so the last time i blogged we had just split up and spent our weeks part in fiji…. we now find our slightly smellier dishevelled selves in the USA , so lets fill in the gap in between !

so i arrived in New Zealand a week before humphrey…. walked out of the airport in my sandals t shirt and shorts to be greeted by a 10 degree chill…. not to my satisfaction (hard nipple central) I stayed in a hostel called the jailhouse just on the outskirts of Christchurch, as you may have acertained by the witty name in its previous life it was a jail. So there i stayed in jail cell c for a week, i made some cool friends and got to know christchurch really well!

One week later i met Humphrey at the airport…. not as he expected camped outside it with a small fire on the go becuase i had lost my passport (again), forgotten my bag and become a man of the street without him, but with my passport, with my bag… and some skittles, bonus!

our first few days reunited were spent at a the sister of close family friends….. Anne Marie met us at the airport and took us back to her beautiful house in christchurch, we spent a beautiful 2 nights with anne marie and co….. much to my mums delight we were fed lots of green things and slept in nice beds and had nice warm showers!

we had decided to spend the night before we got on the kiwi bus at the hostel it leaves from, to save us having to get up at an even more ridiculous time… so after a rather late night (i soooo nearly won the rock paper scissor competition at the bar) we got on the Big Green Kiwi bus at 7.00 AM
so this was the start of possibly our biggest adventure yet… 23 days and over 10ish destinations!

KAIKOURA…. so we got to Kaikoura after about 4 hours driving through the most beautiful scenery (this will become a reoccurring theme), we had both signed ourselves up for the first activity of our trip……… Whale watching, so once we were booked into our hostel etc we headed down to the dock to get on our boat, we got to the dock and entered the whale watching building we then realised this would be no normal whale watching trip…… it would be worthy of moby dick himself….. the sea was particuarly rough, they had put a servere warning of seasickness out and were giving refunds to anyone who wanted them, the swell was sitting at a massive 2 metres (how high from the top of a wave to the bottom i think), were the brave humphrey and couragous Tom put off by any off the health warnings?….. not on your nelly, so we got on the boat and soon realised we had made a horrific mistake, we were tavelling at 40 knots (really fast) getting absolutely hammered by the waves, coming off the top of one and then flying through the air down 2 metres till we hit the bottom again…. we were about 20 mins in and already we had at least three people being sick in the boat…. an hour later we made it to the last known location of the whales, finally slowed down and were allowed outside to see some whales and get some photos !

photos were an interesting concept, it was practically impossible to to a photo of a whale that came to the surface for a minute at a time while the boat was rising and falling 2 metres in the waves, when you were at the lowest point of your waves and the wave in front was highest you couldnt see the horizon and everything went black !

so three hours later and it emerged that i had managed to take the best photo on the boat (it will be amongst some of the ones we eventually upload, ive lost my usb cable so i cant do it at the moment)

Throughly shaken up and unable to walk in a straight line we made it back up the hill to our hostel, managed to cook some pasta, watched a film with everyone else and went to bed!

NELSON…. nelson nelson nelson…. this is where our trip really started, the town in new zealand that gets the most hours of sunshine of anywhere in new zealand… 3000 per year, also produces some of the worlds best wine (within the top 0.3 percentile) and houses the macs brewery,  bet you didnt think this blog would turn into an educational hurricane did you eh!!

this is also where we met the legend that is RINGO… he was to be our kiwi driver for the rest of the south island!

so we got dropped off at our hostel in Nelson… to be quite honest it was a hotel, all 40 of us off the bus sat in the lobby and the manager welcomed us, said that we all had private on sweet rooms with 4 beds in each, that for 10 dollars (4 quid) we could have a roast dinner and free pudding… this immediately got us all listening ! he then went on to say at 5 o clock there would be a free beer tasting session of all the local beers and that they would be giving out free drinks at the bar and coupons to get you free drinks at other local bars….. had we died and gone to heaven!

this was also the day we met our travelling partners for the next month!

after the beer tasting and the meal, we sat down at a table with a guy called Dee…… soon to become an amazing friend, we were also joined by ellie dawn hannah and emily, the seven of us ended up travelling the whole of new zealand together!

after a loooong night out we got on the buses with our sore heads and made our way to westport!

WESTPORT…….this was where the phrase…. id quad bike this was coined!

so on the way to Westport there was a stop at a small activity centre where you could do horse riding, jet boating and quad biking! Myself, Humphrey and Dee were the only people to sign up for the quad biking, so we were taken to get our overalls etc… then we headed off into the forest to learn how to use our new beasts…. for the next hour and a half we trounced around muddy tracks… up 40 degree inclines and through rivers…… best time of our lives…. but from that day forth walking just seemed so boring… spawning the phrase “id quad bike this”

POO PUB…. so a bit more about the legend of Ringo our bus driver…. he had what many of my family label me with “verbal diarrhea” most bus drives started with him on the microphone spending a solid 5 minutes going “sweet as sweet as sweet as” constantly….. the Poo pub is one of the more famous stops on the kiwi route simply because you take over the whole pub and hostel and get to meet 86 year old Les who runs the poo pub….. every bus that passes through the Poo pub has a themed party in the bar that night, so you stop off in town before and get your outfit, our theme was come as your country, or something that symbolizes it… so after many discussions we decided to go as St George (even after the genius idea that we go as harry ron and hermione, we missed out if u ask me) .. so between me humph and Dee we brought a few swords some white t shirts and some red paint!… amongst the best costumes we had on our bus were, a bottle of jameson for ireland, a wind mill for holland, and the queen in drag!

FRANZ JOSEPH…… it was along the windy roads to franz joseph that ringo taught us to bus surf….. the basic concept being that as we travel round the 90 degree bends up the massive mountain range, you have to stand in your seat and try to “surf” the bends…… highly impossible but extremely fun ! The town of Franz Joseph is so named because of the  massive glazier in the mountains just next to it, the main reason for stopping at franz joseph on the bus is to see this glazier….. unfortunately due to the  incredible rain that they had had in the last few days the river that you normally cross to get onto the glazier had risen far to high for you to cross….. so a full refund and alot of very disappointed faces later we found ourselves spending the day in the local outdoor heated pools, fed by glazier water….. so i suppose technically we got onto the glazier in the end, just after it had been melted and few into a swimming pool !

LAKE WANAKA…… lake wanaka so named because the town is set next to a massive lake that sits in between the mountains….. although the lake was beautiful wanaka was about 1 thing and 1 thing only……….KARAOKE NIGHT !

you will be glad to no me and humph were up there with dee, singing our hearts out to such classics as “time of your life”…. you no the dirty dancing one… all the girls “ahhhh patrick swayze”…. and “love shack” my favorite!

QUEENSTOWN AND MILFORD SOUND BABY……. so there is no mistaking the fact that queens town is known for three things….. the parties, extreme activities and furgburger!

on our first day in queens-town we did 2 things, first of all was the luging…… 3 men….. a massive hill and 3 gravity driven luge carts…. we did our own little grand prix over 6 races… i just managed to clinch victory from dee and humphrey, but not before a horrific crash of epic proportions ending up with me upside down skidding across the tarmac and humph ramming into my now driverless luge.. (i still won my luge crossed the line first)

so up n to this point i had been slowly physicing humphrey up to do something crazy in queens town…. the canyon swing being my main objective….. on the second day we booked it and we were away…. the basic premise of the canyon swing is stand on one side of a canyon 210 metres up…. jump off… fall 60 metres and then begin to speed up as you hit the arc of the swing!

we both did it twice and in 2 different ways, i have got my vids up on youtube

on the third day we had booked ourselves to go on the Milford Sound day trip… ringo had bigged this up especially saying it was the sole reason alot of people come to New Zealand and that it has some of the most beautiful scenery of anywhere in the world, so we had decided to book it, we were somewhat tentative at first though because alot of our time on the bus during the day was spent driving through some of the most amazing countryside  and seeing amazing waterfalls etc, after a while you almost take the view that after you seen 10 waterfalls or lakes the rest wont impress you……. but i’m glad to say that Milford sound blew us away.. its really hard to convey what we saw in words, so as soon as i can get the pictures up onto the web hopefully they can help show you what we saw!

our fourth night in queenstown was based mainly around one thing….. a massive pub crawl, over 2 or 3 hundred of us from the kiwi bus all took part in it, heading round town with a crowd that big is a rather surreal feeling, but a great one at the same time, the perfect way to end the perfect week in my opinion !

KAIKOURA (AGAIN)………. so as many of you avid readers who havnt died from boredom yet will realise we are now back at Kaikoura… our loop of the south island complete we now head up to Picton to get the ferry to Wellington

WELLINGTON……  this will be a short one as there isn’t much to do in wellington….. we went to a local museum. which unfortunately turned out  to be crap….. was meant to be in the top ten in the world….. but in my book nothing beats the science museum….. u can sits in planes and everything!

the rest of our time was spent partying…. exciting for us to do… very boring for you to read about !

TAUPO……. taupo taupo taupo… what is there to say apart from this quickly came to be known as

“the worst day of our lives” between me and humphrey  and dee!

basically the main actraction in taupo is something called the tongariro crossing which is a nine hour hike that is rated within the top 10 walks in the world!….. it is also over the mountain made famous is lord of the rings… called mount doom…. for anyone thats interested! 

so we set off up this mountain at 6 in the morning, we had amazing views and sunny weather, for the first two hours it was kind of flat and we had pretty good weather….. then at the 2 hour mark we hit the part of the walk called the devil staircase….. so named because they believed the devil must have created this part of the walk…. just before this moment we had just climbed what we thought was a fairly big hill… and naively thought we had done the devils staircase…. this lead to the three men standing at the top involved in a coversation much like this … Tom: “hah devils stair case that was easy”…. humphrey:” call that the devils staircase, more like angels staircase”….dee:” i could have done that in my sleep”….. how wrong we were. We spent the next hour climbing up the steepest set of stairs ever… consider even the tallest set of stairs you’ve ever climbed has probably only taken you 10 minutes… we spent and hour plus doing this one!…. the scene at the top of the real devils staircase was more like this…. three men crying with joy, hugging each other  whooping jubilantly!

so up to this point the walk had been hard and long, but the weather had been really nice and the views were immense… so no pleasure without a bit of pain right?…. this is where the mountain turned evil and decided to try and kill us…. the weather became really bad, massive wind….. worst rain ever and fog so bad you could only see 20 feet in front of you, we had this for the next 6 hours of our trip….we had thought this would be a nice walk so we were only in t shirts and jumpers… at some points the track was so narrow (5 feet) and with 800 feet drops on either side we had to slide down on our bums or hands and knees!

eventually we made it …… not without huge mental scaring and the motto that if anything bad ever happens to us, we can just think back to that day and instantly think… its not as bad a mount doom!

i still havnt been able to wear a pair of shoes because of the blisters i got… thats over 2 and a half weeks in sandals….. (insert sympathy here)

so next up was a small stop off in a place called waitomo, me humphrey and dee had booked oursleves in for an activity called black water rafting !

this involved getting suited up in wet-suits and boots and then absailing down a 50 metre hole in the ground, below to a network of caves…. once we were inside we were attached to a zip line, and we sped across this underground canyon to the other-side…. once there we were given hot chocolate and some flap jack (thoroughly English i thought) and we sat on the edge of the canyon and watched the glow worms in the pitch black!

we all then picked a rubber ring and had to hold it behind us and then jump into the river below…… it was a good ten of fifteen feet to the river below, so i decided to go first and jump into the pitch black abyss…. once we had all done it we turned our helmet lights on and floated downstream together…. a while downstream we got to a waterfall which we were able to jump off and say such witty things as CANONBALL…. thank you will…. after crawling through some ever increasingly smaller holes and climbing back up a dew waterfalls we finally made it back to the surface and were given some hot soup!

so this is pretty much the end to the blogable parts of the trip…. there was a big party in auckland on our last night and lots of goodbyes but not much else!

i am really sorry about the horrific length of this post….. i shall personally give anyone who manages to read the whole thing 100 pounds…. all you have to do is fly out to meet me !

lots of love to everybody…. less that 15 days till you have me back in you lives people…. isnt it wonderful !

Tom….. and humphrey (hes here i promise!)

hope you are all well x x x x

saying that i have also just remembered would be a lie!……. because in our last few days instead of the beautiful sunshine and warm water and  that we had for the first part of the week we were greeted with the effects of hurricane hamish. from Saturday through to tuesday was a mixture of tropical rain and high winds, anywho we made it back to sydney safe and sound, said our tearful goodbyes to fran and moira (sorry if i spelt it wrong)

so this is the point where me and Humphrey split up….. so this part is only my experiences of fji!

so while humph headed of to lautoka to do his football coaching i had booked myself into a little hostel in nadi, after saying goodbye to humph at the airport i was picked up by a fijian guy called poni who took me into his office to call for my transfer to mumas (the name of my hostel)…. he picked up the phone and started saying “tom… youve got no booking for anyone called tom? and your shut tonight”…..meanwhile im sitting thinking whooop just peachy, just as i was starting to get worried he turned to me and started laughing…. then shouted welcome to fiji to me and showed me the phone wasnt plugged in!!…. so then he got on the phone and called muma for real this time, he told me the car would be about 15 mins so 40 mins later and still no car, this was my introduction to FIJI TIME…. everything runs of fiji time, minutes mean hours and hours mean days!

so i finally arrived at the hostel at about 8, put my bag in my room and came downstairs to the sound of the kavaholics…. a local band that play at the hostel every friday… so i joined the circle of people and sang along till the early hours of the morning.

my week in fiji was very relaxing (i read 9 books)… i visited one of the local islands called robinsons Crusoe which was wicked, i went snorkeling, we learnt how to extract 3 different kinds of juice from a coconut hows to juggle fire, then we had a masssssssive lunch which was cooked traditionally in a lovo… dig a hole, light a fire, chuck on the meat and the cover it up!

after lunch we went and saw a turtle and saw some fijian dancing….. all in all a wicked day!

looking back in reflection i had a great week… although at some points it did feel like i was there forever!

so i flew to new zealand this today, i shall let you no how it turns out……….. also new photos are up http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickpetrie

and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL OF YOU LADIES OUT THERE…. IN PARTICULAR MY MUM!!!!

love to you all x x x

so firstly…. the passport is now safely back in my possession and i am no longer heading to guantanamo for a spell of waterboarding (no its not like surfing)

so i will pick up where we left off, now firmly in bondi so our week in bondi consisted of a fairly consistent routine….. wake up about 11ish.. have some brekky and chill around for a bit… read the book for a while, then about 4ish head down to the beach…. sunbathe, throw the nerf…. avoid the sharks while swimming (using the age old method of “as long as there is a line of chubby blokes in front of us they will be first to get eaten”)

then head back up to frans for dinner (mmm home cooked food)

we also made friends with an aussie dude called matt who took us out to a beer cafe…. who sell beer buy the litre!!! then we went to a schnitzel restaurant (humphreys idea of heaven)… this particular schnitzel place had what they called the thursday challenge…. basically we will give you schnitzel this size of gordon brown… and if you finish you get a free shot of butterscotch snapz… so we all took up the challenge and beat it ! we also went to a bar and met all of his uni friends which was kool!

so on the Saturday we headed back to stay with the whelan family as they had offered to take us to the blue mountains, so we had to leave at 8 o clock in the morning as it was a 2 hour drive up there…. so we set are alarm for 7 o clock…… althought needless to say as member of the petrie family can imagine, i didnt sleep at all… just the idea of having to be awake at that sort of time kept me up all night with a series of cold sweats and hot flushes!

never the less we were up and out on time…… once we got to the blue mountains we had a little lunch and went on a few of the walks…. the mountains and scenery were abosolutely stunning….. standing on the edge of a cliff 1000ft up was Amazing (mum you would have hated it lol)

we also came across a cable car which crossed between 2 of the mountains… it was fairly new and had the special gimmick of having a glass floor….. needless to say i spent most of the journey trying to convince humphrey he could take his feet of the very edges of the glass “you wont fall through i promise!” (check the photos, the link will be at the end)

on tuesday we headed had booked flights to go to noosa… so we got up headed to the airport caught our flight and make it to brisbane, from which we asked a dude the best way to get to noosa… he said the train…. so we jumped on the train…… we hours later at about 6 we ended up in somewhere called nambour… NOT NOOSA….. so then we manage to find a bus which took us to noosa….. 45 mins later and at the last stop of the bus we were in noosa….. but not the right bit… so the bus driver told us to get a taxi from the bus stop to our hostel….. but no taxis were about… so just as we were sitting there thinking to ourselves hmmmmm the hostel shuts in 20 mins we are going to be sleeping on the beach tonight.,. the bus driver ambled over and said… why dont i just drop you off lads… so we jumped on and had our very own busaxi (bus… taxi)… the short end of the story is we made it with 10 mins to spare and all was good!

noosa has been wicked so far… relaxing too the max!

the water is the same temperature as the air (30 degrees)…. and the milkshakes are good!

yesterday me and humphrey rented a boat for 3 hours and spent the day cruising round the noosa river (whoever decided you dont need a license to drive a boat is a genius)

we are in noosa till sometime (forgot the date) and then we have 2 more days in bondi and we fly to FIJI…. where we get split up

sorry for the probable millions of gramatical and general english mistakes that will be in this blog, i wrote it in a hurry !

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickpetrie   …… that link will take you to the new photos we have put up

love to everyone !!!

xxxxxxxxxx

so after spending our first few days with the whelans in chatswood.. a rather nice little area about a 30 minute train ride out of sydney.. we decided to move down to annandale, to a friend of humphreys… Rhonda. she had very nicely offered to let us stay in her spare room whilst we are in sydney.

Annandale.. the area within which we are staying is really nice, we are about a 30 second walk from the local park which is beautiful, and perfect for a kick about with the football etc, you can also walk all the way round along the edge of the water into central sydney which is really nice on a summers day.

The first few days in annandale we spent going into central sydney (the george st and circular key area) to do all of the touristy sorts of things, we went to the aquarium and saw the mystical dugongs….. these were explained to us before hand as actual mermaids… so needless to say i was expecting angelina jolie to be sitting on a rock inside a glass cage singing to me….. alas i was dissapointed, although they are still fairly amazing…. we also saw a duckbilled platapus and some various sharks.

also in darling habour is a lindt cafe…. which i feel i have to mention for my mum….. and yes it was amazing!!!

on valentines evening we were not alone you will all be pleased to hear…… not wanting to look like a gay couple and also not wanting to pay the extortionate prices that restaurants charge on valentines, we had a lovely take away pizza and watching notting hill……..ahhh hugh grant.

in the last couple of days we have had what me and humph consider to be fairly good sunshine (25 dergrees and sunny) although most sydneysiders consider the weather still to be crap, needless to say we took the opportunityto go and get some nice pictures of the sydney opera house and the habour bridge…. we also caught the ferry across to luna park, a small theme park just across from circular quay.

to be honest it looked fairly scary from the outside and seemed it from within too, the people that work their seem to have been driven mad from being made to dress up and wear horrific amounts of makeup.

moving on…. this now brings us round about to the friday just gone, me and humph decided we would go and have a few drinks of the night, it also happens to be the same night i managed to loose my passport…. although never fear tom is here…. through some detective work that colombo himself would be proud of i have managed to locate it and i am going to pick it up when i have a spare moment….. dont worry mum i wont be going to guantanamo bay as humphrey keeps telling me!

so yesterday for us…somehow probably today for you guys if that makes any sense… we moved down to bondi beach to stay with well known petrie family friend Fran…. she has a lovely house just 10 mins walk from the beach…. our first night together consisted of watching a series of Qi…. now we just have to wait for the sun to show itself so we can get down to the beach!!!!!

head on over to see the new photos i posted earlier (sorry there arnt many, i assure the assorted mums we have taken alot more, but dont want to frazzle our hosts internet by uploading 300 photos)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickpetrie/

love you all…. family friends…. yes you jamie !!

P.S….. just a little birthday shout out to yvonne today, i hope you have a lovely birthday and an amazing day !!!

love love love

we travelled to stanley which is on the south side of hong kong island, it was a rather hair raising bus journey their, along a narrow cliff  road, fun none the less. once we got to stanley we had a walk around the local market and had some lunch…….. you soon learn in hong kong that eating is not as much a social or private affair, as you walk into a restaurant they immediately lead you to a table with another 6 people already sitting at it, you eat your food and then leave, the food was amazing and also very cheap though…… on nearly every evening we would have a meal and a beer for 10 pounds between us.

on the last day we headed up to the peak…. via the extremely slow and (dont look now mum) extremely steep tram… it took you to  the viewing platform on the top of the hillside. we could watch the city turn from day to night and also catch they daily light show that 35 of hong kongs building put on, recognized by the guiness book of records as the largest light and sound show in the world i will have you know. Each night all of the buildings reveal a different set of lights…. some can turn any colour they wish, others have huge projections on them and so on, viewed from huundreds of feet above it is rather amazing!

on saterday morning we managed to arise at 6 in the morning and catch the train to the airport for our flight to sydney….. we made it onto our flight and i wasnt carted away at customs for stealing a pair of chopsticks from one of the the places we ate so it was all good!

we arrived in sydney to be greated by the whelans, the family we are currently staying with, they have been wonderful hosts, looking after us, feeding us and helping us use the washing machine!

on our first 2 days it has been upwards of 35 degrees, our first real day at sydney was spent on the local curl curl beach…. we arrived at 9 in the morning and had to leave by 11.30 as the heat was so intense. I also learnt that my beloved swimming shorts i had brought in england are about a billion sizes too big for me, almost exposing myself to the beach on a number of occasions. altough it was 40 degrees and above outside the water…. once you had got in it seemed extremely cold… reminded us of england… well maybe it bit.

we are planning on wednesday if all goes well to move down to bondi and spend some time there…. we shall update you again once we have settled

we have also finally managed to upload some of our 200 photos for you so head over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickpetrie/ to see them…. and hopefully in the coming days we will put the rest up

love to all the families and friends xxxxxxxx

the plane journey was fairly painless and simple, once we got the the airport we took a bus to our hostel which is in the chung king mansions complex…….. ahhh the chung king mansions complex, let me read a small section one of our guide books has written on it… “this huge, ramshackle high rise dump in the heart of tsim sha tsui caters to virtually all needs from finding a bed and curry lunch, to changing your burmese kyat. but you may be put off by the under current of sleaze and the peculiar odur of cooking oil and sewage, the building infamy is fueled by tales tall and true of conflagrations crimes and unclaimed bodies”…… however after living here for a while its not to bad…. havnt found any bodies yet.

the area on kawaloon island we are staying in seems a wierd mix of styles…… the london equivalent could only be described as camden market but with all the shops from kensington high street…. as you leave our hostel we have numerous people trying to sell us knock off suits for “10 dollar… look very good on you sir” yet not 20 yards down the road we have an armarni, prada, gucci and jimmy choo to pick from.

today we ventured across to hong kong island walked around the central district and took the peak tram to the mountains overlooking the city…. so far hong kong has been amazing…. like miday on oxford st 24 hours a day but at the same time peaceful and beautiful in places.

unfortunately we cant upload photos here so you will have to wait till saterday when we get to Austrailia for us to put them onlinel.

love to the friends and family……. both hodge and petrie

hope its not to cold in london with all the snow (20 degrees here)

Tom and Humphrey x x x

its now something like 11 days till we leave…… starting to get slightly excited now!

although nationwide are not helping matters by deciding to not give me a crdit card…… and on top of that deciding it wasnt important to inform me of this fact!

I brought some wicked swimming shorts the other day, wait for the picks of me swanning about in them, although i have an inkling that humphreys choice of swimwear may somehow eclipse my own…………….. thats right ladies and gentleman (female groupies too) he has agreed to wear a pair of union jack speedos on the beach in miami!

I promise next time i post i will not be within the UK borders and also commit to having something interesting to say to all you avid listeners

love to you all

Tom x

Our first destination is Hong Kong and unlike anywhere else on our trip we have already booked a hostel……..Toms hostel to be precise. i take a certain level of comfort knowing that we will be staying with someone who shares my name, although i do hope that is the only trait we share as i’m not sure how i would deal with meeting a clone of myself.

i look forward to writing many more posts and keeping in touch with you all.

p.s to any teachers, grammatical sticklers, english lit students (grandpa) out there who may happen to read this, please do not take offense at my poor use of grammar throughout the time we are away!

Tom