Elvis has left the building

Wednesday 6th July

As I write this I am sat on our flight back from Vegas stuck between Pauline devouring her national enquirer magazine and Tyler wriggling and snoring and I cant help but notice that we have a lot less space than we have had before.

This could well be because of cut backs to the required personal space on aircraft but I cant help but think that it may have something to do with the fact that we are all far larger than when we left the UK 9 Months 3 Weeks and 3 Days ago.

Vegas is definitely not the place to try to lose weight as the staple diet consists of a buffet breakfast, buffet lunch and buffet dinner, which for the average American is an open invitation to attempt to wipe out several indigenous species of farm animal and wash them down with 60 litres of heavily caffeinated soda.

Sadly this means that there are thousands of Americans that are continuously on sugar highs yet are too large to attempt any form of exercise whatsoever other than lifting their enormous hands onto the spin button of the nearest slot machines.

I have a feeling that we were also on that slippery slope of fatness and had we stayed there any longer I have no doubt that my chins would have doubled within the month and I could have kissed goodbye to ever seeing my feet again.

Luckily Las Vegas has devised a cunning way to ensure that you don’t continually eat out in these establishments, its called gambling and if you follow my winning formula in no time at all you will be losing valuable inches off of your waist line as well as losing your house, your car and any hair that you had left on your head in the process.

Needless to say we didn’t win the millions that would have afforded us the life of luxury upon our return so it looks as though we will be having to look for jobs again after all, well that is once we have sorted through the plethora of other things that we need to address since we have been gone.

Having picked my mum up from the airport we headed out to the grand canyon, we had all missed the opportunity of seeing it last time we were here as Virgin screwed up our itinerary so we were all excited to be able to finally make the journey.

Its certainly a mighty impressive spectacle, I don’t think I ever really knew what a canyon was until I got there and then you sort of just look, nod and comment something along the lines of “hmm yep that’s definitely it then, there's no mistaking that is there”.

Then you look around you and you see a mass of other tourists from every nationality adopting exactly the same posture and that’s when you realise that you are truly somewhere special, nowhere else that I am aware of creates the same singular reaction from this many people.

Coincidently that’s exactly when you notice that your face has started to melt from the heat, you look around and see all of the other peoples faces starting to contort from the realisation that it is indeed damn hot there.

We spent the rest of the day rushing between the cool air conditioned car to cooing over the edge of some scenic vista around the canyon and then back again, it was like some warped episode of Benny Hill but unfortunately without the bikini clad mass of women chasing after us.

From here we headed back into Vegas and impending bankruptcy at the hands of numerous casinos, however as everyone knows I cant go into that as everything that happens in Vegas stays there.

I will however endeavour to do a final post wrapping everything up as much as I can and I know a few people have asked questions along the way so I will do my best to get these answered too.

I hope that you have enjoyed accompanying us on our little trip, I still cant believe anyone is reading this stuff but thanks for bearing with us.

Check in, Relax, Take a shower

Friday 24th June

California is truly a unique place, I can think of nowhere else where you can laze on golden beaches, ski on snow capped mountains or hike through scorching deserts all within the same month within the same state.

We have finally reached the final destination of our trip, which could well prove to be the most dangerous place we have visited to date, well for me anyway.

For some Las Vegas is a place of great hope, such as damn I hope we can win back some of the bloody money we have spent on this trip, but in reality it is more likely to be the place that will see me spend the rest of what I have and commit us all to a life of abject poverty.

So not wanting to dwell on the inevitable lets review the last few days in California......

We were all extremely sad to have to leave Lake Tahoe but Yosemite promised to be just as beautiful and it certainly didn’t let us down, we entered the national park from the north and there was snow everywhere.

Tyler spent no time at all in jumping out of the car and rolling around in it until his face was purple, his clothes were saturated and he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers, most other parents may have stepped in far earlier but he looked like he was having too much fun.

When we were finally satisfied that he wouldn’t lose his limbs we then proceeded to search for somewhere to lay our heads down for the night.

I vaguely remember my mate Dave mentioning that we should probably book our hotel immediately (when I spoke to him a few months ago) as it gets very busy, but as we didn’t know what day we would get there we thought we would risk it.

As it turns out this was a bit of an arror of judgement which saw us driving around various different roads at various levels of frustration for the next 5 hours hoping against hope that someone had got sick and cancelled their room.

We literally tried every hotel within a 40 mile radius until eventually we stumbled across what can only be described as a slightly run down version of the bates motel replete with its very own dead body smell on tap.

Pauline was someone confused when she noticed that you received a free hobo with every room but I quickly pointed out that in fact HBO was a TV network and I would have proved it to her too if our electrical equipment hadn’t been mutilated by the last lobotomised psycho to have frequented our room.

Luckily it was only for one night because having tried every single hotel in the area again the following morning we decided to cut our loses and head to Death Valley, we did have a chance to drive around and see a few of the sights though and they were absolutely spectacular.

Unfortunately at that precise moment our Sat Nav got it into its circuitry that we hadn’t done enough driving over the passed few days and as such decided to take us the longest way possible through some of the most uninteresting / unsanitary areas California has to offer.

This was how we found ourselves spending the night at the Motel 6 in Bakersfield surrounded by members of some territorial gang and their fateful canine companions, still that didn’t stop Tyler from attempting to mingle with them in the swimming pool totally unphased as always.

Fortunately we had far more luck securing accommodation at Death Valley as there was literally only one place to stay and it cost us an arm and a leg but it was very nice and I couldnt be arsed to drive the hour back out to another Motel 6 and potential turf wars.

You can sort of figure out how Death valley got its name as when we arrived the temperature was a roasty 48 degrees and apparently can get up to the 50's.

We visited a place called Badwater which is 282 feet below sea level and it apparently reached 58 degrees there in 1913, people literally watched as birds just fell out of the sky and died.

So with this in mind you can imagine my surprise that our hotel had a golf course and tennis courts that still seemed to be open, it was so hot that Paulines crocs started to melt walking to the hotel room.

Anyway that’s about it, in a few minutes I am off to pick my mum up from the airport, yipee someone else to talk to for a change!!

Smarter than the average film crew

Sunday 19th June

Having been to multiple theme parks already we decided to mix it up a little and do yet another theme park for our final day in LA.

Saying that we left the best until last is somewhat of an understatement though, because the Six Flags – Magic Mountain was absolutely incredible.

Our hearts sunk when we arrived as we were met by what can only be described as a flash mob of under 16 year olds streaming in from every direction as far as the eye could see, I was half expecting them to break into a heavily choreographed dance routine but it turns out that it was just the first day of their school holidays.

So, as a special treat for the final day we decided to splurge on fast passes which meant we didn’t need to queue for the rides and even then we still didn’t manage to do all of the roller-coasters they had there.

In the course of a day we were propelled forwards at speed, backwards at speed, upside down at speed, upside down and backwards at speed and finally all four in one particularly interesting ride called the X2.

By the end of the day we didn’t know what way was up and struggled to walk in a straight line but we all agreed that it had been a riot.

From here we headed north to San Francisco, a city that had a hell of a lot to live up to being the only place that I can think of that nobody I know has ever said a bad word about.

The first thing that strikes you as you drive into town is that they have an abundance of 4 way stop signs, its as if someone with OCD was put in charge of traffic congestion and they just went crazy.

Then, at no discernible frequency, they will intersperse these with the odd heavily camouflaged traffic light intersection, usually cleverly positioned in front of a neon billboard advertising something red, green or both just to make you really struggle.

So having finally navigated our way through to our hotel with my adrenalin pumping far faster than it had been on the Six Flags roller coasters we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day.

Fortunately / unfortunately the hotel was directly opposite one of the last vestiges of the great American breakfast, an IHOP (International House of Pancakes) where literally everything on the menu is guaranteed to double your size.

So in order to try to shift a few of the excess pounds we have accumulated over the last few months the following day we decided to do the first healthy thing we have done in ages, we rented bikes in an attempt to cycle across the golden gate bridge.

Like sticking your tongue onto the end of a battery, it seemed like such a good idea at the time but deep down inside you knew that its going to hurt like hell afterwards and true to form this was no exception.

But what an experience, the sun was shining, the bikes were comfortable and the wind was trying its hardest to blow us clear over the side at every possible opportunity, which was a pain on the way there, struggling up the steep inclines, but made getting back a synch and lulled you into thinking you were healthier than you actually are.

With slightly aching muscles, the following day we headed out to Alcatraz which was brilliant and if I ever commit a heinous crime I would hope to be sent there, mostly because it is closed down though in fairness.

If the Americans do anything well it is providing well organized tourist attractions and this was run with military precision, its a nightmare to get tickets and we had to wait two days but from the moment we boarded the ship over everything was run superbly.

There is a section where you don a rather fetching audio device and walk around on a self guided tour of the cell blocks with lots of other similarly lost tourists all nodding and humming at specific prompts and staring intently at empty beds.

Then from there you are free to wander about the island imagining what it would be like to have been stuck there for any length of time watching the skyline of San Francisco a mile across the water and when the wind blows hearing everyone enjoying their freedom.

Luckily for us freedom was but a short cruise back across the water and we then proceeded once again to jump into the car and head off East to Lake Tahoe and just for the record San Francisco is just as amazing as I had heard, admittedly I havent done in justice here but then again how is that any different from anywhere else?

Anyway, I have heard a lot of people rant on about the beauty of New Zealand and how nothing else compares to the magnificence of the landscape but I would imagine that these people have probably never made it over to Lake Tahoe.

As you drive along route 50 towards the south of the lake you are literally surrounded by giant firs, water rapids and mountains still caked in snow which really begs an interesting question concerning Yogi Bear.

As most of you know Yogi Bear is the loveable rouge of Jellystone National Park a fictional place loosely based on Yellowstone in the US which apparently is a place of immense beauty and having seen the new film you would be forgiven in thinking that this is exactly where it was shot.

With such an abundance of natural beauty to be found in the US I find it a little strange then to discover that the majority of the film was in fact shot in New Zealand, information that we had learned whilst in New Zealand but just shrugged off not having seen any of this at the time.

Well, now that I have seen both I cant help thinking that the sole reason for this decision was based upon a whim and the fact that a few guys from the US quite fancied a trip to New Zealand and who the hell can blame them.

The amazing thing is that they probably spent a small fortune making the New Zealand landscape resemble the flora and fauna of the US and absolutely nobody cares.

Hmm well having gone off on a complete tangent as always I am now going to do something completely stupid and rent some more bikes for yet another day of punishment but this time in the serene beauty of Tahoe and who knows we may ever see a bear!

Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles

Saturday 11th June

Some time ago a group of grey bearded, white coated scientists used a government grant of some description to study the effects of jet lag on a human being.

Their results established conclusively that the body takes around 72 hours to fully adjust to a different time zone during which time it is likely that you will be completely knackered and a bit of a fuddy duddy.

So how is it that for the passed three days I have slept like a baby, rising at around 08:00 every morning and crashing out at around 23:00 but here on day 4 I find myself updating this bloody blog at 02:30.

Well, we made it to LA relatively unscathed, we were almost really lucky on the flight over too as when we arrived at the gate to board my name was being called out over the tannoy system and I therefore presumed that my wonderful BA card had blagged us all an upgrade.

Unfortunately on this occasion I was slightly off the mark in my assessment of the situation as apparently instead of obtaining a reclining seat and vanilla scented facial towelettes I was actually being accused of smuggling drugs and carted off to the airport basement flanked by security guards.

Although we should have already known this, it turns out that anyone who has visited Bali and Australia must be smuggling drugs of some description as there is apparently absolutely no other reason to have been to both destinations.

Unfortunately we had missed this flyer before we arrived in New Zealand and therefore forgot to pack out all of our teddy bears butts with crack cocaine or force Pauline into swallowing those condoms full of meth amphetamine.

Still, I guess this is our loss and the nice people at the airport still had some enjoyment having watched me take out each individual item to convince them that Tylers wet suit wasn’t made of reconstituted hashish or that the DVD player wasn’t encased in solidified ecstasy tablets.

By this time however I was the only passenger not on the already delayed plane so they finally let me go, where I was met by rapturous applause by my fellow passengers and looks of disdain from the airline staff for disrupting their LA time.

So having injured all of that you can imagine my face when, upon arriving at LA passport control, my name was already being shouted out over the tannoy system once again, I had visions of very large men with very large hands and very tight rubber gloves wanting to have intimate conversations with me.

Fortunately / unfortunately it turns out that the bag that the New Zealand security team had made me go through at the airport and had convincingly assured me would make our flight, didn’t.

I cant be certain but I would imagine that normally when they relay this sort of news to passengers they are not expecting beaming smiles and looks of complete and utter relief but that's exactly what they got from me.

They then informed us that we would be receiving $100 for essentials, well they might as well have told me I had just won the lottery, I was ecstatic and we could probably make do without our non hashish weaved wet suit and DVD player for a day or two anyway.

So having finally negotiated our way through the airport without even a hint of a rectal examination we proceeded to the car rental place.

When we arrived at the rental office they gave us the option of 2 very different cars, a sporty 3.5 litre dodge charger that kind of resembles a pre-transformed bumblebee from the transformers films or a Chevrolet town&country which kind of resembles a car for someone that once had an over-active libido.

Surprisingly it seems that Tyler has outgrown his transformer days and as such I was unanimously outvoted and now have the pleasure of driving around the US in a pearly white people carrier because, according to Tyler it has, and I quote, “really cool sliding doors” and “plenty of boot space”.

Still on the bright side it does provide us with the additional space needed to squeeze into after having a meal out here.

Although I have been to the US on many occasions I always somehow manage to forget just how humongous the portion sizes are out here, its as if people cant be content unless their meal comes in a bucket and contains at least one entire animal and a years crop of potatoes.

To give you an example in MCDonalds in the UK you can pick up a chicken nugget meal and you probably get about 6 bits of so called chicken, here in LA at the moment you get 50, that’s almost an entire farm.

So, with this in mind then I still find it hard to believe that when we went to Universal Studios I somehow managed to be the heaviest person on the Jurassic Park ride and submerged myself almost entirely underwater whilst my fellow riders remained completely bone dry.

I had to endure walking around the park looking for all intents and purposes like I had just wet myself whilst people three or four times my size were not in the least bit wet and the only explanation I can come up with for this is that they were just too fat to ride.

In all of the parks over here they usually have a ride seat provided at the beginning of the line to ensure that you can squeeze your sprightly frame into the desired position and save you queuing / the embarrassment of everyone looking at your gigantic arse whilst you fail to suck in enough.

I am not sure if America has a bigger obesity problem than England but its more in your face and my theory is that they are just a little more active over here, so you see a lot more extremely large people ambling about where as in the UK they are just too lazy to get off the sofa.

Anyway, prior to universal we did the obligatory touristy sites including the Hollywood sign and the avenue of the stars which were both cool, I was pleased to see that Kermit the Frog got the recognition he deserves for everything he has done for cinema.

We then drove out to Malibu and stalked a few of the stars homes which was both sad (in the geeky sense) and uneventful, Pauline was a little disappointed that Bruce Willis didn’t make the effort to come out of his house to greet her personally, these stars can be so selfish at times!

Yesterday we went to the Knots Berry theme park which was cool, over here Tyler is able to go on practically all of the rides so we convinced him that it was really in his best interest to indulge in our roller coaster fetish and be shot upside down really really fast, several times
.......backwards.

To his merit he mostly took it in his stride and went on absolutely everything we asked him to although he may think twice before going again, well at least until we go to the next theme park tomorrow that is.

It was here that we were also introduced to another of the fine culinary delights of the US the Funnel Cake, which basically consists of deep fried batter covered in icing sugar, covered in ice cream, covered in dairy cream and then covered in more icing sugar.

It just wasn’t fattening enough for us though so we opted for the additional oreo infused crust just to add those much needed carbs and stop our slender frames from wasting away.

Oh yeah, our bag turned up at the hotel the following day as promised, it looked as though they hadn’t taken me at my word and had gone through everything again, however when they failed to lock it they simply wrapped it in a bit of cellophane and hoped for the best, which as it turned out wasn’t the greatest idea.

Anyway, I apologise if today’s blog doesn’t make a lot of sense but I blame this on the jet lag which in turn I blame on a group of scientists who blatantly spent their grant money on beer and curry and invented a 72 hour explanation just so that they didn’t get found out.

Happy birthday your majesty!

Thursday 2nd June

As I am sure that all of you are no doubt aware, this coming Monday is the Queens birthday.

What's that you say, do you mean you had no idea?

Well hang your head in shame!

How old is she you ask?

Hmm yes I believe she will turn eleventy seven.

OK yes, I hold my hands up, I too had absolutely no bloody idea when the queens birthday was either but that was before, when I was doing silly things like living on the same piece of land as she was.

Now that I am12000 miles away however it is literally drummed into our brains every single time we turn on the radio, watch TV or pick up a newspaper.

And get this, the country has the day off, they get to lounge around in their boxer shorts watching queen like quality entertainment all day why you poor suckers back in the UK have to work your little weiners off.

If for some reason they did feel like pulling their idle bodies away from the picture box for a few hours and heading down to the local shops they would be spoilt for choice as literally every single store has a blow out sale to celebrate someone that probably only visits them once a decade.

That basically sums up the entire country for me, everyone is so bloody nice that when our queenie visited long ago and asked them if they would be so kind as to worship her, they made bloody well sure that they did a top notch job of it and they do that for everything else too, they just go the extra mile.

They are also exceedingly proud of the indigenous history of the country and celebrate the Mouri culture at every possible opportunity and this got me thinking.

In Australia they have real issues with aborigines, there is hardly any integration with the indigenous communities and very little acceptance of local cultures yet fundamentally the two diverse groups are pretty similar.

So my theory is this, the reason that the aborigines have had little success integrating where their distant cousins have been widely adopted is that they lacked a cool dance.

OK, so it may not be the most scientific of theories but if you think about it there is some substance, everyone is familiar with the native Maori dance but I would bet that most people would struggle to name anything significant about aborigines.

If their ancestors could have pulled off a passable robot or hula then perhaps we would have been looking at a very different environment indeed.

Anyway there I go again off on a complete tangent so I had better get back to actually updating you on what we have been doing I suppose.

Well, having given up completely on the whole Billy Connelly itinerary as he was far more energetic than us, we limped through the remainder of the south island.

We visited Milford sound ,which ranks in the top 5 must see destinations and to be honest we were all a bit underwhelmed, having seen so much incredible scenery during our time here it would have had to have gone some to blow us away and frankly it really didn’t.

We were fortunate enough to have arrived on a completely clear day which apparently was a bit of an achievement, it seems that with an average of 258 days of rainfall its either raining, about to rain or cloudy.

We took a cruise out through the sound and whilst it was extremely pleasant it was much like the remainder of the country which meant that Tyler was mostly playing the DS and I was mostly snapping hundreds of blurry pictures that will never see the light of day.

They did park the ship beneath one of the waterfalls for a while which gave Tyler the opportunity to get completely drenched and me the opportunity to come dangerously close to breaking another camera.

Following that we put our foot down and hammered back up the coast to Christchurch, this time actually driving around the CBD and witnessing the devastation that has been caused by the recent earthquakes.

Whole sections of the centre were closed and the damage was apparent in the majority of the city, yet there was an underlying sense of community spirit, everywhere you looked their were fund-raising activities still being organised and donation boxes on every spare centimetre of worktop.

I have no doubt that within a year or so it will be business as usual for the community but because this is New Zealand they will ensure that something good comes from the destruction and you can bet your bottom dollar that they will do it beautifully.

Whilst in Christchurch we visited the Antarctic centre which was cool and probably the nearest we will ever get to the real thing, they had a staged snow storm which consisted of no snow but plenty of wind chill and brought the temperature down to a toasty -18 degrees.

Not that Tyler would have noticed , he was too busy bouncing off the walls and sliding down the ice slide with reckless abandon as if it were a seaside resort, it seemed that the colder they made it the more accelerated his actions because until I was vaguely aware of a blurry form whizzing past.

They also had a really cool caterpillar 4 wheel drive snow mobile thing that they drove you around in on a custom off road course which was cool, all of the fit peoples boobs bounced and all of the fat peoples bellies bounced as you were hurled viciously from side to side and floor to ceiling.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of boob bouncing on our side of the cab which is a very good indication that our diet hasn’t been overly successful as yet and probably contributed to the unstoppable tank breaking down mid course.

From Christchurch we headed straight up the coast to Picton where we caught the ferry across to Wellington, the single most expensive journey we have done so far, it cost an absolute arm and a leg and made us realised that we are merely paying a fortune to courier a motor home from Christchurch to Auckland for the rental company.

Upon arrival in Wellington we met a family of like minded crazy people who had also packed up their lives and wandered around the world with their kids, however they had 4 so it kind of put us to shame!

It was great because Tyler had kids to play with and we had adults to talk to and believe me after only having Pauline to converse with for the past 8 months, talk we did, in fact we didn’t shut up and I think they were a little glad when we finally parted ways.

Wellington also made us realise that it was pointless to just drive constantly without really spending any time anywhere so we completely changed our plans and decided to spend multiple days in fewer places.

This gave us the opportunity to visit the fantastic Ta papa museum which is absolutely massive and full of interactive exhibits associated with New Zealand, we literally spent an entire day wandering around poking things and cooing in admiration.

We have now made it up to Lake Taupo a place for adrenaline junkies, hiking enthusiasts and of late rather rotund English families who want to have a lazy few days.

So far we have not done sky diving, bungy jumping, Arctic hiking, high wire trapeze, jet boating, kayaking, the climbing wall or the giant swing across the canyon and if we play our cards right we may even be able to avoid them by the time we leave too.

I am normally up for anything but being here and finally having a chance to relax has taken its toll on me to the point where I don’t want to do anything other than sit around in my boxer shorts and prepare to watch queen like entertainment on the picture box.

You know when you’ve been Tangoed

Tuesday May 24th

For those of you that have not as yet had the good fortune to have ventured over to New Zealand its easy to replicate the experience back home, simply print out the most beautifully scenic image that you can find on the internet, cut it to fit the dimensions of your windscreen and then just put your foot down.

Obviously there is a pretty major floor to this plan after a few seconds of driving but for that short interval you can at least experience some semblance of the tranquillity that lies in store, right up until you mow down the very first pedestrian that is.

Seriously though, it is exactly like driving into a different postcard every 100 meters or so, its so bad that my finger is hurting from taking so many photographs and Pauline has had constant motion sickness from my rather erratic habit of preforming 360s in the middle of a single carriage way in order to get the perfect spot!

The roads are absolutely astounding, perfectly suited to the grace and finesse of a sleek Italian sports car, winding and traversing around mountain after mountain, which is a bit of a pity as our motor home couldn’t be less like a sports car if it tried, so for us every corner is either a near miss or a lucky escape, its akin to driving a tonka truck on a scaletrix track.

We got a bit of a result though when we arrived at Christchurch, we had originally booked a 4 birth motor home but when we arrived they had upgraded us to a 6 birth, I swear that for that first night we were so unaccustomed to the room that we suffered from agoraphobia.

But once we got used to the space we realised that this is quite possibly the worst vehicle to have in New Zealand, the first tell tale sign was when it took us over an hour to find a parking space at the supermarket, it would have been a lot longer too if I hadn’t forcibly made an old age pensioner reverse his car out of the space I had ear marked.

Its a pretty formidable sight having a giant motor home reversing rapidly into your 50 year old vintage car and he didn’t look best happy, but youth conquered on this occasion!

We were also blown away by the fact that our shiny new vehicle was equipped with a TV and DVD player, which would have been fantastic had it not been for a gang of mountain parrots chewing off the aerial on our first night meaning that we could only receive a single badly scrambled channel, and only then we had to be parked on top of their transmitter.

Another downside to this is the fact that we now only have access to a single crackly radio station which spends the 90% of its time as static but then randomly shouts the odd word crystal clear, just as you are careering around a 90 degree turn, causing you to momenterily lose focus.

Still not to be defeated we decided to treat ourselves to Billy Connelly's New Zealand tour on DVD which was coincidently when we discovered that the DVD player doesn’t work either, still, luckily we had retained all of those wonderful card games that we had played over and over and over and over again in Australia.

Originally we had intended to follow the Billy Connelly tour in reverse order so the DVD would have been mighty useful, but take it from me, for an old guy my god does he move fast, we are already 3 days behind his schedule and we have only been here for 6.

Although the lack of electrical entertainment is a pain, it has afforded me the opportunity to write a complaint email into the car rental company and I have been having an email war with someone called Mr Smart for days, it has been an endless source of amusement to be totally patronising at every opportunity.

One of the other wonderful things about this new motor home is that you can put something in one cupboard and by the end of a journey they would have miraculously reappeared in another cupboard thanks to the incessant vibration felt throughout the back of the vehicle.

Not content with being unable to witness this spooky phenomenon actually happening Pauline took it upon herself to experiment a little further with this and decided to leave one of the cupboard doors open when we set of earlier today.

The culmination of which was a huge bang, followed several seconds later by a large fizzing sound as the entire contents of a neon orange cordial bottle proceeded to cover Pauline, Tyler, the broken TV, the broken DVD player and the remaining contents of our motor home with very thick, disgustingly sticky gloop, transforming us instantly into a travelling Tango advert.

We are now like the worlds shitest ice cream van, manned by little dayglo orange people and repleat with a jingle that consists of static and the occasion random word, and with absolutely no ice cream whatsoever.

Ohh yeah I guess I should also mention a little bit about New Zealand in this here blog, well lets see, so far we have taken an incredible helicopter ride over the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, they set us down on top so that we could wander about and sort of imagine what it would be like to have crashed there, as if to emphasise this they even let Tyler fly it for a bit.

Then today we reached Queenstown which is a very very picturesque town (as is pretty much everywhere we have been so far) but definitely the most touristy place we have been so far.

We looked at the local what’s on guide to see what we could sign ourselves up for and the special event for today was the topless bikini contest which seems to be a bit of a contradiction in terms and to be honest I don’t think I have the figure for that any more :-) Incidentally though Tyler was up for going and tried to persuade Pauline to have a quiet night in!

So instead we decided to plum for the Luge which totally rocked, it was in a location that was very possibly a former bond villains lair, but with every possible type of cool thrill ride stuck precariously on top of a mountain instead of just having sharks and laser guns.

For example you could throw yourself of on a para sail or a bungy jump or on the luge or on a mountain bike or you could fly above it on a helicopter or do a sky dive etc etc etc, it was like a giant testosterone filled mountain of death.

So as usual we fitted in perfectly well as we bounded up to the entrance surrounded by adrenalin junkies and potential suicide victims.

Still it was well worth it, the luge track was great fun and we got several goes at hurtling ourselves down the slick cascading runs with only a thin layer of plastic seperating our butts from the very hard looking tarmac beneath.

So long, Possums!

Thursday 19th May

I really wanted to hate Sydney, not in a nasty horrible vindictive sort of way or because of anything in particular but merely for the reason that everyone else that I know loves the place and I hate agreeing with the crowds.

Well although it pains me to admit it, on this occasion I join the masses and concur that indeed Sydney seems like a really great place to be, and whilst I haven’t instantly sold my worldly possessions in a bid to stay there longer, its definitely somewhere I would like to visit again.

The weather probably helped as we had 5 days of crystal clear blue skies with temperatures that hovered around 20 degrees and seemed to put everyone there in a great mood.

We also had a right result with our accommodation and stayed in the heart of Darling Harbour in a pretty swanky apartment that had been converted from an old warehouse and was exactly the type of place that I love with loads of cool little architectural features throughout.

So when we pulled up outside in our dodgy looking camper van and then proceeded to drag box after box of dodgy looking tat that we had accumulated, through their pristine looking foyer in front of their other very formal guests, I am sure that they were extremely pleased to have us stay with them, we are probably exactly the type of clientèle they are trying to attract.

Still, for some reason they didn’t throw us out and after an hour or so of tooing and throing we finally managed to clear the contents of the van and instantly turn one of the nicest looking rooms that we have stayed in into a complete dive.

We then set about trying to take the van back, I say trying as the address that was in their book, that we took over an hour to navigate too, isn’t actually the address that we needed and with very little time to spare we only just managed to get it back in time.

An enormous sense of relief was felt by all, not merely for the fact that we wouldn’t have to sleep in that cramped little tin room another night but also for the fact that we didn’t get charged for the damaged we did to the other vehicle.

Words cannot describe how well we all slept that night, but suffice to say we didn’t venture out too early the following morning

For as long as I can remember one of the things that I have always wanted to do is see a whale in its natural environment, I remember sitting in front of the TV with my dad watching countless David Attenborough wildlife documentaries and longing to be able to see them up close for myself.

Unfortunately we always seem to have been in the right place at the wrong time on this trip, in western Australia we were one month too early to go swimming with the whale sharks although they had already been spotted, in SA we were three weeks too early to see the whales at the great Australian Blight although they had already been spotted, it really didn’t look as if it would ever come to fruition.

So you can imagine how excited I was when we casually walked around the harbour and there in giant letters written on the side of a giant boat were the giant words “Whale watching starts here Saturday May 14th”.

Hang on a bloody minute, today's Sunday the bloody15th, I thought to myself, bloody hell we may actually get to bloody do this!

So you can imagine how incredibly disappointed I was when we bounded recklessly up to the door to find it completely locked up and showing absolutely no signs on life.

So you can imagine how amazingly happy I was to learn that we had just missed them, but they would definitely be there the next morning and that yes they had indeed spotted whales yesterday.

So you can imagine how bloody frustrated I was when having woken Pauline and Tyler up at the crack of dawn so that we could go out on the first boat of the day, we discovered that in fact the first boat of the day was 12:45 as they weren’t running the morning ones until peak season.

So you can imagine the look that my wonderful family gave me having realised that I had dragged them around the harbour at stupid o'clock in the morning for absolutely nothing.

So you can imagine how completely unamused they were at the suggestion that we should hang around outside the booth until it opened 4 hours later, and how eventually I let them convince me to do something else for the remainder of the day.

So you can imagine how wonderfully ecstatic I was the following day when we turned up at 12:00 and there in all of her glory was the wonderful little lady who was going to exchange my hard earned currency for the 99% guaranteed chance of seeing these majestic creatures!!

So you can imagine how unbelievably gutted I was having spent just over three hours on what turned out to be the bumpiest boat trip since the titanic and not having seen a single poxy thing in the water.

Still, on the bright side, we may not have seen whales that day but we did bare witness to some of the most impressive projectile vomiting seen since the Exorcist.

What made it even more spectacular was the fact that this magnificent multicoloured mucus marathon was being generated by the fruit of my loins.

If the whales had decided to pick that precise moment, to jump out of the water and have a giant whale orgy, nobody would have noticed as everyone on board, including the staff, were completely transfixed on Tyler’s regurgitating abilities, waiting in eager anticipation for his head to start rotating and his body to levitate.

What was even more incredible was the precision with which he managed to direct his streams of stomach soup, practically missing the floor entirely he landed the vast majority on our 1 week old camera and the remainder on the sleeves of my new fleece.

So thankfully we didn’t see any whales on that voyage because if we did the mere thought of lifting my vomit drenched arm towards my vomit splattered face so that I could peer through the vomit encrusted camera is a little too much for my stomach to handle.

So you can imagine the look I gave to the guy on the way out who very gingerly handed me a free return trip for the following day!

On the bright side if we had returned Tyler would have lost enough of his body mass that we could have probably taken him as carry on hand luggage and saved ourselves a fortune on the flight to New Zealand.

We have done a little over 20,000 kms around Australia and still haven’t seen hardly anything, so as I am writing this from my seat on the plane to New Zealand, I feel a mixture of regret, relief and sadness.

I regret not having been more organised, for not having rented a 4x4 to go further into the heart of the country, for not having planned our visit in advance to ensure that we were in season for everything that we wanted to do and for not having more money to really be able to experience everything the country has to offer.

I am relieved that in a country where everything is trying to kill you from its tiniest wildlife right through to the pedestrian crossings that change to red as soon as you step foot on the road and force you to sprint across to avoid carnage, we somehow managed to survive it all.

But most of all I am genuinely quite sad to be leaving, if it weren’t for the dollar being so high I am sure that we would have probably stayed a fair bit longer and I am certain that one day we will be back and hopefully this time far more organised!