Recap and highlights: 233 Days; 73 different beds, 32 Flights; 15 Countries, 4,000 photographs. One toilet bag and suitcase each for 8 months.

UK , August 2010: friends and family. Cheryl Scott-Smith’s wedding. Having all three of our girls plus Kate’s boyfriend Nick, there-wonderful.

Southern France: 1st week of Sept. with the girls and Nick.

Malta for 2 weeks with the Frommels and the Scott-Smiths.

Greece for a month: Mykonos, Naxos, Santorini, Crete, Delphi, Peloponnese, Athens.

Qatar (Doha) for a 6 hrs. taxi ride during a stopover.

Egypt for a month: Cairo for five days where we just hung with the locals and walked the city. Then a public bus across the Sinai to Dahab and 4 nights in the Hotel Jasmine on the Gulf of Aqaba arguing with Tito, Momo and Mimo (all really called Mohammed) about music and also Egyptian politics. On across Israel to Aqaba in Jordan where we joined the tour that we would stay with for visits to Wadi Rum and Petra and then back to Egypt, still with the tour group, for the Pyramids and a seven day boat trip up and down the Nile. Dawn over the Nile from a Hot Air balloon with the Valley of the Kings below us.

India for six weeks: Bangalore to stay with our friends Ramesh and Lakshmi and their children. Flights down to Kerala for a stay on a rice boat and at a resort and then up to Goa to stay at Jessica’s place on the beach. Joined our second tour group in Delhi for a 16 day tour of northern India and all the main sites-Taj Mahal; Jaipur and Agra Fort; Rajastan Tiger Reserve; Amaritsa: Pakistan Border; Sikh Golden Temple (best of the lot); McLeod Ganj (Dalai Lama’s residence in exile); Shimla (Last of the Raj).

Vietnam for a week. Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, bicycling through rice paddies in Nimb Bimh, Hoi An. Inspirational communist messages over city loudspeakers.

Cambodia five days in Siem Reap. Angkor Wat temple. Persuading the hotel owner to talk politics. Sarah joins us for Christmas and Cambodia and Thailand.

Thailand. Koh Phi Phi, Koh Samui, Bangkok. Christmas Eve on the beach at “Marie’s Place-A Bar Sometimes”.

Australia. Summer down under and beaching it in New South Wales. Staying with our friends Harry and Barbara and visits from other California friends Wendy and Rick and Ernie. Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef and Rainforest tours. Along the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Adelaide and sheep shearing with Brownie and Beck. Visiting with our friends Chris and Lioni and looking at kangaroos over the fence. Sydney. The fantastic Australian wildlife.

New Zealand. Two weeks and 3,000km in a camper van all around the south island. Lots of hikes and simply wonderful scenerary.

Fiji. Just three days buy very good.

Tribulations experienced and calamities avoided:
We spent October in Egypt and missed the Revolution; in early December we spent a day on a boat in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam not long before a similar boat to ours sank very quickly drowning eight tourists; we spent January and February in Australia untouched by and not too far south of the Queensland floods; our flight, booked last July, into Christchurch, New Zealand got us there on schedule but only a week after the Earthquake. We avoid Greek Union strikes.
Entering Israel from Egypt a 10’ high plate glass door fell off its hinges and crashed and shattered on the marble floor moments before we were to go through it. Christine narrowly missed some broken bones in Malta after slipping on our room’s wet tiled floor after we left a window open during a rainstorm. I get an ear infection from the Australian surf but a Dr. ($70) and some antibiotics ($35) fix it. A visit to an Indian Dr. and hospital for some blood work to allay some fears sets my mind at rest. $11. The Dr. asks if I would like more work done-“perhaps a stress EKG and other heart tests?” He recognizes that he can save me money if I need such work done and he’s merchandising the hospital’s services. The local newspaper laments the lack of a more aggressive marketing campaign for their new and state of the art hospital which was built to attract medical tourism.
My laptop hard drive crashed in December and one week before its warranty expired, it was fixed by Lenovo while I was in Australia at no charge. Only a small loss of data since I had brought an external HD with me and backed up frequently. The laptop was essential and allowed me to stay on top of all of our personal stuff while travelling and also allowed Christine and I to Skype the girls and other people frequently.
I have carried a wallet with US$5 and some cancelled credit cards in case I get mugged-I didn’t need to use it. I wear out three of my four T-Shirts and lose the other one by the time I reach Bangalore but my good friend Ramesh gives me three of his.
32 flights are more or less on time, no lost suitcases.
We feel lucky.
To our surprise very few insect problems to test our two month course of Malaria tablets. Malta was the worst with both mosquitoes and flies, some sand flies in New Zealand but otherwise OK.

Last Thoughts on the eight month trip:

Yes we would but not for such a long time. Not for another eight months but at no point did we want to come home earlier than our planned return-there was always the next stop to look forward to. We missed the girls too much especially over Christmas. Eight months this first time was OK and we are happy with what we planned and did. We are some surprised that it all went so well. We have the travel bug though and are already planning possible 2-4 month trips to various places.
Air fares and insurance came close to US$20,000 and the two tours (Egypt and India) together cost about US$10,000. We had never taken tours before and still prefer to make our own way but for both Egypt and India they were worthwhile. Everything else we tried to do on a budget. We didn’t want to get back and have to regard this as a trip of a lifetime that couldn’t be repeated due to cost.
We missed our music and wished that we had brought some iPod speakers, perhaps some movie DVDs. The Kindle was an essential piece of luggage.

Back in the USofAIt’s raining and cold and I have to get some gas ($4.12/gallon now) and air in one of the car tires and so I head out to the local gas station. Their air compressor is broken and as I complain to the owner another customer comes over to offer some help. Mike’s old broken down small Chevy has an electric air pump in the trunk and Mike comes out in the rain with me to help me get enough air into the tire for me to get to a repair place. Mike looks about 35, a little chubby but a kind face. A few years ago Mike was a stocker at a local supermarket “and just about did everything that needed doing there” for $25/hour. Then two different supermarket chains closed 19 stores in Northern California and laid off all of their staff. Mike figured he had to re-invent himself (he’s married with two small kids) and so he went and got his commercial trucker’s licenses including hazardous materials etc. Starting at the bottom of the ladder he did seasonal trucking (fertilizer to farmers in the spring, their hay in the fall, propane gas to houses in the winter etc) for a few years ($15/hour) but got laid off when the financial crisis hit in 2008 (only 3 years’ experience compared to other more experienced truckers). Now he’s washing dishes at $10/hour (California minimum wage is $8.50/hr.).
Our local café offers a breakfast of ham, eggs and toast at $4.99 and all you can drink coffee for $1.99. The trees are in blossom.

END OF BLOG

Day 229 Saturday, March 19th. New Zealand recap.

15 days and 3,000km in a camper van, all in the south island. We had a great time and would recommend a visit. An awful lot of people do the campervan routine, the roads are full of them and the campsites are set up to host them with power, water, hot showers, laundry, large kitchen if you want it (the campers have a cooking range and most nights we cooked in our camper) and usually, a lounge area with TV etc. if you want some company. About NZ$40-50/night. (US70c to one NZ$). The campervans range from about NZ$100-200/day.
About 1m of NZ’s 4m population live in the south island and the rest are in the north island. We chose, for this trip anyway, to only do the south island and we’re happy with that decision. We have met a lot of Kiwis travelling here in the south island (most of them visiting from the north of course) and all of the input is that the south island has about 75% of the sights. Two weeks was about right to see the south island for the first time, it’s a beautiful place if you like the outdoors and that’s where all the Kiwis are: biking (lots of tourists on biking holidays), kayaking, fishing, hiking (“tramping”) etc.
We were here March 5th to 20th and the weather stopped us hiking a couple of times but, for the most part, we enjoyed sun with just a little nip in the air and some Fall colours. I doubt crowds would be a problem even in peak summer in January and February-this is a sparsely populated island.
We are discussing a return trip of between 6-8 weeks and then we would do a couple of weeks in the north island (there are definitely some things to see up there) but then spend most of the time in the south island and do some more serious hiking and fly fishing and bring the right gear with us. We will see, we liked New Zealand a lot.

Day 228 Friday, March 18th. Mt Cook

Started with completely blue skies and turned to high winds and rain, no wonder so many die attempting what is not a very high mountain. (12,500’.)
We tried a few different hikes but had to turn back due to rain and wind.
We drove down and stayed for the night at Lake Tekapo, a small pleasant enough little town. We have started our journey back to Christchurch now in readiness for leaving New Zealand on Sunday and flying to Fiji.

Day 227 Thursday, March 17th. Rob’s Peak- beaten by the weather.

It rained hard all night. In fact the pounding of the rain on the camper van’s roof kept us awake. We didn’t even try Rob’s Peak. In the morning the rain had stopped but everything was sodden and Christine just has tennis shoes and mine aren’t much better. We would have been climbing through mist with cold and wet feet. Disappointing though-maybe next year.
Instead we drove 200km on the high desert road through the middle of the south island to Mt Cook and got to the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Center around 2.00pm. Lots of roadside wildflowers and Fall colours in the trees - New Zealand is home to the largest buttercup in the world - but we didn’t find it. Mt. Cook was shrouded in clouds and so we went to the Alpine Center and bought tickets for all of the movies and watched the movie of Hillary’s life and his conquest of Everest. It was very good.
We are camped in a very remote spot and I am looking forward to the southern sky star show during my 2.00am lonely walk to the campsite’s bathrooms.

Day 226 Wednesday, March 16th Wanaka Mountain Biking

Today we wanted to head back to Wanaka since we liked it a lot the first time and, since the weather cleared to completely blue skies we rented two mountain bikes from the campground and headed out for four hours and then rewarded ourselves with beers in the local pub.
Actually today was a take it easy day since the real reason we have come back is to have another go at climbing-this time to the top with luck-Rob’s Peak. It beat us last time.

Day 225 Tuesday, March 15th. from Glenorchy to Queenstown alongside Lake Wakatipu

Day 225 Tuesday, March 15th. One week to go!

Now, of course, after eight months we are getting very excited to be home and to see our three girls. But we are still trying to enjoy every last minute of this trip and New Zealand is making that easy.
After a large breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast at the camper van we set off for a long mountain hike, one that Lonely Planet rates as “#10 in the world’s top ten best hikes”. We drove to the trail head for the Routeburn Track and started off with our day pack. We made it up to Hut One where the overnighters on their multi-day hikes take a break. These “Huts” have bedrooms with bunk beds (this one had about 24 beds in two rooms); a common room with a woodburning stove and washing lines above it; flush toilets; cold water wash basins and then some propane stove tops for cooking. No hot water and no showers though-the ice cold river is near bye. We stop for an apple and granola bar each but then hike on. It’s steep, tough hiking over broken rock paths and through the rain forest. Everything is dripping wet in the forests but there is no sign of any wildlife at all. This is such a change for us after Australia where the wildlife is amazing. New Zealand didn’t have any mammals until Captain Cook’s mice and rats ran ashore. Then rabbits were introduced and, later, stoats from the UK to control the rabbits. The stoats ate the birds eggs. I was told today that NZ has 12% of the world’s endangered species of birds. We see and hear very few birds and there is no rustling of little feet in the undergrowth as you walk along. It’s so quiet it’s unnerving and spooky and I miss the noise and interest of looking for wildlife. Plenty of sheep to look down in the valleys below-they were introduced about 100 years ago.
We don’t quite make it to the 2nd hut before turning back as planned and hiking down. The round trip today was about 18km and an elevation climb of about 4,000’. We are sore, we hiked for almost six hours. We decide to drive down to the comforts of Queensland for the night and stay at a campsite near the town. The drive down from Glenorchy to Queenstown alongside Lake Wakatipu must be one of the most beautiful in the world.
We go into town for a beer before dinner and then head to a local French Restaurant and pork up again on New Zealand Lamb in gravy with mashed potatoes and carrots and a glass of NZ Pinot.
A great day. We head for Mount Cook soon.

Day 224 Monday, March 14th. New Zealanders return to Christchurch.

Page 2 of the local paper here has a full page of messages from the government to its citizens. (paraphrasing):
“Welcome Home-Information for residents returning to Christchurch”
1) Recovering after the earthquake.
Firstly check with your neighbours and ask them if they have power, water and electricity. Check [gov website} for advice.
2) Can I enter my property safely?
If your property has been red tagged then do not enter, it is unsafe. Consult with a structural engineer on what needs to be done to make it safe.
3) Emergency Accommodation
Call [number] for temporary housing.
4) Water.
If your property dos not have water ask a neighbor to run a hosepipe over the fence. Water can also be obtained from the temporary tankers roaming the city. All water needs to be boiled until further notice.
Portable hot showers are at 6 locations throughout Christchurch.
Stay away from rivers and estuaries because of sewage overflows.
5) Rubbish
Organic, recyclable and rubbish will be collected as normal.
6) House damage and repair.
For all damage under $2,000 go ahead and arrange for the work to be done, keep all receipts and file a claim with the government. For repairs over this amount contact the government for an inspection.
7) Recovering your car from the red zone
Call [number] but please be patient, all red zone areas remain dangerous and it may take weeks to reclaim all cars.
8) Maori Support Services
[numbers to call]
9) Ethnic support
Foreign language support [numbers]
10) Coloured placards on businesses.
Green = safe to resume business
Yellow= entry permitted with an engineer in attendance.
Red= no admittance until a detailed engineering report has been submitted and evaluated.
11) Memorial Service, Friday, March 18th
Please walk, bike or bus to this service.

We see lots of Japanese tourists here walking around...I would like to talk with them but don't know if I should or how.

Day 224 Monday, March 14th. Te-Anau through Queenstown to Glenorchy

We stopped at Stu’s place on the way to check out his fly fishing shop and guided fishing tours. NZ$750/day for max. 2 people and NZ$500 per ½ day. Clearly a life-long passion for this 30 something man with pictures of him as a boy in Scotland, with his Grandad, winning all sorts of prizes for fly-fishing plastered all over his shop walls. We would like to do this but he’s booked this week and, anyway, it’s blowing a gale today and it was difficult to keep the van in a straight line while driving.
We stopped once again in Queenstown for a coffee but then drove to Glenorchy to stay the night. It’s raining hard now and looks as though it will do that all night and into early tomorrow, we will see if we can get any hiking in tomorrow. Omelettes in the camper van for dinner and we’ll read our books and listen to the rain.
We actually went for a riverside walk (“Diamond Creek) in the drizzle.
The two pictures of Christine show that we have moved from a summer in Australia to a Fall/Autumn in New Zealand in just two weeks. It's all great.

Day 223 Sunday, March 13. Milford Sound cruise and then back to Te-Anau.

Well, we slept well in the dorm room with Carl and Jay last night and they were deep sleepers since Christine’s snoring didn’t wake them. Or my night trip to the bathroom. NZ$33/night for each of us. Hot showers, communal kitchen (an experience in itself with a middle aged man cooking himself some rice and chopped up sausages and a French group doing a seven course gourmet meal and talking in French just to show off) and a lounge area for everyone to mingle.
We took a cruise on the Sound for 2 1/2 hrs.and paid NZ$80 each and it was very good. We had a naturalist guide and so had lots of detailed information as we went along. We were pretty lucky to get some sunshine as well, this place gets about 30’ of rain per year; 220 days of rain; about 80 days of grey and then some sun. That’s not too bad, somewhere else on NZ gets 54’ of rain per year). It’s actually fortunate to be able to see it during or just after a rainfall since the sides of the Fjord are apparently just covered with thousands of madly rushing waterfalls.
This place was named by a Welshman but it’s actually a mistake-it’s a real Fjord and not a Sound since it’s v-shaped bottom (about 1,200’ deep) was actually carved by ice and not a river. (Hey, I paid to get told this stuff).
We stopped at Deer Creek for a river-side lunch on the way back to Te-Anau where we will spend the night at a Top Ten campground (NZ$46/night).
We would recommend making the Milford Sound visit and cruise but suggest staying in Te-Anau rather than Milford Sound. It’s a 2hr. drive each way and so an up and back trip and the cruise can easily be done in a day.
1st 2 photos are of our lunch stop at Deer Flat coming back down from Milford Sound to Te-Anau and the others are from the cruise on the Sound.

Day 222 Saturday, March 12th. Milford Sound at sunset

Day 222 Saturday, March 12th. Wanaka to Milford Sound. Sleeping with Carl and Jay.

A big day of driving today but absolutely beautiful countryside all the way. Rather like Scotland but with the sunshine. We are headed to Milford Sound and want to sleep there tonight so we can get on one of the cruises around the fjord early on Sunday.
We loved Wanaka and were a little sad to leave but then we had a great drive up over another mountain pass and down into Queenstown for a Starbucks coffee and a shared pastry. Like all of NZ, Queenstown offers a lot of outdoor activities including a gondola ride to the top of the nearest peak and jet boat tours of the large lake the town sits next to. This is ski country and so all of the winter activities are evident as well, x-country skiing etc. Queenstown seems a nice town but we’ll be back through in a few days and so, for now, we move on and reach Te-Anau to get more diesel and propane since there isn’t any to be had up at Milford Sound, a 240km round trip from here.
Te-Anau is stunning. It’s set on the 2nd largest lake in NZ. It’s Saturday and so all the locals are outside along with tourists, there is a sailboat race going on and everyone is picnicking alongside the lake and so we stop for lunch from the camper and join them.
Now it’s 4.00pm or so and we have to get over the final mountain pass to the west coast and Milford Sound and so we head out and pretty soon cross the 45° latitude line and pass lots of signs asking us to stop, slow down and take fly fishing trips. I hope that we will find time to do just that on our way back north next week but, if not, that’s just the sort of thing that will bring us back for a 2 month trip to New Zealand.
We have to go through a very long one-way tunnel to get to Milford Sound (15 minutes between traffic signals) and we don’t talk a lot going through but then I ask Christine what she was thinking about during the trip inside the tunnel and she tells me that she doesn’t want to talk about it. But it’s on both our minds-what would happen if an earthquake hit now? The news from Japan has reached us.
We get to Milford Sound around 6.00pm and the one campsite is full so our only option is to share a double bunk bed dorm room with two guys from Canada, Carl and Jay. They are back-packing around NZ using buses and seem to be doing OK with the, apparently, good bus service here. Christine wants the bottom bunk but I tell her that could make it very difficult for me with my nighttime bathroom visits and so she agrees to take the top but I know she’ll spend half the night worrying about falling out. We’ll see.
1st photo is the start of the climb over the Southern Alps to Milford Sound and the next is Te-Anau lake. Next 2 are of Queenstown.

Day 221 Friday, March 11th An attempt at “Rob’s Peak”.

Well we started late. What with the morning rain and the show we wanted to see we got to base camp at 4.45pm and looked up the 4,500’ to the summit and said “yeah, we can do this”. Then, after climbing straight up for an hour we met some young and fit looking climbers coming down and they told us that it was a three hour climb up and a two hour climb down. We climbed for an hour and had spectacular views back down over Wanaka and its lake. Then a 45 minute walk down and a rush to the shop for food for dinner (paté and salmon) and a quick beer in one of the local bars.

Day 221 Friday, March 11th. Scottish Kippers and toast for breakfast

--in our camper at Wanaka. Rained this morning and so took it easy in the camper van and waited for the sun-which came out and so we visited the big agricultural show here. All the tractors you could want to buy. Also show goat contests. The judge explained that the ideal female should have big hips, a little narrower at the shoulders and an amenable disposition. I raised my hand to offer a different opinion but he wouldn’t give me the opportunity to speak. Next came the Billy Goats but we moved before the criteria description became to raunchy.

Day 220 Thursday, March 10th. Getting around New Zealand. I want my own road sign.

Our 16 day loop tour of the south island should be about 2500km so about 150km/day and easily manageable. With some days a blast of 300-400km we have more than enough time to relax and spend lots of the days hiking and general sightseeing.
The roads are just two lanes (there are no freeways), they are a little bumpy sometimes and also some occasional road works to slow you down but at the 100km speed limit it’s easy to make progress.
There are very few vehicles here and those that you do see are 50% tourist campers - many of whom are Kiwis enjoying their own country. (Bill Ford (Grandson of Henry) tells us that there are 800m vehicles on the road WW and he thinks that there could be 2.5bn by 2050 and is worrying about where they will all fit. I hope that they don’t come here).
New Zealand began to be populated by “Westerners” about 200 years ago but even now has only 4.5m people. Getting in to live here is still quite tough-they don’t seem to be materially ambitious enough to force-feed the economy through immigration.
Every bridge, stream and culvert seems to be named after someone and I begin to muse, as I drive, that it would be quite nice to have my name up there amongst the others, on the side of the road- for all to see. We pass “Haas River Bridge”, “Lost Spade Fork”, Hilda’s Stream”, “Freddies’ Half Bridge” and “Hidden Culvert”-there must be room for me. A ditch would be OK. Gotta find someone to talk to.

Day 220 Thursday, March 10th. Wanaka and the Bagpipe Convention.

Wanaka is a fantastic little town. All of the locals seem to be out this evening for a sail on the lake. There is so much to do here that we will have to come back on what we are now planning to be a two month re-visit of New Zealand. Just have to get that into our budget.
Lots of hiking; fishing; Tiger Moth open cockpit flights around the area; etc. We are planning to stay two days and get in some long hikes including the Rob Roy Glacier. Tomorrow the local farmers have a show day and all the other locals join in so lots of local crafts and other fun will be going on.
My new campsite neighbor pulls up and gets out to take pictures of what’s left of the sunset. He’s short, bald and has funny denim shorts on and so I wouldn’t normally speak to him but his camper is bigger than mine (so is his camera) and so I wander over to make conversation. He’s Australian and tells me that he was originally part of a Bagpipe Convention trip to New Zealand but that this was postponed due to the Earthquake but he and his wife decided to come anyway. I ask him-“so, are you Scottish then?” and he says, “no, well, my Mother was”. I need to talk to him some more and go to bed hoping he hasn’t brought his practice set with him.

Day 220 Thursday, March 10th. Through the Southern Alps to Wanaka.

300km today from Franz Josef to Wanaka and, once again, we have been lucky with the weather and the sun followed us all day. Now I am relaxing at a new camp site here in Wanaka and typing this with a glass of wine to supplement the fantastic campsite view over the town and its lake. A hot shower each as we wait for the laundry and then we’ll head into town for dinner.
Boiled eggs and toast at the camper van for breakfast at our Franz Josef campsite and then we got on the road around 10.30am to go the 30km to Fox Glacier where we did the easy hike around Lake Matheson for a couple of hours. Sometimes you can see the reflection of Mt. Cook, covered in snow, in the lake but today wasn’t the day-too many clouds around the mountain but we did get glimpses of the glaciers covering its slopes now and again. Coffees and a shared choc. muffin as a reward for the hike and then south on route 6, still hugging the western coast of the south island to Haast. Nothing much to see there and so we blew through Haast and started to climb through the Southern Alps and then down into Wanaka.