The JaYmes Escape

The last week started with Invercargill, a strange cross between Inverness and Arthur Scargill, and apparently the most southern city in the world. Fom there it was down to the southern tip of the country at Bluff then up the south-eastern coast through the Catlins and Scottish-heritage Dunedin to the largest city on the South Island, Christchurch, where it’s dry and sunny – a welcome change from the west. I’m going to be here for a little while to see if I can find some work.

Hope you can find time for some of the pictures. More of Christchurch to come.

There is so much scenery here it gets hard to take it all in; and the camera lens is frequently not wide enough. The best bits from the last week are probably in the Buller Gorge (watch the video) and Glacier albums. I was hoping to celebrate my 30th birthday with a skydive over Lake Wanaka but the wind put pay to it all at the last minute and I had to make do with a few beers instead.

Today I made it to Milford Sound; some say it’s the eighth wonder of the world and it’s certainly famous for it’s rain – an annual fall of over five times that of London. It’s also home to thousands of fish, seals and dolphins who all seem to dutifully perform daily for boat loads of tourists armed with cameras. Many pictures of all that and the scenic route from Ta Anou are currently sitting in the memory card waiting for an upload-friendly internet cafe.

It’s been impossible for me to avoid making the comparison between Milford and Lake Bled in Slovenia. Milford definitely has the edge and superiority of scale when it comes to natural scenery but Bled has the distinct cultural advantage with it’s historic clifftop castle and churches. Bled gave me the photogenic winter weather but unfortunately for the camera Milford gave me what it’s famous for – bucketloads of rain.

Don’t forget to drop by the gallery.

On February 6th, 1840, the British Empire and Maori leaders in New Zealand signed a treaty at Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands. This has been the basis of coexistence between the Maori tribes and European settlers ever since. Visiting the historic spot of Waitangi on February 6th 2005 seemed like a good idea, and was certainly interesting.

Pictures of Waitangi day are in the gallery along with pictures of the jet boat trip to the ‘hole in the rock’, Cape Reinga, the Hot Geysers at Rotorua and much more. I’m exhausted, and crossing over the Cook Strait to the South Island tomorrow.

It still impresses me how sitting on a plane for 10 hours can take you from winter in Tokyo where it’s just above freezing and it gets dark at 5pm, to summer in New Zealand where it’s sweltering in the 30s and dark at 9.

Auckland is very relaxing after the bustle of Tokyo and London. So relaxing in fact that my jet lag has caught up with me and has me keeping strange hours. Anyway, apart from getting some (minor) sunburn yesterday I’ve been boring the locals with tales of Eastern Europe and tonight I taught some Kiwi rugby players how to drink vodka and say ‘Na Zdrowie’ in the Polish fashion. A single shot here is a measly 15ml so I had to order triples to do it properly (a single shot in Poland is 40ml), and of course, there’s no decent substitute for Bison, Nemiroff or Russky Standart.

Plenty of pictures of Auckland in the usual place, plus the full set of Tokyo pics is now online.