roganjosh

So here I am in Vegas surrounded by neon lights and slot machines. For the last couple of days on my travels I’ve been joined by some of my buddies from England for a post-event bachelor party. We tried calling it a “stag do” but nobody knew what we were on about. Anyway, there’s been plenty of eating, drinking, gambling and dancing while we’ve been out here - though since what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas I can’t reveal any of the details…

Since I last updated I’ve visited Fiji - which was beautiful and sunny and full of women in bikinis, and LA which was beautiful and sunny and full of rollercoasters! I spent most of my time there in theme parks or hanging out with my cousins playing penguin based games (and losing).

This is very nearly the end of my round the world adventure. In a couple of hours I’ll be jumping on a flight to Gatwick and getting back to my normal life! Well, not exactly - The evening I arrive I’ve got my induction meeting for my Philosophy course, followed by a party for the same this Friday! After that? Well, who knows… I’ll be seeing you all in the pub for a pint at some point though I hope, and we’ll see how things go from there.

So I went tandem hang-gliding in Queenstown, and absolutely loved it! One second you’re standing half way up a mountain clipped onto a metal frame, that for all the world looked like a tent while it was being put together, and the next you’re hanging about 1,000ft off the ground looking down on the tops of trees. It was all very calm and controlled and I even got to have a go at steering it myself. Much, much more fun than jumping out of plane!

The hang-gliding was actually the last thing that I did in Queenstown before hopping on a flight up to Christchurch. Leaving Queenstown it felt like I was starting to head for home, even though I’m still about three weeks and two countries away from finishing my journey. Christchurch was a nice little city, the largest on the southern island and I had a fun time looking around the place. One of the city’s claims to fame is that it’s an international departure point for antarctic missions so I visited the antarctic centre to be driven around in a Hagglund all terrain vehicle and experience a simulated arctic storm. That done there didn’t seem to be any point actually going to Antarctica itself so I didn’t feel too bad about not making it any further south than 45°S (Te Anau, on the way to Milford Sound).

From Christchurch I carried on up to Kaikoura and saw some whales, albatross and some fur seals. Then I headed for Picton and a swift flight on a small plane over to Wellington where I managed to tick off another item on the list of things to do in New Zealand - I met a guy who was in Lord of the Rings! In the film he rode one of the huge elephants in the big battle at the end, though his day job was doing the seal safari, which I enjoyed going on (Thanks for the tip Amy!).

Not fancying a 9 hour bus ride from Wellington to Auckland I abandoned the thought of travelling any further with the Stray people and flew up to the north, and here I am back in Auckland! I couldn’t find much to do the first time I was here, but tomorrow is surely my last chance to do a bungee jump. Expect a compelling excuse as to why I didn’t bother soon…

There are lots of extreme activites you can get up to in Queenstown - Bungee jumping, skydiving,  white water rafting, that kind of thing - but I think you have to go a long way to beat taking snowboarding lessons in weather so bad that all the slopes except for the nursery one are closed and the wind is so strong that gusts of it will actually stop you from sliding down a hill. Slightly worse than that was the horizontal hail that would whip across the slope and hit you like shotgun pellets, leaving us knocked over on the floor and cowering with hands over faces. That said the sliding around part of the day was huge fun, even when I occasionally stuck the wrong edge into the snow and stacked it. gnarly dude!

So what else have I been up to? Well I spent a night in Golden Bay to visit a friend of my sister’s who moved out here a couple of years back after marrying a kiwi. It was nice to spend some time with a family for a while instead of random backpackers! After that I jumped back on the stray bus for a stop in Barrytown - a real middle of nowhere place where I did some carving, and then on to Franz Josef where I walked on a glacier and came second in a pool competition! I did win a t-shirt and a $15 bar tab though, so I guess losers can win too.

Going to see if I can go hang-gliding over here at some point, which might come at the expense of me doing a bungee jump - There’s only so many daft things you can fit into a day!