel options, but there are some areas worth checking out for sure. I might take a day trip out to the coast tomorrow or the next day, and maybe even venture into the mountains, they are ever so close and are all covered in snow now, which feels weird considering I was on a beach yesterday!

Well, it is my last morning in Rio and I head for the airport and Santiago shortly. It’s been a fairly relaxing few days here for me really, just spending some time on the beach and watching the football in the afternoons. Watched the game yesterday with a German bloke I met in the pub, it was great fun watching him squirm as the Holland goal went in…

After a couple of beers on the beach I wandered back to the hotel to find they had a room, great! That first shower felt good, really good…

I’ve given into temptation and have changed my flight out of here to Wednesday afternoon, just to have a couple more days of hot weather before hitting the Chile winter. Today’s activities obviously revolve around the England/France game, for which I’ve procured a stool in an Irish pub to watch in a little while.

Oh, one little anecdote I forgot from the Amazon. I met this South African guy, and got chatting about me having been there a couple of times last year for work. When he found out I was working on the billing system for Cell C there, he says “Oh, yes, that’s Arbor from Kenan, isn’t it?” It turns out he works for Accenture and has had something to do with it. What a small world it is, you go to the middle of a jungle and meet some guy that’s heard of that crap, you just can’t seem to escape from it anywhere. (For those readers that don’t know, this is the stuff I used to work on with my old job)

Right, off to settle into that stool…

The coin landed on the side of the Amazon, so that’s what happened. Not without incident, of course… Took what I thought was a bus from the centre of Campo Grande to the airport, as the name had “Aero” in it, but I ended up down in some southern suburb, the airport being out to the north west, D’OH!! Not having enough time to get a bus back to the centre, and not being able to find a taxi anywhere, the only option was a “moto taxi” which is where you cling on to the back of a motorbike being driven by a mad Brazilian. After the initial effort of getting him to understand that I wanted to go to the airport (largely involving running around on the pavement with my arms out to each side and singing the Biggles music) he took me with all my luggage hanging off up there. As luck would have it he was a relatively safe driver!

So, the “direct” flight which actually consisted of 5 individual flights and took 13 hours got me to Manaus at 2:30 am, I decided to sit it out in the airport until sunrise at 6:00 and get a bus into town. Found myself a reasonable hotel and tried to get some sleep without much success, then went into town and gathered arm loads of leaflets about the various jungle outfits, and found a street bar to read them over a couple of beers. As I hadn’t slept for 36 hours or whatever the beers knocked me out virtually, and ended up negotiating a deal where the guy was talking in USD and I thought he was talking in Reals, bit of a screw up, and also booked 2 nights when I only really had time for 1. They promised me a refund of the 3rd day but of course it didn’t materialise, so paid a bit over the odds for all that.

Other than that the trip to the lodge was fascinating, very peaceful of course, and high water so you can paddle through the treetops which is an eerie feeling, because the water is so still you get the very deep reflection of the trees in the water, and is sort of feels like you’re flying in the canoe. Very trippy…

I caught a few piranhas which we had for dinner, and an alligator which we decided to pass on. Next day we’re walking on what little dry land there is through the jungle, by which I mean we were cutting our way through thick jungle with a machete. Lovely conditions as well, not too hot, no rain, and very few mosquitoes which surprised me.

After getting back to Manaus a day early, I then had to kill time until the flight left at 3:20 am, but when I got to the airport, the flight was full, so had to take another flight for an extra 200 reais or so, I was starting to think I was having one of those days. Now I am back in Rio, and my favourite hotel I was staying in is full, ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! So for now I’m going to cry into my beer for a while and then sit on the beach, it’s 32 and gorgeous here today. Something will sort itself out!