6 months of featured travel

Wel­come to Out­side Con­text.  If this is your first time on our web­site, this is for you!

In mid 2008 we left the shores of Eng­land for a around-the-world adven­ture.  This page recalls the fea­tured art­icles we have writ­ten on the way!

 

The first stop on our Jour­ney was a stop over in San Francisco.

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San Fran­cisco has that high sided build­ing feel that you get in all US cit­ies and which Lon­don rarely achieves, but it also has a very vis­ible divide between those who have and have not.  Beg­gars are every­where and in all guises.  Simply look­ing like you don’t know where you are, squint­ing at sign­posts for example, will have them swarm­ing over you in packs all vying for the largest tip you can muster.  I would like to say that I was able to res­ist, but one such likely fel­low, a “vet­eran” he claimed — although of what war I couldn’t say; pos­sibly the civil war, collared us and was very help­ful in point­ing out the way, pla­cing a good map in my hand, smil­ing and laugh­ing about our jour­ney from Lon­don and char­ging me a fiver.  I hope the cash went some way to help­ing him buy a pair of trousers.

After leav­ing the US, we arrived in Sydney Aus­tralia and the far side of the world.

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Speak­ing of drink, one thing that I found funny was that you couldn’t buy alco­hol in the super­mar­ket. In fact I had to wander for a good 20 minutes before I could find one dinky little shop that even served the dev­ils drink. Spy­ing the usual tattle of Fosters and Stella I asked the guy to recom­mend me some­thing local,

“Cooper’s mate, the rest is all shit,” he said point­ing at a pack of pale ales, “Don’t worry about the bits in the bot­tom of the bottles, that’s nor­mal, just roll the bottles before drink­ing and don’t shake it”.

It may well be nor­mal for you mate, I thought, but I held my peace and paid the man. The price of beer is high in this part of town and 6 beers cost me 8 quid.

We left Sydney and trav­elled up to the Blue Moun­tains north of the city.

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Our walk­about ini­tially took us to a cave where we were enlightened on how the abori­gin­als used euca­lyptus leaves rolled and placed into your nos­trils to sooth cold symp­toms. Mod­ern life still swirled in our minds and raced through our veins as we listened to the slow rhythm of Evan’s voice. We were lead safely into a med­it­at­ive state, known as ‘Dream­time’ to get rid of our ‘bad spirit trouble’. We shared our exper­i­ences together.

After the cold and amaz­ing Blue Moun­tains, we came to the Hunter Val­ley and wine tasting!

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Our second port-of-call was Rose­mont Estate, a small taste­fully con­ver­ted chapel which now housed a tast­ing room and shop. We now knew the format to wine-tasting and had all relaxed some­what as well. The wines here were just as pal­at­able, if not a little more expens­ive, but the vari­ety was not as good in my opin­ion. Our group appeared to err towards the sweet whites, but J&I also indulged in the reds in search of the ulti­mate wine that sat­is­fies both our palettes!

Next came a stop over in Noosa and a visit to Aus­tralia Zoo, home of the late Steve Irwin.

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I am one of the late ’s greatest fans, although at first I was unsure that his larger-than-life-persona was not just that; a per­sona.  Some­thing he took off like a hat when he got home.  I soon learned my mis­take by watch­ing one epis­ode of his pro­gram where his wife and he came across a large pod of whales that had beached them­selves and lay dying in the sun.  Steve was heart­broken and it was very clear to me that he was genu­inely upset.  Steve Irwin, I real­ised, was the real deal.

After the zoo, we stopped over in Byron Bay – home of my friend Tony!

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We exper­i­enced a won­der­ful open-air mar­ket where the bohemian essence of came alive. Hip­pies were every­where with Ozzies selling cloth­ing, dijeri­doos and drums etc, Afric­ans selling jew­ellery and Indi­ans doing henna tat­toos. The weather was not in our favour, but it was good to be there and see local Byron at play.

Then we went to Cairns and out onto the Great bar­rier Reef

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Cesca like myself is new to shar­ing the water with some­thing that could eas­ily eat us.  We watched it circle and then sud­denly with a flick of its tail it changed course.  It was now com­ing dir­ectly towards us, its decision made; that light was worth invest­ig­at­ing, there may be food there.  I watched its speed and then turned off the light.  If it was com­ing for us it would be on top of us in 5 seconds.

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Cesca gripped my arm as I waited till that last moment to turn the torch back on…

All that diving got us tired and so we spent a few days in the rain­forest at the Sanctuary.

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You may laugh, but trav­el­ling is quite tir­ing! If you’re any­thing like us then after three weeks on the road day and night you’ll want to press pause for a while. How­ever, you keep at it as after all “This is Aus­tralia” and you can’t just pop back again any­time soon. So our sched­ule has been full of early morn­ings and overnight­ers on the Grey­hound and we felt entitled to take a break from the road and hole out for a few days. Whilst stay­ing at the won­der­ful ‘Dream­time’ hostel in Cairns we were recom­men­ded to go south to visit ‘The Sanc­tu­ary’ near Mis­sion Beach.

Then we flew to the Out­back and beat around the bush!

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James woke to find a dingo steal­ing my remain­ing marsh­mal­lows! Brav­ing the cold of the morn­ing the hot showers were extremely wel­come and the break­fast even more so.

We then caught the Ghan Train down the coun­try and met the inex­plic­able Franco.

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Inno­cently inquir­ing about the area where Franco lived, he invited us to stay, in exchange for some help in the garden and some odd jobs around the house. True to his word Franco col­lec­ted us the fol­low­ing morn­ing from another Annie’s Place (in Adelaide) and took us to his home in (an afflu­ent part of town). We were impressed by his open­ness and trust as he gave us a key to his home and left us there for the dur­a­tion of the after­noon whilst he ran errands. We made ourselves at home and in return tidied and cleaned in his absence.

Leav­ing Franco we spent two week WWOOF­ing on Kangaroo Island

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One animal I loved were the Kangaroo’s.  Every other morn­ing Paul would have us feed the wild kangaroo’s up at Stokes Bay.  They would all come hop­ping out of the woods to the line of oats we lay on the ground.  The ones at Paul’s Place were also very friendly and soft to pat.  On one occa­sion I was cold and so went and cuddled one for a few minutes to warm up.  I find it amaz­ing that this coun­try can sup­port such a large creature in the wild.  It must be due to the lack of real pred­at­ors in Australia?

We then drive the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne

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We chilled in the morn­ing tak­ing full advant­age of our 24hr Global Gos­sip access on wire­less (Wifi) no less! I can’t believe we can use wire­less in the moun­tains when it’s so hard to get else­where, bizarre! Not want­ing to strain James’ swollen knee from a sub­stan­tial knock on the bed­post in Cairns, we drove to the ‘MacK­en­zie Falls’ via an impress­ive view of the Grampi­ans. This par­tic­u­lar vista was in our view Aus­tralia lay­ing down the gaunt­let to New Zea­l­and for the most dra­matic landscape.

Mel­bourne was a city of col­our, friends and art

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The weather in Mel­bourne was not in our favour and resembled the gray skies of Lon­don. In fact the river here was remin­is­cent of the River Thames and for us the whole city felt like a mini Lon­don. This was both a plus (it felt very famil­iar) and a minus (it was just all too famil­iar). We joked on our trip that around every city corner there is an EY build­ing and here we found a Nokia Care store too! Both pre­vi­ous clients.

James was so moved by NZ that upon arriv­ing he waxed lyr­ical about the place and people

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After watch­ing LOTR for the first time I star­ted a long jour­ney of the heart.  The first steps were the read­ing of the book itself, now and forever with the New Zea­l­and land­scape in my mind, fol­lowed by many years won­der­ing if the real coun­try actu­ally looked like that.  Many steps, down this long road, later I have actu­ally stood on the Pel­lanor fields and I can tell you that yes, in fact, New Zea­l­and does look like Middle Earth.

But it also looks so much more.

We left Aus­tralia for New Zea­l­and with its biggest city of Auckland!

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Auck­land has the bustle of a real city and the sky­line to sug­gest money but it seemed at first to lack some of the soul. It would not actu­ally be until I vis­ited Wellington’s Tae Papa museum that I would get to see Auckland’s soul prop­erly and its very strong com­munity spirit.

Head­ing into the New Zea­l­and North­land we found the end of the end of the world

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Could it be that New Zea­l­and would be like this all over?  A supra-blessed coun­try that all oth­ers would pale next to?  The wind blew into my face as I wondered about all this, its passing blow­ing in my ears, a sound only dis­turbed by the ever present click­ing of Cesca’s camera.

We were then cap­tiv­ated by the beauty of Hoki­anga Harbour

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Put­ting on my rain coat I lay in the wet and loosed the spare tire, while Cesca found the jack and star­ted on the nuts.  I had never changed a large vehicle’s tire before, but luck­ily for me the enorm­ous 10-ton jack had dia­grams explain­ing where to put everything and a help­ful pic­ture show­ing that drop­ping the van on my head was not a good idea.  Get­ting the nuts loosened took every ounce of my strength and pulled skin from my hands.  Then the jack went in.  The wind­ing of the jack was geared so that max­imum effort gave a smooth but deadly slow lift.  Cesca could see the ferry in the dis­tance, mak­ing its way back.

The centre of the North Island bubbled in vol­canic splendour.

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DOC camp­sites grant you the free­dom that hol­i­day parks just can’t and Lake Rerewhakaaitu at the base of Mt Tarawera was no excep­tion. The low morn­ing mist over the lake felt as if you were the first ever people to enjoy this place. Ducks quietly paddles across the reed riddled lake. There was a sense of com­fort know­ing such tran­quil places exist between the effer­ves­cence of the region.

We then made it to the South Island and vis­ited Mount Cook

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I have always loved moun­tains.  Either look­ing up to their fram­ing of the val­leys below or being able to stand on their sum­mits and view the dis­tant vis­tas they offer.  New Zea­l­and has offered some of the most amaz­ing moun­tains I have seen out­side the ski fields of Europe and I share with you now some of those dis­cov­er­ies here.

In Queen­stown we faced our fears by sky­diving and bungy jumping

Here it is, the big one!  In this latest film Basho and Cesca face their fears! Cesca sky­dives 15,000ft and Basho jumps the 134m high­wire Nevis bungy!

See both events from mul­tiple angles includ­ing a wrist cam­era (the Bashocam! put into new ser­vice!) and set to a com­bin­a­tion of Wings and U2.

Our second attempt at WOOF­ing was at the amaz­ing Marl­bor­ough Sounds!

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The walk from his­tor­ical Ships cove to Fur­neaux was worth every step and a won­der­ful way to spend an after­noon.  How­ever, it was a hot walk and a sig­ni­fic­ant 3 hours trek up and down the hills.  By the time we came around the head­land and could see the bor­ders of Furneaux’s land I was in dire need of refreshment.

Hap­pily it has a bar.

With a heavy heart we left NZ for the heat and cold of Singapore

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One of the first things that hits you on arrival to Singa­pore air­port is the intense cold.  Litres of Icy cold air is blas­ted at you from almost all dir­ec­tions from a myriad of air-conditioning machines the size of sky­scrapers and it is quite nice to get out­side and exper­i­ence a little heat for a while.  Air-conditioning has been taken to new heights by the Singa­por­eans, indeed the entire Tube sys­tem is frosty cold con­di­tioned, as is every single mall and many of the pave­ment steps sur­round­ing them.  To walk around Singa­pore is to be blas­ted by heat and cold at such extremes you won­der if you have wandered into a new form of torture.

The delights of Melaka temp­ted us on our visit to Malaysia

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Cesca, unfor­tu­nately, doesn’t par­tic­u­larly like satay, was suf­fer­ing a little from the heat and not lik­ing the mess when she spilt a big dol­lop on her top…

After that we adjourned the meal.  I am just glad that, what with the port being so close, the loc­als prob­ably have heard worse swearwords.

Prob­ably.

 

Fin­ish­ing off Malay­sia we found a little slice of heaven in Langkawi

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Then we vis­ited the highest point in the area and climbed a tower to view the jungle.  I defi­antly have improved my fear of heights since the Nevis jump in NZ!  Next we went for a walk in the very over­grown Mossy Forest.  This short walk was a little light for those of us fresh from New Zea­l­and, but since more than one of the tour got stuck in the mud – to the gen­eral hoots of hil­ar­ity from the oth­ers – we didn’t mind

 

 

There you have it!  So far at least.  Watch this space for more fea­tured posts!

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