Long overdo

It’s the beginning of a beautiful day when we catch up with our two friends once more. The sky was without as much as a scratch and of the purest blue. The air was warm but not too warm, it was just perfect. It was the kind of weather we can only dream of in these cold winter days. The soft stroke of the sun and the gentle nibble of the bedbugs slowly shook the two from their morning slumber. Yawning loudly they began to get dressed and started their morning routine, which consisted of drowsily walking to the restaurant and ordering some toast and fruit; all the while scratching the occasional bedbug or sandfly bite which were subtle reminders of the fact that they were quite far from home. The heat of the sun made them lazy, I’m pretty sure it was the sun, and many a day was spent by the side of the pool. Every now and then a bus would stop by the resort and unload its herd of backpackers and other tourists who would spend a night at the resort only to leave the very next morning. Having adopted the relaxed island lifestyle our two friends steered clear of this rowdy bunch and generally went to sleep before the festivities reached full swing. This time however the two were startled by a sudden yell. They turned around and saw sitting at one of the tables two girls that seemed strangely familiar. They were the same girls they met about 4 months earlier in New Plymouth, the ones that promised they would give the couple a ride should they ever come to the south island. Right away the girls reminded them of this asking “Hey, why did you never call us when you were on the south island?” The two looked around uncomfortably and produced a few varieties to the ever popular “erm….” The truth of the matter was that our two friends completely forgot about this promised ride and subsequently had no good excuse. The girls however seemed to forgive them for this. It turns out that they were staying in Nelson, the very same place that had given our two boys so much trouble a few months earlier. If they had only remembered to call them it would have saved them hours and hours of walking and waiting for a car to pull over. The girls had to unpack their bags and settle into their room so they left while our little friends ordered and ate their delicious and nutritious meal. In honor of their two friends and because of the coaxing by Sasha, one of the waiters, the two decided to finally attend one of the parties hosted by the FijiExperience. Having heard a tale or two of the kind of games they played here the two were dreading the signal that would start them off. The first game started ominously as the players were given an egg and a spoon, but it turned out to be a simple egg and spoon race, who would have thought! Surprisingly the taller of the two even won a prize. Relieved that the games weren’t as weird as they feared they would be the two were much more confident for the second game. This game was musical chairs, only instead of sitting on a chair you had to grab a partner and act out a sexual position. Awkwardness galore as the two did their best to get eliminated as fast as possible but somehow always seemed to be grabbed by someone else and used in their vile attempts to win the game. Luckily they eventually managed to get eliminated and were allowed to sit down. During the party they got to chatting with four sassy German girls; Esra, Kathrin, Katharina (whom everyone called Katy) and Sandra. The girls were there on their holidays and were not with the FijiExperience like the others; they would stay at the resort for another week or two so. Soon it was way past our duo’s bed-time and they turned in for the night.

The next few days were spent hanging around the pool and playing piggy in the middle with the girls. Eventually the two boys decided they wanted to go snorkeling (since they were too poor to go diving again) and wouldn’t you know it, Esra and Sandra were just going to do a discovery scuba dive and the boys could tag along and snorkel out on the reef. The weather was beautiful, as it had been all week, and the visibility under water was great. The boys jumped in and started snorkeling with Kathrin and Katy while Esra and Sandra suited up for their dive. The reef consisted of several hill like formations that extended to just under the water surface, making it an ideal spot for snorkeling. The boys spotted all sorts of wondrous and colourful fish, one of which was called a parrot fish. This fish was not only odd because it had such bright and vivid colours but also because it ate the rock hard coral, producing a gnawing sound in the process. Take a few hundred of these fish and it sounds like there’s a drill hacking away at the reef. When the boys got tired of looking at the fish they tried to find Sandra and Esra but it wasn’t until they were coming back to the boat that they found them. They tried diving down to where they were but failed miserably as they couldn’t even come close, all attempts to attract their attention were in vain as well as the girls didn’t even notice them until they were back on the boat. The girls were very enthusiastic about their dive and it wasn’t long before they decided to do their open water. All the while days came and went, all spent by the pool and in the restaurant, all spent basking in the sun or cooling down in the shadows. Because Esra and Sandra were busy with their open water training the others went on a canoe trip to a neighbouring island. There wasn’t much to see on the actual island but a local boy came by to have a little chat, which was nice. The way back turned out to be infinitely harder than the way there as the wind was blowing full in their faces. After what seemed like ages they arrived back at their own beach where they sat in the sea cooling down. The fish were not scared of them at all and would actually swim under and over them.

After a few days another FijiExperience bus arrived, which meant another party. The boys weren’t particularly keen to join in on their silly games, but the girls insisted that they join in, so they were left with no choice. After the same “musical chairs” game there was a game where the group was divided into two teams and the team that would pass a ball through their legs to each other and where the last person would run to the front as soon as they had the ball. First team to have all people be in front won and the losing team would have to do something embarrassing. The team that the boys were in was doing good but not quite as good as the other team and was lagging behind slightly. When one of the boys was standing at the back waiting for the ball to be passed through the legs of the person in front of him the team decided to do something drastic and throw the ball rather than passing it on. Unfortunately the boy was not aware of this and looked away to see where the ball was at the very second that they threw it; as a result he missed a ball and kept waiting for the ball for at least 10 more seconds before the rest of the team decided to look back to see what the hold-up was. Needless to say they lost horribly and had to do something embarrassing; perform a routine from the movie “Moulin rouge”. None of the people in the team had any idea what to do so instead they decided to display the worst “sexy” dancing ever witnessed by mankind. After a while the winning decided that it was perhaps more punishing to have to watch the dancing than to perform it and allowed them to stop. After it was all over one of people from the FijiExperience came up with a new game for everyone to play. It was a simple game since all that was needed was a cardboard box. The box would be placed on the floor and everyone would get a turn to try and pick it up with their teeth; nothing other than your feet was allowed to touch the floor. If you didn’t manage to pick it up then you were out of the game. Once everyone had a turn a piece of the box would be cut off and the next round would start. This continued until the box was nothing more than a flat piece of cardboard and one of the boys and two other girls were the only ones left in the game. Because they could all pick it up a race was suggested where everyone would get a piece of cardboard and the first person to pick it up would win. To his own astonishment the boy actually won this round and was allowed to pick up a free drink at the bar.

Time flew by and soon came the day when the girl had to pack their bags and go back to their jobs in New Zealand. They were leaving really early in the morning and they didn’t feel like going to sleep at all, so our two friends hung out in their room and soon a furious pillow fight broke out. It got so bad that Jasper fled to the top of one of the closets. Eventually though the boys said goodbye and went to sleep. The following morning the girls were gone and the boys didn’t know how to entertain themselves anymore so they just sad by the pool all day being bored. In the evening they played some card games with some new people who had arrived with the new bus. A few days later the boys also hopped on the bus and went to Nadi to spend one day there spending their last money before catching the plane to NZ. Their trip through town started off nice and gentle and they felt very welcome as the people in front of the stores smiled and greeted them, asking where they were from. When they refused to let go of your hand and insisted that you check out their amazing store with all sorts of wonderful cheap wares they began to get a bit uncomfortable. After the third person had done this they felt like throwing away their bags and fleeing back to the taxi central as fast as possible. After they were done shopping and had bought some clothes that they would probably never wear again they headed back to their hostel. The night was quiet and boring and the boys were having a hard time enjoying themselves. Good thing they were going back the next day!

The following morning they got up really early so that they wouldn’t miss their plane and hopped in a taxi to the airport. When they got there their planes was on the board but two hours later than their ticket said it would be. Because it was the same flight number the boys figured the flight had just been moved to a later time. After an hour of waiting they could finally check in for their flight! They dragged their heavy bags to counter; one was still rearranging his bags when the other handed over his tickets to the lady behind the desk. The boy at the desk suddenly went quiet and turned around, shoving the tickets under the nose of the other boy. “Look it says may 6^th” “Hmm, that’s strange it’s not Thursday the 6^th, it’s Thursday the 8^th… Oh no wait, it’s not Thursday…” “Fuuuuuuuu!!!!!” They had missed their plane by two whole days; it seems they took “Fiji time” a bit too literal. When asked what they should do now the lady replied that they should go to the service desk, which they did. The service lady looked at them strangely when they said they had missed their plane. By two days. But agreed to see what she could do for them. She typed in our information and made a weird face at what the screen said. She grabbed a calculator and made some calculators; again she made a weird face. She showed the calculator to a colleague of her and said something in Fijian to which the colleague burst into laughter. This was not very promising. The lady turned to our two brave adventurers with a worried face and said “If you want to go on this plane it’ll cost you 400 New Zealand dollars”. This wasn’t good. The boys didn’t even have that much money left on their accounts! So they asked what it would cost if they went the next day, luckily this would only cost them 130 New Zealand dollar (around 70 euros) which wasn’t ideal but at least they could afford it. They could pay for them now if they wanted to, there was an ATM a little further up the airport where one of the boys went to get money while the other stayed to watch over the bags. When he got there it turns out that it was out of order and the closest other ATM was at least 10 minutes away by car. Things were as they always had been for the two. They agreed to pay for the tickets the day after and took a cab back to their resort where they were the laughing stock of the staff. Having barely enough Fiji Dollars left to pay for their meals they were bored out of their minds all day. Tropical paradise isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. The following morning they left early in the morning despite the fact that their plane wouldn’t leave till 4 pm, just be sure nothing would go wrong. But of course the ATM was still out of order so they had to ask the taxi driver to take them back to another ATM and then back to the airport again. By the time they were all ready and waiting by the service desk the tall one asked “Hey! Where’s my jacket!?” It was gone. After frantically calling the resort and the taxi company hundreds of times they had to accept that the coat was gone, and so was the camera that he had in it. Gone were the photos he had taken of Fiji. They had plenty of time to muse over this as the service desk didn’t open until 4 hours after they arrived at the airport. Eventually they managed to get on the plane back to New Zealand.

In New Zealand they spent their last money on souvenirs for the people back home so were forced to live on cheap food for their last remaining days in Auckland. To pass the time they visited the girls they met in Fiji and they even went out once. But this was on a Wednesday night and there was nobody else there… After a few days their trip was at an end and it was time to go home once more.

And so ends the tale of our two friends, back where it began, in a plane to Hong Kong. Soon they will pick up their normal lives and slowly start to forget the experiences they had and the people they met. Such is the tragedy of travelling; the traveler is allowed a taste of ultimate freedom; a true escape from modern day life with all its woes and limitations. But in the end the traveler is forced to go home and pick up his old life. No one can run far enough to escape reality.

Fiji Time

A few days before departing for Fiji we got a message from Siem, asking if we felt like hanging out. We had been doing nothing for too many days already, so the prospect of hanging out with Siem appealed to me. Just as we were preparing to go out, a guy from our hostel asked if we were going out, and if so if he could join. We told him we weren’t sure what exactly we were going to do, but he was welcome to join if he wanted to.
Turns out Siem was keen on going to the internet café to play some games first and so we headed out. At first our new friend didn’t feel like playing with us, but when we changed to playing Counter Strike he became very eager to join indeed. Turns out he used to play this game a lot back home and proceeded to kick our ass for a while before we headed out to drink.
We weren’t going to let the fact that it was Wednesday spoil our fun and followed Siem as he lead us to a nice bar he’d found the other day. The bar was pretty empty and emptier still by the time we finished our first beer, so off we went in search of another bar. When we entered the next bar Sebastian (the new guy) was called over by some girls, and the rest of the group moved over there while I went to order our next round. When I’d paid and collected the beers I returned to their table and found that of the 6 girls there were only 2 left, and one of them was leaving to play pool. I’m still not sure what happened but Jasper took the blame for chasing all the girls away. Eventually we all moved to a table close to the pool tables and it didn’t take us long to scare away the last girl (Jasper took the blame for this one as well). She was going to “sit with some friends”, not mentioning that these friends were imaginary and occupied a small table outside in the cold. Ouch.
We then moved to a really tiny karaoke bar where a bunch of preppy kids was busy raping “material girl” by Madonna, and ordered our next round. We joined the group in shouting incoherently to the tune of Madonna before a couple took the microphone and rocked a couple of songs. After a while most of the people left and so we decided it was a good time to call it a night. Because Siem knew the way we only walked in a circle once, all the while 3 out of 4 were complaining about having to go to the bathroom. We decided we’d stop by the McDonalds for a quick toilet break and a burger. To our horror we suddenly remembered that the toilet in the McDonalds close after 10, so we just went in some dark alley.
We went to the McDonalds nevertheless for a quick burger and an ice-cream, during which we had a nice conversation with a bunch of random people.
The following day we went on a little sightseeing tour with Siem, he said he knew a nice place with some old defensive cannons. On the way there we ended up on a nice little cliff at the edge of the ocean, but nice though it was it, was decidedly not the place with the canons nor even remotely in the right direction. Prepared as we were we didn’t have a very detailed map of the area and decided to just backtrack until we reached something recognisable.
We soon found a point which we recognised on the map, took a wrong turn and found an excellent spot to pull over and make a u-turn. Only we didn’t notice the giant pothole in the side of the road so Siem drove straight over it, or well. . . straight in it is more exact I guess. We then backed up, through the pothole, surprisingly the only damage was to the exhaust and it wasn’t even real damage, just something that popped out of it’s rubber clamp.
After this slight mishap we headed in the right direction and after one of the scariest rides of my life, past endless drops without guardrails and sheep on the road, we arrived at the gun placement site. We parked the car and headed towards the cannons, apparently this used to be the NZ defence against a Japanese invasion. After about 20 minutes we arrived at the guns, or rather at where the guns used to be. Of course the government wasn’t stupid enough to let the actual guns in place. . . unfortunately.
Still, we had a great time exploring the bunkers that accompanied the guns and me and Siem did a great rendition of the Egyptian we learned from Alex at the Milford Sounds, Jasper recorded it with his camera but unfortunately the video got lost along with his camera.
That evening Outi and Netta were also arriving in Christchurch and were planning to go to the same hostel as us, they asked Siem if he wouldn’t mind picking them up from the bus stop.
Siem didn’t mind, and we said we’d come as well, but considering his past successes with parking inside Christchurch Siem decided it was probably a good idea to pick them up on foot. When the girls arrived the first thing they asked was “Where is your car?”, they didn’t look too happy when we told ‘em we were on foot. But we helped them carry their stuff and soon we arrived at our hostel. Siem had to go back to the house of the family he was staying at, not in the least place to fix that exhaust. We hung out at the hostel the rest of the night. We had to leave at 5 in the morning to catch our flight and as it progressively got later and later we decided we’d just stay up all night. Though eventually/ the girls got really sleepy and we all sort of dozed off. At 5 the alarm went and we quietly packed the remainder of our stuff, said goodbye to the very sleepy Fins and hopped into the shuttle. We picked up a few more people before he dropped us off at Christchurch airport, from where we’d fly to Auckland to catch our flight to Fiji. We checked in our luggage and headed through the security gate without problems. Well, almost without problems. Jasper was called over to the side and one of the security personnel reached inside his backpack (his small one) and pulled out his pocket knife. The look on Jasper’s face was priceless. Apparently he remembered to take his knife out of his pocket but instead of putting it in his main backpack he put it in the one he was going to use for hand luggage. Fortunately the lady was really nice and said he could just check his bag in as main luggage and wouldn’t have to hand over his knife. So while he did this I waited. . . and waited. . . And they called out that our seat numbers were asked to board the plane. . . and I waited. . . And they called out that the other seat numbers could board the plane. . . and then finally Jasper showed up and we raced to the boarding gate and went to our seats. We made it!
After falling asleep a dozen times we arrived in Auckland where we couldn’t check-in for another 2 hours. We called home with our BBH phone cards, and Jasper managed to use up all his credit in 10 minutes. Not so surprising because he was calling to a Dutch cell phone.
After a while we could finally check in and headed to one of the bars to have a drink. We barely managed to stay awake until boarding time. This time we managed to safely get through all the security checks and when we boarder the plane we were greeted by the Fijian flight staff in their colourful shirts. That and the tropical music they were playing made us feel as if we were in Fiji already.
A sleepy plane ride later and we touched down on Fijian soil. The exit walkway was outdoors and as we exited the plane a wall of hot humid air smacked us straight across the face. The sky didn’t look too promising though, it was grey and cloudy with vague promises of rain.
After we managed to get through customs and all the other safety checks with only marginal problems (we only stood in the wrong line once or twice, and Jasper couldn’t find one of the declaration cards he filled in earlier) we found that it was now night. In about 30 minutes the sky had changed from light to pitch black. We asked a man where we could find the pick-up for our resort and after he’d lead us to the appropriate spot we started to talk. After he found out we didn’t have a set plan for our trip he immediately tried to get us to go to a resort which probably belonged to family of his. About 10 minutes later our ride arrived and we headed out, along with two other girls. We suddenly came to a stop because there was a truck blocking the way, after waiting for a minutes for the truck to go away the driver decided to just go around it. Then his headlights suddenly moved over the reason for the truck; a car had missed a bridge by about 2 meters and had driven straight into the ditch, little did we know then, but this wouldn’t be the last time we’d find evidence of bad driving in Fiji.
A short ride later we arrived at our resort where we’d booked 2 nights in a 2 bed dorm (so basically a twin room), but upon arriving found that something went wrong in the booking and they’d put us in a normal dorm room. It wasn’t a great start of our trip but I figured it was only for two nights so I didn’t mind that much. It was a lot better than what happened to the girls that came with us, their booking didn’t even arrive there and they already paid as well.
We moved our stuff into the room and picked our beds, the room wasn’t especially luxurious and the bathroom was pretty crummy but I guess you can’t really expect the same quality as in NZ. We had dinner in the restaurant, which was pretty good and pretty cheap, before retiring to bed quite early to catch up on some sleep. The next day was quite warm, but not too warm, despite the grey clouds. We chose to spend it by hanging in the hammocks and swimming in the pool while we contemplated on where to go to next. The original plan was to go to the island group to the west of Fiji, which is apparently where everyone goes, but after talking to a Finnish guy named Tuomo we decided against this. Instead we headed south and east to Pacific Harbour. We had to take a taxi to another hotel to catch the bus to Uprising Beach Resort in Pacific Harbour. As we walked up the driveway to the resort we passed a security checkpoint where the “guards” were very friendly and all shouted “Bula” at us as we passed them. The staff behind the counter was equally friendly though it took them a while to check us in, and when we asked about the shark dive more than a few minutes passed before she’d called the company and told us they were booked full for at least a week. This was a bit of a setback because we had grand plans of touring the country and were on a tight schedule.
After some discussion we decided to wait there for a week, since the shark dive is one of the more memorable things to do in Fiji, and cross a few other locations off the list.
To keep ourselves busy during the week we booked another dive for during the week.
The resort looked nice, despite the grey skies, it consisted of a ton of small wooden huts called “Bures” and there was one big one which served as a dorm. This thing housed about 26 beds so it was a large dorm, but somehow it didn’t feel like it at all. The weather wasn’t good enough to swim, so instead we explored the small town of Pacific Harbour. It had a small tourist attraction called “arts village” but really, it was just a tourist attraction. The people were very friendly though, and every single person there yelled out Bula as you passed them. We pulled some money out of the wall and went back to the resort. It rained for the next two days, the grass slowly turned into swamp and the road was littered with deep pools. Mercifully the rain stopped on the day of our first dive. We had to wake up early to get ready in time for our pick-up. Our ride arrived 15 minutes late, Fiji time, and we and a few other people got in. As we started to talk to the others we found out that they were going for a shark dive, but this confused us as we were told that there was no shark dive with that company on that particular day. But we paid no further attention to it until we arrived and they were told that they were in the place. Two of them got back in the van to be driven back, and a third asked if they could wait while he made sure he had to be in the other place. After he was sure he was in the wrong place he went to get back in the car, but this had by that time disappeared. Unfortunately for him he had to wait for the car to come back. In the meantime we headed over to the shed to sort out our gear. We also had to sign a release form stating that if we were to be eaten by shark we would in no way be able to sue the company, after all we were the ones stupid enough to dive in waters where sharks are frequently spotted.
After we had our gear sorted out we sat waiting for the others to get ready and were soon joined by two Chinese and one Japanese men. One of them carried a huge camera, jokingly stating that with that thing he didn’t need any extra weights. After we got on the boat it was a short ride along the river past another resort, where we would pick up some more people, before heading out to our dive site. As I got talking to one of the Chinese men he mentioned these people and said that they were from “Lussia”. I tried to guess what he meant (Austria? Latvia?) but I had to wait for the newcomers to speak before I realised he meant Russia. Anyways, he was wrong because they were from Czech Republic. Evidently it pays to be rich in the Czech Republic because besides what appeared to be a family there were two fat old guys with two beautiful young girlfriends. After a short briefing it was determined that me and Jasper would get a guide for ourselves, which was nice because it meant we weren’t all going to swim in each others way. The Czechs and the Asians got their own guide as well.
Before we went to our own dive-site we dropped a guy off at an island where he would do his scuba discovery dive. When we arrived at our first dive site we all geared up and jumped in the water. The guides had told us beforehand that the water was quite cold, but it felt nice and warm to me and the viz appeared to be great. I spent a few minutes looking around trying to find Jasper and our guide, when one of the others directed my attention to some people under the water; they were waiting for me. Because my gauges were in imperial units I had no idea how deep we were going, and only an approximate idea of how much air I had left, so I was slightly nervous going into this dive. On top of this my gauge leaked a little bit of air, it didn’t seem serious but I wasn’t sure if this would affect the accuracy of its readings. It didn’t fortunately and after a few minutes I could relax and enjoy our first coral dive. The visibility was phenomenal compared to our previous dives and even in our shorty wetsuits the water was very agreeable!
We spent about 40 minutes enjoying the beautiful corals and colourful fish before heading back to the boat. Jasper had some trouble getting up because his BCD leaked, but we managed to get back on the boat safely. It was quite a wait before the other divers came up, especially the Asian bunch they must have stayed down for almost 70 minutes. After everyone was back on the boat we went back to the island where we dropped the guy off earlier and were told we could go for a quick snorkel if we wanted to. I wanted to see more so I jumped in the water and swam to the nearby reef. Unfortunately they didn’t have any actual snorkels with them so I had to contend with just my mask, needless to say I ran out of breath a lot and scared away all the fish because I kept popping up for air. Still, it was a nice way to spend my surface interval.
We mentioned our gear malfunctions to our guide and they managed to fix them for us and our second dive went perfectly.
The scenery was pretty much the same as on our first dive, but it was still very enjoyable.
After we came back to our resort we had a nice lunch in the restaurant and hung out by the pool. We then had 2 days to kill before our shark dive and as we started talking to some of the people there one guy told us he was going to take a bus to Suva the next day. After we did nothing that next day he came back and told us about it, and it all sounded quite nice to us. Because I wanted to see if they had any disposable underwater cameras I wanted to go as well and Jasper agreed with me, so the next day we got up reasonably early (10 am) to catch the bus. At the little shelter which functioned as a bus stop there were 2 people waiting, locals, and they told us all about the busses there. Apparently there were 3 different companies running busses to and from Suva all stopping at different places and charging different prices. We had no idea which was which but were kind enough to stop, what they told us, was the right bus. It looked pretty good for Fiji standards and they even had a Television in it! As I sat down I was curious to see what movie they were watching, but it seemed like the bus driver forgot to press the play button because the image wasn’t moving at all. It took me 10 minutes to realise that it was in fact still playing, but that the many bumps in the road were causing the DVD to freeze all the time. In the 30 minutes it took us to get to Suva the movie didn’t progress for more than 5 minutes. The bus drove us past dilapidated looking villages, across unpaved muddy roads. When we arrived in Suva it dropped us off at a busy bus station with people trying to sell their wares wherever you looked. It was a little bit intimidating but we decided to just start walking and see where we’d end up. After a while some guy came up to us and asked if we needed any help, I asked him where I could find an underwater camera and he immediately offered to take us to the best place in town. I knew he just wanted money from us, but I figured it would save us a lot of wandering through town and was probably worth the couple of dollars. The first store only sold non-disposable film cameras for a price I wasn’t willing to pay. The second one didn’t have any cameras at all, only shirts, but it was a “good store where the profit goes to the local villages”. Right. The one after that did sell the underwater cameras and despite them being slightly pricey I decided to buy one. As we were walking to a store where they sold scuba supplies, Jasper wanted to check for a mask and snorkel, I popped into the store that sold shirts to see if they had any that would serve as a nice souvenir. Most of them were garbage and so cheesy you could use them for fondue, but they had one which said BulaBong (Referring to the brand BillaBong) and this struck me as being surprisingly witty. I bought it immediately.
After some fruitless searching for a mask for Jasper we gave our guide a few dollars and decided to make a stop at the theatre. Compared to the rest of the city, which was crowded and dirty, the theatre looked amazing. But in retrospect it looked just like any other theatre.
We watched a movie called Centurion, which was pretty good, and all the while I was debating whether or not to go to a pharmacy. I had managed once again to get a cold at the worst possible time, the day before a dive we’d been waiting all week for. My ears were hurting and my nose was clogged, but the pharmacy was a long walk away and by the end of the movie I was feeling sorta better already. I decided to just take it easy, go to sleep really early and bring a handkerchief on the boat. On the way back our bus stopped at every little town we passed and even though the bus was already full every second stop an entire class of children would enter, and then leave 3 stops further. This whole thing seemed a bit bizarre to me, and it took us more than twice as long to get back than it took to get there. Eventually our bus stopped in pacific harbour and I was glad to get off.
After dinner I went straight to bed, but the big light in the dorm was still on and I just couldn’t find the switch to turn it off. There must have been at least 12 different light switches there, and I tried all of them but none of them were the right one! After a while a girl came to drop her stuff in the dorm and she asked me if I was looking for something. When I answered that I was looking for the light switch she offered to help me, but even with the two of us we just couldn’t find it! Eventually a guy walked in and when we asked him he said “Oh yeah, it’s this one.” *click* It was in the least logical place imaginable, hidden behind one of the bunk beds at waist height. Anyways, I could finally go to sleep. I could try anyways, because the sounds of the party down at the restaurant were coming in so clearly that I could hear every word that was said. The next day we had to get up early again to catch our ride. There was a big group of people from our resort going, including the girl who helped me search for the light earlier. She was called Amanda, and this was going to be her 2nd dive after her Open water course. After we got to talking to the other people we found out that most of them had only done a few dives. This was a mile pole in our diving career! For the first time ever we weren’t the ones with the least amount of experience! On the boat ride over we received our briefing and it appeared that our dive would consist of 3 stages, each at a different depth and with different types of sharks feeding on the bait. Once we got the feeding grounds we all geared up and jumped in the water. We were told to follow the guides to the first feeding site where there was a small wall of coral behind which we could sit. There were about 11 of us so it took a while for everyone to get comfortable, but once we were the feeding started. They opened a container with pieces of fish that they’d placed there earlier and immediately fish started to appear from everywhere and it wasn’t long before the first sharks showed up as well. They varied in sizes from small to freaking huge and they weren’t shy at all, at times they would come so close you could touch them. But because of the risk of losing a hand or two no-one actually did this. The feeders would drag the bait towards us just as the sharks were about to chomp down and as they chased the bait they showed us their gaping mouths filled with razor sharp teeth. When the food was gone we moved up to the next feeding place where slightly smaller sharks were attracted by the food. There were grey sharks, white tips, black tips and nurse sharks. After this we moved up to the last place of the dive and then back to the surface. During the surface interval we discussed our dive excitedly over a cup of Milo and some cookies. When we were about to jump in the water for the second dive someone noticed some bubble like things in the water. They turned out to be organisms (they aren’t jellyfish apparently) of the same family as the Portuguese Man o' War, which can deliver very painful stings which can be fatal in rare cases. So in the end nobody was very eager to jump in the water and we waited a bit for the group to float past us. When they all seemed to be gone we were told to jump in the water and head straight for the bottom. Funnily enough we were about to jump in the water with a dozen hungry bull sharks and all of us were afraid of a small bubble like creature. We all managed to get to the bottom without getting stung though, in fact we didn’t see any of them again. This time we were told to lie on our bellies behind a tiny coral wall and to keep our down as much as possible because these sharks were the real deal.
After they opened the container with food it took a minute or two before the first shark turned up, but once it did there were a whole bunch more that followed. These sharks were big, bigger than any we’d seen so far, ranging up to somewhere between 3 and 4 meters and extremely fat. As they grabbed the huge chunks of fish they stretched their mouths open wide enough to swallow your average man without chewing. As I looked up to see them circling above me, I noticed a huge ball of fish slowly coming our way. When I looked closer I saw that there was a diver inside the ball and that he appeared to be carrying a wheelie bin. When I got over the surrealness of the situation I realized that this must be the next load of fish food.
For this dive I also took the underwater camera I bought earlier. It couldn’t go any deeper than 15 meters, so the first dive was too deep, and this dive was right on that limit so I hoped it would hold out long enough (it did and I got some nice pictures with it). The marine biologist that was with us to capture some footage swam over to us at some point and held up a shark tooth. He looked like he was going to give it to me but at the last moment he changed his mind and gave it to Amanda who was lying next to me, girls have all the luck.
When the dive was over we headed back to the resort on what felt like the longest boat ride ever. Me and Jasper both had to go to the toilet really bad (diving does that to you) and as we stopped on the river to catch a volleyball they accidentally threw in the water I nearly lost it.
Before the boat was well and truly tied to the shore we jumped out and raced to the bathroom.
There was an option to buy a DVD from the dive, but it was a bit too expensive for our liking. Fortunately for us Amanda bought it and promised to send it to us later.
The rest of the day we spent hanging out with Amanda and eventually with Leon, a German guy we drafted for our volleyball game. By the end of the day we looked at the list of activities they had available and noticed something called “Horse-boarding”, it was free too!
Apparently it was a bit like wake boarding, only then you would get pulled along by a horse.
Unfortunately we noticed this too late and we couldn’t do it anymore as we would leave the next day. We still had fun playing pool though, despite Leon totally kicking our asses.
The following morning we said farewell to Amanda and Leon and headed for the bus-stop to catch a bus to Suva and from there to Rakiraki.

There she blows!

Easter weekend is obviously very popular in New Zealand. Fortunately, besides following murphy's law wherever we go, we seem to have the luck of the Irish. We managed to score 2 of the last 3 seats on the bus and one of the last spots on the campsite. Unfortunately our neighbours had pretty big tents and pretty big cars to boot! As a result we had to squeeze our tent in an area about the size of a grape. The fact that our tent was about just as small did nothing to reduce our aggrovation.
In order to quickly escape the flock of children we headed into town soon after setting up our tent. The town wasn't much to look at, but the landscape off in the distance was amazing! About the only thing in town we were interested in was the helicopter whale watching and wouldn't you know it, that was about the only thing in town that was closed! But, we weren't in a hurry so we just shrugged our shoulders and went to the supermarket for dinner. The next day brought clouds and rain, though it reminded us a lot of home we found it hard to appreciate. Obviously this wasn't the best weather for a helicopter ride so we booked it for the next day which was supposed to be better.
We did our best to pass the rest of the day without being bored out of our minds, this involved a lot of watching TV and restlessly surfing the internet. Where would we be without technology, eh? In a small tent not even large enough to sit in, while a virtually limitless amount of water pours down on it, that's where!
As we were attending to these very important matters we received a text from Netta saying that they would be arriving Kaikoura that very afternoon. We were expecting to see them again, but not this soon so this was a nice surprise. We met up with them after dinner (and after they had a sauna, the lucky sods). They came with a friend of theirs called Chris who seemed like a nice guy. After thoroughly investigating the Kaikoura nightlife we dived into the first pub we could find. For some strange Kiwi reason they couldn't serve alchohol to people who weren't eating anything (some weird easter law), so we had to order chips for 5 people even though everyone was still full from their dinner. Even though the girls had made fun of our love for computer games on numerous occasions they were the first ones who noticed the Nintendo Wii in the back of the pub. We decided to play a game of bowling, because you can only play that with 4 people, me and Outi had to team up. But it was good that we did because we totally smashed the others! Well, except for Jasper. And maybe Netta. But we totally beat Chris by 5 points! Of course the sponsors for a professional bowling team started to pour in immediately, but me and Outi decided to stop while we were on top of our game.
The bar closed at 12 so the barkeeper kicked us out at 11:30. Apparently there weren't enough people buying drinks and we were obviously not good enough for him to stay open for us. Kiwis. . .
The following morning promised to be a beautiful day, but we soon found that days can't be trusted to keep their word because when we opened our tent the grey skies were already waiting for us. We checked back at the helicopter place to see if there were any extra people for our flight (this would save us $100 each) but there weren't. We decided to wait about an hour or two in hopes of more people and better weather. But after about 40 minutes we decided to just go ahead with it while it was still dry. When we came back to the office we paid for the trip and were then told to hurry to the helicopter. Apparently the whale had just come up to the surface so if we hurried over there we would be able to spot him. We quickly climbed into the helicopter and were buzzing with excitement while the pilot started to warm up the engine. Determined to catch the take-off on video we had our cameras ready and rolling, but after 5 minutes we were still on the ground. Even though the videos of us sitting in a vibrating helicopter were extremely interesting *cough* we decided to delete them. The pilot told us the whale had gone down again and that we could exit the helicopter while we waited a while. He gave us some quick information on the whales in the area and why they were there. Because there was a large underwater mountain chain just south of Kaikoura the current coming from the north is forced land inwards, this brings a lot of plankton and other small sea life with, which in turn triggers a chain reaction all the way up to the whales. They mainly get sperm whales in the area, though they have the occasional orcas and blue whales as well.
After about 20 minutes we boarded the helicopter again, this time it only took our pilot a minute or two to fire up the helicopter and take off. This was such a big change from last time that I almost didn't get it on camera. The take-off was smooth but there was still something uncomfortable about it at first. It sort of felt like sitting in a cardboard box that's slowly rising higher and higher, tilting forward as it does. Soon this feeling passed however and I could turn to the scenery that was slowly expanding before my eyes. Off in the distance we could already see two of the whale watch boats waiting on the spot where the whale was expected to pop up. When we got there there was still no whale to be seen though, so we sort of circled around to see if we could spot it. As we were doing this jasper asked the pilot if he was steering with his feet. The pilot replied by saying it was a combination of things. "If I use the feet pedals I turn using the rear rotor, see?" he said as the helicopter made a few very strange maneuvers through the sky. "Then, if I want to speed up I just point the nose forward and do this." And the nose of helicopter tilted forward to a nauseating angle as it accelerated to a gut-wrenching speed. "Then if I want to quickly make a turn I just do this." And then the whole world turn upside down. The helicopter tilted so far sideways that what was once the side of the helicopter was now the bottom and what was the bottom was now the side. I hung on to my chair for dear life even though I knew this was a perfectly safe action. Probably. When he was done stunting er... I mean explaining he started to circle around again, by now a plane had joined our little whale watching show. We paid for 30 minutes of airtime and when we still didn't see any sign of a whale after 15 minutes we started to get seriously worried. The company had a 98% success rate of seeing whales, we should have known that those were horrible odds for us. Even if they had had a 99.99% success rate we'd manage to be that one 0.01%.
Just as I was wondering whether the helicopter ride alone was worth the exuberant amount of money we'd forked over for this little escapade there was some chatter over the radio. The pilot immediately cut short his search circle and raced the plane to the whale (apparently only 3 vessels are allowed close to a whale at a time). We were there first (tough luck mr. plane!) and started to circle the whale closely. I must have taken about 40 pictures before I figured I should probably look at the whale with my own eyes as well, and not just through my camera. The whale sort of looked like a sausage that occasionally had water rising up from it, but in a good way! All in all we must have taken at least a hundred pictures (and a couple of videos for good measure) before we headed back to solid ground.
We were supposed to go surfing with the girls (Chris had left to catch a plane) but the weather was so horrible that we decided not to. Instead, the girls wanted to take a coastal walk to the seal colonies. When we came across a playground none of us could resist the tempting call of the majestic sea-saw. When we got to the seal colony we found a vast number of tourists harassing the seals, blatantly ignoring the "keep your distance" sign and coming well within touching distance of the animals. Since we wished to have nothing to do with this we decided to carry on along the coast in search of some more seals. It wasn't long before we found them, in fact we nearly stepped on some that were dozing in the grass. One of them seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly as he was stretching and rubbing himself on the grass in exaggerated movements. We then climbed the hill back to the path where the girls wanted to hitch-hike back to town *cough*lazy!!*cough*. We didn't though, partly because me and jasper didn't want to, mainly because there was no-one to hitch-hike with. After a walk that seemed much longer on the way back than on the way there we arrived back in town. None of us had eaten anything besides breakfast and it was now past 4 PM so we were starving. We decided to stop and eat in the very first restaurant we saw, so after passing up on a ton of them we settled down in the burger shop at the other end of town. We then split up to freshen up. Later the girls came over to our campsite to watch the movie channel, unfortunately for them all the good movies were gone. We watched 10,000 BC and a movie directed by Ben Affleck (personal request for Ben: Stop directing movies at once!). The next day we didn't do much seeing as it was pissing rain, we tried to watch some more movies but they were all so horrible that we gave up. Then the girls received a message from Siem that he was coming to Kaikoura as well. We met up after dinner for some good old card gaming fun. They also had a fireplace with an ominous message next to it "Don't overfeed the fire, if you set off the fire-alarm you will be fined $1500." I could already see the fire-alarm going off as soon as I would light even one match so I tried not to interfere with the firemaking too much. Us guys couldn't really get a good fire going, but luckily everyone in Finland still lives in a cave where they have to make fire out of snow and frozen poo so Outi managed to get the fire going in no time. We already started our card game while the girls had to take care of some stuff on the internet, and a Danish girl wanted to join us. Now I won't bore you with the details, but I'll say this: Danish girls are weird. Of course we ended up being the very last people awake in the hostel, and by 2 AM we were hungry again. Luckily the girls had kept some rice in Tupperware containers, so we ended up eating rice with sweet chili sauce and Muesli bars in the middle of the night. Weird, but tasty.
The following day me and Jasper hopped on the bus and said farewell to our friends once again. Hopefully not for the last time though.
When we got to Christchurch we booked into our old hostel only to be told that we were lucky indeed because there were only 2 beds left. Luck of the Irish indeed! I'm beginning to wonder if Scheffe isn't an Irish name after all.
With 9 days until our flight to Fiji we'll probably be wandering around town a lot.

Photos

Let the good times roll

Christchurch was going to be a short stop for us before we headed to kaikoura. Just a day or two and then we'd continue. The first day (well, actually the second but we arrived in the evening of the first day) we headed into town to see if we could find any travel agencies and after checking the internet we came across a backpacker travel agency. After about an hour we had picked a flight on the 15th of april and we'd return 3 weeks later. We decided to let her hold the flight and that we'd come back the next day to pay and book a hostel. We spent the rest of the day in an internet cafe. The next day we headed back to the agency pay for our flight and accomodation with a huge stack of 20$ bills in our wallet (900$ worth). When the girl that helped us the day before tried to book the flights she'd reserved for us she found that they were gone, even though the machine had told her that we had 48 hours to pay for them. After a lot of calling back and forth it turned out that the seats were gone and that there was nothing we could do about it. Luckily we could find 2 tickets for 2 days later, we then booked a hostel for the first 2 days and a shuttle to the airport (it's going to pick us up at 5:15 AM!). However they couldn't get hold of the hostel so they'd have to send them and e-mail and we'd have to come back later to see if they had space for us. Unfortunately the next day was saturday and they were closed in the weekends so we'd have to come back on monday. The whole ordeal took about 2.5 hours and afterwards we spent some more time in an internet cafe (don't ask).

That evening we made pancakes and while we were doing this we started talking with a Dutch guy who had just checked in with two Finnish girls he travelled with, turns out they were in the same dorm as us. After dinner we played cards and just had a lot of fun with the occasional outburst of singing and dancing (without even a drop of alcohol as well!). We both shared a bit of our language and we now know haw to say "I need a hug" (Mula on halipula) and "Cheers!" (Holokyn kolokyn) and we taught them to say "Hey cutey" (hey lekker ding) and "Want to kiss?" (Zoenen?). We ended up playing and talking until 2 O' clock in the morning and the asian girl that shared the room with us probably wasn't very happy with us! She got us back in the morning though when she got up really early (at 8 or 9!) and started walking in and out of the room a lot and opening and closing every single zipper on her bag. We walked to the city centre together in hopes of seeing "the wizard" (a strange fellow who dresses up as a wizard and holds speeches on the square). Unfortunately we didn't see the wizard so we just went our seperate ways; Siem and the girls (Netta and Outi) went to the library to look for jobs while me and Jasper had important bussiness to attend to in the internet cafe *cough*computergames*cough*.

That evening was filled with a lot more cards, dancing and language lessons, the girls even baked a delicious chocolate cake and before we knew it it was around 2 again. The asian girl must really hate us by now. The following morning however she woke up really early again and packed her bag to leave. We were all really wondering who'd replace her and were hoping for someone nice!

This time we took the car to town in hopes of catching a glimpse of the wizard but we were disappointed once more. However there was a funny Scottish guy swalling swords and electric breadknives, he even walked over glass! We went our seperate ways once more as the girls went to the library again to look for jobs, Siem went to park his car and would join Jasper and me in the internet cafe later. The three of us ended up spending the entire day playing video games, the girls were very disappointed in us for wasting our time so badly and called us to ask when we were coming back. We then headed back to the garage where Siem had parked his car only to find that the garage had closed 15 minutes earlier. Siem decided to let his car in there until the next morning. That is, until he remembered that all his stuff (including his sleeping bag) was still in the car and that he'd need it to sleep. As we were thinking of what we were going to do next a girl said that she'd already called the security agency to come and pick up her car and that they'd arrive in a few minutes. 1 minute later they showed up and opened the gate; they had to pay but because there was two of them they could split the cost. We hung out with an American girl called Evelyn for a while and me, Jasper and Siem made pancakes for our group. After the pancakes the girls thought it might be fun to go to to an arcade hall. We had to hurry a bit because the hall closed at 11 and we didn't finish eating until 8:30 but we ended up having a lot of fun there playing dance dance revolution and guitar hero and the likes. The girls also wanted to use one of those asian photo booths so we had something to remember eachother by. the photo's ended up being extremely tiny but it was still worth it.

This time it wasn't a chinese girl we were waking up, but two german guys (who according to Netta and Outti weren't very nice). They retalliated by rustling plastic bags all morning. Siem was going to check out and continue today (he was actually planning on doing that the day before but decided against it). Before he went he agreed to come into town with us to use up our last arcade hall credit and have some last minute fun with us. He had found a wwoofin adress and was going there that day, but since he never said what time he'd be coming he figured he could arrive whenever he wanted to. After we played some DDR and Guitar hero (I even beat some guy who wanted to play against me!) the girls went job hunting again and us guys went for a last round of computer gaming. By the time we snapped out of our computer game state it was 7 and started to walk back to the hostel (Siem decided to leave his car there after what happened last time). However as we approached the hostel Siem's car was nowhere to be seen. We were afraid it was stolen, since it had all Siem's stuff in there as well, it turned out to be towed away. We waited with the girls while he went to the police station to get his car back. When he finally returned after two hours it turned out that he couldn't get it back that evening; his car had been towed away because it was within 1.5 meters of a drive-way though it wasn't blocking it at all. We had some carrot cake that the girls made, which was peculiar but very nice. After another fun night of cards and music we each headed to our own rooms (we were too late to get the same dorm again so we were split up all over the hostel). The following morning we all said goodbye to Siem and me and jasper headed into town with the girls to book our busticket to kaikoura. The girls wanted to do something fun on our last day (they were going on the next day as well) so we went to the gondola just outside of town. After a 20 minute busride we arrived at a barren landscape with a couple of hills scattered around. The gondola and the hill itself weren't impressive at all, even the most interesting attraction (the time tunnel) was closed. Still, we all had fun hanging out. When we got back in town we all had an ince-cream before the girls went off job-hunting again (this time they found a job that they really liked, I hope they get it).

The following morning we had to say goodbye to them, unfortunately, as they got picked up by a friend of theirs.

Now we're waiting for our bus to Kaikoura.

What was supposed to be just a day or two turned out to be well over a week, but it was time well spent!



http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20April%202/



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QorGHvqpP8E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-0XEaipuP0

On the road again

We managed to get to Invercargill in one piece, and booked into a nice quiet hostel. Our tent decided to break again (only about a week after we got it replaced) so we headed to Kathmandu once more. After trying to fix the zipper for a while the guy behind the counter gave up and announced that he would just replace the whole tent for us (last time they only replaced the outer tent). However we'd have to come back the next day because we didn't bring our tent poles. Because we had nothing to do we decided to go to the cinema to try and watch a 3D movie, but just like the other 3 times we tried to watch a 3D movie here they weren't playing one, Doh! So we just watched Greenzone instead, which wasn't too bad. The next morning we picked up our brand new tent, which was actually a newer version than the one we had (and was about 500 dollars more expensive!). We wasted some time on the internet and headed back to our Hostel.
The following day we walked for an hour before arriving at the edge of town so we could start hitching a ride, but before we got our bags off our backs a car stopped. The guy obviously saw that we were planning to hitch-hike and offered to take us to Gore, which was about an hour further up the road. He dropped us off at the edge of town where it took us just over two and a half hours (!) to get our next ride. We finally ended up in Dunedin where we checked into another hostel (no campsites in town here), which was actually really nice and cozy. We spent a day exploring town and decided to go to Oamaru the next day to check out the penguins. After a long hour of walking we reached the start of the motorway and started to hitch-hike. After about 20 minutes a guy stopped and took us a short while up the road to the next town. From here another guy took us halfway to Oamaru. Rain then proceeded to piss down and after 5 seconds we were drenched, luckily we managed to get a ride after about 15 minutes, all the way to Oamaru this time. Oamaru actually looked very nice, it had a Victorian theme to it and the buildings all looked very clean. The campsite wasn't too flash, but it gave us a chance to test out our brand new tent. Turns out it was the exact same tent as the one we had, only with different colours, totally worth $500! That night we checked out the penguins, it was an hour walking to the first colony. Here Yellow-eyed penguins (one of the rarest penguins in the world) came ashore just before sundown. When we arrived there there was already a penguin ashore, he was standing in the bushes in plain view. After about half an hour of staring at the same penguin we decided to head to the other colony. This one was occupied by blue penguins, also called little penguins. We sat down on the huge podium they made on the edge of the sea to watch them come ashore. After about half an hour, just as it was starting to turn dark we saw the first wave of penguins swim towards shore. You first saw them as a swarm of little black spots, usually about 7 at a time. They were hard to spot at first because it was so dark, but once you saw them they were quite easy to follow. Even though it seemed like they got a brutal pounding as the waves crashed them onto the shore they were quite alright. We were told we couldn't take any pictures because they didn't want any flashes to accidentally go off, but when we were walking back to the campsite we found a few penguins that were coming ashore at a different spot so we took a few pictures of them here (making very sure that we'd turned off our flash). The next day we explored town, especially the old part of town was nice, it had a cool dutch bakery and a very nice 2nd hand book store. Of course I couldn't control myself and bought 3 more books, my bag is getting heavier and heavier. . .
When we started to hitch-hike to Christchurch I wasn't really feeling it as much as usual and because of the long distance (3 and a half hours) between Oamaru and Christchurch we were fairly pessimistic.
When at 2:30 pm we still didn't find a ride we decided to change our goal a bit so we wouldn't arrive at the hostels too late to find a bed. But just as I was writing our new destination on our sign a car stopped and the lady that got out offered to take us all the way to Christchurch.

http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%2020/

Yally!

Getting from Queenstown to Te Anau was surprisingly easy, though we had to squeeze all our bags with us on the back seat again. The weather was slowly turning bad with grey skies and fierce winds, so for the first time in ages I had to put on my sweater. After booking our accomodation we decided to go for the dive trip into Milford sounds despite the fact that the two dives were only 25 minutes long (this was because we had to get over a mountain on the way back and a longer dive would make us risk decompression sickness). We had to get up at 5:30 the following morning and drowsily got in the van that would take us to the sounds. It was to be a 2 hour journey and it was still too dark to see anything outside so we just tried to catch some sleep. When we got to the dock in Milford Sounds our dive guide introduced himself as Alex (his real name was masouf or something), he was an egyptian guy somewhere in his 60s who said he'd been a diver all his life and used to train navy seal divers. He was an interesting character to say the least.
After a quick toilet break he had us (me, Jasper and the American Guy who was with us) carry a small pontoon boat into the water, the skipper then rammed his boat into the pebbles next to the small boat (he wasn't allowed to use the docks). We would then step from the small boat onto the bigger one (a very interesting system for getting on the boat if you ask me. . .). As we sailed out to the first dive-site we spotted some dolphins jumping out of the water in the wake of the boat.
We geared up and jumped into the water and it was freezing! We weren't exactly used to warm waters, but this water was only 12 degrees and that was a bit difference compared to the 16-18 degrees we were used to. After a quick weight check we descended into the very mirky looking water and reached the clearer salt water layer. Because of all the rain there is a fresh water layer on top of the salt water which causes a lot of light to be filtered out and thus creates a dark cold environment which is very similar to conditions at 60-70 meters. This makes the sounds a very unique place to dive in and you can see rare sea life that you wouldn't normally find at such shallow depths, such as black coral (which is actually white). We quickly spotted a nudi-branch and black coral. The black coral rose up like small white trees and there were fish hanging all around it like fruit. It seemed the American was having some problems with his buoyancy and was swimming hand in hand with Alex. Too soon the dive was over and we headed back to the boat. On the way to our next dive-site we passed by a bunch of seals and Ox our skipper said he was going to clean the boat. We were wondering what he meant by this, but he said we'd soon find out. While we were taking pictures of the spectacular scenery ox sailed the boat towards one of the many waterfalls in the area. Before we knew it water was pounding down on the roof and deck of the boat. After this refreshing shower we went to our next dive site, though the water here was even colder than ta the first site it didn't bother us as much as the first time. This time we swam along a 160m deep wall (though only at about 16m deep) taking our time to search the wall for all sorts of sea life. After we got back to the boat we sailed to a small island where we were to clean our wetsuits in one of the waterfalls. As Alex rowed the small boat ashore he sang an egyptian song and has us sing "Yally!" after every sentence, it was a very amusing situation. Once we reached the island we stepped into the waterfall and jumped into a pool to clean the wetsuits. After we arrived back in the port we hung around a bit and had some lunch to get the nitrogen out of our blood before we headed over the mountain.
The American guy went to the toilet while me and Jasper jumped into the van, when the American came back we drove off and stopped at a place to take some pictures. After I had gotten out and was about to walk towards the river to take some pictures Alex called and asked me where my friend was. I looked around to see where Jasper was, but I couldn't see him. I was sure he didn't walk past me yet but I was also sure I'd seen him get in the car but he wasn't in the car either. . . In the end we concluded we must have left him back in Milford Sounds somehow and Alex and Ox went back to get him while me and the American checked out the river. When we came back Alex and Ox had picked up Jasper, who apparently went to the toilet after he had dropped his bag in the van and without anyone noticing. We then drove back to Te Anau and I slept most of the way, I was dead tired.
After a few more days of resting we headed towards Invercargill.