Hello again

Hello again
Well hello.It's been a while since I've posted anything here. After my meditation course I spent another month trevaling around the north Island visiting some lovely places, though I managed to loose my photos when the lady in a chemist copied them to compact disk for me. I did check the CD had my photos on it before I deleted them from my camera. As it turns out the CD contained the first few of my photoes and then the graphics file for the advertising on the photo printing machine in the shop. Oh well never mind.

I've very nearly sold my flat. It's only taken a year and a half. Just waiting for the solicitors to arrange for a date for the exchange of contracts. Then I'll officially be off the housing ladder again.My life seems to have gone full circle. No flat, renting a room in a house and working in a job for the minimum wage. And all is going to plan!

I have now finished my touring around the country and living on my credit card. Which I thouroughly enjoyed. I'm now living and working in Nelson a small "city" of about 40 000 people on northern coast at the top of the South Island. It's a very sunny place and even though autumn is here it is still hot and rain free.Rather bizzaarly I am working in a small Zoo, which is testing my ethics, that has been running on a shoestring for years. However, a Trust has recently taken it over from the local council and is currently trying to raise money to update it and bring it into current thinking about conservation and education. My friend Kate works there as the Operations Manager and she offered me a short contract to design interpretation and information displays, concentrating on conservation and education issues. Though I do also work with the animals, mucking them out and feeding them. The work of designing the interpretation and education is certainly something that will prove useful on my CV, but I don't think I will continue with the caged animal work.

I have just returned from a 3 day workshop on Salsa dancing which was great fun and I learnt alot from excellent from teachers from all around the world, including Cuba, New York, Sydney and Europe. I concentrated on taking lessons about the basics such as timing, leading and understanding the music and it's structure, I learnt loads and realised how much more there is to learn and practice. It was a fantastic time. Before the course started I thought I would be sick of the music by the end of the weekend. But as I learnt more and more about it, the more and more I enjoyed it.

I have now rebooked my return flight I will be stopping over in Hong Kong for 10 days so I have to find out about some tours in the countryside around the City. Which is quite exciting.And that is about all of my news.

Bye for now

Nick

Hello again

Well hello.

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. After my meditation course I spent another month trevaling around the north Island visiting some lovely places, though I managed to loose my photos when the lady in a chemist copied them to compact disk for me. I did check the CD had my photos on it before I deleted them from my camera. As it turns out the CD contained the first few of my photoes and then the graphics file for the advertising on the photo printing machine in the shop. Oh well never mind.

I've very nearly sold my flat. It's only taken a year and a half. Just waiting for the solicitors to arrange for a date for the exchange of contracts. Then I'll officially be off the housing ladder again.

My life seems to have gone full circle. No flat, renting a room in a house and working in a job for the minimum wage. And all is going to plan!

I have now finished my touring around the country and living on my credit card. Which I thouroughly enjoyed. I'm now living and working in Nelson a small "city" of about 40 000 people on northern coast at the top of the South Island. It's a very sunny place and even though autumn is here it is still hot and rain free.

Rather bizzaarly I am working in a small Zoo, which is testing my ethics, that has been running on a shoestring for years. However, a Trust has recently taken it over from the local council and is currently trying to raise money to update it and bring it into current thinking about conservation and education. My friend Kate works there as the Operations Manager and she offered me a short contract to design interpretation and information displays, concentrating on conservation and education issues. Though I do also work with the animals, mucking them out and feeding them. The work of designing the interpretation and education is certainly something that will prove useful on my CV, but I don't think I will continue with the caged animal work.

I have just returned from a 3 day workshop on Salsa dancing which was great fun and I learnt alot from excellent from teachers from all around the world, including Cuba, New York, Sydney and Europe. I concentrated on taking lessons about the basics such as timing, leading and understanding the music and it's structure, I learnt loads and realised how much more there is to learn and practice. It was a fantastic time. Before the course started I thought I would be sick of the music by the end of the weekend. But as I learnt more and more about it, the more and more I enjoyed it.

I have now rebooked my return flight I will be stopping over in Hong Kong for 10 days so I have to find out about some tours in the countryside around the City. Which is quite exciting.
And that is about all of my news.

Bye for now

Nick

Vipassana meditation - Let me ponder awhile!

Hello

A friend back in England, Lucy, introduced me to Vipassana meditation which she practiced, and me being my usual mature self made numerous, humerous comments about sitting cross legged and going Ommm!! Which I'm sure went down like a lead balloon. Anyway she lent me a book called the Art of Living which explained what Vipassana meditation is and I though well ok, this isn't about religion, it isn't about having beliefs in an entity or following scriptures. It's basicaslly about sitting quietly and discovering what is going on in this little brain of mine, which turns out to be rather more than I suspected.

So as I have always felt so restless with life and have been constantly feelining that what I want is just around the next corner, I thought that this may be woth an experiment with. However this form of meditation is taught at 10 day long courses, rather than through books or short quick fix courses, as it depends on the pupil learning how to miditate in several small steps only when experience of the previous step has been gained.

So I felt that during my time out here in NZ with few demands on my time i should invest 10 days at the Vipassana meditation Centre just to the north of Auckland. If you are interested there are similar retreats around the world, including one in Herefordshire in England. The fact that the course, accomodation and food are all free, helped me to realise that this wasn't some gimmick out to make money. The centres are financed through donations of old student that have finished a course and realise their value. Such donations are not always monetary, but can be through volunteering to work at the centre for a short period of time. In this way the meditation is not limited to those that can afford it.

The technique is the same technique as Bhudda taught 2500 years ago and it has been kept in it's original state in Bhurma all this time. Where as every where else Bhuddist teachings have been altered over the years to fit in with beliefs and lifestyles of the time.

For 10 days of sitting, I think I can honestly say that it was incredibly hard work both emotionally and physically. But I was able to realise that alot of firmly held beliefs and convictions that I have had been causing alot of difficulties, insecurities and misery. Discovering aversions and cravings and letting go of them is basically what this form of meditation teaches. It teaches this through showing how everything is made up of a serious of continuous actions right down to the sub atomic level of all matter, including the human being. When sitting and meditating one observes the sensations that occur on the body both large and extreamely subtle.

A very important part of the course is remaining silent for 9 of the 10 days, apart from talking to the teacher or to the course manager. On several occassions I was so fed up with the course and though it was a waste of my time that I would have ranted at anyone that would have listened to me, which would have magnified my displeasure and the other persons. However I had to sit it out and just think things through by myself. And when I did i discovered the real cause of my displeasure was the fact that I didn't want to accept that I was craving unachievable things or had aversions to things which were clouding my judgement. I now realise the value of keeping my gob shut occassionally.

It would seem that this would lead to a feeling of oh well it doesn't matter what I do then or I wont do anything, but I found that it enhanced my feeling of getting on and doing things, and has started to release me from feeling bound by my past or restricted by what I think is expected of me in the future. Obviously I still have an extreamly long way to go, but I have at least started to see a glimmer a way that makes life a little more understandable and more enjoyable.

The difficult bit now is to continue to meditate every day.

I must fly now as I'm of to the cinema. But if your even slightly interested in Vipassana meditation. I pretty sure that I highly reccommend it. Even though the sceptic in me is still there and is watching closely.

Cheers
Nick

Heading up north...continued

As I continued to head up North I came to Whangarie where I went Scuba diving at Poor Knights Island, an hours boat trip out to sea. The wheather was still rough with a mighty high swell and raining, and for the first time in my life I felt sea sick, Four of the people on the boat where being sick, into little paper bags, no throwing up over the side allowed as it is a marine reserve, so you can't leave anything behind.

We found a sheltered bay and the diving was absolutely fantastic with an incredible amount of fish in every direction, seaweeds cling to all the rocks and in amongst these tiny tripple fin fish, sea anemones and nudibrancs (beautifully coloured sea slug type things), unfortunately I don't have any photos of these. I did two dives during the day and during the first dive the weather changed and when we surfaced it was in to glorious sunshine. The journey back to the mainland was lovely and calm, like a Mediteranean cruise (I imagine, on a nice day that is).

Well my journey North zig zagged across the country and my next stopping off point of interest was Oponini , on the west coast where I partook in a little sand boarding, which is a little like snow boarding but on huge sand dunes, several stories high and ending up in the sea at the bottom. This was absolutly fantastic fun, but resulted in some interesting friction burns!

From here I travelled back to the East of the country to the Bay of Islands, where I had 2 more scuba dives, this time going down to the wreck of the sunken Rainbow Warrior. The Greenpeace ship that was sunk by French Government agents because Greenpeace was objecting to French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The wrecK was towed to it's current resting place and scuttled to create an artificial reef. It is a lovely dive and it has been colonised by all manner of animals. We also swam inside and it was quite spooky looking deep into the body of the ship and to have hundreds of pairs of fishes eye staring back.

From here I travelled to the tip of Northland to Cape Rienga the nearly Northernmost point of the mainland, in the same way as John O'Groats is nearly the northern most point of the UK mainland, when in fact we all know it is actually Dunnet Head! Hooray! I camped a couple of kilometres from Cape Reinga, where nearlly all the mosquitoes in New Zealand seem to go for their summer holidays. I camped with the rest of them (20km to the south) over the following week at Weitiki Landing where we where based for more bar tailed godwit surveying.

Did you know that there are mosquitoes that suck the blood of other insects, that's why they can do so well even when there aren't mammals around. And here's another funny thing, there are midges that suck the freshly sucked blood out of the mosquito. Not in NZ but somewhere, I know because I read it in a book.

Anyway getting back to the bird surveying with the New Zealand Ornithological Society. We spent 5 days tracking the large flocks of Godwit, the area is one of the main feeding spots in NZ before they start their journey to reach their breeding grounds in Alaska. The plan had been to do mist netting on a peninsular to catch and ring the birds, but unfortunately due to unforseen circumstances a sufficient number (ie more than one) of experienced bird ringers could only be present on the last two days of the week. So for the start of the week we tracked down the flocks of wading birds, mainly bar tailed godwits, red knots, banded and NZ dotterels, wrybills, turnstones, verible and pied oyster catchers, and with the use of telescopes checked their legs for indentification rings, in order to plot their movements around the country and the world. The scenery was absolutely fantastic.

On the second to last night four of us took a small boat (which had been ferrying us about all week) out to a small shell bank, in the middle of the estuary, and set up a number of mist nets. Basically very fine nets strung between poles up in the air. As the tide rises, during the night the birds are forced of their feeding grounds and fly over the shell bank and into the net. Where they are disentangled from the net and put in holding boxes then fitted with identification rings (called bands over here), measured and weighed and the such, then released. We had an incredibly successful night and where working from 4pm when we boarded the boat for the 15 minute boat trip until 7am the following morning when we arrived back at the jetty, with next to no time doing nothing. We caught and processed about 100 birds through out the night, of various species. Pretty hard work. This was far in excess of the numbers we expected so we decided that as we were all shattered, having expected to be in our beds by 2am, we didn't need to go out again the following night. So I headed south towards Auckland to be ready and rested for my meditaition course which started in the evening of the following day.

And that tale will wait until my next entry.

Evening All

Nick

This is not all of the next installment

Hi Guys

Sorry for the delay in updating this thing, and this isn't really an update. It's just to let you know I'm still in the land of the living.

Since the beginning of Jan I have been travelling around the North Island of NZ. My first 3 days were spent in Wellington staying at the house of a hitch hiker I picked up on the way to the ferry terminal. Wellington is a great city, though I did have the window of my campervan smashed, othing was taken though. I haven't been able to contact Pat (the lady I used to work with at Enlish Nature who has emigrated here), I guess she is using a different email addres to the one she gave me.

I spent the next few days travelling up the west coast calling in at varoius bays and beaches and generally being a tourist, and going for walks in the bush. I attempted to walk up Mount Taranaki (Mount Egmont) but the weather was so cloudy rainy and overcast I couldn't see a thing so turned it in to a lower level walk. When I returned to the car park at about 7pm the wind blew away the cloud and the mountain bathed in bright sunlight with snow on it's peak.. From here I travelled in land to do another mountain walk, the spelling of which I can't remember at the moment. But anyway by the time I got there the weather had turned rubbish again, so I decided to put the walk of until I passed back that way which will happen in a week or so from now. That journey inland though was along a 2 day long forgotton highway, which was mainly unsealed but passed through some fantastic scenery. I got to eat alot of dust along that route. I will add some pictures to this blog when I remember to bring my camera in to the internet cafe.

I trundled on back to the west coast to Ragland a bit of a surfing town, where I thought I may have a go at Kite surfing or normal surfing, but once again the wind and rain and a rather delighful cold (not) put a stop to this. Apparenty NZ is having one of it's worst summers for years, though it does mean it's nice and cool when I'm tramping up hills, and I am becoming pretty expert at the formation of the inside of clouds.

I spent 3 days at Ragland feeling sorry for myself and cheering myself up with nice food and music from the various bars and cafe's before heding north once more. I had a long old day of driving and bypassed Auckland and headed up the west coast to the North of Auckland and spent threedays exploring Tarhanui Regional Reserve run by Auckland City Council which is a peninsular that has been fenced of with a several kilometer preditor proof fence, so that possums, stoats, weasals, cats, hedgehogs and the such (all non native) can't get into the reserve and eat the native birds or the young shoots of the regenerating bush. The reserve is now more or less predator free. The northern coast of the peninsular has bee designated as a marine reserve, with good snorking and diving, unfortunately I was unable to go snorkling due to the high winds and rough seas, though the surfers seemed to love it. I spent my time walking in the rain, in cluding the most fantastic walk which took me of the designated paths by the directions printed in a leaflet which included things like; turn left at the third fence post walk up the hill and enter the bush by the old collapsed gate, then follow the stream bank until you reach the big rimu tree. It was a great way of exploring as the path was little used and I had to push through overgrown vegetation. It was the best self guided walk I have ever done, in a country park type setting. The Regional Park has really made me eager to get back to work with conservation, countryside recreation and the public. Just the inspiration I needed.

Any way it is time for me to leave the computer behind and get back on the road, so I will get bach to the computer in the next couple of days with tails of diving, meditation and more wading bird ringing.

But before I go, my eyesight has been improving over the last month and a half and I now only use my glasses for driving at night or at the cinema. I downloaded an ebook from the internet, which gives exercises (15 minutes a day) to do with your eyes to strengthen them. I am very impressed with the results and highly recommend it. The website is www.perfect-eyes.com and costs about the equivilent of 15 pounds.

Have fun, the suns out at the moment so I'm going to make the most of it.

Cheers
Nick

Well, well, it's nearly Christmas and the days are at their longest and the sun is getting hotter every day. I hope all is well in good old Blighty and you aren't suffering from too much frost bite.
It seems that the best part of a month has passed since I last updated this blog thing and thank you very much for the comments that you have posted. It's so nice to hear from you.
I have spent time with the waders again and we were even successful in catching some. We were also swabbing them by sticking a cotton bud up their bums and sending it off to a lab to have them checked for bird flu, to get an idea of the bird flu distribution (if any) in the NZ wader population.

I have also done some more wwoofing at two absolutely gorgeous places. The first was at a hostel called the Innlet, just down the road from Farewell Spit (top of the South Island) and I spent my time weeding their organic vegetable plots and linseed oiling one of the wooden buildings. All very thereputic as I had my CD of salsa music playing so I can try and improve my ear for catching the beat when whirling young ladies around the dance floor in that hot latin way. The Innlet is a great Hostel, very chilled out and set in amongst glorious native forest and a stones throw from the beach. There are bath tubs with hot water in the gardens and lovely sunny verandas to laze about on. Working at the hostel was rather fun, as it enabled me to gossip with guests every evening and find out about their home countries: America, Germany, Slavinia, Holland and a strange place called England.

My second wwoofing place, where I still am at the moment, is on top of a mountain on the edge of the Able Tasman National Park. This is an absolutely gorgeous place with views across Golden Bay, that I'm sure it would be absoutely impossible to get bored with. I am helping to build a meditation and yoga retreat, which will be a timber building consisting of a number of round rooms.. The work mainly involves digging the trenches for the foundations, but as you know I'm good at digging holes fo myself. The chap who owns the place has already built a couple of timber round houses and has installed solar panels, a composting loo and has plans to install a small hydo electric generator. There is a real "Good Life" feel to the place, but unfortunately with out Felicity Kendal. There's even the odd bit of yoga thrown in for good measure. No meditation sessions but we have been playing a board game called Settlers, that has been developing a sense of competition and capitalism instead.

The new year will see me travelling on to the North Island, attending a meditation course, where I have to stay silent fo 9 days! Aswell as getting up at 4am. Catching more waders on the northern tip of North Island and a attending a 3 day Salsa festival in Wellington. I expect I will have to do some fruit picking at some point too.

Any way, enough of this rambling, I hope you all have a cracking Christmas and aren't suffering from too many pre Christmas celebrations. With just 3 days to go it still doesn't feel like Christmas here, with the shops selling Christmas decorations next to bikinis and sun cream. I'll be spending Christmas day basking on the beach with a Picnic.

Ho Ho Ho!

Lots of Love
Nick
xxx

Well it seems a long time since I’ve updated this, and I’ve been up to quite a lot. It happens to be chucking it down with rain on a Sunday morning, so it is obviously time for typing. I’ve just got in from hacking down broom and gorse round some native tree saplings that have been planted to re-establish an area of native forest at the small holding, called Dovedale (just like Derbyshire, hills, rain and sheep) that I am currently staying on and we have decided it’s to wet to go out and do some more, after all, it is Sunday (Note: The Lincoln Conservation Group should ignore this comment and stick with their dedication to get out there and hack things down, sorry let me rephrase that, conserve Lincolnshire’s beautiful natural heritage, whatever the weather.) This is not a Wwoof place, but I am here as a result of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand (OSNZ), and the small holding belongs to one of its members.

So how come I’m hob nobbing with birders? In the first place let me reassure you that I haven’t become a Twitcher! About 4 weeks ago at the last Wwoof place I was volunteering at (a lovely place on an island in an estuary to the north of Nelson) I was offered the opportunity to volunteer with OSNZ to help carry out wading bird surveys and canon netting and banding (ringing in English) with identification leg bands, down in the south of the country at Invercargill and Dunedin. I took up this offer and spent 10 days wandering around the estuaries of the south looking beautiful plumage and leggy birds, trying to see if they had a ring on or not. Then every 2nd or third day we would set up a series of little cannons, dug into the sand, with projectiles attached to the corners of a large furled up net (pegged to the ground on one edge) and wait for the high tide to push the waders up the shore line until they came to roost just above the high tide mark and just below the net. Then with an electrical circuit the cannons would be fired and waders caught, if luck was with us (it more often than not wasn’t). The net is fairly light weight and when it comes down over the birds it does not hurt them. Then comes the task of extracting the birds (only done by properly trained people) measuring all their bits and putting a number of bands around their legs. I’m not sure what is done in the UK but here these lucky little blighters leave with 6 new bands. One light weight metal one with a unique number, four coloured plastic bands which can be attached in a unique order, so the bird can be identified at a distance, through a telescope and one little coloured plastic band with a sticking out “flag” so that the region the bird was banded can be identified.
The birds that we caught were turnstones, South Island pied oyster catchers, red knots, and bar tailed godwits which over winter in NZ after flying directly, non stop, from their breeding grounds in Alaska, a distance of between 11000 and 13000 km.
I hate to admit it but I have been keeping a tick list of the first date and place where I have seen each new species of bird. I do solemnly promise that I will not do such a thing back in the UK, but train registration numbers, now that may be another thing!
In return for my being a labourer for the banding and surveying exercise I was given a bed to rest my weary head and fine nourishment to fill my rumbling stomach. Oh! and also the offer to do it all again on the tip of Farewell Spit at the very north of South Island.

On my return to Nelson from the far south I discovered that missing two salsa lessons in a row, made me look like a total incompetent fool at the next lesson did make. Most dis-heartening. I spent a few days living in my campervan until Kate’s landlord invited me to stay in return for some garden labouring and then I also spent time working as a volunteer at the little zoo, Natureland, where Kate works, carrying out risk assessments and making and repairing some of the enclosures.
Nelson has a really nice feel to it and it is very easy to slot in to the social scene there, it also helps that it is generally nice and sunny. Summer is definitely on its way in spite of today’s rain. In the week and a half there as well as working I managed to get to see 3 bands, go climbing at the indoor wall and go sea kayaking.

Then I left Nelson behind me and headed north to Golden Bay; a glorious laid back alternative lifestyle area; a day before meeting up with the OSNZ gang again for the Farewell Spit adventure. I spent the night parked out side a hostel with a Buddhist feel and ideal to it as well as it being an Eco house with solar power and water heating. I had to wake up to a fantastic view of Golden Bay. It also happened to be opposite (at the end of a 2km track) the best pub I have so far found in NZ, called the Mussel Inn. The Mussel Inn brews it’s own beer which is extremely tasty, though I was delighted the lights were low for the folk duo playing on stage, so the tears in my eyes which came from eating the whole red chilly floating in the chilly beer, could not be seen by all and sundry.
The next morning I found that I had missed a Buddhist meditation session in preference for my beer and music session. There’s probably no hope for me!

Then it was up Whariki Beach for me to get sand blasted on this gloriously stunning beach with wonderful dunes, cliffs and caves, before meeting up with OSNZ to drive 30 km out along the beach of the sand spit to the light house where it was planned to spend the next 4 days.

The wind at Farewell spit is notorious and as we were driving along the beach (in a 4x4, not my campervan), the whind was blowing a ankle high blanket of sand at a different angle to our direction of travel, this gave the oddest sensation of motion in a strange direction. By the time we got to the light house in was early evening as we had to wait for high tide to subside before we could travel along the beach.

The next day was glorious and clam and sunny, so we were out on the spit tracking the waders and planning and scheming as to the best place to lay out the canon nets for the high tide the following day. We also spent a lot of time watching the big flocks of waders and spotting the coloured leg identification bands. After lunch we then went out along the spit a little further to count the nesting pairs of what I have been informed is the only sea level colony of Gannets in the world (these were Australasian Gannets), normally the colonies are found on sea cliffs, but on Farewell Spit the nearly constant wind means they can take off from ground level, instead of having to drop of a cliff.

The following day, the day of the cannoning netting, started off windy then just got windier and windier. We laid the net out but in the two hours it was out and we were waiting for the birds, the wind moved so much sand that it buried the net, and even if the birds had been stupid enough to move around in that wind, we wouldn’t have been able to fire the net.

The weather forecast for the following two days was no better so we decided to decamp and return south to Dovedale (about a 40km north west of Nelson) and go netting at the more sheltered coast line closer to Nelson where we had one unsuccessful attempt, this included me in a kayak trying to scare godwits and knots of a nearly, but not quite enough, submerged island, so that they would fly to the net catching area. They didn’t!

The second day was a little more successful, at a different location (no need for kayaking) and we were able to catch 22 oyster catchers, though no knots or godwits which we were hoping for.

And that brings me up to this weekend of clearing around the newly planted native woodland. All the stuff I have been having to cut down are the alien species from good old England, hawthorn, broom, gorse, bramble and barberry, which just take over given the chance.

I hope all is going well in Lincoln and that the winter is just as you like it. It is very odd here, as the sun gets hotter and the summer clothes are coming out, that Christmas is just around the corner. Christmas stuff in the shops doesn’t seem right.

Oh well, cheerio for now
Love
Nick

Wwoof

I've been working for the last week and a half out at a horse stud farm (on the Wwoof scheme), about half an hours drive out of Nelson, with gypsy cobs(long tails, long manes and fluffy feet).The lady who runs it is into building mud brick buildings and building with old tyres which is why I went out. However my work mainly involved fence building and staining. Although I did get to go to a stud show down at Christchurch with the lady, so I spent a long time helping to wash the horse down and tease knots and dry horse poo out of his tail, a long job. I also had the great delight of of picking up horse poo from around one of the paddocks the horses were in at her farm and stacking it on the poo pile. In return for this I was put up and fed. I have been eaten alive by sand flies, which are a bit like large midges, so I am scratching all over the place now.
Kathy the lady who owns the farm, also has a small businness making kyacking gear, clothes and spraydecks and the such, so I even spent a bit of time cutting out cloth to be made into waterproof trousers.

Oh and I also took the friendly goat for walks up into the hills. I think I would quite like a goat.

Whilst down at Christchurch we stayed at a bee keepers house and I was shown the integral workings of a bee hive and also invited to come back and do some bee keeping work, later in my travels, which I think is an offer I will take up. We also visited a chap who restored old horse drawn carriages and machinery. As well as having a great long beard he also had the most amazing workshops, packed with every type of tool and machine you could want. I am having a great time discovering how other people lead their lives, without their having to go into the office.
Each time I meet a new person I think "I could do that". But I'll wait and see before I make any decisions about my future.

I have now left that farm and I start at a new place on Monday, but this weekend I am back in Nelson going to a couple of Salsa dances and the theatre. On wednesday just gone I started going to Salsa lessons, which is good fun, though harder than Jive as I have to concentrate on foot movements as well as all the Jive stuff.

I have also bought a car, which Kate is now usingaround Nelson and I am using her campervan, for my travels .

And that's you about up to date.

I have just returned from a trip into the mountains of South Island, where I went with three friends and managed to go camping on a snowy mountain top over looking Franz Joseph Glacier, and woke up to the most fantastic views looking down on to the Glacier, under bright blue skies. I was told that we were camping beside the car, what I wasn't told was that although in distance we weren't that far from the car, we were about a 1000 metres higher than it. It took us 2 and a half hours to climb the mountain, all but the first 10 minutes in darkness, but it was definately worth it.

This gentle introduction to the holiday was followed by a days Cross Country skiing and a days downhill skiing near Wannaka, both of which were great fun and thankfully i haven't broken a leg and ended up in traction for the rest of my year travelling. Then it was of down south to go tramping (hill walking) in the mountains, near Queenstown, along the Routeburn Track, until the threat of avalanches made us turn back, the low cloud didn't add to the view as we were inside one of the clouds. We spent two nights up the mountain in a fantastically enormous mountain hut (48 beds) that was helicoptered in and now stands on stilts. A bit of cabin fever sat in as we were waiting for a break in the rainy weather so I pursuaded Kate that a circuit training session along covered out doors section, which warmed us up a bit. We had to cook on camp stoves and as it was getting dark by 6.30 and there was only torch light we were hitting the sack by a staggering late 8.30 ish. The torrential rain nearly drowned us as we walked out and when we got back to the car at the base of the mountain we drove to Alexandra in Central Ontago for a bit of mountain biking, it's only just stopped hurting to sit down.

The gale force winds and heavy rain put pay to further skiing on the return journey, so we had a couple more days of mountain walks in the Arthur's Pass area.

All in all it was a bit of a knackering but highly enjoyable holiday.

News on my flat sale is that it's fallen through, so it's back on the market. Looks like I'll have to get a job, that was very short retirement!

Anyway I'm in Nelson now at Kate's House for a few days, until I get my self sorted.

Must go as my time is soon to be up at this Internet Cafe. May be next time I will try and put some photos on. Cheerio for now,

Nick

OK I'm here now

Hi. Well I'm in Auckland now, though I fly out tommorrow to go to Nelson to meet up with my mate Kate.

Loads of telly on the flight over, and a part from a slight technical fault at LA airport which made the lights go out in the buildings and the airfield, as well as locking me and a flight load of other people in various small sections of corridor. All went fine. If the LA airport transit lounge is what the rest of the country is like I can't see why it is such a popular holiday location.

Spent the week sorting out things like tax codes and bank accounts and hopefully my flat sale. But I've also been having fun not working. Spent a couple of days out walking. One on a cross Auckland trail that takes in volcanoes, sheep and cows and goes from the norht coast to the south coast. It's a bit like the viking way through Lincoln I suppose.

Today I went to Waiheke Island which is a 35 minute ferry ride from Auckland and did some splendid coastal walking. Just for the twitchers I saw a handful of NZ dotterals which I believe count as a "rare". I've photo's on my new camera, which foolishly I don't have with me so I can't down load them at the moment, which will probably be a relief to non birders. I have a photo of me too, which you can look forward to!

Pleas don't ask me about the hostel. I could say the whole set up is fantastic, but .... Oh dear my money is about to run out. Cheers for now. Nick

The Adventure Begins

Ok, well I haven't gone yet, so there aren't any adventures yet.