I’ve uploaded some diving pictures from the Poor Knights Islands to my wanderingscotsman picture gallery.  If you don’t dive and have been reading my blog, AND you have a broadband connections, check out this video from the Similan Islands on Google Video.  You’ll get an idea of what it can be like.  I saw most of the stuff on this video in one shape or form including the mighty Manta Ray, but I went back to the boat before the whale shark shown re-appeared (arg).

I sent off my final (hmmm…Japan?) box home today bringing my total shipped back from my trip to around 100kg.  God knows what!  Actually a lot has been gear I had but wasn’t going to use anymore, and the tent I bought here just slipped in the box too, along with my underwater camera stuff, jacket and climbing stuff.

After the post office I was $300 lighter! Admittedly being a mere $300 lighter was a bonus.

First thing this morning I thought I had lost $800 from my pocket last night. I’d been carrying it around…..actually I started with $1300 after selling the car……until I got to Auckland to get some Japanese Yen.  I was gutted.  The best part of £300.

I finished packing up the van, sellotaping the box, and I realised in my haste to get to the pub I had left the driver’s window of the van wide open last night – yes, with a van full of computer, photography and other kit.  But hey, it was quiet and I was lucky.

I was just getting myself prepared to go round and ask at the pub as I found my $800 on the van floor, obviously falling out my pocket one night as I stripped down for bed!  Lucky bugger.

More luck was had at the post office.   My box was 1kg short of the 20kg limit and I sent off my first submission to a picture library for quality control so fingers crossed.  Out of the thousands of pictures I have take I found it really hard to select only ten to send.  It wasn’t even that they were all good I was just very critical of my photos – e.g. a cracking photo of a young monk but his shadow was cut off and more things like that.  I wish I had looked at them so critically before as I learned a lot in the few hours I was doing it.

As well as that I’ve just submitted a couple more hints ‘n’ tips to a travel magazine, I’ve got my fingers crossed for my first article request, and I have to write a book review for possible submission.  Nothing definite yet but fingers crossed.

Meanwhile I really should get off this free wireless in the airport.  I dropped the van off after 4pm and don’t fly until 6am so I have the night at the airport.  My bag still seems full, but not as heavy so more internetty time and I’m off to make myself into a south park character from one website I just had pointed out in an email.

Sorry New Zealand my time has unfortunately come.  You’ve been great and I hope to be back again some day.  Maybe soon.  Maybe later.  You are so diverse.  You are hot and cold, have some great wet spots, but some fantastic icy ones too.

New Zealand – I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The holiday park in Tutukaka was mobbed last night – I mean there were FOUR campervans in it!

After dinner and my bottle of Feijoa wine I had sitting in the fridge (now that I just remembered that, not wonder I was so bad this morning as that was after my post dive pint!) I went out to the pub to see if it was still open, asking along others at the site.  Only an Austrian girl came along, but there were a couple of English girls from the site there too.  I had been praising the diving, but a tad jealous I wasn’t going out with them all the next day.  The two girls were travel writers in one shape of form (real ones, sorry if you guys read this!) so had a bit of a chin wag with them.

The bar manager and a local manager of another bar joined us and we stayed there until well after closing time until it got too cold.  We then headed back for a display of Poi – fireball dancing to you and me (I never even knew it was called that!).  Pretty neat but boy I was a bit rough finishing packing another box to send home this morning.

Ouch!  Who’s got hot balls!

I got back to the Tutukaka and had another day’s diving during my last full day in New Zealand.  As soon as I had it in my head I knew it was the right thing to do and I was eager to get back.

There was a new crew on the boat, but again they were all superb.  Total professionalism, extremely educational, and with a total right on attitude towards the marine reserves…..but with the essential fun thrown in too.

To be honest my first dive in the morning was one of the worst I’ve ever done.  Leaky mask, foggy mask, and it’s the first dive I’ve done in around forty dives without taking a second mask down as I completely forgot.  I was a bit panicky at first and couldn’t wait to surface, but thought I’d stick it out so see how I got on.  I spent the whole time holding the front of the mask.  Horrible.  Heavy breathing, running through gas quicker than my Subaru did, and I wasn’t able to focus on looking at things, although I still managed to see another short tailed Stingray.  I was so glad I didn’t have my camera down with me as well as that would have just been another thing to look after.  Like my previous post mentioned I thought I should have left my diving experiences on a high.

(Picture : Kelp ‘forest’)  I knew it would be the last diving I’d do for a while so had to go out again and get the vibe back, so on went a hire mask, and it was absolutely fantastic.  The skipper helped me out with my underwater casing and put a different plastic knob on the end of it and it worked a treat.  It’s so bright there you don’t even need a flash for mediocre images.  I even took my first underwater video but annoyingly it was a bit of an afterthough just before I surfaced but it was great.  It really made me want to take this up!  I tried to upload this to YouTube but the file was too large.

We entered another cave and finally I got my own pictures of one of the cave entrances.  We saw another ray, several nudibranches and were diving through the kelp forests.  Unfortunately we never saw the carpet shark that sometimes hangs around one of the dive sites.  In exchange for some photoshop info I even got a Poor Knights CD from one of the guys there.  I also spent the boat trip chatting away to an English girl doing her divemaster there.

What a superb day and an ideal way to leave New Zealand.  I was so sad knowing that I wasn’t going out the next day as despite only being there three times I walked in in the morning to ‘Hi Darren, you came back then.’ and that wasn’t even from someone who was out on the boat with us.  When I left someone said ‘maybe see you next season for your divemaster then.’, and I went away with the email address of one of the guys incase I made it to Malta to dive when he was there.

The Poor Knights Islands really are a pretty special place even without the diving.  Above and underwater there are loads of arches, caves and ‘bubbles’ in the rocks from the previous volcanic activity, and it’s a sacred place for the Maoris due to the history.  Due to the lack of human activity on the island its one of the few places, if not the only place in New Zealand that is free from pests and rodents so you get very special creatures including the only remaining ‘dinosaur’ species around. The caterpilars are huge due to the lack of predators.  Humans are not allowed to land on the islands apart from the odd DOC or scientific representative.  Hearing about this place really brings it home how much man has buggered up New Zealand in the past and present day introducing foreign species, trashing the marine life with fishing practices and generally all the things that lie under the covers of New Zealand’s ‘clean and green’ marketing.  New Zealand isn’t alone with this but the longer you spend here the more you realise how much bullshit is being marketed compared to what really goes on.  There are many opponents to the Deptartment of Conservation here, and even their practices, but it’s great to see some of the things they preserve and try their hardest to maintain and that they make some of the reserves very easily accessible (e.g. Goat Island) for people that maybe wouldn’t experience the environments otherwise.

One day I’ll be back

Oh and to finish on a good note, here’s a really special picture of a seahorse I took.

I actually got sent this from a traveller I met in Laos.  Apologies to the copyright owner as it’s not my picture!  (oops).

I left Tutukaka yesterday morning already wondering why I hadn’t just stayed to dive.  I knew I wanted to see the North, but I had kindof already decided I wouldn’t head to Cape Reinga as it would be too much driving, and I got fed up of that recently. Immediately I felt like I had turned into a ‘tick off tourist’ just cruising past the sights with no time to take them in.

Straight past Bay of Islands, straight past where they signed the historic treaty, straight past Doubtless Bay, and a quick snap on a misty 68 mile (sorry ‘90′ mile) beach.

I decided I had to head back to Tutukaka and spend my last clear day in NZ doing another dive at Dive Tutukaka by the Poor Knights Islands.  I’ve constantly thought about diving and doing my divemaster since being there, so if any generous and wealthy reader has some spare pocket change you could give me a birthday present of flights and divemaster course for my birthday once I return home!  I’m just hoping the weather over there has stayed better than in the west.

It’s a bit like a good days climbing.  Do you do another climb after the last superb one you just did, or do you leave it incase the last one you try isn’t as good and taints the memory?

Anyway, they are a great bunch there and probably one of the most professional (but not boring) dive outfits I’ve ever went out with, alongside probably Borneo Divers.

I’ve lasted pretty well so far lugging all my gizmos around but it’s a bit of a hassle as well. I’ve got compact camera, digital SLR with a few lenses, laptop, MP3 player and I’ve acquired a few external hard drives for holding music, pictures and the odd video.

(PIcture : Chargers and leads galore)

I’ve also always purchased a SIM card for my phone in every country except Cambodia (you needed a local ID card there) and Myanmar, and I won’t be able to in Japan.

(Picture : My seven SIM cards : Left to right clockwise - since I know you are really interested – Malaysia DTC, Australia Optus, Vietnam somethingorother, NZ Vodafone, UK Vodafone, Laos Tango, I think XPAX is Thailand as well I can’t remember, and in the background the purchase card for my Thai Happy SIM!) 

And of course, taking as many photos as I have the last 12 months, you have to expect a camera memory card to get confused and become useless at least once…luckily I never lost anything and had a spare with me as it was at the start of my Mount Aspiring walk!  Of course I had to take it apart to have a look.

(Picture : External hard drives)

But I’d struggle to travel without all the stuff!

To be fair it this sign probably had nothing to do with a Kiwi.  I saw this scribbled on the back of a toilet door in a holiday park yesterday….

Writing my Hi Tech blog made me think about cellphones (or mobiles) in New Zealand. It’s obvious from the start it is a monopoly country, and I guess it may stay that way due to the population.

You have Telecom, who have some stupid old system that doesn’t use SIM cards, and Vodafone who has a monopoly for all the travellers, and many Kiwis as well so they can roam with it.

But it’s expensive.  It’s like the UK years ago.  90c a minute for a call (about 30 pence), yet you can call the UK just now for 30 minutes for $3.

Considering the low population density the coverage is pretty good though, but gets poorer around parts of the South Island for obvious reasons – terrain, national parks and low population.

In saying that you can pretty much tell that if you are in a place you think that is remote but you have cell coverage, I reckon it’s a pretty good indication there are some pretty expensive baches (holiday homes) just tucked around the corner, or in the North Island, you are just about to hit another bunch of JAFA’s holiday homes (Just Another F!?”ing Auckland – sorry I just had to get that into my blogging somewhere).

Also, Vodafone’s service is terrible.  Text messaging not working, long waits on hold to the call centre, voicemails delivered several days later – all really bad when you pretty much have a stranglehold on the market.  I’ve been with them in the UK for years and they’ve been great. 

Come on – give the Kiwis what they deserve Vodafone!  Cheap calls, great service and even better coverage – you’re one of, if not the, largest phone company in the world!

Just a quickie as my time on the net is running out and my accommodation in Japan has fallen through…
I’m heading back to Tutukaka for another days dive probably as I’ve turned into a ‘tick off tourist’ again and don’t like it. And I’ve always been thinking of diving….

More soon.

Not quite, but here I am sitting grabbing internet time, contemplating going home, flights booked, a ‘free’ trip home effectively, and I’m still enquiring about my divemaster at Dive Tutukaka, and then I get an email from my Melbourne host titled “Come to India”….”I’ll be there in two weeks”  yet I reject the idea!

Bloody money!