Seals in San Francisco. God, they smelt so bad

Around The World Trip: USA (part 2)

Next stop was San Francisco, after a long train journey in which I had to endure a bloke hocking back the snot in his nose every 15 minutes, before an icy cold stare from myself seemed to dry up all of his mucus-related problems in one hit. Who needs Tunes? On ‘de-training’ in SF the same man said to me “Like your hat”, referring to my tatty baseball cap. Too late for niceties you suck-up. Eew, disgusting habit…

After struggling up the hills on arrival, past the many beggars asking for change (my response: “Real change comes from within”) and wondering if my hostel, being in between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill areas, was in the Tender Nob district (it wasn’t), the first thing I did was a tour of the city which was a good way to get my bearings and see the posh area of Pacific Heights, the trendy area of Haight/Ashbury, the Castro (not a Cuban community, but the gay district – I wore an all in one rainbow outfit for the occasion), not forgetting the Golden Gate Bridge and Park, the Palace of Fine Arts, Chinatown and Little Italy (every city has these!) and capping it all off with a view of the city from atop Twin Peaks. Continue reading →

Around The World Trip: USA (part 1)

Americans – don’t ya just love ’em? After the bad weather and less than tourist-friendly attitude in the Cook Islands (someone told me that a between islands flight they were on was delayed because the pilot was having his lunch!), I’m now in the home of mass consumerism, starting with Los Angeles, which translates as ‘The Smog’ if my Spanish is up to scratch.

While I’m venting my spleen… what is the point of those stupid US visa entry forms?! My own favourite questions were:

‘Are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?’ Well, hopefully in Las Vegas; and

‘Have you ever or are you now involved in terrorist activities or genocide?’ So if you state ‘No’ and they find out that you are a war criminal, are they then going to say: ‘Not only have you killed all those people, but you sir ARE A LIAR!’ Pointless. Continue reading →

Around The World Trip: Fiji

Initially I found the 20 degree increase in temperature from NZ as a bit of a shock as I arrived in Nadi (pronounced Nandi for some reason). I was met at the airport by locals shouting what sounded like “EBOLA!” Worried that they were warning me about a plague of the deadly disease, I was about to turn back before realising that they were, in fact, welcoming me with the Fijian greeting of “BULA!” Oh… Bula back. After a brief wander around it soon became apparent that this was a country with the most number of blokes in skirts outside of a Scottish Highland Games. No wonder many of them seem to be big fans of the sarong-wearing mincer, David Beckham. But hey, I wasn’t going to say anything negative. They must rest their babies on beds of compost for them to grow into such big men. There was just enough time for a few beers on the first evening, so I caught a taxi to Ed’s Bar with some fellow travellers. And it was certainly an unusual taxi – stereo volume on 11 and more flashing lights than the actual bar itself! Other than that, an uneventful night. Continue reading →

Queenstown

Around the World Trip: New Zealand, South Island

I’m already on my last day in NZ. Could have done with a couple more weeks, but it’s getting cold now so I’m looking forward to Fiji next. NZ has been as picturesque as I had been told but unfortunately I’ve had to miss out on some of it due to time and money constraints. I will miss the amusing Kiwi habits of ending every sentence with “Eh?” pronouncing ‘I’ and ‘E’ the wrong way round, saying “Choice”, “Sweet as…” and “Too easy” (meaning “Okay – that’s good”) plus being every bloke’s “Bro” as I didn’t realise that I had relatives here.

So, the south island exploits… I continued south with a couple of Yorkshire lads, both called Dave, that I had been travelling with on the ‘Magic’ bus since Rotorua. They had saved enough money working overtime down the pits to treat themselves to a holiday (just kidding). The Magic bus network is a backpackers’ bus service that takes you to places of interest that you wanted to go to, didn’t know you wanted to go to or definitely didn’t want to go to, thus creating long trips out of supposedly short ones, especially seeing as the bus keeps stopping for a ‘break’ every 45 minutes.

Continue reading →

The Skytower, Auckland

Around the World Trip: New Zealand, North Island

Lake McKenzie - Fraser Island

Around the World Trip: East Coast Oz (part 2)

In my last post I had just ditched the Irish bloke (only joking Paul) and I was looking forward to an adventure-packed last couple of weeks in Oz. I headed up to Hervey Bay in readiness for a trip to Fraser Island the next day. Didn’t think much of HB and my hostel was in the middle of nowhere (1 1/2 hours walk to centre!), so I was glad to only be there for one night. When I arrived I headed down to the beach and, relaxing with a deep sigh, wondered what FI would be like as I gazed out to sea, past the drainage outlet pipes, listening to the hypnotic sound of the breaking waves, and gurgling of passing drain water…

FI (the world’s largest sand island) is one place that has to been seen to be believed. It has rainforest, sand dunes, stunning clear lakes, long beaches and plentiful wildlife. You can swim there too, if you don’t mind seeing jellyfish and man-eating sharks from the bottom of the ocean as you are dragged down in the undertow. Continue reading →