Mendoza, Canopy, Rafting

Next morning we were up bright and early to catch a bus up through the Andes and over into Argentina. Winding our way up along the mountain passes the scenery was truely amazing, as were the busses - a far cry from National Express! The worst part of the entire journey by far was the wait at the border crossing. Totalling over 2 hours we everyone in the queue of busses got plenty of time to give themselves an unhealthy amount of sunburn and windburn if we so wanted, or just sit in a stationary bus. Oh the choices.

Finally we were allowed into Argentina...though not before the immigration officer seemed took a keen interest in all the visas I had in my passport and noted their numbers on his computer. Very strange!

After running around trying to sort out a few essentials like some new clothes (Aus & NZ had been way too expensive for many!), we headed out with a bunch of people in the hostel to Mendoza´s bar street. On a Tuesday night though everything seemed a little on the quiet side. Even so though we met up with some locals who spoke as little English as we did Spanish, so all-in-all great practice! More to the point though it was an opportunity to teach them the infamous game: "Esta es la brucha. La que? La brucha!" - yes we now know This is the Witch, and can teach it, in 3 languages...no excuses will be accepted anymore!



Next day it was time to go a bit crazy...first of all whilst dangling a good 30m above a river on nothing more than a wheel running along a steel chord! Awesome fast fun, especially when you take it on upside-down, albeit in a slightly dodgy position with the instructors! The final two lines were by far the best...being 400 metres long you got up a whole load of speed by the end...and that was the one I went upside-down on! I don't think we screamed like girls too much...well hopefully!



Following our high-speed fun it was time for a huge piece of steak (as is the unforunate custom in Argentina)! Yum yum yum.

Task two was to hop in a boat with an Argentino locissimo, kiss goodbye to fear and zip off down some class three and four rapids! Awesome. Well all apart from the whole seating arrangements. Martin and I were in the front, which involved sitting cross-legged with one foot inside a sock sewn into the floor and the other jammed between the floor and the tubing wall. Unsurprisingly this wasn't exactly the most comfortable sitting position ever so I made a bit of a trade-off with what I'd been told to do and first-class comfort levels! It was definitely a trade much in their favour as all I did was only put my foot half-in the sock and rest my foot under the wall instead of jamming it there, oh and sit possibly a bit more atop the tubing. Hardly a first-class ticket. The system worked really well. And then we plugned into a deep trough, the tubing acted like a trampoline, bouncing me upwards and backwards out of the boat. Onboard it had actually been getting pretty hot so it was quite a refreshing dip, well bar impending death. Captain wasn't quite so relaxed though and ordered me to swim my arse of back to the raft where I could be hauled back on! Unfortunately the photo is just a re-enactment.

A hard day of work requires a well-earned beer and that's exactly what we headed out for after. Walking to the bar I asked for "tres Quilmes grandes", the effort of which is usually rewarded with three one-litre bottles of Quilmes (Argentina's national beer). Today however it somehow translated to three huge-ass pitchers. These necessitated a slightly more lengthy stay than we'd expected at our pavement bar...another good opportunity to get to know the locals introduce them to a few games! Early that morning it was back to the hostel to continue our night of guitar playing, bad singing and just general banter about, well, anything.

Morning after it was a quick look around the town square and a scramble around the hiking shops in search of equipment for later in the trip. No such luck though so off on the bus to Cordoba...an overnight Andesmarr Full Cama bus - its like flying business class on a bus!

Santiago and the wonders of time travel!

Some would say its impossible to catch a bus, hop on a plane, have dinner, watch two films and have a good 4 hour snooze and arrive exactly fifteen minutes before you left your hostel. However, Martin and I are now believers having done exactly that. If I´ve lived the same day twice though does that make me a day older than everyone back home...I mean just how many hours did pass whilst I was travelling from Auckland to Santiago whilst going backwards through time??!

First stop was to find a guidebook somewhere in this huge city...well by way of an ice-cream refuelling station complete with party-hat style cones! We quickly came to the conclusion that we had been spoiled in South-East Asia and even China by the remarkable availability of English Rough Guides and Lonely Planets. Our hunt was probably doomed from the start, when I began asking for English travel paintings instead of English travel books. Fortunately the locals realised my mistake before I did and sent us in the right direction anyway...well the right direction to purchase a Chile Lonely Planet for GBP24 intead of the usual GBP16. Adament we weren´t going to spend that much we hit the supermarket where you can buy bananas for 8p a go and apples for 6p (this is more like it again!) and then got back to our little bohemian hostel at which point we pretty much crashed and burned at all of 8pm in the evening. Time travel makes you tired.

Arising nice and early at about noon, it was time for a bit of sightseeing whilst again trying to find a guidebook. First to be ticked-off the list was the Bellas Artes - not a Theatre like the one in Mexico City, but a small art collection of, well, not a lot to be honest! There were a couple of intersting paintings, but they were overshadowed by strange exhibits like a jumpsuit made entirely of red plastic beads, for which apparently the dramatic effect of a completely darkened room with wire-and-pin decorated ceiling was necessary! The city was certainly very similar to Mexico City, though thankfully with a few thousand less cars tearing around the place!

Next event - a time trial. Just how long will it take Martin to go into a chemists, purchase a 30-pence packet of plasters and apply one to his foot? After the initial problem of trying to find plasters, which we overcame by showing the security guard his blister (the dictionary didn´t have the word) we found what we desired hanging above the counter. From there on you´d think it´d be plain sailing, mainly in the direction of the exit after a quick stop to drop a few pence off with the counter, but oh no...before that you have to grab a number from the reel and wait...and wait...and wait...even if your number´s actually only 11 away!! Total time for the trial - 3 minutes to find the plasters, 18 minutes to stand in the queue and 1 minute to apply to foot!

The cathedral was next on our list of things to check out, full of catholic-style overzellous artistry, though a little less gold than the ones in Mexico. The ceiling was very impressive, as was the alter.

Not wanting to be late for our wine tasting evening we hurried on back by way of blokie on horse (just over the river from our hostel) and various chorro, empanada and hot dog vans! Our wine tasting evening was awesome fun...organised by the owner of the La Chimba hostel who certainly knew his way around a wine cellar. It turns out that remembering names of wines isn´t really my thing... I could only remember I liked bottles 8, 3, 7, 9 and 6 in that order! However I now know that those equate to: Bottle 8: Concho y Toro Casillero del Diablo Malbec; Bottle 3: Cousino Macul Don Matias Cab Sav; Bottle 7: Mission de Rengo Merlot; Bottle 9: Santa Carolina Petit Verdot; Bottle 6: Santa Carolina Syrah. I´m going to partake in a little research to find out the actual names shortly! The evening started off very orderly but after tasting 15 wines and taking water inbetween (which apparently speed up the alcohol uptake of your body), people were beginning to feel a little giddy! Well what better place to go than the Salsa club Maestra Vida?! Naturally we all made fools of ourselves...well I mean compared to the locals we clearly haven´t got a clue what we´re doing!

Places open late in Santiago...so after not making it back until the not-so-wee hours it was necessary to crash for the entirity of the following day...at the beautiful volcano-top pool behind our hostel! Life is so hard.

And then the next day it kind-of was. Martin and I spent something crazy like 5 hours drawing up our plan of action for South America, complete with map! Well-worth it though - it should avoid a bit of bactracking and ensure we actually make it to Lima on time...kind-of important! Fortunately though for our bodies, after booking our onward bus we did manage to get out and catch a breath of fresh air that day...albeit on La Calina de Los Amores (the hill of lovers), also known as Cerro Santa Lucia. Literally everywhere you looked people were making-out...on every bench, wall and spot of grass! Oh how unsuspecting Martin was...!! Later we particularly enjoyed being sent from hostel to hostel trying to find a place, after the girl who had taken our bookings for the sister hostel didn´t bother to pencil anyone in - nice! A great meal out in Bellavista made up for it.

Auckland

Frustratingly the weather the next morning was the best it had been in ages, yet the absolute last bus I could get to Auckland running behind us had no space for me...so I still didn´t get to do the crossing.

Checking-in at the Base hostel anywhere in New Zealand always takes a long time, though on this day in Auckland they were really highlighting their go-slow ability! Walking to the bathroom though I found out why - a bunch of policemen were hanging around just outside of a room. The two girls behind me in the queue came up just as I was heading past, trying to get into the room where the policemen were. Not entirely speaking English they pushed open the door to reveal a dead man lying on the floor...not exactly the room you´d expect to be checked into. Unsurprisingly they demanded a change of rooms.

After a wander around the marina and dinner on the rooftop terrace at the hostel, James, Valerie, Jana and I tried to hit the town. You´d have thought that a city the size of Auckland would have a lot going on whatever the night of the week, but alas Wellington it isn´t. In the end we found a little Irish pub with a guitarist playing absolute classics so we were well away!

Next morning I went for a brief wander around Auckland, up around the cultural centre and the skytower, from which people were throwing themselves on what looked like a cheating-form of bungee. Softies!

That evening I continued the theme of not doing much once again...heading to the cinema with Martin and Nicky to see Stranger than Fiction. Completely different from anything I´d ever seen before we all though it was great! Returning to the hostel it was a bit of a surprise to see what was either a drunk or drugged-up girl running around every room on every floor bashing on the door trying to find every single last item of her stuff which had apparently been stolen from her in her sleep. OK so maybe not so strange in Base for someone to get so wasted they forgot which room they were in, but it was quite a spectacle!

Next day it was all about using-up the final few dollars I had left on a few things to eat such as the totally sensational Mephis Meltdown Big Bikkie icecream which I really hope is going to be available in Britain by the time I get back!

No Tongarario but we visited auntie!

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Next morning the weather was as bad as the previous day, so once again Tongarario was closed. Massively disappointed we headed for the thermal pools nearby. They turned out to be a mini version of those at Yellowstone (not that I´ve made it there yet), complete with some instense colours and unbelievably clear water. Also in this mini reserve were a whole bunch of egg-smelling cooking stoves for frying-up steaks for a picnic in true New Zealand style! Cooking this naturally must be good for the environment but I´m not sure flavouring everything with essence of sulphur is exactly a favourite of your average picnic enthusiast!

Things seemed to be against us that morning what with the walk being closed and then the water pump for the big thermal bathing pool turning out to be broken. However, not to worry - Maurie (drive) to the rescue. As luck would have it his great auntie lived 5 minutes around the corner and had a "massive" thermal hot-tub at the back of her house. So off he trundled to ask her if he could park the tour bus out the front and let the 15 or so people in it hop into her hottub.

Having last been there when he was about eight, Maurie´s grasp of the actual dimesions of the hot-tub were somewhat skewed...there was absolutely no way we were going to manage to fit more than five people into it, nevermind 15! It was great though, even if rediculously hot to the point where you feel giddy - or is that the sulphur?!

After successfully turning the white parts on my shorts yellow, we headed upstairs into a cosy home for a cup of tea and scones - absolute Magic! Its great to find homely places full of character when travelling through so many hostels, generally devoid of the personal touches you get in someone´s house. It turned out that Maurie´s great aunt was actually going to do a skydive next year, aged 60! Nutter.

As we couldn´t walk the mountains Maurie took us for a drive up to the ski resorts so we could at least get an idea of what the area was like. It was truly amazing with huge volcanic bolders littering the landscape...some of the most recent ones only landed a couple of years ago and Ngauruhoe is due to erupt again sometime this year. Once we were back down the mountain it stopped hammering down with rain and we were able to at least go on a short hike from Whakapapa out to Taranaki Falls - what great names!

Everything on this walk to and from the waterfall was beautiful, and by the end of it there were blue skies once again. The walk was also a bit of a lesson in psychology for me. Chatting to a girl who was studying it I started to find out about the various theories and opposites, but more even more interesting...that you can do the Myer Briggs Type Indicator test online and its that same stuff that companies use so I´ll have to check it out before applying for jobs!

En route back from the walk the clouds finally cleared around Mount Tongarario (Mt Doom from Lord Of The Rings), though not for quite long enough for us to stop the bus, hop out and grab a photo...nearly though!

That night we stopped at an awesome hostel called The Park, complete with massive living room complete with log fire, kitchen, tabletennis and TV room. It was an absolute joy to sit down to a nice dinner in something which was once again so homely! That evening it was time to make up for not doing the walk with some "rock climbing" at the local climbing wall. It was awesome fun and a great challenge...even greater when my forearms wouldn´t release after the fifth climb - worrying how little exercise I must be doing for that to happen! Totally randomly I bumped into Seb and Kate from our Chiang Mai trek, so spent some of the evening in my very homely hostel catching up and plotting South America.

That night I also learnt just how big a knot you get if you leave the laces on your shoes when washing them at the same time as your clothes! D'oh!

Taupo - Powerboats and Golf

After a screw-up with the accomodation which actually landed us with better accomodation than normal I headed down to the lake to watch the powerboat races. Very noisy and very quick were the essential elements which they seemed to combine...and a keen driving ability. There was however one instant where the either the driver made an error or the waves on the lake upset the boat as it cornered, sending in arse-over-end and landing it upside-down in the water. Pretty crazy at that speed! The helicopters were quick on the scene pulling both driver and co-driver out of there.

That evening, following another huge serving of chilli con carne, it was time to check out the local nightlife. Mullighans (or a pub with a similar Irish name) had one hell of a loud band playing, making getting to know the new Stray people a bit difficult. As it turned out though they went home to bed whilst I stayed out partying with the Kiwi bus (what a traitor!). As the next morning was so overcast I couldn´t be bothered to get up to do the hike and so the Stray people all went on to try to do it and failed too due to the adverse weather.

Instead of walking I finally took a day of relaxing - playing crazy golf, and joining in the cheering as Ross continued to burn his cash on pitching golf balls at a floating green in the lake! Also playing on the floating platform in the lake turned out to be a good way of passing time, even if the water was far too cold!

Dinner that night had to be about the most healthy for the past two weeks - guacamole (made to my Mexican recipe courtesy of TrekAm´s Sean), bread, sauces and heaps of salad. Surprisingly filling after a day of finally relaxing and playing plenty of hands of s**thead and taking the mickey out of Valerie for clearly not having washed for the last two days since her skydive!

Wellington

Arriving late into Wellington I went for a quick wander around the shopping streets unusually lined with individual non-chain shops, the cultural centre and the marina. The bridge from the cultural centre to the marina was covered with what seemed like a random assortment of Maouri artefacts on poles and in piles!

The marina itself was huge and full of office-types heading out for their end-of-the-week celebrations. In fact considering how dressed-up everyone was in Wellington compared to what us traveller-types have in our wardrobes on our backs, we were a little concerned whether we were going to be able to go anywhere other than the Base backpacker´s bar.

And then it happened - the first spot of rain in Wellington and then a torrential downpour! I stayed out in it a bit longer than probably I should as at the moment it started hammering down I had been watching the prelude to the showing of Grease at a free screening in the park. It consisted of 30+ 30-somethings getting on down to the moves from the Greese medlay among others infront of a crowd of cheering families...probably the embarrassed children of the very adults making a hilarious spectacle of themselves!

That night it was Frenchie´s last night...so out we went to celebrate in style with four people we met in the Base bar, of which I can remember Dave´s name only, though one was from New York, another made jewellery and the other was just plain wasted! Jana, Velerie, Ross & Vicky from the Kiwi bus came to join us after their film for a night full of checking out just how well Frenchie´s dancing skills fitted into the amazing number of late-night bars and clubs which remarkably had no cover charge...a genious idea whereby you can just walk straight back out if its crap! It turns out the bars here really don´t close, at least not before I need to go to bed cos I cannot possibly dance anymore as my legs are about to give way!

Next morning I´d said to Lucy I´d be up at 9.30am to go check out the city. Amazingly that is the precise moment I manage to crash into the kitchen having just had one heck of a rushed shower. First stop was intended to be Old St Pauls - an old entirely wooden church which, as it turns out, is an extremely popular venue for marriages. Lucy had missed going in yesterday for exactly that reason, and as we got there this time it was the same thing all over again...grrr!

So off to get a tour around the Parliamentary buildings. Frustratingly we weren´t allowed to take photos of the Art Deco and faux Corintium interiors of these beautiful buildings, but the tour was really interesting and even included a good look at the system they´d used to stabilise the old buildings for earthquakes. We also found out that their House of Lords had voted itself out of existence following a lengthy campaign by the Commons to vote-in people who really didn´t wanted nothing more than to be rid of the Lords!

When we finally made it into Old St Pauls, between two wedding services, we found ourselves conveniently supplied with food and a string quartet! In fairness the whole church was beautifully carved and a lot more interesting than "just a church built from wood" which I´d expected. The new cathedral wasn´t half as interesting though, probably built in the seventies and in tight competition with Prinknash Abbey over which is the least asthetically pleasing.

After a lunch of enchiladas in another very reasonably-priced food court (why don´t we have these in England?) it was time for part two of my day - the Te Papa Museum in Wellington. Absolutely enormous and totally fascinating it showed just about every aspect of New Zealand history and life. I still haven´t seen a Kiwi bird alive, but I saw plenty of stuffed specimens here. The huge Pigmy Blue Whale skeleton hanging above them was massive and totally awesome.

One particularly worrying display was of some ginormous bug which weighs about the same as three mice...it´d take a hefty tennis racket to swat that!

The top floor was by far the most interesting with displays of all aspects of Mauri life. The houses and places of worship were paintstakingly carved and painted and really impressive. One really cool thing to see was the reconstruction of the catermaran sailing boats they originally used to sail between the islands of Polynesia which essentially consisted of two canoes strapped to some boards and a sail. They must have been total nutters to sail something so small across the ocean.

My final stop of the day was the botanical gardens at the top of the mountain, reached by way of a "cable-car". Having managed two botanical gardens on this trip - the other being in Sydney - I´m quite sure this is the only one I´ve been to which is partially on top of an old volcano cone...pretty cool! As well as being used for star gazing, the cone on the top of the volcano had a sundial installed which would tell you the correct time if you stood on the correct day with your back to the sun. All-told glancing at your watch is a quicker process, but definitely not as enjoyable.

Last call in the botanical gardens was at the Rose Garden - Mum and Gran will be particularly impressed! Full of over 100 different types of roses it smelt rather good and was definitely on the rather-large side. After that day and only 3 hours' sleep it was back for a late dinner and an early night.