Reintegration into society

Hey folks, Well. I'm back living in Scotland. Many things are a little challenging at the moment. The weather, job hunting, and internet access!!! You don't realise how dependent you were on internet cafe's till you can't find one!! Even though I don't have a job yet, looking for one seems to take up a lot of my time, and no real progress yet. However, one thing that had to be done was the hair. So I've taken a few photo's of me before, and after. Thanks to Penny for the great clipper work!! Scott

Hippy

That's right, hat off...one step at a time

Baaaaa Baaaaaa, so this is how sheep feel at the shearing

Baldy wee man that I am, for some strange reason shaving off the tail seemed fun

Rotophotos!!!!

The pressure was too much, in the end....she blew

From a distance it looks rather star trek-ish...minus the wooden barrier, and asian tourists of course!

A bubbling puddle of mud!

After letting of some steam, the geyser drifts into the pool...for a wee dip.

Bad photo, cool dance!!

Better photo...but not so much a dance as a rant!!

I'm gonnae eat your heart...cuz I'm bigger than you..and you belong in ma belly!!

Sulphur lake...not so pretty really!

Some of the locals, out for a wee afternoon paddle!

Christmas New Zealand style...man I don't wanna come home, it's gonna be wet wet wet!!

Rotorua stinks!

So this is my last tourist destination before spending two nights back in Auckland before catching my flight home. Rotorua, what do I think? Well it stinks...literally, sulphur and all sorts of other gasses leak out of the hot pools, mud pools, and various fissures and cracks in the earth. I could actually smell Rotorua on the bus before I could see anything that told me we were there! That aside, you kinda get used to the smell, and it is pretty unique. It looks like something out of a Captain James T Kirk Star Trek episode....everything looks alien and dead! The lakes have very low oxygen counts so there isn't much life in them, however there is still quite a few birds around, I suppose the chance to take a warm bath beats that of a cold one!!

So what did I see? Well I planned to go to a National Park, however in my rush to get there on time I forgot my ipod in the internet cafe....so after spending $10 on a taxi to the park, I then spent $10 to go back, and surprise surprise, some evil human stole my ipod. So not only did I miss the 12:15 Maori cultural show, and the guided tour of the park...some swine stole my ipod (music player for those who don't know). I had only bought this in Thailand 6 months ago, and it was a life saver for the 6hr bus rides, it also had a selection of photos on it, and also solitaire....how will I now cope? I have a 26 hour flight to Scotland in 2 days...and no music...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

But I'm not dead, and that's a good thing. I did eventually get back down (walked the 45 mins cuz I couldn't afford to buy anything for the rest of the day!!) and finally saw geysers steaming up, mud pools bubbling away, hot pools and the Maori cultural show which featured a tradional Maori welcome dance, as well as the Haka. If you've ever seen the Haka you know how intimidating it can be, if you haven't imagine a massive polynesian psychopath with his eyes rolling around in his head, his tongue hanging out his mouth, while he stomps his feet, and slaps one of his hands on his legs, while the other is waving a spear, not too mention the tattoos all over his face, all while chanting about how they're gonna eat your living heart...well actually everything they were shouting was in Maori, so I've no idea what he said...but I reckon he wanted to eat all our hearts.

After that I went back to the hostel, met two new fellows in my dorm, and we went out for a few beer, and Jon (from Holland) and Jon (from Germany) were happy to stay for one more last beer, and then one more last beer, and then one more last beer!! Our "only out for two beer" dragged us back into the hostel between 2 and 5 am...as we all left at different times. Good night though...although my vow of no more drink only lasted 2 days...ah well.

So the next day I went for a walk around Sulphur Lake, and although it was pretty in parts, it stunk royally. However, you can see why the Maori saw it as a magical place. One area outside Rotorua was known as Hell's Gate, for obvious reasons once you've seen some of the landscape!! I realised about half way round that I'd done something to my foot and limped home shortening my walk by about an hour or so....but you'll see the photo's pretty bleak in places!!

My last day I spent in the museum, and chatting to a few folk....then caught the bus!! Rotorua was definetely different than the rest of New Zealand, and I'm glad I went...now if only I can get to see a black beach before I go!! So this effectively is the end of my travels. My last entry from overseas I believe. I'll be home in 2 days (the 11th of Dec) and then a whole new adventure starts since I have no money, no job, no flat, no car!! I'm looking forward to the challenge though!! It really has been the most incredible trip. I guess some expectations were met, some weren't there were definetely some surprises, and some scary moments, also some absolutely unforgettable moments, and most of all some amazing people...and that is half the fun of travelling...you never know who your going to meet!!

That's it for now...hope to see you soon!

Scott

Tekapo and dolphins photos

Of course the first thing you do is go for a swim in a glacial lake that's 5-10 degrees....if you're from the North!

Beautiful old church in a perfect surrounding with wild flowers, a beautiful lake, and mountains!

Wildflowers in Lake Tekapo

Wild flowers and lake Tekapo in the background

Beautiful Sunset from our hostel where we were staying in Kaekora

Dusky Dolphin getting ready to jump

There he goes

And getting ready to land!!
He's in!

This is our view from the hostel during the day...not bad eh?

Queenstown Photos

I apologise for not having more photo's of my bungy's, there was a technical hiccup online and I could only download 1 set of photo's, from one bungy...however my bungy photo's of the bridge (smallest jump) are at the bottom. Wait till you see the others! Will get them up soon hopefully!

A Yellow eyed Penguin (or in Maori a Hoiho), cleaning himself

A Hoiho flapping about...sorry it's a bit blurry, it was rainy and miserably dark...plus he was moving!!

The little female seal up close and personal!

The big male seal, wouldn't want to mess with him, even if he is a juvenile!

The little female rushed up to our guide and put a bit of fright into most of the tourists...not me though!!

Preparing for a plunge! Note the 10 fingers for Ten Rapid?

The pivotal moment.....stepping away from the stable platform to plunge over 30m\100ft down

I don't know if you can see the look on my face...but yeah, it's fear

The rebound after going in up to my waist and getting a good mouthful of water!

T-t-t-tekapo and Kaikoura...eek eeeek eeeek

So we were on our way to beautiful Lake Tekapo. I had bumped into Scottish Adam, and we had decided on two key things on the way to Tekapo. One that as we were on holiday there was nothing wrong with having a bottle of wine on the bus on the way, and two that since there was a glacial lake that was around 5-10 degrees, we should not only plunge ourselves into it, but try and encourage as many others from the bus to do it as possible.

So just before arriving, I made an announcement, announcing what we intended to do. We checked in, then gathered out front with a combination of nervous and cold shivers running through many a body. In total, there was Adam, myself, 3 more Canadians, and 2 more Brits. Funny how it was all Northern hemisphere bodies, and all blokes!! So we all charged the beach, and plunged into what is probably the iciest coldest water I've been in in a while. Then as quickly as we were in, many were out...however I did make it a point to stay in longer, and miraculously my body went numb as did Adam's and we agreed it wasn't so cold once you got used to it. The unfortunate side to this was that when we got back inside the showers were taken....and to make matters worse, my roomates had the keys. So I managed to shiver my way through a window into my dorm where warm clothes awaited!!

We then head outside for some more wine, and a BBQ. Around midnight my busdriver had passed a comment that it was awfully brave to head into the water, but a different kettle of fish at midnight (which it was). Before you could call us Pansies, Adam and I had stripped off and were frollicking yet again in the somewhat more baltic waters of Lake Tekapo.....ah the stuff memories are made of.

I spent the next few days at Tekapo taking photo's of the mountains, wild flowers and a beautiful old church, as well as reading, playing guitar, lots of cards and even a game of scrabble. There was also a wee group of us, 5 Canadians and an English Fellow named Ben who got along pretty well, and ended up coaxing each other into drinking pretty much the whole time we were in Tekapo. Now that I'm in Kaikoura, believe me.....I'm on detox. Tekapo was beautiful though. Well worth a visit for a few days of unwinding!!

Kaikoura

This was my last stop before returning to Picton, but also one that I was strongly looking forward to. As a result of the one thing that I had planned to do from the minute I heard about it. Swimming with Dolphins. There is a couple of pods of Dusky Dolphins which live around one of the bays here. So when I booked my dolphin swim it was with a lot of excitement. However before arriving it turned out that they were booked out and I wasn't going swimming, however I was booked in for whale wathcing which I didn't want to do. Then it turned out I was booked in for the day I arrived not the day after, so I was doing a swim!!

The swim was incredible. We had between 50 and 100 Dusky dolphins at least. We slipped into the water off the back of the boat and swam out sounding like morons. Making loud cooing noises and high pitched squeels to try and get the dolphins interested. Interested they were. We had loads of dolphins swimming over us, around us, behind us, under us....absolutely everywhere. It was phenomenal. When they came up with you, if you were quick you could swim alongside them, or in circles with them, sometimes they slowed town to keep up with you, others they rushed away in a mad dash to show off their speed. Almost everytime though you had eye to eye contact with these beautiful, intellegent, friendly, curious and elegant creatures. They were completely wild, not fed, or encouraged in any way. The draw for them seemed to be purely curiousity. This was definetely one of those experiences that define this trip as a once in a lifetime experience. If any of you are heading this way I strongly recommend it, you won't regret it....in fact you can't get enough and just are left wanting more. I am seriously thinking about taking an Environmental course with a stronger focus on biology after seeing so much of our worlds wildlife in it's natural surroundings. I want to understand more about them, and do what I can to conserve them....it's official, I'm now a hippy.

Next stop Picton where it all started on the south Island, and then who knows. I've still got about a week and no money...so we'll see how creative I can get. Speak to you soon!!

Scotty

The Queens-town, and a mini Scotland.

As far as I'm concerned the mountains are the most majestic thing about Queenstown. It's a beautiful town, very much like a small version of Whistler. I arrived there with 2 things on my agenda. One a bungy jump, and two letting off a bit of steam and enjoying a few pints with my fellow travellers.

Queenstown

So my priorities were to do a bungy jump, and then celebrate. The bungy jump in questions was planned to be the mighty Nevis jump. That's 134 meters or 440 feet. That's correct, I planned to stand on a ledge the length of your arm and throw myself off the ledge, for an breathtaking 8.4 second freefall watching the ground rush up to your face...providing of course your eyes are open.

So our bus pulled up to the Kawarau Bridge the site of the first commercial bungy which was a paltry 43 meters, or 140 feet. Compared to Nevis that is. However we decided to book our Nevis bungy at this center. There are 3 jumps the Nevis, the Bridge, and the Ledge...all operated by AJ Hackett who pioneered bungy. I convinced a wee American gal named Jeanne that this would be a good idea for her, to plunge around 450 feet head first. So tentatively she agreed and signed on. After all she'd bungy jumped...how hard could it be?

So we got into town, and there was about half a dozen of us that had met on the bus that agreed to go for a wee pint that night. It was funny, I was with 5 girls.....and no boys. Ya know, sometimes you just miss talking Formula 1, or Rugby etc. Not with these gals, a wee conversation about Schumacher and the future of F1 developed, it was great!!

So the next day Aurora a wee Italian gal and I decided to head up the Gondola and get some photos, as well as try the luge....which can only be described as a non motorized downhill cart that steers like a bike....man was that fun, I even managed to get a bit of air! Then we went to watch people plummet off the ledge, the other bungy jump which is a slightly more substantial 47 meters, or 155 feet compared to the ledge. I watched people and listened to their screams as they plunged off the ledge, and man, I couldn't wait till Nevis...literally, so I went and signed up...a big part of this was cuz I knew that you could flip off the ledge. So I wandered down for my first ever bungy, and man was I stoked. The guy that set me up had a Scottish Accent, and we were mutually amused to find we both lived in Stirling!! Ah well, so on with the jump. I lined up, got my mind focussed, ran towards the ledge and threw myself into a forward roll motion which resulted in almost 3 full sommersaults before the bungee started to retract, and I stopped screaming. Ahhhhh. It was fantastic. I knew I wanted more, and as it turns out you could do all three bungy's in the "Thrillogy" package. So I forked out way more money than I had planned, budgeted or had, and was set for the next day, Kawarau and Nevis. It was liking waiting for Christmas morning as a kid!!

Kawarau and Nevis

First stop was Kawarau Bridge, the home of bungy, a smaller jump than the Ledge and obviously Nevis, so I asked the guy how to get the best bang for my buck. He suggested that I face him and step back off the ledge keeping my eyes on him. Sounded good to me. So I placed my hands behind my head as instructed, and as they counted down, jumped back off the platform and fell away at something like 80-100 kms an hour. Scary stuff all the same, even though it wasn't as high as my upcoming or previous jump. This one felt like you were floating away from the top instead of falling towards the ground. It was a bizarre sensatation because you expected there to be a jarring impact, instead within a split second you're going from feet first looking at the sky to headfirst with water rushing up to you, then I went head first into the water, up to my waist, with a nice healthy mouthful of the Kawarau river as a souvenir. It was still a kick, but what would Nevis be like at around 3 times as high?

Scary is the answer. In fact probably the scariest thing I've ever done. I watched a couple of guys ahead of me, and thought I was ready. Until I took the rickety old wire platform over to the main gondola. The gondola is suspended over a canyon, with a shallow, and I mean shallow stream at the bottom. Once I stood up after being strapped in and waddled my way over the ledge, I stupidly looked down. I tell you know. My stomach flipped and turned, and I asked myself for perhaps the first time in my life, what are you doing? The river looked like a pencil mark. In reality it was about 12 feet wide. You will never understand the height from photo's as distance has a funny way of being much more perceptible to the human eye when you're balanced over it. They started counting down quickly 3-2-1 and for a split second I decided not to do it as my body had committed, and my mind revolted...however in this case it was body over mind and before I knew it I was jumping, and literally throwing my whole body off the ledge and plummeting head first towards the canyon bottom. As I threw myself off the ledge almost as if of their own accord my vocal chords let out an ear splitting baratone "God Help Me" which quickly rose to as close to soprano as I'm ever going to get....that is until I realised there was no sound coming out of me because I was 4 seconds into my fall roughly, and had no air in my lungs. It was absolutely terrifyingly exhiliratingly brilliant...so I took a deep breath and thought to myself, may as well settle in and enjoy the ride.......and quietly watched the river expand in size. Next thing I knew I was rebounding back up then doing it all again....eventually the electronic motor winch started pulling me up and for some reason I found it hard to let go of the bungy rope which was my lifeline to safety. Absolutely brilliant for those of you who reckon this may be your cup of tea. I strongly recommend it.....you must do it! There isn't anything like it as far as sensations go, the other bungy's didn't come close!!

I'm actually excited just after typing it all out, and man, as scary as it was, I'd do it again....I think.

The rest of Queenstown was more mellow, a few drinks in the evening, and just bumming around watching movies and reading. I did debate hiring a mountain bike (a giant reign) and heading to the local bike park for some jumping about on the doubles, tabletops and singletrack...but decided I'd spent enough adrenalin and money for a few days. The next stop was Dunedin, a quaint wee Scottish influenced town.

Dunedin
Dunedin was very much like Scotland, in fact NZ can be seen as the love child of Vancouver and Scotland. Mountains reaching to the sky, with snow peaked caps, and soft, gentle rolling green hills. It definetely reminds me of both. Well Dunedin was a one night stop, but I was staying in a reputedly haunted hostel....however to my disappointment it was only haunted by two zany Japanese who let me play their little 3 stringed Japanese guitar thing and plenty of other travellers. However I did see my first wild penguins, and got up close and personal with some sea lions. The sea lions were about 10 feet away, there was a large male about 100 kilo's and a smaller female. The female charged our guide, and while half the group stayed near the guide, the other half decided caution was the better part of valour and backed away from all of us!! I of course having complete trust in my guide, and being an idiot stayed where I was to capture video footage, and photo's. I got some awesome photos of wild Sea Lions as a result and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I am starting to think when I go back to Uni maybe I need to consider a biology based degree. The next day we were off to a wonderful place called Tekapo.

Frans Josef and Wanaka

So I conquered the mighty Franz Josef Glacier. Well some of it. We left for a full day hike, at 9 in the morning and got back at around 5pm. It really was a good day out, but nowhere as difficult as I thought it would be. I was totally amazed at the size of the glacier, and how rough yet beautiful it was. The colours of blue in sections was awesome. I reckon if Dean and I had done it we'd have climbed to the top and just about killed ourselves!! I was missing my Vancouver Crew...what say we do Joffre's Lakes when I get back?

After the glacier I soaked in the hostels hot tub for a couple of hours, and had an early night before we left for Wanaka where I am at the moment...leaving for Queenstown shortly, but man is Wanaka beautiful. I don't know how anyone couldn't fall in love with it...and Big Al at Wheelcraft was right, it is absolutely awesome here.

Left to Right, a Dutch fellow, English bloke, and Irish gal (who studied Ninjitsu and Jujitsu and was a black belt in both..em, woah.) who I chatted quite a bit with.

You wouldn't want to lose your grip and fall onto that badboy, you'd be a bit sore....if you lived.

One of the glacial crevasse's we climbed through, the blue of the glacier comes from the weight of the snow pressing out most of the oxygen and allowing only the end of the clour spectrum blue and violet to escape.

Very lord of the rings, minus the ice axe of course!
Jagged ice teeth reaching up to the sky
It's a bit tougher than it looks, I had nothing to hold onto with my left hand
Ice stairs hewn into the glacier on the right, and 30 meteres (100 ft) of crevasse to the left, don't slip!!
An ice tunnel we climbed down into and out the other side, very cool!! Note the blue?
Hundreds of jagged teeth reaching up from the glacier bed
The water below us was about 5 feet deep (or more?) and bone chillingly cold
I was having a blast, we need more glaciers in the world! Note my MEC bag, it was made for this....thanks Jay!!
Just an artsy fartsy view of the valley from the glacier
A Kea, not sure if that's the right spelling, but they're parrot like birds that will rip apart anything with their beaks to get at any type of food. The buggers live in and around the glacier.

Wanaka, very, very pretty, much like Vancouver, but the size of a tiny village.

Wanaka at dusk, a little sideways, but that's what happens when I get tired!

New Zealand South Island Photos!

Me doing my volunteer stint ripping out non native plant species...in this case jaggy, prickly, no nice boxthorn (do I look hippie yet?)

The view on the Ferry over to the South Island of New Zealand!

Someone with a creative sense of humour, I liked it!!

Giant fern tree thing on the Abel Tasmen hike to Mahataua or something like that
Into the Jungle...well rainforest technically
Crystal clear streams were plentiful
Abel Tasman, by ferry....and we hit a rock, nah it was a giant Maori with a big axe that hit the rock, cleaved it right in two as you can see
Did I mention we passed by a seal colony on the Magic bus on our way to Franz Josef?
These strange formations are called the pancake rocks
Waterfall on the beach
Closeup of waterfall on beach