half time score

i cant believe that i am already basically half way through my south america trip.
time seems to fly when you are having fun.
and even on the times when you are not.

i have come to a couple of conclusions (and seeing i am stuck in uyuni, bolivia for an extra day) i thought it was time i wrote them down.

1. it is possible for a week (a day, a month) to be too touristy.
the thing about travelling is that you dont really give yourself a weekend. i try so hard to make each day worth it, and as i find i wish i had more time in each country, i dont really seem to take a rest. thats not good - i have started to take things a little more slowly so that i can appreciate what i am doing each day.

2. travelling 24/7 with a friend IS HARD. dont let anyone tell you any different. dont get me wrong, i love nell to pieces, but spending all day and all night together does get a little strained. i have decided to try and live by the rule - dont sweat the small stuff. sometimes you have to compromise and other times you just have to shut the hell up.

3. what did travellers do before facebook ?
everyone we meet (well just about) - ends a hangout period with the sentence ¨facebook me¨ or ¨i will facebook you¨ and its actually kinda helpful.
you do meet the same people again and again on the gringo trail and getting hints and helps about places to go and not to go is awesome. plus you can read what your travelmates are telling other peeps too.

MAYHEM in 35 days !

its 35 days til we leave !!!

the time has just flown by. at almost this time exactly in 5 weeks, nell and i will be taking off on another chapter in the adventures of the International Women of Mayhem.

i'm in my office today finalising the last of the accommodation bookings, updating the trip budget and packing up my bookcase. its all too exciting for words but i shall try to convey exactly what i am thinking right now.

london and yorkshire are going to be cool as i get to see my brother and meet the new girl in his life. we also get to take mom under the channel to paris for her birthday.

the united states will be a blast. we'll get to run through central park as well as enjoy a real new york show. then after mercilessly teasing andrew (junior) we'll cut a swathe through vegas and new orleans and onto miami. we're both pretty good at being miami (sun, diving and drinking)

then the adventure starts ! the real challenges will be the language and roughing it a little.

but you know what i decided tonight ?
part of growing up is growing out - growing in experience, sensibility, knowledge of the world and knowledge of self - and exactly what i am capable of is only going to increase.

boarding in 5 mins

the departures board has been telling me that my flight will be boarding in 5 minutes for nearly 40 minutes now.
today is going to be a very long day.
up at 2:30 for a flight to melbourne. application workshops all day today - finishing around 6pm melbourne time (thats 8pm NZST).
same again for thursday and friday and then last flight home friday.

big sleep saturday!
thought i might go and dance my feet off at the our house party on saturday night.

possibly a new tattoo on sunday?
any able to translate some english into maori for me?

the world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page -- st. augustine

i've just come back from holiday and i already need to take another.
i got home from fiji on sunday (monday was also a public holiday thanks to easter) and today is my first day of work.

its not only going back to work that gets me down.
its the difference in weather between new zealand and fiji. and its only the end of summer/beginning of autumn.

fiji was 32-34 with 29 degree water.

its 14 degrees in auckland at the moment!

oh well ... i saw a turtle or two. and a shark.


octopus resort, yasawa islands - march 2007

but i wouldnt be surprised if i catch a cold!

perving at polo players on ponies

my birthday - 2007 - is going to be spent in argentina.
to me that means watching polo, riding ponies, eating steak and drinking a huge bottle of mendoza red!

nell and i are off on our world tour this year.
setting off at the end of july (after cossies 30th), we will be spending a couple of days in singapore and then flying to london for a week or so.
we will go on up to yorkshire to visit martin and sam from the super saturday fiji crew. and hopefully somewhere like the lake district. i have only been in london and it was a quick trip. there may even be a chance to attend a beach rugby tournament in venice.
after we leave europe, its off to america. 5 days in new york, an excursion to boston, then down to vegas and miami. diving in miami looks amazing so we should get the chance to do that.
from miami, we go into central america. this one needs a little more planning but we should have a couple of weeks there.
south america was our original intention - but as you can see, the itinerary has grown somewhat!
colombia, bolivia, ecuador, peru, chile and argentina. and it doesnt look like we will get more than a few weeks in each country.
christmas will be spent in south africa. a fortnight or so in namibia is also on the cards! and we will be able to celebrate nells dads 70th birthday with him.

wow! and we'll be home at the beginning of february 2008.

why would i live anywhere else

welcome to new zealand - at christmas.
the pohutukawa are in full bloom, the sky is clear and the breeze is warm.

we are having more subtropical (yes -rain) weather around december and january, and there has been a fair amount of bitching about the weather around home lately. still, it wouldnt be christmas if there was not the opportunity to have a christmas breakfast bbq, to don our shorts and tshirts and have a little game of backyard cricket. with days like this - why would i want to live anywhere else in the world?
i know, i know, any kiwi reading this will have some comment to make about our weather. probably something to do with the fact that december was the wettest and coldest on record. so what!!! the weather is the one thing that we cant do anything about - so why sit around complaining about it? do something else. i think that the seasons are changing - summer is arriving a little later but the good news - is it stays around a little longer too.

breathing underwater isnt just for fish

div‧er  /ˈdaɪvər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[dahy-ver] –noun
1. a person or thing that dives
2. a person who makes a business of diving, as for pearl oysters or to examine sunken vessels
3. any of several birds noted for their skill in diving
4. British. a loon

humans are not supposed to breathe underwater. but surprisingly, it actually feels pretty natural.

my friend nell and i decided that we wanted to go to fiji, so once the school holidays had ended and there were some reasonably priced flights available, we booked our tickets and secured a spot at the octopus resort on waya island. one of the main reasons for us choosing octopus was that nell had managed to talk me into agreeing to do my PADI open water course.
even before i left home, i knew that i was scared. of learning to dive. of diving in general.
i like the sea but i'm also scared of heights. and spiders. and snakes. and pretty much anything that i dont know anything about. so thats quite a lot.
i had already told lots of people that the reason i was going to fiji was to do my PADI open water course. so i could hardly freak out and not do it now - could i?
can you imagine the hassle my friends would give me? well maybe you could. but you havent met my friends. so imagine what you will and times it by 10 .. thousand.

being scared of lots of things means that i have had a bit of time to think about how to still do the things that are exciting and cool. the way i normally get around my fears is to try and imagine that they dont exist and just push myself.
just get on the plane. just get on the boat. just climb that step. that kind of thing.
dont think about it and before i know it, i'm doing it!

before we left new zealand, there were rumblings of a fijian military coup. even our ten foot tall and bulletproof prime minister helen clark was asking for additional security around her attendance at the pacific forum. we kept an eye on the ministry of foregn affairs safe travel website and decided we werent going to be in any danger. bugger.
it could have been a very good excuse for me not to complete this trip and to be able to delay this diving thing for a while. but alas, no travel advisories were posted and realistically - if things got rough - they would probably target the forum first!

so we jump on our air pacific flight, shoot over to nadi and step out into warmth!!
leaving new zealand in october for fiji is something that i would recommend to all kiwis. go and get some sun!
even though it was overcast in nadi, and slightly moist and very humid, it felt so good. we stripped off any jerseys we had and proceeded to the hotel we had booked for the night to change into our swimsuits and jump straight in the pool. even the water was warm! from there, enough time to get changed and mosey on down the road to ed's bar for dinner ($50.00 for 3 courses + drinks for the two of us) and lots of beers and games of pool.

the next morning, we were collected by the shuttle bus for the resort at 8:30. they drove us over to lautoka to the transfers office. but we had to wait for nearly 2 hours.
now lautoka is an interesting town. be warned, if someone asks you for your name and then pulls out a package of sticks, it will cost you. this seems to be a ruse for the tourists - you will have your name carved on a canoe or an oar or the like and it will cost you around $10 - $20FJD. unless you catch them quickly and dont give them your name or say no thank you before they start the carving.
anyway, it doesnt matter because i was really feeling like i was on holiday. as soon as we got packed back into the van and taken to the wharf, i started to get nervous. that was a bit weird. but i knew what it was.

so we arrived at the island after a boat trip of around an hour and a half. the photo on the left shows the bay on which octopus is located - its called likuliku bay and it was the most beautiful thing that i had ever seen.
we had started chatting to the people on our transport van and their faces reflected mine. huge smiles and absolute pleasure at what we had only seen on the internet. this was even better.

the water in the bay was crystal clear and extremely blue. i couldnt see anything bigger than my hand so the shaking stopped and i was able to breathe in a sigh of relief and jump off the boat and onto the warm white sand.

the staff at the resort were so welcoming and full of smiles - i was sure that nothing bad ever happened here.
we strolled on down to the dive shop and rented out snorkel gear ($5 for the entire length of our stay!) and i got all the forms i needed for my course. you know the old medical questions etc. i met jodi at the the dive shop. she is one of the instructors at octopus - and her manner put me at ease from the start. she told me we could get it all done in 4 days and that i had 5 pool dives and 5 open water dives to complete. plus i had to watch some really corny videos and complete some knowledge tests but that none of it was going to be a stretch.
the first pool dive was going to be the next day - and sam and martin from our boat (couple #1) were going to be doing it as well - yayyyy!

right - the day of reckoning. can i shove a regulator in my mouth and submerge myself? will i float to the top? will i survive? once again, my law of doing everything first and just jumping in worked well. i had my wetsuit on first, tanks strapped on and jodi told me to put my regulator in and just snorkel around for a while.
WOW! 5 seconds later i had the big grin - this i can do! first hurdle overcome - i know i can breathe underwater. then we sink to the bottom of the pool and hang around there for a while.
the next day was to be our first open water dive. i woke up in the morning and felt ill. not just because i was nervous. but the night before was sams birthday and in order to forget my fears, i participated in the consumption of 3 bottles of vodka. i was a little more than slightly hungover. damn.

diving with a hangover is not fun. dry mouth. headache. queasy tummy.
getting into my wetsuit, i was wondering what on earth i had got myself into. nell was standing around the dive shop throwing a few funny comments and all i wanted to do was smack her and tell her to go away. so i snapped at her instead and then just ignored her as i made my way down the beach to the dive boat. we got out to the dive site and the water was clear - but i still couldnt see the bottom well enough. and i couldnt tell if there was anything down there that was going to eat me. but i james bonded (backwards roll) into the water and then swam around to the line to wait for the others. by this time i had figured, the faster i get in, the faster i can get out.
the others joined me at the front of the boat and we started to descend. but i wouldnt sink!! i was pulling myself down the line trying to remember to equalise and trying to get further down - but none of it was working right! joe, one of the dive masters, came back up for me and led me down by the fins and kept reminding me to equalise. we turned around onto our bellies and he grabbed my hand and led me around the face of the wall. we made it down about 12 meters and i was sure i was having problems with my ears and i would never be able to dive again. yayyy! finally an excuse!!!

about this time, sam had decided that she had well had enough. she wanted to go up and i just pretended my ears hurt a little more than they did. so i went up too.

we surfaced - to find that we had been at 12 meters for 22 minutes.

see - breathing underwater isnt just for fish



p.s. coming home from this trip, i felt compelled to share my travels in more ways than one. for a brief travel log, take a look at my yasawas report on globosapiens.