New Zealand - the "OMG LOOK AT THE KIWI" edition

Previously, I flew to Wellington to stay with Kim, and there was much rejoicing.

The day after we went to Te Papa and to see Thor: TDW, it rained. Like, a lot. All. Freaking. Day. And not even the kind of summery rain where it's still warm enough that you don't object to walking to the bus stop and going to do something indoors. Nope, the wintery kind where the rain is horizontal and it's freezing cold and all you want to do is curl up on the sofa under a blanket. Obviously, we stayed home, played Lego Marvel and ate an awful lot of junk food. We may also have watched an episode of Agents of SHIELD and mocked it for being terrible and contrivance-ridden.

My last full day in Wellington, luckily, featured no rain at all. Instead, it featured sunburn. Because when we left the house, it looked like it was about to pour with rain, so I put sunscreen on but didn't bother to take it with me. THEN THE SUN CAME OUT. Sigh...

Anyway, we caught the bus into the city, picked up some sandwiches, and walked the 4-ish kilometres to the zoo. We started out with a visit to the otters and the penguins, neither of whom were anywhere to be seen. So we headed up through the kiwi enclosure - also nowhere to be seen, but this was probably due to an extremely loud small child. Luckily, some of the teeny monkeys were more accommodating:

From there, we went to a display by a red-tailed black cockatoo who was zooming all over the arena and who could do little puzzles with stackable cups and things in order to get treats. Sadly, there was a VERY screamy small child present who desperately wanted to steal the cockatoo's toys and kept running across the floor towards it. This made the cockatoo and the zoo keepers very nervous, but apparently small child's parents had no fucks to give because they basically did nothing...

Our ears needed a break after that, and it was almost time for the chimpanzee talk, so we headed up to the top of the hill to eat our sandwiches and hang out with the chimpanzees and a great view of the city for a while:

We were basically the only ones there until about 30 seconds before the talk started when an entire class of unruly grade 1 kids turned up and swarmed all over the place. YAY... Luckily, the chimps getting their lunch was entertainment enough to shut them up a little. Said lunch consisted of the keeper tossing out pieces of fruit one at a time and the chimpanzees having to catch each piece. And let me tell you, those chimpanzees were EXCELLENT at it. They could easily play cricket with catching skills like that!

Other highlights of the afternoon included my all time favourites, the red pandas:

And the sunbear, who looked incredibly shocked about something:

We also saw a moronic 20-something guy banging on the glass of the baboon enclosure, causing a lot of the juvenile baboons to hurl themselves at the glass with their teeth bared. He thought it was hilarious. I'm still convinced that one day, he's going to wake up at 3am to find a baboon ripping his face off, because they were NOT impressed...

Eventually, we headed back to the kiwi house for the keeper talk. And it was FABULOUS. The kiwi that they had out only has one leg because he got stuck in a trap meant for feral cats (I think...) and it broke his leg so badly that it had to be amputated. They made him a prosthesis, but apparently he prefers to hop, which is basically the cutest thing ever. If you're interested, you can read more about Tahi here. Anyway, he was about a foot away from me and he was so stinking adorable that I probably could have watched him all day. So if you're ever in Wellington, you should go to the zoo and check out the kiwi keeper talk!

Also, you should go to the zoo because they have FABULOUS signage:

After a detour through the gift shop where I bought a kiwi shaped cookie cutter and a stuffed toy kiwi with wonky legs (I bought him for Little Miss A, but ended up keeping him myself because REASONS), we caught the bus back into town, grabbed ourselves a couple of scoops of ice cream, and walked around to Oriental Bay to sit on the beach for a little while. In keeping with my curse, there was naked New Zealander there, although this one was at least a small child rather than a creepy grown man...

We wandered back through the city and took a few obnoxious selfies on the way, because OBVS.

My flight the next day was at around lunchtime. It was insaaaaaaaaaaaanely windy so walking down the hill to the bus with my suitcase was a rather interesting experience - rather like being dragged along by a very enthusiastic dog... Still, we made it to the airport in plenty of time and, after getting rid of my suitcase and checking in, we headed to Donut King, because of reasons.

Stolen from Kim's Tumblr.

And then we sat there listening to flights being cancelled because the wind was reaching insane levels... Fortunately(??) for me, they were only cancelling the propeller flights, not the jet flights, so my flight wasn't cancelled. Takeoff, however, got a little bit interesting. Especially as I was trapped in a middle seat and the woman on the aisle demanded like 14 sick bags "just in case"... O.o

Eventually, I made it to Auckland, found my luggage, walked the million miles (read: 1km) to the international terminal, checked in, had lunch, abused the free wifi as much as possible, and flew back to Melbourne. THE END. And only four months after my trip ended! ;)

K xx

New Zealand - the "one DOES simply walk into Mordor" edition

Previously, Ness and I explored some thermal stinkiness, visited an epic waterfall, and drove a really long way. Also, we stayed at a hotel that was far too posh for us, and we were the youngest people there by at least ten years.

We got up to be greeted by a gorgeous sunny morning. And, I discovered that if you were willing to stick your entire upper body (and your SLR) out of the window and twist around to the left, this was the view from our hotel room:

Not too shabby, huh? We kitted up, grabbed some breakfast, and headed out to do a couple of short walks. We'd originally been planning to do a longer one, but the forecast was for the weather to get crappy by early afternoon, so we figured it was probably best to not set out on a walk that would require us to spend three hours walking in the pissing rain to get back to the hotel.

We figured we'd do the longest one first to make the most of the good weather, and so headed out to Taranaki Falls. The walk itself was pretty easy - a couple of biggish hills, but with proper steps and plenty of places to convince yourself that you were stopping to admire the view:

After a little over an hour, we reached the Falls. They were a lot more impressive than I'd anticipated and I kind of wished there'd been a path down to the bottom so that we could see exactly how cold the water was. I mean, water that clear tends to indicate snowmelt, but it looked SO NICE...

Hiking fashion is not like regular fashion

The walk back took us past Mount Doom Ngaurahoe and Mount Ruapehu but was generally less pleasant than the walk TO the falls, due largely to the lack of shade. Still, the views pretty much made up for it:

I still giggle every time I see this

When we got back to the hotel, we jumped straight in the car and headed a little further afield. We started out with a walk that was meant to take 20 minutes but in fact took us less than five. It wasn't particularly picturesque either, so it's hard to imagine it taking 20 minutes even if you loitered to look at the scenery.

So we headed on to the walk to Tawhai Falls. It was a lot smaller than Taranaki, but you could get right up close. We spent 20 minutes or so clambering about the rocks and just enjoying things before a couple of middle aged tourists appeared and we thought it best to head off.

And then we decided to walk the Ridge Track. That proved to be rather steeper than we were anticipating, and by the time we reached the top and its (apparent) panoramic views, it became abundantly clear that there was some very heavy rain approaching. So we hightailed it back down the ridge (overtaking an incredibly annoying group of French people who abruptly stopped talking when I overtook them with a "Pardon. Merci!" on the way) and arrived back at the hotel juuuuuuuuuuust as it started to pour.

After showering and generally de-hiking-ing, the rain was just as bad. So we grabbed some books and headed down to the lounge where we spent the rest of the afternoon partaking in tea, cheese and crackers, and cocktails (Black Forest hot chocolate? YES PLEASE).

This is not Black Forest hot chocolate. Obviously.

We also did laundry because we're rock and roll like that. I mean, what else do you do while in Mordor???

Next up, we go on a random roadtrip of randomness. Because we can.

K xx

Ancient history, Volume XXXIX

Previously, OH GOD, I'M DYING. Otherwise known as "Don't eat ice or sour cream in Latin America".

The following day, I was still sick, but not to the about-to-pass-out point, which was a vast improvement. Arizona Boy, Waterproof Trousers and Irish were heading off for the wilds of Honduras that morning, so I dragged myself out of bed and out to the lobby to say goodbye to them. A couple of hours after that, I had to dope myself up on Imodium, bid a very miserable farewell to my BFF Sara and board a minibus heading to Guatemala City. Once at the airport, I braved the first food I'd had in about 40 hours - McDonald's chips (that's fries to you, America).

Source

My logic in eating McDonald's chips was as follows:
1. Said chips are deep fried, and therefore very unlikely to result in a repeat upchucking performance;
2. Said chips are covered in salt, and salt is important when you're dehydrated;
3. Said chips would provide a large number of calories without me needing to eat very much.

Genius plan, no??

Anyway, the flight to Mexico City was relatively uneventful. Well, besides the fact that the flight contained the  Guatemalan under 10 soccer team, and that whichever member of the team was sitting behind me felt the need to kick the back of my seat for the ENTIRE flight. But once we landed in Mexico City? Things got...somewhat more interesting. We landed in the pouring rain, only to be told - after sitting on the runway for 20 minutes - that there were no air bridges available and that we'd need to disembark onto the runway and take buses to the terminal. Which would have been fine, except that half the plane - including myself - got stuck behind an old man who managed to walk down one step around every minute. So we were all rather drenched by the time we got to the terminal.

Upon arrival at the terminal, it seemed that around a millionty planes had arrived at once, and Mexico City only had about four staff working the immigration gates. The queue to get through immigration took over TWO HOURS, and by the end of that time, I was about to sit down on the floor and cry. About half way through the insanely long wait, there was a bit of a kerfuffle behind me, and a familiar figure ducked under the barriers. That figure?

Source

Okay, so it was Michael Richards and not Cosmo Kramer, but whatevs. Apparently he decided that being a celebrity(-ish. Seinfeld was more than a little passe by 2008!) should entitle him to queue jump. The Mexican authorities took great delight in giving him death stares and pointing to the back of the line.

Anyway, I eventually made it through the queue, claimed my luggage, and headed for the pick-up area. Only to find that two hours was apparently far too long for my $96 transfer driver to bother waiting. I attempted to find a phone number for the company to insist that they send the driver back, but the only number listed was in Peru. NOT particularly helpful. So I headed for the taxi rank, only to have half a dozen taxi drivers refuse to take me to my hotel because parts of the city were flooded. Thankfully, the concierge guy stepped in, and insisted that one of them take me.

So I eventually arrived at my hotel, arranged a tour to Teotihuacan, and collapsed into bed. Only to wake up the following morning with approximately a thousand mosquito bites on my back, thanks to a particularly bloodthirsty and unwelcome roommate.

I dragged myself out of bed and onto a tour bus. The tour consisted of me and three slightly mad Argentinian women who spent all day calling me Chris. I'm going to go ahead and just show you a bunch of pictures of Teotihuacan because I don't really remember that much about it on account of I hadn't eaten since the chips the previous day...

On the way back into Mexico City, we stopped off at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which I found rather hilarious. Why?
1. Because it looks like a football stadium from the outside.
2. It houses the original icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in order to pray before her, you stand on a series of travelators. One goes left to right, the one behind that goes right to left, the one behind that goes left to right and so on. This ensured that everyone got a chance to pray without causing a traffic jam.

3. You could get yourself blessed with holy water outside the Basilica. Except that the holy water was housed in huge plastic rubbish bins, which just made it seem kind of gross.
4. There was a GIANT statue of Pope John Paul II and one of his Pope-mobiles outside.

Who doesn't love an unexpected statue of a dead Pope?!

Up next, the most enormous flag of ever, some weird happenings at the National Anthropology Museum, and I fly to Las Vegas.

K xx

Ancient history, Volume XXXIV

Previously, tequila was evil and led to weirdness...

The day after the Infamous Helicopter of Love Incident, we were up bright and early (and, with the exception of me, VERY reluctantly) and on the hunt for breakfast. Turns out, there wasn't much within walking distance of the hotel that was open at breakfast time, which is how Sara and I ended up having doughnuts and soft drink for breakfast. Health food of a nation!!

By 8.30am, we were at Palenque, the archaeological site. To this day, I'm fairly certain I was the only person on the tour to enjoy it. Everyone else was hungover and sick of visiting ruins. I, on the other hand, was in my element and nerding it up like there was no tomorrow.

Personally, I found Palenque fascinating because only about 2% of the site has been uncovered by archaeologists. The rest is still hidden away in the jungle. I also loved a lot of the little details, like this door hinge:

Or this carving of Quetzalcoatl:

There was also a museum filled with fun things, which I was super excited about. Eventually, we finished our time at Palenque and headed to the waterfall at Misol Ha:

There was a path that let you walk behind the waterfall, and Sara and I decided that we should go behind said waterfall. That ended about as well as you'd expect:

From there, we headed over to Agua Azul. Now, usually Agua Azul looks like this:

Source

But just after WE got there, it started to pour with rain. And we're talking pouring with rain to the point of the water coming through my Goretex jacket, resulting in us having to hide out in an empty stall waiting for it to ease up:

Eventually, it was light enough that we were able to wander around without drowning. But of course, the rain meant that instead of looking like the above, Agua Azul looked like this:

Sigh. So much for the beautiful blue waters!!

That night, thankfully, was FAR less exciting than the previous one. And the next morning, Palenque gave us one last piece of hilarity: this sign at the bus station:

In case you can't tell, that second point says "No alive
and/or dead poultry".

Wheeeeeeee, Schrödinger's chicken!!

Next up, crocodile infested canyons, releasing evil spirits by burping, and unusual methods of finding a husband!

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XVIII

If you missed the last installment, Mrs. Watermelon got publicly humiliated, and I saw the world's most epic rock.

Day 4 of the Inca Trail started with a 4am wake up. Yup. FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. Don't these people know that nothing good ever happens after 2am?? (Name that sitcom!)

Anyway. We were dressed, packed and in the lodge by 4.30am, where the porters had very kindly made us pancakes for breakfast to lessen the "OH GOD, WHAT TIME IS IT???" feelings of doom. Then, after a visit to the moth-ridden bathroom (and if you think THAT didn't cause me to have a minor nervous breakdown, you'd be wrong), we set off towards Machu Picchu. IN THE RAIN.

We reached the final checkpoint at about 5.15am, which was something of an issue because they didn't open the gate until 5.30am. Nothing quite like standing around in the rain going "Dammit, I could have had another 15 minutes of sleep..."! *sigh*

Anyway, the gate was eventually unlocked, and we had a delightful hour and a half's stroll to the Sun Gate. I say 'stroll', because there were 200 people walking in a line in the dark, so it was pretty slow going. On the plus side, after the first half hour, it was getting light enough that we didn't need to use our stupid headtorches any more. Such things are always a plus.

The only tricky bit of the walk was the climb up to the Sun Gate, because you have to go up a flight of 'monkey stairs' - really steep and narrow, and basically you had to use your hands to keep yourself moving. That was followed by a couple of steep flights of stairs up reasonably big hills. We finally got to the Sun Gate at about 7.10am.

Now. The idea of getting you up at stupid o'clock and making you hike in the dark is that you get to see the sun rise over Machu Picchu and go "Oooooooh". Instead, we saw this:

Not actually from the Sun Gate. But you get the point.

Yup. More rain. We stopped at the Sun Gate for all of ten minutes before the head guide announced that he didn't think it was going to clear up for aaaages and so we may as well head down to Machu Picchu. That took about 45 minutes, because it was downhill on rocks that were extra slippery thanks to the rain. I MAY have had a couple of little "Oh crap, I'm sliding and am going to fall off a cliff and die" moments. (Obviously, I didn't fall off a cliff and die. Although being the world's first zombie blogger would be quite an achievement..........)

By the time we reached Machu Picchu, it was PROPERLY raining. So we headed for the cafeteria, and spent an hour or so hanging out under patio umbrellas, eating overpriced second breakfast, and waiting for a break in the weather. Our tour leader clearly didn't have high hopes for it clearing up - he took our passports and $20 each, and set off into Aguas Calientes to try and change our train tickets so that we could go back the next day if it didn't clear. But thankfully, by 9am, it had eased to drizzle and we were able to set off on the tour.

And because I don't really remember much of the detail from the tour (BAD ARCHAEOLOGIST), have a bunch of pictures. WHEEEEEEEEEEE:

The tour took about an hour and a half, and then we had two hours free before we had to be on the bus down to Aguas Calientes. So a bunch of us decided that we'd climb the smaller of the two peaks that rise behind the site (the one that's going off the left side of the frame in that last photo). It was only about a 15 minute walk to the top, but the trail was pretty narrow and winding, and there were occasional scrambles over tree branches and rocks and stuff. But the view from the top? Totally worth it.

When we'd finished marvelling at the view, we meandered through the site on our way to the bus.

See that little V in the mountains? That's where the Sun Gate is.

The bus ride to Aguas Calientes was a LITTLE hair raising, due to a millionty hairpin bends. And I'm sure the day visitors really appreciated how delightful we all smelled after four days with no showers. After a lunch of pizza and beer (hey, we deserved it!), it was time to head to the train station.

Oh. AND. The culmination of the Watermelons saga: after she was stretchered to camp on the third day, she declared that she would walk on the fourth day. She made it to the Sun Gate, and basically gave up. The two guides that were with them had to stretcher her down to the medical station at Machu Picchu to get her checked out. Then one of the guides had to go back UP to the Sun Gate to get Mr Watermelon. Because he'd been so worried about his wife over the past three days, that he'd forgotten to drink enough water. And so he'd basically dehydrated himself to the verge of a heart attack. So the guide had to PIGGY BACK HIM DOWN THE MOUNTAIN. And THEN? The SAME guide had to walk back up there AGAIN to get their bags. And the Watermelons spent the whole day at the medical station, and didn't get to see Machu Picchu at all. So yeah. That happened.

(Incidentally? I'm pretty sure that "So yeah. That happened" is going to be the title of my hilariously witty and completely hypothetical autobiography...)

The train ride back to Ollantaytambo ended up being kind of hilarious. Because there were lots of tunnels. And Ness and I were listening to her iPod, which decided to play "Scotty Doesn't Know". So whenever we went through a tunnel, all we could think of was "Mi scusi!" (name that movie), and we'd fall about in fits of hysterics. I'm not so sure it was particularly funny to anyone ELSE on the tour. But WE sure as hell had a good time!

That night, after quite possibly the most welcome shower I've ever had, we all headed out to Inka Grill for dinner. If you're ever in Cusco, GO TO INKA GRILL. Seriously. The food is fantastic, and if you order guinea pig, it comes to the table with a little crown made of red capsicum/bell pepper on its teeny tiny creepy-looking head (We didn't order guinea pig, hence the lack of photos. Someone at a nearby table did though). Oh. And order the warm chocolate tart. You won't regret it.

After dinner, we went out for a few well earned drinks. And several people tried to complete the Machu Picchu challenge - staying up for the full 24 hours and drinking. After one (free poured, and therefore disgusting) vodka raspberry, I caved and headed for bed. At least I got a good night's sleep before the unexpected drama (HI NESSA!!) that was to come the following day... Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun: to be continued.

K xx