Lickable Wallpaper

We were lucky to come across Casa de Mara! After crossing from Pucon to San Martin de los Andes in Argentina (beautiful scenery, Riona is constantly overwhelmed by the Andes), we decided to slow things down a little and spend some time doing a Spanish course. We did some research and found a lot of good things said about La Montaña, a Dutch owned school in Bariloche. A number of people who´d written about the school also wrote about the immersion programme that they organised, where you could stay with a local family for the duration of your course. One home in particular sounded nice, with a great cook as host and large double room with its own bathroom and kitchenette – it sounded ideal and staying with a local family would be something different, so we rang the school, booked four days classes and a week’s homestay, and after taking another bus down to Bariloche were in our new home for the week trying to make sense of our surrogate madre, Mara!

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The second part of our trip began as we touched down in Chile on the 7th September, five hours before we left New Zealand (we crossed the date line so we left at 5pm and arrived at 12.30pm the same day!). We had heard that Chile was one of the most expensive countries in South America so we only spent a week there, even though we really liked it. We had also heard that Santiago (the capital) was not the most exciting place to visit, although an immediate positive for us was the sense of history exuding from all the old buildings and monuments. These things are so rare in Australia and New Zealand, and you don´t realise how much they add to a place until you spend time in countries that don´t have them.

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Ten days on the South Island left us with only four days on the North Island but it was enough to do what we went for, a bit of skiing and surfing! After flying from Christchurch to Auckland (the cheapest way of getting there, tickets worked out at 50 NZD each – to get a ferry and bus would have cost us almost twice that much), we rented a car from Ace rentals that even my old Corolla would have given a run for it´s money, but it was cheap and better than relying on the NZ public transport which wouldn´t have worked given the time we had. We left the airport and and headed for Whakapapa, the main skiing area about 6 hours drive away.

The scenery on the North Island is very different to the South, not as pretty (or at least for the parts we managed to see) but very green nonetheless. After doing a few food and coffee stops (the Kiwis do great coffee, make sure you try their ´flat white´ if you´re over there, it´s like a latte but with more coffee and less milk), we visited the Huka falls for a look. Huka falls aren´t very high or wide, but the volume of water that passes through them is ridiculous (about a quarter of a million litres per second!) and worth experiencing – not somewhere you´d want to fall in.

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We only had ten days planned for New Zealand´s South Island and wanted to see a lot so we looked into joining a hop-on hop-off touring bus (after chatting to a few people who´d done the same) and ended up going with Stray. There are quite a few companies that do these trips in New Zealand, but this one had the reputation of having a slightly older crowd (with the average age being about 25 instead of 19 – sometimes when you´re at the other end of your twenties you really notice it!). We and about twelve others were whisked around the South Island over ten days by a bus driver and guide called Spike who proved to be a blessing, as he was an ex-driver for the company who was filling in for someone for a few weeks and didn´t hesitate in telling us what was worth going to see or do and what was a complete rip-off (something that most of the other drivers don´t do apparently). He also had a diploma in Maori and knew every legend and story about the place, kind of like a younger, less hairy Eddie Lenihan ;-)

Ten days to see the main sights of the South Island seemed like a very short time at first, but it worked out pretty well as New Zealand requires a healthy budget if you want to spend any amount of time there. (more…)

For some bizarre reason Eddie and I had thought that nine days in Fji might be too long and we had actually considered shortening it, but it wasn’t worth the cost, so off we went over the pacific ocean with very low expectations and absolutely no plan. But after a bumpy start (avoid the tour desk woman in the Nadi Bay Hotel, actually avoid the place in general, stay at the Blue Water Lodge, fabulous place) we developed a love for Fiji. I don’t want this post to go on and on about the places we stayed, so I’m going to bullet point the main things, but basically we loved the place! I can see so clearly why its a honeymoon destination – it is the most relaxing place I have ever been!

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We’ve been a bit lazy on the blogging front for a few weeks and also a bit busy, but I wanted to write a bit more about Australia before I forget it all! So as Eddie wrote, we had a fab time with our friends Michelle, Justin and baby Molly for our first five or six days in Australia. We got picked up from the airport, went for lunch in St. Kilda’s in Melbourne, saw the beautiful Mornington peninsula (where Michelle and Justin live), visited some local wineries, got well fed in both the parent’s houses and got brought down the Great Ocean Road for a weekend trip (saw Koalas, Kangaroos, Whales and of course the 12 Apostles), dropping baby Molly off first with the grandparents. Suffice to say, after six weeks of roughing it in Asia, it was a real treat. We then spent a night with a relative of Eddie’s who took us up the mountains to her daughter’s house for another dinner. We were well fed and watered again!

We spent 2 days in Melbourne itself and loved it. It’s a very friendly city and easy to get around. There was a free tram and tourist bus which went to all the sights so it suited us perfectly! We got our rental car after that to begin our five day trip up the coast to Sydney.

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Winter – I’ve finally decided that I have a favourite season and it’s Winter. After spending the last seven weeks or so in warm and humid places, it feels wonderful to be somewhere where I can wear trousers and warm clothes again and don’t have to worry about suntan lotion, insect repellent or trying not to sweat! Unfortunately we still have to take the anti-malarial pills every day (they need to be taken for four weeks after leaving an affected area) as they make me feel a bit sick and have the strangest and most vivid dreams nearly every single night.

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I have a bit of spare time here on free internet, so I thought I’d write a little bit about the stuff we haven’t mentioned yet but which have been important aspects of the trip so far:

• The food: Its been good mostly, especially in Indonesia, where we were well fed on rice with tasty veggie dishes and lots of fish. Eddie has discovered he actually likes most fish and is now a committed tuna lover. You get gorgeous banana pancakes for breakfast everywhere in Indo, (more…)

So we are now preparing to take our leave of Borneo, after a fun few days checking out the oranguatans, snakes, birds and insects of the jungle on a Kinabantangan river tour and at Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. At Sepilok we stayed at Labuk B&B; a really lovely place with an outdoor jacuzzi and just ten minutes walk to the sanctuary. The jungle trip we went on to the following day was a two night/three day job with a company called Nature Lodge, and included four river cruises and three jungle treks; two at night time. It was pretty good; we were lucky enough to see wild Orangutans on the river’s edge and we saw some beautiful birds sleeping on the last night walk.

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Here’s a couple of pics from our short diving trip to Mabul and Sipadan, off the east coast of Borneo. Apparently we didn’t get the best day of diving the area has to offer, but it wasn’t too shabby either – we saw loads of colourful fish (that we don’t know the names of) along with nudibranches, a good few turtles (including one absolutely huge one!), some sea snakes, lots of sharks and a pretty mean looking giant moray eel. The seascape around Sipadan itself is pretty spectacular – unlike most of the Malaysian islands, Sipadan doesn’t sit on the continental shelf but is the tip of an underwater volcano that drops around 600m to the seabed. The walls are spectacular to see with the trough between Sipadan and the other islands dropping to around 1000m deep!

We went with Seaventures, whose base is a converted oil rig just off the coast of Mabul. They were pretty good (just bring your own dive tables). The night before and after we stayed in the lovely Sipadan Inn in the poor (and smelly) town of Semporna. It cost a bit more than our usual accommodation, at 85MR per room- about 15euro- but was a great bit of luxury! We spent both nights relaxing in our room watching movies on HBO! Anyway, here we are in action!

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Ever since seeing a Channel 4 documentary called ‘Into The Abyss’ about twelve years ago, I’ve been fascinated with Low’s Gully, so when I heard that it was less than two hours away from Kota Kinabalu where we were staying, I knew I had to go and see it!

Low’s Gully is a 1600m deep rift that hit the headlines in 1994 when a group of five British soldiers got caught up in its depths for thirty one days. The Malaysian army came to their rescue after three weeks of searching and just in the nick of time as many of the badly trained group were on the brink of starvation (even though they were surrounded by all sorts of food – tapioca, sugar cane etc. according to a local woman we spoke to). Despite their best efforts, the army team had still only managed to descend about one third of the gully – it wasn’t actually bottomed until four years later when two of the original army team returned with a new group and threw as much equipment as they could at the rift – they rigged it with 5000m of fixed rope and successfully sneaked through. Known locally as ‘the place of the dead’, locals believe that the gully is a kind of purgatory where the souls of their ancestors pass through on their way to heaven or hell.

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Well we’re in Malaysian Borneo and we’re liking it so far! It’s quite different from Indonesia, a bit dearer for one thing, but also more developed than I expected. For some reason when I thought of ‘Borneo’ I thought of wild jungle land and indirectly, abject poverty. It’s only now that I’m here I realise the importance of the word ‘Malaysia’ before the word ‘Borneo’. I didn’t actually realise until we started out on this trip that Borneo is not a state itself, just an island made up of three countries: The northern strip (Sabah and Sarowak) is part of Malaysia; there’s a tiny bit on the north west coast which contains the rich kingdom of Brunei and the remaining majority is Kalimantan, which is part of Indonesia. We’re in one of the most visited parts, Sabah, as there’s lots to do here and it’s a bit more developed than the Indonesian bit so it’s easier get around. Don’t get me wrong, its not like Europe or anything, it’s just not as poor as Indonesia. Its not as hot either, which is actually very welcome after a month of profuse sweating!

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After the Perama boat trip (which was a major highlight of Indonesia as we saw so much, ate so well and met some cool people) we decided to dedicate our last week in Indo to our original reason for going there: surfing. We then did a lot of talking about where to go before deciding to head back to Bali, as its just so much easier to get around – it’s much more set up for tourism than most of the other Indonesian islands so everything is just less hassle. We landed on our feet as it turned out, because we got a pretty cushy number in a surfcamp on the Bukit peninsula, South Bali, near Padang Padang beach and the famous Uluwatu surf break.

Its a very small world, as we discovered that Josh, the owner of the camp is a good friend of a friend of Eddie’s, and he sorted us out well.

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Before we left for Lombok, we provisionally booked a place on a boat trip to Flores and back – the big attraction was going to be a trip to Komodo Island to see the dragons, but we reckoned the journey itself would be a bit of craic and there were going to be thirty others on the boat so it would be a good opportunity to make some new friends.

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