The eve of the Inca Trail

Hola! So here we are in Cuzco, 3500m above sea level, on the eve of our Inca adventure. We arrived in Lima two days ago, Lima is a fairly nice city, or at least the district that we stayed in was nice. After a brief wander around some shops we found a cafe to watch the champions league in, and that was pretty much our day in Lima. That evening we met up with our group for the inca trail in the hotel, there are 4 canadians, 4 scando´s, 2 brummies, 2 other northeners and just the one southerner. It seems like a really good bunch, and after a few hours of chatting in the hotel we went out for a pizza for dinner. This morning we woke at 6am and flew out of lima to cuzco at 9:30, arriving at the hotel at midday. At this altitude although i feel fine and dandy walking about, carrying the bags upstairs made me a bit light headed. In the hotel we met our travel guide who will be leading us up the treck and learnt about our itinerary. After this we went for a wander into town and bought ourselves some thick peruvian jumpers for the cold Andean nights. And that brings you up to the present, i think this eve as it is my b-day tomorrow and a brummy girls birthday on the 3rd we are going to go out for some food and some drinks. Then get some good sleep in before our early start tomorrow, when we head to the sacred valley, and then on to our first day of walking the trail on the 2nd. It will be a week until we have access to the internet or mobile phone reception so we will be giong dark until then. Hope the weather is nice in blighty, its scorchio here.

Rich

Buenos Aires

Hola! We have arrived safe and sound in Buenos Aires, we landed at 5pm local time last night and found a couple on our flight who were equally clueless in spanish nd teamed up. Together we managed to get a taxi to the centre and find a hostel. We went out for a few beers and some food that evening and thats about all there is to tell so far. This afternoon me n dave are gonna go for a wander about the city, it seems like a bit of a sprawling mess, but we are armed with a map! Then i think tonight there is some sot of street festival/carival going on, so we might go check that out with our new friends. Then we only have half a day tomorrow before we head back to the airport and off to Peru! Its all go for us. Blog soon.

Rich

Aroha nui Aotearoa.

Hello, I think this will be my last blog from NZ as we are flying out to Buenos Aries in 2 days. Since our tramping adventures we have been hot footing it to Auckland to watch the Auckland Blues play the Queensland Reds in the super 14. On the way up we stopped off at the two glacier towns of Fox and Franz Joseph, and went hiking on the Fox glacier. This was pretty amazing, its fairly surreal to be walking on a giant lump of ice whilst the sun is beating down on you. Our next point of interest was Abel Tasman national park, where we went sea kayaking along the cost, here we saw seals frolicking about on the rocks, and a lot of cormorants. We stopped for lunch on a deserted beach and it was a beautiful sunny day. Seeing the rugged costline from sea level in a kayak is definately the way to do it. I am now in Taupo where we are simply stopping to use the internet, have lunch and chill for a bit before hitting the road again.

Thisd past four and a bit weeks in New Zealand have been epic, its been the most action packed 4weeks of my life. So far NZ tops the list of countrys i have visited, and i definately want to come back. The people have all been nice and friendly and the whole coutnry is like a giant adventure playgroud. Dad, you should definately come out, its like the lake district on steroids.

So anyhows, next stop South America and Buenos Aries. Blog soon.

Rich

PS. The blog title means Goodbye New Zealand in Maori

Trampers

Hello all, so the past 4 days we have been Tramping in Fiordland and
Mount aspiring National Parks. We covered 70 kilometers over 4 days, which was fairly comfortable and allowed plenty of time for relaxing and meeting people in the backcountry huts. The first day was a 6 and a half hour walk over most of the routeburn track, one of NZ's great walks, and the hut we stayed in had 50beds, gas cookers and lights!! The views on the first day were fairly spectacular and we had good weather for the time we were walking. However when we reached the hut the rain started to come in, that evening the hut ranger gave us a talk saying that this area of NZ recieves 7m of rainfall annually, and 200 wet days a year. That night the rain was torrential and the following morning when we set off to walk it was still coming down. The effect on the walking track was spectacular, the hillsides were gushing torrents of water, and at no point over the next 3hours of walking did we escape the sound of cascading water. It made for a pretty walk but we were sodden when we arrived at the next hut, a much smaller affair with simply bunks and rainwater supplied taps. Here we met a kiwi teacher, an American traveller called Aaron and a french mountaineer called Arian who was training for his attempt at two 8000m peaks in the summer. The next day was a very short day, with only 4hours of walking where we met up with the kiwi again at the hut for the night. A routine walk out the following day (today) and met up with Aaron and Arian in the carpark and made plans for a big fat burger to treat ourslelves. And this was no ordinary burger, $16 of beef bacon egg and salad. I think we deserved it after our hiking efforts. Next we are heading up the west coast. Blog soon.

Rich

Bungy and Swing videos

This is the first person view i had on the Nevis Arc.


Me doing the swing


Lloyd doing the swing


Me Doing the Bungy

Mothers, look away now

After the healthy hiking of Mount Cook we decided to even things up in Dunedin with Tours of the Cadburys Factory and a Brewery. Both were really good fun, altho I feared for the cadbury tour guides mental heath, he was overly jolly. From Dunedin we set sail for Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world! We almost ran out of fuel on the way, but after an overnight stop in a field we managed to limp to a petrol station in the middle of nowhere at 7am and waited for 2 hours for a man to come and open up shop. Back on the road we were soon at Queenstown and within 30mins of being there we had signed our lives away on the 3rd highest bungy jump in the world and the worlds highest swing.

The bungy and swing were biblically epic. The Nevis highwire bungy is a 134m drop with 8seconds of falling before you bounce back up. The most nerve jangling thing is wiating around in a tiny gondola dangling high above the valley floor waiting for your name to be called. Jumping out into nothingness with your feet tied to a length of elastic is a strange sensation. The first second feels amazing, the feeling of hurling youself out is liberating, its the next 7seconds of falling that are crazy. The floor approaches mighty fast. Bungys completed and high on adrenalin we moved on to our next activity, the Nevis arc. This is basically a giant swing over a canyon, falling from 120m up you rush towards the floor and then at what seems mighty close to the bottom you swoop across and up the other side. I asked to do mine upside down and took my camera with me, the video is pretty cool. And all going well the vids should be posted abover this.

Next up for us is a spot of lugeing today, then tomorrow we are going for a nice relaxing two day stroll along the Routeburn track. Hope you are all well. Blog soon.

Rich

The Southern Alps

Camper Capers

Hello there. We have covered a fair amount of ground since we picked up the camper. After getting sorted with our gear we headed inland to a place called peel forest, where we went for a short walk along a river and tossed a rugby ball about, that evening we collected firewood and had a nice little fire by the camper, we even cooked our dinner over the embers. We were hoping to go white water rafting the next day but too much rain meant the river was too full, so instead we headed to Lake Tekapo, a nice lake in the shadow of the southern alps. The rain that had scuppered our rafting at peel forest had dusted the lake Tekapo region with snow, and made for a very pretty scene. After a walk around the lake and a nice warm cup of tea we headed towards Mount Cook the highest peak in NZ. The mountains were all covered in thick cloud when we arrived at the campsite, and it snowed again that evening. However when we woke the sky was crystal clear and the mountains glistened with fresh snow. We went for a walk up to the foot of two glaciers around mount cook, which took us all day and now after i finish up on here we are giong to cook dinner and find a place to park up and sleep. Next stop Dunedin, the scottish city. blog soon.

Rich

The South Island

So, from wellington we got the ferry over to the south island, the views from the ferry heading into the Marlborough Sounds were pretty spectacular. Upon arrival we went to the i-site tourist info place and booked our hostel, a train down to christchurch and a wine tasting tour of the marlborough wine region. The wine tour was that afternoon and was good fun, we pretended to be sophisticated by engaging in all the unneccessary wine tasting parafanalia before we drank the stuff. Some even spat it out!!! We visited 4 vineyards and one place that made schnapps and all sorts of alcoholic concotions for tasting. The hostel we stayed in that night was by far the best we have seen. For $25 or 9pounds we got a twin room, with towels soap and shampoo, a free pool table, free darts, a free hot tub, two cats, an aviary, a free continental breakfast and free coffee and tea. The next morning we woke earlyish and went for a quick 2hr walk into the hills around Queen Charlotte Sound, after the walk we caught the tranzcoastal train down to christchurch. Internet time is low so have to rush, picking up a camper today and touring the south in that. blog soon

Mt doom Videos

The View From the Top...


Making up for lost time on the way down, the quickest way is in a straight line...

Hot Pools and Mount Doom

For our second day in Rotorua we rented a 7seater car with some of the other members of our bus tour who had hopped off and headed out to a geothermally active site called Wai-o-Tapu. It was very smelly, with all the sulphur and whatnot, but an amazing place. We wandered around bubbling hot pools of mud, steaming lakes and saw a geyser erupt. The geyser was least impressive however as it was artificially triggered at 10:15 every morning by a tour guide putting some soap powder in it. On the way back we stopped at a bee-ery and tasted some honey.

The next day we hopped back on the bus and headed to Taupo 80km south of Rotorua, on the way there we stopped for an hour at an amazing place where a hot river from a hot spring met a cold river. Here we bathed in the waters it was awesome, you could sit close to the hot river for a nice toasty bathe, or there was a ledge at the meeting point where you could sit and the hot water warmed your front and the cold water cooled your back. After we had had a nice soak we continued to taupo, the group on this bus were/are a really good laugh and that evening we all went out to a pub quiz.

The next morning we were up at 6:30am to go to the tongariro national park and walk the tongariro crossing, voted NZ's best one day walk. It was epic, and a 2hr detour from our supposedly already 7hr walk would allow us to walk up mount doom! So despite the woman guide telling us not to do it as we didnt have time, we went for it. It was a hard climb though, mainly because we went straight up, in a straight line. The views from the top were amazing, stretching out over the entire national park. The way back down we used the soft crumbly ash to pretty much straight line it and got down in about 10 minutes. The rest of the walk was spectacular and we completed it all in 6 and a half hours with plenty of lunch and photo stops. We were shuttled back to our alpine lodge hostel, and the first port of call was its spa pool, where we soaked our aching limbs for a good 40minutes. That evening we watched Lord of the rings to see our conquested peak in all its cinematic glory, although I only lasted 1hr before retiring to bed.

And so that was our final day on the stray bus, it took us to wellington yesterday, the final stop on our journey and where I am now. Tomorrow we head to the south island and go it alone in a camper. Blog Soon

Rich