The Magic Island

FLORIANÓPOLIS, ILHA DE SANTA CATARINA, BRAZIL - 6th February 2010

Picking up the tale in Porto Alegre, the guacho Brazilian barbecue that I had been so looking forward to came across a slight but significant hiccough that began, quite literally, just as I'd finished with that day's blog. First came the sensation of aching bones and neck... soon followed by a rising temperature... and gradually a stomach turning to jelly. 4 months of my travels have seen no form of illness strike me down worse than an evening of sniffles back in Fox Glacier in New Zealand, so I was in no mind to let some stupid germs get in the way of what was going to be a delicious dinner with Paulo's family. Sadly, the germs fought a tough fight and, even with Fernando (Paulo's nephew) dashing off mid-dinner to buy me some paracetamol, my consumption of some insanely delicious steak (a particularly fine example of which I took the liberty of photographing, below) was disappointingly low - and punctuated by regular strolls to the bathroom and back for now other reason than to cool my head with water and walk off the bloating sensation that was welling up inside me.



Nevertheless, dinner was very enjoyable with the Caldeira family and I was bowled over by their present to me once we were home - a limited edition centenary shirt of Internaçional, Fernando (and all the family's) football team. An amazing souvenir to take onwards in my travels, reminding me of a stay in Porto Alegre that - despite its brevity and hijacking by unknown illnesses (the night's sleep involved multiple bathroom visits), was a wonderful introduction to Brazil and, in particular, the warm-hearted generosity of Brazilians.

6 hours on the bus from Porto Alegre to Florianópolis passed, thankfully, without great incident - I was still feeling rather delicate after the previous night's digestive fireworks. Meeting me at the Rodoviaria (bus station), however, were Luis and Bruno - and an opportunity to recount my amazing good fortune across 4 days in Australia. First, Fraser Island, and fate's decision to have me in a van whose 7-person group included Eduardo and Rita - brother and sister from Rio de Janeiro, the latter on holiday visiting the former, who now lives in Sydney. At this stage of January - a month ago today - the plan to meet Anna in Rio for Carnaval was in disarray due to the combination of a total lack of accomodation, and insanely prohibitive prices on what little was available. The mention of this state of affairs set things in motion, and in one fowl swoop, however, we went from having nothing and no plans to having no just accomodation in Rio, but for free! Things got better still just 2 days later on the Whitsunday scuba cruise, when I befriended fellow divers Guillherme (Gilly) and Luis - brothers from Curitiba, Brazil; both on holiday, but the former from his work/studies in Bonn, Germany, and the latter from his studies in Brazil. Again, one thing led to another and my non-existent plans suddenly had amazing shape - I was now going to meet up with Luis (whose university semester only begins after Carnaval) in Florianópolis, and then head up to Curitiba with him to stay at the family home in Curitiba. Fate was dealing me some particularly good cards at that stage...

Fast forward one month, and Luis had driven down to Floripa (as the cool kids call it) with his friend Bruno for a long weekend of sun, sand and partying with yours truly - though my internal state meant the first night was a bit of a knockout. Florianópolis is actually just the gateway city that links Ilha de Santa Catarina with the mainland, but for whatever reason people just take Floripa to mean the whole island, a.k.a. "The Magic Island" (apparently). Day 2 saw us shift from one hostel (a temporary fix) to the one we actually wanted - Tucano House comes massively recommended on Hostelworld and has apparently been ranked "best hostel in Brazil" and "second best hostel in South America" over the last few months. It goes without saying that it is, to use a piece of Kiwi English that I took straight to heart, "sweet as".



It was not even 2 minutes after we'd set foot in Tocano House that who should show up but Mitch and Scott - the Sydney boys I'd met back in Montevideo. Introductions to Luis and Bruno were made, and before we knew what was going on we had ourselves a little crew and were finding out that I was not alone in my ailments - both the Aussies had been struck down with identical symptoms, suggesting that the culprit could well have been a certain Montevidean roadside burger...



Anyway, catching up aside the crew were trekked off towards Joaquinha Beach for some sandboarding down some pretty massive sand dunes. It sounds cool, and it is when you go down. However, the negatives stacked up - after a walk that took AGES in boiling heat (40° wouldn't be far off), climbing back up a massive sand dune, with the sandboard you've just ridden down, is cardio-vascular exercise like nothing you can imagine. Throw into the mix three suspect stomachs, and you have 15 minute recouperation intervals between each 30 second ride!

Knackered, hot and sweaty, we sauntered over to the actual beach and spent an excellent couple of hours enjoying the sunshine and incredibly cold water, as well as some pretty impressive surf (mastered by the dude to the right). Sugarcane juice was downed for energy, before trekking back up and over the dune hills for a very late fried seafood lunch that us three infirms really could not do justice to (a fact that annoyed me just as much as in Porto Alegre), and in true Latin style we all crashed out for siestas in some shade on the shore of Lagoa du Conceiçao. The lake is the biggest on the Ilha de Santa Catarina, and has the most ridiculously warm water I have ever known - I certainly have been nowhere else where emerging from the water into 35+° heat leaves you feeling a bit nippy.

Back at the hostel, the swimming pool was commandeered, although it took some work as we initially found it armed with a veritable possy of upper class England's finest - apparently all residents of either South Kensington or Sloane Square (London's equivalent of Manhatten's Upper East Side) and the like, here sat a group of 15 or so Brits whose quintessentially Public School accents (the girls in particular) were not even half as annoying as their fantastically condescending demeanour. Some of my closest friends from Oxford are products of the likes of Eton and Harrow, so I have nothing against the Public School crowd per se - but these guys were disliked by all 5 of us from the word go. Thankfully, our paths diverge tonight as we head to a local place that supposedly specialises in hip-hop style music - while seemingly everyone else has splashed out on a R$50 round tour to some electro-techno affair 45 minutes away by bus. Shan't be missed.


The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#14 - However many beers you've had, roadside food in Montevideo should be avoided.

Franz and Fox: The Ice Twins

FOX GLACIER, GLACIER COUNTRY, SOUTH ISLAND - 23rd January 2010

Depending how you look at it, the last 3 weeks of my life have been either phenomenally efficient, or one massive rush (or indeed both). It seems patently ridiculous to think that just 3 weeks ago I was in Sydney climbing the Harbour Bridge with the whole Australian East Coast yet to be seen, leave alone New Zealand. It is equally galling that it was a mere 12 days ago that some swarmy git stole my camera - a fact that has inevitable meant many a solitary moment since the 11th has left thoughts to turn to various "what if" scenarios that achieve little else bar leaving me feeling pretty gutted.

Today, however, had a double-whammy of gloom-busting developments. On one front, the nagging annoyance of losing so many fun-filled photos from Fraser Island was lifted upon seeing some classic snaps appear on Facebook courtesy of Nick - one of the crew in our 7 man 4x4. On a second front, a quite breathtaking sunset over the rugged flat plain, rainforest-clad mountains and white icy glacier provided a perfect opportunity for my new camera to show off why I'm far better off with something of its calibre in a country like New Zealand. A few examples can be found below.

On the topic of glaciers, I am in Glacier Country, and today saw me tick off another rather large box both in the Must-Do New Zealand activities, as well as a smaller but still decent one in the general checklist for life experiences. The task at hand was the Franz Josef Heli-Hike, involving a helicopter ride up to, and 2-hour hike around, the upper reaches of the Franz Josef glacier.

The Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are about half an hour's drive apart from one another, but have international fame due to their unique surroundings - along with another in Argentina, they are the only glaciers in the world that are found rolling down mountains whose banks are populated with temperate rainforest. It is surreal, to say the least, to be standing on top of a good 100 metres of solid ice, in blazing summer sunshine, surrounded by lush green trees. Given there are over 3000 glaciers in New Zealand, leave alone the rest of the world, you can get some perspective on just how unique a sight you behold.

On top of this, Franz and Fox move at a remarkable rate - at their tops the level of snowfall results in as much as 8 metres of downward movement every day. As a measure of comparison, your average glacier would be hard pushed to move 1 metre.

With an unseasonal forecast of blazing sunshine (which, according to Chris at Neptune's, is about as likely as guessing the roll of a die), I'd taken the liberty of booking the heli-hike" from i-Site tourist info centre in Greymouth - although cheaper alternatives included either heli- or hike on their own, once again monetary considerations were thrown out the window after at least 2 people said "the heli-hike is the best if you can afford it". My Visa card being accepted was criteria enough for the above, and after another ridiculously scenic drive down the ridiculously scenic west coast, I was in the Franz Josef township early enough to grab a colossal toasted sandwich from the local "Speight's" bar/cafe.

Helicopters are seriously fun. The physics of their motion is so different to any other method of transport, but what really takes you by surprise is their incredible stability through the steepest banked turns. With a full panoramic view as you ascend the carved escarpments of centuries of glacial erosion, you can't help but hold your breath as the pilot casually pulls a 180 degree banked turn while descending to within 10 metres of the ice below and 20 metres of the rocks to the side, before dropping to a perfect landing on a specified patch of ice.

Out the chopper, crampons on, and for the next 2 hours we follow Essex boy Ned around the sights and sounds of Franz Josef at 1600 metres. First impression? Immediately around you, there's a lot of white; just beyond, a lot of green.


Moving at the rate it does, the glacier is constantly changing, so the guides follow new tracks every time depending on what they've seen earlier that day. Our features included a couple of caves (cue cheesy photos), a tall, thin ice corridor (anyone much fatter than me wouldn't get through) complete with ceiling, and an awesome tunnel of ice that was basically flat at a horizontal angle, requiring you to slide on your front along the flowing water till the you reached a little pool at the other end. Apparently there were some stairs carved in the ice allowing you to avoid the water, but I was too busy posing for sub-glacial photos (see below) to look/notice and, much to the amusement of the rest of the group, ended up balls-deep in icy glacial meltwater. Cold.


A bit more hiking, a chopper ride back down, and I was back on the road heading a bit further south to the Fox Glacier township. 5 minutes outside of Fox lies Lake Matheson which, on a clear day (i.e. once in a blue moon), offers the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous view of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman - the two tallest mountains in NZ - reflected in the crystal clear water. There was a bit of cloud cover over the peaks while I was there so I couldn't get the epic pic, but the one that will eventually appear below isn't half bad either.

A few hours later, and the other side of the car park offered one of the most stunning sunset backdrops I've ever seen - beginning a barrage of photos (one such example below). To top everything off, over at the summit of Mount Cook the cloud suddenly cleared, with snow-capped summit glowing in the evening sun like a beacon of light. Beautiful.





The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#12 - Don't travel anywhere without Lemsip. Post-glacial sniffles were destroyed with one mug.

Messing with the Man

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - 21st January 2010

Travelling alone leaves you a lot of time alone with your thoughts, but it was nevertheless surprising to find myself contemplating, of all things, the nature of money as I sat here in the "interlander" ferry terminal. In particlar, what makes one financially prudent when it comes the cheapest hostels, transport, even meals, and feel bad about splashing out an extra $5 on dinner, but happily write off swathes of cash on crazy activities and put it down as necessary expenditure without giving it a second thought.

The main reason for this slightly tangential line of thought came at some stage yesterday afternoon on my drive down from New Plymouth. After a disappointing detour to the Mount Taranaki visitor centre only to have the whole area swamped in cloud, it was straight down to Wanganui for lunch and then down Highway 1 all the way to Wellington.

Unfortunately, "highway" doesn't mean much short of being a trunk road - it's still a single lane in each direction and heads right through the middle of every village en route. The latter presented the main issue - the speed limit falls from the standard 100km/h to 70, and then right down to 50 as you pass through town centres. Sadly for me, I ignored the latter as I passed through Levin, and a few hundred metres up the road my rear view mirror was full of blue and red flashing lights. 79km/h in a 50 zone? $170 thank you very much - and 28 days to pay up . Not cool.

With money being spent for fun in this country, I'd have expected myself to be seriously pissed off by this development. For some reason though, my financial value system slotted this in the "necessary to have a laugh" file and off I went - more amused than anything else.

Wellington greeted me with blazing sunshine - a welcome change from the meteorological crap I've had to put up with seemingly everywhere else I've been - and I passed a relaxing evening checking out the sights, including New Zealand's "Beehive" Parliament building (right) and the ubiquitous red cable car up to the top of the Botanic Garden Hill. The sunshine had locals out in numbers (the weather having been notably craptacular down here for the last week or so), all centred around a stage area at the foot of the gardens where local Brit-pop inspired band "The Supermodels" were the evening's entertainment in the city's month-long summer festival. Covering bands ranging from The Killers to the Rolling Stones and The Cardigans, as well as the Franz Ferdinand blast below, they were pretty damn good - aided by a fantastic location and a buzzing crowd.

Now, it's cheerio North Island till the 30th, and off to the scenic South.

P.S. Events have inspired me to introduce a periodic addition to the blog - with backdated additions from October, keep an eye out for:

The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
# 11 - When speeding through small villages, remember to search for cop cars hidden behind other, more innocent, parked cars. Or trucks. Or just slow down.

CSI: Airlie Beach

AIRLIE BEACH, QUEENSLAND - 11th January 2010

No point beating around the bush here. About 2 hours ago I had my digital camera stolen from my hostel room.

In the 5 minutes I was out of the room walking to the laundry room and back, or the 5 minutes I was out at the supermarket, a French girl staying in the same room was stupid enough to not just let in a complete stranger when he claimed he'd "left something behind", but leave him alone in the room. 20 minutes later, I'm making a sandwich and the girl comes asking if I've seen a man from our room, because her "camera is gone". With mine gone as well, it doesn't take much imagination to guess I was far from impressed.

Thankfully, the summer 2008 theft of my mobile phone with 4 weeks of travelling photos in Kho Pangan, Thailand - unofficially known as the "Curious Incident of the Berghaus Bag" - left its mark on me in terms of securing my photos, and everything up to and including Brisbane is safely backed up on my portable memory stick. Unfortunately, all my photos from Fraser Island - which were both plentiful and, arguably, the best photos from all of Australia (particularly of Lake Mackenzie) - as well as those from the Whitsundays are all lost... which is pretty gutting.

One other blessing is that as a result of doing four dives on the Wings II Whitsundays cruise, I got a free DVD with hundreds of photos from our time there, including many duplicates of ones on my camera. The police (who blatently agreed with my assessment of this girl's stupidity) said CCTV might give them a lead on this one, but even for a camera that has been lost twice before finding its way back to me (most notably at the Reading Festival in August, when these kids picked it up, snapped a load of photos of themselves, then returned it to Lost Property), I can't say I'm optimistic.

Silver linings are always around though, and in this case it means I can get the money from insurance and spend it on buying myself a fancy new SLR-esque camera in duty free before I leave to New Zealand in a few days time!

THE DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#9 - Trusting the French may be fine, but trusting those trusted by
the French will probably end badly.

New Year - Sydney style

KING'S CROSS, SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES - 1st January 2010

Happy New Year! I can happily report that Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge fireworks display is indeed as spectacular as it is bigged up to be - at 12 minutes in length it involves a quite remarkable quantity of exploding metal, and the choreography around the Bridge and the Opera House is pretty awesome.

The hours leading up to midnight were fairly eventful, although not in the sort of way I would have chosen. My Greyhound coach arrived at Central Station on schedule at 11am, and I walked over to the Meriton where Neil, a friend from Pembroke, was booked in (as getting accommodation here over New Year is next-to-impossible, I'd happily taken up his offer of the floor). After several attempts to call his room with no one picking up, and knowing he'd lost his mobile, I left my bags in the luggage room at reception and - armed with the trusty LPG - went exploring around the central area of town - checked out the impressive architecture of the Town Hall and St. Andrew's Cathedral next door to it, as well as the Queen Victoria Building shopping mall - a place so lavish and historical it would do well to be in Knightsbridge or Mayfair in London. Working my way north, I took in the vast facade of the General Post Office at No.1 Martin Place - complete with gargoyles and the imposing statue of Queen Vic - and over at Macquarie Place the cannon and anchor from HMS Sirius, the leading ship of the First Fleet that arrived in Sydney on the 18th January 1788 to establish the first convict settlement.

It was about here that things got interesting. Firstly, the heavens had opened - it goes without saying that when you're walking around a city miles away from your things, and with nowhere to change even if you could get to your clothes, rain is about as welcome as Barack Obama at a KKK Convention. The weather was a side-issue, however, shadowing the more pressing matter that arose when I checked facebook on my mobile and discovered a message from Neil saying that he was now flying back to LA early morning on the 1st, and had therefore checked out... leaving me high and dry (but, ironically, rather wet)!

A few quick phonecalls were made, and soon I was on my way to King's Cross - the backpacker-dominated precinct to the east of the main city centre - where Becca, another Pembroke friend is crashing in an apartment with friends she's made travelling around Australia. Awkward introductions were made, stories of travelling traded, and a few hours later we were all marching off to Rushcutters Bay with a picnic of sandwiches, pasta, crisps and wine (of a particularly cheap, nasty variety), to get ourselves a nice spot to watch the fireworks.

Rushcutters Bay was an excellent find by one of Becca's friends - it's far enough from the main centre that it isn't rammed, and anyone looking at it on a map would assume that the view of the Bridge is blocked by the peninsulas in front of it - but in fact you have a perfect view of the Bridge and the whole city away to the left - allowing you to see all the fireworks at once. We had a preview at 9pm, with the inaugural "Children's fireworks display", but the real deal at midnight was, well, the real deal - as the video below illustrates!



From there it was out to Kings Cross' bars - a typically messy affair - and this morning was not particularly enjoyable. However, with time in Australia running out I forced some productivity out of myself, and went for a long walk around the Botanical Gardens, which provide the best view of the Opera House and Bridge at once, and all the way around the Bay to the Opera House itself. I'll be back again tomorrow to climb the Bridge!

On the way back, and in serious need of some food to settle my stomach, I strayed across a fairly nondescript portable van next to the naval docks at Woolloomooloo (another addition to the "places with ridiculous names" collection), which turns out to be a place of some legend. Harry's Cafe de Wheels have been serving their "Tiger" pies, complete with mash and peas, since 1945, and the walls of the van are adorned with photographs of all sorts of celebrity customers, ranging from Pamela Anderson to Frank Sinatra to Sir Richard Branson. The place is definitely worth a visit, but at the very least the history is worth a read.

Photos... well they'll turn up eventually.

The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#10 - The dictum "Beer before wine? Fine. Wine before beer? Oh dear" exists for a reason.

Floating in the Sky

TOCUMWAL, NEW SOUTH WALES - 13th December 2009

An old family friend of my cousin, John, is a big gliding enthusiast and owns a third share of a glider out at an airfield fairly near to Mooroopna (about 100km is pretty close by Aussie standards). With me being a big fan adrenaline-based activities such as these, it had been arranged as long ago as last June for him to take me for an airborne spin.

SportAviation, John's flying club, is run by a friendly couple at an airstrip in Tocumwal, just over the Murray river that divides Victoria and New South Wales. The airstrip was originally built by the Americans in the Second World War as one of the bases for an assault on the Japanese should they invade northern Australia. Subsequently, it got converted for civil use, and has vastly shortened runways now that B-12 Bombers aren't coming by on a regular basis.

Gliders, obviously, cannot take off by themselves, and so are dragged airborne by a small plane with a line running off the back of it. I took the liberty of videoing our takeoff from the back seat, which you can watch below:



When the glider pilot is happy with the altitude reached, he disconnects the cable and frees the glider into his control - usually at about 2000-3000 feet. The aim of the game is to locate "thermals" - vents of hot air rising the lift the glider higher and higher allowing perpetual flight; a good thermal can send you all the way up to 10,000 feet in a few minutes. Usually they come in vertical cylinders, meaning you have to bank go round and round in a circle in order to sustain the lift for an extended period of time. If you're lucky though, you'll get a "road", where the thermal moves laterally allowing you to continue rising while flying in a straight line.

Unfortunately for us, it was a clear, sunny day without any sort of cloud in the sky. Unlike normal aviation, clear days like these are terrible, as it means thermals are dispersed and hard to find, but the air is still turbulent due to the general heat. Sure enough, we struggled to find a decent bit of lift for a good 10 minutes, before we strayed across a small one that gave us a bit of lift. Its diameter was damn small, meaning we had to back at about 60 degrees to stay in its current... and I can tell you first hand there are few things that'll make your stomach twist more than being strapped into a seat at a few thousand feet with the blazing heat of the Sun beating down on you through the glass, all the while performing incredibly tight circles at banking of 60 degrees, with your gradual circulating ascent punctuated by periodic shudders as the glider drifted in and our of the thermal. If you don't like roller coasters or swinging ships, gliding on a day like this is to be avoided!

We eventually got up to a little shy of 4000 feet before enjoying a nice relaxing cruise over 15 minutes or so back down to land, but I was reliably informed that it had been "really hard work" - something my insides could testify to! But it was still an amazing experience - not just because of spectacular panoramic views of the Australian bush spreading out to infinity in every direction (see below). The thing that really struck me was the phenomenal force existent in simple air. As John described it (slightly paraphrased), "down on the ground we don't really see anything... occasionally we see a tornado go by and think 'wow - that's a bit strong'... but it's only when you floating in a glider that you really understand that that power is everywhere". I just finished reading "Chaos" by James Gleick, and part of its story relates to how smooth flowing air currents can suddenly deteriorate into a state of total chaos with seemingly no pattern or rules to it: turbulence. No one really understands it, but its existence is a small part of an infinitude of reasons why our actual ability to model the atmosphere (and thus forecast weather in any sort of long-term manner) is useless. Going gliding is as good an interactive example of this in practice as you could want.



Anyway once we were all back in the hangar/office and relaxing with a couple of ice cold suds*, the proprietor of SportAviation got us to pose for a photo in front of our machine - "Golf Victor Yankee" - so that it could be recorded on website's blog, and sure enough the entry for the day has John and myself grinning away (see below).



* bottles of beer

The Daily Rod's Top Travel Tips:
#7 - There are always ways to prove the assumption that you're totally immune to motion sickness incorrect.

The beginning...

SEVENOAKS, KENT, UK - 29th September 2009

When I suggested creating a blog to chronicle my travels around the world, I did so expecting it to be shot down like a Jack Weavis chat up line, and receive a similar level of abuse in the process. As it turned out, however, the suggestion generated an altogether startling level of interest (almost certainly feigned, but startling nonetheless), and there seemed like no better time to get it going than at 25 past midnight... 6 hours before I depart sunny Sevenoaks.

Choosing the name for this blog gave me a surprising appreciation for the dilemma that must face parents when it comes to naming their kids. Once you've chosen, that's it - it's final, irreversible, and if you regret it later then its tough shit for you. The reality is that naming a blog is worse - as I've discovered over the last few years, kids' names have a get-out clause allowing parents to pull a fast one - if their first name sucks 2 years down the line then just call your kid by its middle, "backup" name and claim you always intended on doing so. Sadly, indeed tragically, the same doesn't apply to blogs. You type the captcha, click CREATE, and it's game over.

Thankfully, I managed to think of something that is both HILARIOUS and CLEVER, and will DEFINITELY continue to be so for the next 7 months. Slash, I typed the first thing I thought of that didn't sound like the Lonely Planet Mark II. Either way.

Aside from blog-name-choosing-based over-excitement, it has actually been a remarkably chilled day - all things considered. Most stuff was packed at ready by mid-afternoon, and aside from an hour-long scare where I convinced myself that I'd left my digital camera in Knole Park last weekend (it turned out to be in a box in my room), there was minimal stress. There was even time for another vintage episode of Pointless with the Judd guys still left in Kent, and the infinitely pleasurable experience of watching a "woeful Liverpool" get dominated by an Italian side who'd struggle to make the Top 6 in the Premiership.

But that's that for England - M25 traffic and Terminal 5 baggage handling permitting, 7 months of travel begin here. I guess the idea is that I post something here whenever I have something worthwhile to say - whenever that may be. I'd like to think I'm gonna have all sorts of interesting insights to share with the world, but realistically I'll probably just end up posting lots of internet links instead. But hopefully a few people will go out on a limb and provide some useful comments... if for nothing else but to keep me interested.

For now though, its time I got some sleep before my 6.20am departure to Heathrow T5. Next stop - Mumbai, India.

The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#1 - Make sure your iPod is loaded with every song you're going to want - it's all you'll be hearing for a long time.