gone a-Stray..

The best way to get around New Zealand is with a backpacker tour bus. They take you to sweet places, book you on fun activities, sort out your accommodation, and drive you about. Easy. I've been on the bus for two weeks now and have made some great friends, done some incredible things and seen some fantastic places.

We started off on the 3rd of May in Auckland with the Stray bus and our driver, "Dodgy" Dave, touring many parts of the North Island and making our way South by bus and plane. Currently in Queenstown at the moment, the last couple of weeks have seen a great and permanent group of us go all out on the New Zealand adventure fix.

At Raglan, the surf capital of NZ, a good mate Derk and I took up some lessons - it was top fun; a sweet (but infrequent) feeling of getting on the board and surfing around a bit! Derk kept showing me up though, he had the skills.

Waitomo was the place for caving. We took a three hour journey through some spectacular glowworm caves, doing things like turning off lights and trying to find our way around (it's pretty dark..) tubing in the streams and singing Hakuna Matata along the way. One of our girls was wearing lovely perfume, making it easy to follow her around in the dark!

Then it came to the skydive. Twelve thousand feet above lake Taupo and out we jumped. The hardest part about a skydive, and I think I have a general consensus on this, is putting your feet over the edge of the plane and falling. After that it's allllll good. What a feeling, strongly recommend it to anyone. The fifteen minute plane ride seems like an eternity, the freefall is a blip in time, and the parachuting down to earth is both a welcome relief and a chance to marvel at the scenery in silence and serenity.

One of the cool things about seeing NZ with Stray is seeing what goes on in a little place on the South Island west coast called Barrytown. We made knives. They look good. Forged in the depths of a barbeque, air fiercely pumped through by a vacuum cleaner, we took roads of steel, bits of brass and a plank of wood to experience the Barrytown marvel. After hammering away on the anvils, grinding the blade down with numerous grades of sandpapers, and of course the obligatory gash or two along the way for malconcentration or malcoordination, we ended up with the Barrytown tool. Lovin' it.

The other big activity, and the one which shook me up the most in anticipation, was the Nevis bungy jump. Standing at 143 metres, the bus ride up the procarious landscape gets the blood pumping. The ride in the rickety gondola gets the adrenaline circulating, the wait in the cable car 180 metres up gets the nerves fretting, standing on the edge of the ledge ready to jump gets your brain seriously questioning, and the fall down gets the senses thrown into overdrive. It's difficult to describe the feeling of plummeting into a revine only to be (hopefully) catapulted up by a cord strapped to your legs, but what a feeling it is. I think the best way to describe it is in actions: a) go to AJ Hackett b) pay money for a Nevis jump c) do it.

I think the adventurous activities are coming to an end, perhaps being rounded off by a scenic dive at the Milford Sound if possible (going to be pretty cold) or jetboating in Christchurch. And since I'm still on the road, pictures will be postponed, but forthcoming. I'll be back in Auckland for a few days before heading off to Santiago at the end of May, where I'll blitz all my time in an internet cafe doing some serious photo screening, cropping, captioning and uploading.

I said I made good friends since starting. Some great people, like Derk and Stephen have come and gone, hopping on different buses down the line, and I'm glad to have met them. But there have been five of us that have stuck together and my good mates that I've been fortunate to travel with have been such a laugh, making the Stray experience infinitely better. So cheers to Kelly, Fredi, Dionne and Kristin - you're all lovely girls. And of course, I'm a lucky guy heh. Stray in touch (see what I did there? Great stuff.)