Well, if you gotta go touring, you gotta do it in style - once, at least. Zoe had devised an excellent idea for a present for her father: a day's rental of a Saab 4 seater open top convertible - perfect gift for a guy who's into cars and driving, apart from the bit of having to give it back at the end of the day. It was an utterly gorgeous car, and a perfect day of pure blue skies for driving down the pacific highway, top down and music at top volume all the way, for mile after mile of white sands and turquoise surf. Stopped off for swim at Coolangatta near the border with NSW; water cool enough to be refreshing and phat waves for bodysurfing - a fair few jellyfish too, unfortunately, but nothing lethal. I think. And on to Tambourine national park for a bit of a wander around: the village of Tambourine nearby seemed like a peculiar place, consisting almost entirely of a variety of specialised gift shops - one was dedicated to teddy bears, another to German cuckoo clocks, and so on - rather odd for a village an hour from any major urban centres. Maybe the place is just populated by harmless eccentrics who love the various areas of specialties, and run the shops as a sideline to their obsession. Or maybe not.
Anyway, I can verify the existence of the 20 metre long fossil snake, Montypythonides - and, better still, that it was named after the show. Those nutty palaeontologists... According to the curator who told me about it, they also named a particularly dull bit of pondlife after the former head of palaeontology, using a rather neat Latin pun that translates into 'dickhead' as well as incorporating his name. (He had already retired, of course).
And a spot more barbecues, and a spot more clubbing, and it was time for me to move on to New Zealand. Again. Having obsessively checked my ticket, and received the new passport the day before leaving, I was all set; got to the airport with loads of time to spare. The check in girl inspected my brand new passport and asked me where my visa was. Shit... I took a deep breath - trying not to hyperventilate - and explained about having lost my old one which had the visa in it and how this was a replacement and my visa was in my old one but surely - surely - the embassy had processed it with visa as standard procedure, because they sure as hell hadn't said anything to me about needing to get a new visa... So the Bloke that Deals with Things came up and made a call or two, and looked serious and said I might be able to travel on Monday, but definitely not tonight. Seeing my lower lip start to quiver, he went away and made another call or two, and after half an hour or so said YES I could travel tonight, but would have to get a new visa from the Australian embassy in NZ ASAP. I almost kissed him, and ran through before he could change his mind. By way of recovering equilibrium, I discovered the joys of shopping (I hate shopping, but have just found that new opal earrings can indeed be therapeutic, especially when the duty free has a 50% off sale, so they're about a fifth of the UK price). And uneventfully on to the plane, just a few hours flight and landed in Christchurch at 3.30am local time, got through the obstacles in record time and figured I had about half an hour to spare before my relatives came to collect me. So had a shower (it was free, so I had to have it) and came out to find that the whole family had arrived and been undergoing a nasty deja-vu of the last time, being unable to find me and wondering, what's happened this time? So we had a joyous - if somewhat sleepy - reunion, and I've been in Christchurch ever since.
A nice place, New Zealand: I approve. Christchurch is a smallish city, full of 1920s lowrise buildings and wide streets; a cheerful and friendly kinda place between the sea and the browngreen rolling mountains. There seems to be an inordinate number of hip-hop, boardin', surfin', cool types of 15-25 year olds around - though maybe that's due to a combination of going around with my cousin Jayne, and that school's out for summer. Not too sure what the clubs here are like. My cousin Zita (now in Amsterdam) couldn't tell me of any clubs that'd be open from 4am to 9am (I was hoping to avoid waking the family by clubbing till a more respectable hour), and reckoned that people mostly did house parties here. And for sure, it's been damn good having young Jayne to bring me to her friends' parties. One which took place on Christmas eve was most unusual: probably the Nicest party I've ever been to, thoroughly decorated and catered for in a Very Impressive manner. The garage had been converted for the evening: the roof covered with dark blue cloth and fairy lights to replicate the night sky; the walls covered with green cloth of a shade to match the (home made) christmas crackers and present boxes, and matching everything really. Made me feel I ought to at least clean up before my next party (wouldn't do to get carried away. My friends might start getting above themselves). So that was nice, if not exactly wild; gorgeous food and lovely little presents for all. Another party was on Christmas night, and far more normal; lots of merry people filled with Christmas spirit, amongst other things; got there around 11 in the evening, and left when we got locked out at 5am. I found a little party of my own when I went out a couple of days ago and played some very bad pool with some local blokes; ended up going back with them and various others for some more drinks and fervent political discussion (the only bit I can rembember is that the current female prime minister is totally approved of by everyone in the whole country - an uncanny state of affairs. I did my best to argue against her - after all, agreement is no fun - but was much handicapped by knowing nothing about the woman. Every generic negative comment I made was met with a "Oh, no, not at all - she did X". Most peculiar, a politician who is liked and respected by all). And of course there was New Years Eve party - last night - in a pub/club called the Wunderbar, very cool by all accounts, and I did like the use of models torsos and dolls heads as lights, and the music and crowd were good. But I discovered that after one week, I was getting to recognise people I'd seen around, and that Jayne could tell me the name of mine host of the previous night (he was a friend of a friend, and word had spread that day to her that I'd been there. Rapid network). So I'm thinking it might be time to move on.
Meanwhile, other stuff from here... The first day I was here, I went to see "The Lord of the Rings" with Vee and Sean (the aforementioned aunt and uncle) - excellent; I was really impressed that they managed to make something that even obsessive fans of the book like me, thought was good. Christmas day was lovely, catered for with vast quantities of Lindauer - a kinda local very tasty champagne - and vegeterian food by my aunt. Sean and Vee and Jayne took me to Hamner, a place in the Alps with hot springs and gorgeous scenery. Very nice: they have lots of pools, some with different temperatures, some with different levels of sulphur, some nicely designed like rocky streams, some for kids to play in: it's easy to spend several hours between them all. They also had quad biking, which was excellent fun! A couple of hours of scrambling around the mountains, fording small rivers with water almost up to the seat, skidding over dusty paths and up and down steep gravel hills with stones spitting and tilting under you: great stuff! I felt like Tank Girl, skidding around corners and a daft grin on my face. I believe I even exclaimed Yee-haw on certain occasions. 4 wheels good, 2 wheels bad...
What else? Well, I blame my aunt for taking me shopping: I came home with a full set of camping equipment which I hadn't particularly planned on and really dread hefting around for the next month. Still, though, when you can get a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, cooking ring and gas, and cooking pans for 65 quid for the lot - brand new - it does seem irresistible. And they have all these long trails here that anyone can walk over 3 to 5 days, camping along the way (yeah, there's huts, but that means you have no choice in how far you go each day). And it's busy season here, and hostels are getting full. Oh, it all made such sense at the time, but now I have an extra 3 or 4 kilos to port - and I'm the one who was getting so obsessed about rucksack weight, I was half thinking of trimming the bristles on my toothbrush. Arse.
Anyway, merry christmas and happy new year to y'all.