timblesworldtour

Here in Australia it’s the middle of summer and school holidays, and there’s lots of events going on which culminate in the Australia Day celebrations on 26th January. So far in our trip we’ve managed to ‘leave the party’ in a city just as the fun was starting! In Christchurch we left the day before the International Buskers Festival started, on the day we left Auckland to fly to Sydney a music festival, Big Day Out, was on!! Originally we’d planned to leave Sydney on 24th Jan, but we rapidly changed this to 27th!

One of the events held every year is a series of free, open-air concerts in an area called The Domain, a beautiful park adjacent to The Botanical Gardens. We’d missed the jazz concert (groovy..) the week before, but we’re in time for the classical concert with The Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Sat 20th. We had to go!

The place was ‘jumping’ when we got there, a sea of sydneyites (?) with blankets, coolers and folding chairs. After availing ourselves of a bottle of Australian red and two plastic cups from the beer tent (very nice, and pretty cheap – $25AUS/10 pounds), we found a space on the grass and settled down to enjoy the evening. And we did!
The concert was directed by Charles Hazlewood and was ‘a celebration of 20th century music from the Americas’..apparently. It featured music from Frank Zappa, Leonard Bernstein and culmunated in The 1812 overture by Tchaikowsky with cannons and fireworks! The whole thing was very entertaining and we came away cultured, relaxed and more than a little bit drunk.

Taking pictures was tricky, as it was nearly dark, The alcohol didn’t help.

Whilst listening to the music, we happened to notice large flying things circling above our heads, in the dusky light. Thinking it a bit late for birds to be out, we looked closer and discovered they were bats – enormous ones about the size of pidgeons!

You may have noticed some spots on certain of the pictures. this is caused by internal refections of sunlight within the camera itself. I haven’t had time to photohop these pics yet and remove the spots.

The solution is to use a lens hood. If you have one. My new sigma 18-50 mm F2.8 lens had a lens hood, which I duly lost. I ordered a replacement from Sigma, which they duly sent, and I got shipped over to Australia. The genius at Sigma who took the order, sent the wrong size. Not only do I have no lens hood for my lens, I also have a lens hood for a different type of lens which I will never own.

If you can keep your lens hood while all around are losing theirs (especially Sigma), then you are truly a photographer my son.

So it is our first day in Australia. After arriving, we made our way to a hotel, which jokingly refers to itself, as being at a place called potts point. It is actually at Kings Cross, a wierd mix of backpacker land and strip joints. It doesn’t really matter, as the staff are ace, and we can see some of the symbolic landmarks so well associated with Sydney from our room.

Our first day, we spent at circular quay, which could also be called tourist central, taking lots of pictures of the famous landmarks, such as that above, and the harbour bridge.

Just a final post on New zealand, before we leave. We fly back to Auckland in the morning, and there we will catch a flight to another country, much bigger, better known, and home to more tourists, animals (and residents). Just as diverse in wildlife, Australia is our next stop. All of my life I have waited for the right opportunity to visit Australia, but all the time (as I suspect have many others) I was missing the real jewel of the southern pacific, New Zealand. My trip to NZ didn’t do it justice, and I need to return with more time to really explore this great country.

The flight with Air New Zealand takes around three hours to cover the 1337 miles. It is surprising how far sydney is from Auckland, as on a world map it looks very close. This is of course due to the fact that Australia is extremely large.

Here’s a quick question how big do you think Australia is? Thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of miles?

I had no idea, but it is actually (wait for it) 2,967,909 square miles, and has some 16,000 miles of coastline. It is the sixth largest country by land mass (the USA is No.4, Canada is 2nd – (sorry USA!)), and is a continent in it’s own right. In fact it is the only continent which can be completely traversed without need of a passport.

Anyway, it is goodbye to New Zealand, and hello to Oz.

Aside from being a beautiful city, Dunedin is also home to a huge amount of wildlife. Located as it is, at the southern most tip of land, it has unique habitats which of course wildlife has used to its advantage.

Just a short 30 minute drive outside Dunedin, is a stretch of land which is rightly famous – the Otago Peninsula. This crescent shaped strech out to sea, is of course formed from previous volcanic activity.

This area is just packed with wildlife.

We decided to take a tour with a local company Monarch Wildlife Cruises, which could take us out to the southern most tip of the peninsula, to visit the nesting sites of the Great Southern Albatross, then by boat sail all the way back into the harbour of Dunedin.

I mentioned earlier there is a lot of wildlife here. This was proven within twenty minutes of getting on the bus, as we passed one of the local beaches. Right next to the road, there was a male sea lion lying basking on the beach. Truly remarkable!

Eventually, we reached the Southern Albatross centre,and left the coach (others chose to go and see some local penguins instead).

The Sothern Albatross centre

We were told that the tour would start in twenty minutes or so. Just time to get some nosh. Typically in the UK and other places, the food in such a visitor location would be overpriced, and generally of the crappiest crapness possible, but the food was just great.

The tour started, and we were given a detailed overview by one of the staff about the albatross. Typically the adult wingspan reaches 2.5 Metres, beaten only by the largest type of albatross (the wandering albatross) whos wingspan reaches 3.0m. Either way, these are seriously large birds, with a specially adapted wing, which can effectively ‘lock’ the wing for prolonged soaring. The albatross flies so little (soaring instead) that it does not have the same large flying muscles seen in other bird species. After this very detailed intro, we were taken up to the hide which overlooks the nesting site.

Fortunately, it was quite windy, so we had good expectations of seeing these great birds in flight. We were not disappointed.

The truly remarkable great southern albatross will pick a mate, then leave for maybe two years continually at sea, with the mate flying off in the opposite direction. Usually, after several years they will both return separately, but within days of each other to the same nesting site.

It is hard in pictures to show how big these birds are, but just think big, and then even bigger, then bigger again.

After this we were met again by our driver, who took us down to the boat mooring, to board the MV Monarch. This was a proper old fashioned boat.

The crew took us on an extensive visit of the surrounding area, visiting seals, with their pups. The skipper, helped by some ’spotters’ was constantly picking out sea bird species, giving full explanations of their nesting sites, and markings. At one point, there were two types of albatross present, although only the great southern nests here.

The remainder of the cruise took us into the back towards Dunedin harbour, with great detailed commentary by the staff. Unlike some trips, these guys really knew wildlife.
If you visit this area, I can highly recommend this boat trip, as one of the most informative, friendly and professional wildlife cruises you can ever wish to get.

Throughout history, the Albatross has been often encountered by mariners, as it spends almost its entire life at sea, rarely visiting land. It achieves these great sea-going voyages (often covering 600 miles a day), not by flying like most birds, but by soaring, riding on air currents. It is this fact throughout history which has made the Albatross an omen of good luck to sailors. In the days of sailing ships, being still in the ocean for many days with no wind could lead to the untimely death of the crew. Sighting an albatross did not mean land was near (as with other birds), but it did mean there was a wind.

In the rhyme of the ancient mariner, by Samuel Coleridge Taylor, a mariner shoots an albatross with his crossbow that visits his vessel. Eventually the ship reaches still water with no wind;

“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”

The crew believing that the killing of the albatross has brought bad luck, and still sea, decide to punish the mariner by placing the dead bird around his neck;

“ Instead of the cross, the albatross About my neck was hung”

I won’t give away all the story, but ultimately, the mariner is condemed to wander the earth warning all, of the tale of the ancient mariner, and how bad luck can befall any who kill god’s creatures;

“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

It is not surprising that so much superstition became associated with this bird. It often stays at sea for six or seven years, and will typically mate for life.

The Albatross does not nest on mainland, only nesting on islands at certain times of it’s life.

Except in New Zealand. Just outside Dunedin is the ONLY place in the world where the Albatross (in this case the great southern albatross) nests on mainland. That’s where we’re going.

Ok, so we are still behind on posts, but this will change rapidly over the next two days – so there will be lots to read. I hope. Remember, if you have never accessed a blog before you can also access all the old posts at the start, and click on the pics to see the larger versions – most are 800×600.

We flew further down the east coast, again with Air New Zealand, to ‘The Edinburgh of the South’ – Dunedin. What was remarkable about Christchurch Airport was that we didn’t need to go through security for an internal flight! In fact we were so shocked that we had to ask someone, having already removed our shoes, belts and artificial limbs in preparation. (just joking about the limbs!).

Dunedin was set up by Members of The Free Church of Scotland in the mid-1800’s who were keen to set up a ‘Scotland of the Southern Hemisphere’. The ‘wee free’s’ were quickly out-numbered by other nationalities in the following decades, but they had stamped their mark on the town pretty well.

Anyone who’s familiar with the streets of Edinburgh will feel very at home in Dunedin. Our hotel was on Princes Street, which lead to George Street. There’s a Water of Leith, Leith Street and even a coastal village called Portobello nearby! Apparently, the design for the layout of the town didn’t really fit in well with the local geography, but they managed somehow. The centre of the town is called The Octagon, for obvious reasons, with streets at 45′ angles around a central, tree lined boulevard that links Princes and George Streets.

As well as architecture, the first Scots also brought some of their values and ideas to the town. Dunedin was the first town in New Zealand to have a university, and is still a major study centre with students making up 20% of the population.
There is also a fantastic Botanical Gardens, built on a sloping hillside on the outskirts of the town.
We visited in late afternoon, when it was very peaceful and quiet, and spent a good few hours wandering and sitting to take in the views. Some of the specimen trees were incredible, particulary the dawn redwoods, and the sloping alpine bank was a blaze of colour.
Agapanthus in full bloom, here in Dunedin, but seen growing all over New Zealand.

Again we found the people in the hotel, shops and restaurants to be incredibly friendly and helpful, and the whole atmosphere in Dunedin is very chilled and laid back. We got talking to one of the staff in the information centre, who’d lived in South Queensferry, in Scotland for six months- she was familiar with a certain, “very nice garden centre” nearby which she’d visited a few times. As Walt Disney said ‘it’s a small world after all’!!

So after our whale watching adventure, we had to get back to Christchurch, were we were based. The difficulty was, neither of us wanted to take the same decrepit bus back again. So we explored other options, and one of these was the once daily train from Picton to Christchurch. This route actually goes all the way from Auckland to Christchurch in a day, with ferry crossing of Marlboro sound between the two islands.

This is regarded as one of the great railway journeys of the world, so we decided to take up the opportunity to catch this service as it passed through Kaikoura. This, I guess is how train travel was meant to be, with comfy seats, really friendly staff, and an open viewing carriage at the back. This last item is important, as this railway line follows the coast all the way down the south island, and has some of the most stunning scenery possible.
It is interesting to note that the Kaikoura railway station only sees two trains a day, one in each direction.
Viewing the stunning scenery from the open viewing carriage

More stunning scenery from the train

If you have an opportunity to visit New Zealand, then I would certainly suggest you do at the very least part of this journey, as it is truly awesome.

We got back to Christchurch, safe and sound, ready for our trip to Edinburgh, our last stop in New zealand, the next day.

One of the things we’d read about before visiting NZ, and put onto our tick list, was whale watching at Kaikoura – a small coastal resort, a couple of hundred kilometres north of Christchurch. In fact it was one of the main reasons we visited the Christchurch area. Because of the geography of the sea bed, with a deep, fertile ravine coming close to the coastline, whales are common and a group of sperm whales makes it their permanent home.
On the day before leaving Christchurch, we set off by bus for a two and half hour ‘fun packed’ journey to get there. The bus wasn’t the most modern of models and only seemed to have about two gears. The driver also had a keen and detailed interest in ‘farming methods of New Zealand’ whch he told us about for most of the journey, over the loud speaker system! We arrived a little bruised and weary, but ready to whale watch.
Because of the permanent whale residents, sightings from the boat are virtually guaranteed (or so we were told at the information office when we booked). Sadly they hadn’t anticipated a thick layer of mist which had decended into the valley of Kaikoura, making it impossible to see anything. The result was that our boat trip was cancelled, and the following two were fully booked – disaster!
Kaikoura, sans fog!

Nice as it was, Kaikoura is not the kind of place you want to be stuck in, in a thick mist, with no prospect of leaving for another five hours – and there’s only so many whale souvenirs you can look at before you begin to lose the will to live!
However, just when we’d given up all hope of ever seeing anything remotely resembling a real whale, the mist cleared in about ten minutes. We had spotted earlier an advert for a light aircraft trip to fly you over the whales. Having been given a full refund on our boat trip and with two hours to spare before the train back to Christchurch (we couldn’t face the bus again!) we decided to go for it. A quick phone call later and we were dropped at the airfield by taxi.

The beautiful little Piper Archer, one of the fleet of Kaikoura Aero club

The flight itself was fantastic, and really gave us a feel for how beautiful and picturesque the scenery is around this area. With just the two of us, and the pilot, it was like our own private flight!

After five minutes in the air we spotted our first sperm whale, surrounded by three spotter boats. The law dictates that only three craft, including planes, are allowed within a certain distance of the whale at any one time. However, by the time we got there the whale at dived anyway.
Sperm whales are toothed whales and feed mostly on squid and octopus which thrive in the Kaikoura channel. (although the pilot did tell us he witnessed a whale eat a shark recently, by creeping up on it). They will dive for about 45mins then sit on the surface for 10mins before diving again to feed. We had better luck with our next sperm whale which the pilot spotted and flew us to.

It’s really difficult getting decent pictures from a piper archer, whilst using a tele lens. The vibration of the aircraft, essentially causes images to become blurred despite using high shutter speeds and ISO. Of course the real solution is a lens with built in image stabilisation, but I can’t afford one, so the pictures are blurry. Get over it already (as they say in Manhatten).

Whilst on the surface, the whale used it’s blow hole to expell water regularly and it’s this that a trained eye can spot. We had a good ten minutes of watching the whale sitting on the surface before it disappeared beneath the waves. Fantastic!

Short final, for a grass strip landing. Thanks to the excellent guys at Kaikoura Aero club, for an amazing flight.

No matter where you come from in the world, you will likely be struck by how nice people in New Zealand are. It seems everyone wants to help. For example, we took a cab across Auckland, it cost a few dollars over $20, and when we went to pay, the taxi driver said, oh, just give me twenty (America are you listening?). But even more than this just regular shopping, or eating is an amazing experience. I’m not saying everyone in New Zealand is extremely nice, but generally, they are noticably nicer and keener to help than anywhere else I have ever been. They are all extremely (and quite rightly) proud of their beatiful, peaceful, scenic, non nuclear country.

I really cannot recommend this country enough. In Auckland, and some other big towns, it can get busy, but get to the South Island, and it is even better. Uncongested roads, uncrowded streets. Generally just a very civilised country. On one occasion, we drove to the airport in the ‘rush hour’, and hardly a car to be seen, arrived at the front door of the airport. As our taxi driver left us, he shook our hand and wished us a safe journey (no bribery required -it was genuine) walked up to the check in desk (no queue), greeted by friendly staff, who seemed genuinely interested in whether we enjoyed our stay. Another civilised flight with Air New Zealand (and no, I’m not getting paid to say this).

If you have become jaded with modern life, New Zealand is truly food for the soul.

As well as being a haven for fauna, in NZ there is also quite a lot of flora for ‘plant spotters’ to get excited about. Some things are native and could be seen growing right in the heart of Christchurch city centre. I saw Phormiums everywhere, masses of blue Agapanthus and Cabbage Trees (Cordyline Australis) – some we saw growing on the banks of The Avon were taken as cuttings from trees growing at pre-European, sacred Maori meeting places.

Bird taking a rest on a riverside Phormium flower

The Botanical Gardens in Christchurch are a gentle stroll from the city centre (or a tram ride!!) and very well laid out. There’s the usual specimen trees, ponds and themed gardens – one particularly good one was The Australian Garden with some fantastic Eucalyptus specimens.

Anyone who knows me will also be surprised to learn that one of my favourite areas was The Rose Garden. There’s something quite surreal about being surround by hybrid tea roses, in full bloom, in the middle of January. The colours were amazing and the plants were extremely healthy.

Roses in full bloom in January

Hydrangeas thriving in shade of acer trees

A riot of colour in the herbaceous border

One of the main reasons for visiting christchurch was to explore areas of natural interest. One of these is an area close by, known as Banks penninsula. This is an outcrop of land a short distance from Christchurch, formed from several extinct Volcanoes. It is named after the Botanist Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his voyages. Originally, due to it’s shape it was believed to be an island, but later it was realised it is a penninsula.

Just a short bus trip in this area is the coastal area of Akaroa (a place where French settlers to New Zealand originally arrived). This area is famous as being one of the very few places on Earth where you can see the smallest (and rarest) Dolphin in the wild. In fact this Dolphin only exists in New Zealand, and only in certain locations within the South Island. The Dolphin is known as New Zealands dolphin, but more correctly, as Hectors Dolphin (named after the first curator of a museum in Wellington, and who first examined this dolphin).

This dolphin had characteristic markings, and quite uniquely, a rounded dorsal fin.

We set out on a fine morning with one of the available cruise companies, and were very quickly joined by a number of these dolphins. They move very rapidly, and are very small (around 1 metre in length), so are very hard to get good photographs of. Fortunately I managed to get some decent shots of them in the water.

Due to the decimation of this species by certain types of fishing nets in the 70s and 80s (it is estimated that more than half the population was rapidly wiped out), the area around Banks Peninsula was declared a marine reserve, in order to protect the dolphin.

Here are some nice pics of these amazing dolphins;

Akaroa, like most of New Zealand is a truly stunning location teeming with wildlife, and it seems only right that New Zealand takes such strict measures to protect it.

On 14th Jan we flew to Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand, with Air New Zealand. The flight was on time, cheap and we weren’t charged a small fortune for a nasty cup of coffee (unlike Ryanair).

Before visiting, I’d always thought that anything of interest, in New Zealand, happened in the North Island but this is not the case. Christchurch is a fairly decent sized city, albeit with a small population, and popular with tourists. We were staying right in the centre, not far from The Cathedral Square which is the main hub of activity.

There is also a river which flows through the centre – The Avon – where you can be punted through the streets and into The Botanical Gardens. All in all, it’s very reminiscent of an English cathedral town such as Durham or Cambridge (hardly surprising as the town is named after one of the famous colleges there).

Like most cities in the late 50’s, Christchurch decided to rip up it’s ‘obselete’ tram network to make way for the new internal combustion engine. However, they have replaced part of it and you can ride in a loop around the main city centre, if the mood takes you.

One strange sight to come across in the city centre was a life-size statue of Captain James Cook, legendery captain of The Endeavour and the man who ‘discovered’ Australia and raised The British flag in NZ. He seems to be a bit of a hero around here. Being from his neck of the woods, and hearing a lot about him when growing up, it was strange to come across him so far from home.

New Zealand has a very rich and diverse heritage of wildlife, much of which has been exploited, threatened and driven to the brink of extinction by good old homo sapiens over a very short historical timespan. Because of the abundant coastline, a lot of creatures are marine – whales, dolphins, fur seals and albatross being some of them (see later blog entries…). But there is also a unique bird population on the islands which aren’t seen anywhere else in the world.

Because of NZ’s isolation and lack of native land mammals, the birds adapted to fill all the niches usually filled by other animals, and in many cases became flightless, with no major predators.

The most well known is the national emblem, The Kiwi, of which there are six types, but there are also alpine parrots, flightless parrots and there ‘was’ a large emu type bird called a Moa. I say ‘was’ because all that’s left are a few bones to show that they ever existed.

Since man’s arrival on the islands, beginning with the first polynesian settlers, things have gone from bad to worse for the locals. But things really went downhill when Europeans arrived. As well as eating them they also introduced predators for which the birds had no defence. Some were accidental – rats, ferral dogs and cats- but some things were deliberately set free to go forth and multiply! These include deer, pigs, starlings, possums, rabbits, stoats (to eat the rabbits when they became a problem, sadly they prefer kiwi!). As well as this, there is now only about 5% of native forest left in NZ where the remaining birds can hide.

Thankfully there is a big conservation movement going on to save these unique animals, areas are set aside as reserves with predator-proof fencing and non native critters are regularly hunted or trapped. New Zealander’s seem to have a pathological hatred of one seemingly innocuous alien – the possum. This Australian immigrant is nocturnal and strickly veggie, but they are happily munching their way through the precious remaining native forest. Many gift shops do a roaring trade in possum fur accessories, and I read that one Green Party MP, who’s car is probably adapted to run on organic carrot juice, did have possum fur seat covers!!

Auckland is known as the city of sails for very good reasons – it has a very busy harbour area with yachts, cruise liner berths and trendy shoreside appartments.

The harbour is perhaps most infamously known as the site for the 80’s ‘Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior Incident’ – when the French Government and Secret Service decided to take the law into their own hands and blow up the ship whilst berthed here. That’s the French for you, I’m surprised they didn’t fill it full of burning sheep first!

We booked a harbour cruise whilst in Auckland to see the city from the water, and we were lucky enough to get a beautiful day for it. The cruise itself lasted about two and half hours and was reasonably priced ($45NZ/15 pounds) It took us out of the harbour, past some very expensive pleasure boats, and up underneath The Harbour Bridge. (not as big as Sydney’s but still pretty smart).

Apparently, after being built, the local authorities realised the bridge wasn’t big enough so they added on extra lanes on either side, with associated struts – Forth Road Bridge Authorities please take note. You can bungee jump off the bridge if you want (or sit on a nice safe boat underneath it sipping free coffee – you choose!) The view of the city, from the water, is fantastic and it gives you an idea of the geography – extinct volcano peaks form much of the high ground.

Something which you become aware of upon reaching New Zealand, is that it offers many.many varied opprtunities for thrill seekers. Typically, this involved jumping off things, being catapulted or thrown at high speed. This is due in no short part to the fact that the world’s first commercial Bungee jumping site started in New Zealand, by A.J.Hackett. Since then, the number of ptential site for jumping has increased markedly.

If you are a thrill seeker, New Zealand is for you.

In Auckland is the Sky Tower, which is located right in the centre of the city. This tower is 328 meteres tall (the tallest in the southern hemisphere). Whilst it is not the tallest in the world, it does have a quite unique feature. You can jump off it. Apparently, this has been done by many people, and is an amazing thing to watch.

Of course, as soon as I heard about this, I knew I just had to do it…….yeah, right.

If like me your are quite sane (or a wimp, depending on perspective), you can just get the express lift both ways, but I never got round to it.

The Sky Tower can be seen in this skyline shot of Auckland. It’s quite high.

Ok, so we start our Journey by arriving into Auckland airport, at around 4 am. Bizarre as it may seem, the difference in time between San Francisco and New Zealand, is only 5 hours. The real complication of course is dates. We left USA on the evening of 7th Jan, and arrived into New Zealand on the morning of 9th January – we ‘lost’ a day. This is of course because we crossed the international dateline.

For those who have read ‘around the world in eighty days’ by Jules Verne, this will come as no surprise.
[STORY SPOILER ALERT!!!]

if you recall, Phileas Fogg went around the world eastwards, and whilst crossing the dateline effectively ‘gained’ a day. When he arrived back in london, he was just a few minutes late for his bet. Or so he thought. He was actually a day early, and went on to win his bet, get married etc…etc…blah de blah de blah.

If you haven’t read it, well there’s not much point now.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is, that despite the best efforts of the superb Air New Zealand crew to get me drunk on whisky (Glenfiddich), the effects of Jet lag were minimal.

And so here we are in Auckland – ‘the city of sails’

They take sailing seriously here

POP QUIZ : What is the capital of New Zealand?

ANSWER: Anyone who said Auckland, go to the back of the class. It is of course, Wellington, but Auckland is bigger.

When Peter Jackson chose to film the Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand, it increased the number of people visiting this truly remarkable country. Originally (and still) called Aotearoa (Maori – Land of the long white cloud), this country is still proud of its origins. We are going to New Zealand to see this magnificient country, see some of it’s native animals and plants. We are also going whale watching, as many types of whales are present in one location of New Zealand, all year long.

New Zealand is some 6516 miles from San Francisco, which involves an overnight flight of some 12 hours non stop. Fortunately, we are flying with one of the better long haul airlines, Air New Zealand. Whilst at this point, I thought it may be good to estimate the distances flown on this trip already, so here goes;

The flight only routing has been as follows;

EDI-LHR-SFO-JFK-SEA-LAS-SFO-AKL.

According to the great circle mapper (www.gc.kls2.com), the combined approximate distance to Auckland is 18503 miles.

The long flight to Auckland gave me some time to reflect on all the homeless people I saw in America, and some of the nonsense petty biggotted (religious) politics currently going on there. I don’t want to talk politics on this blog, as it’s not what it’s about, but I have to say something about the United States of America. I like the country, and had a great time there. It has a major problem though, called George W.Bush.

Let me explain; there are around 6.5 Billion people on planet Earth, and of them only North Americans think George W.Bush is NOT a complete and utter fool. America is a great country. It needs a great leader.

Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
one for the dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

J.R.R.Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.

So, now I head back once again to San Francisco, for one night, before heading to the next part of my journey. In a truly genius masterstroke, I have arranged to leave San Francisco, the day before the world’s largest Mac conference. Doh!

Never mind, I’m off to somewhere rather special, instead…

What can I say, my trip to the USA is very near it’s end. I’m leaving Las Vegas. It’s an amazing place, and everyone should experience it least once in their lifetime. I’ve been here four days, and that’s just about right, I think if I stayed longer, I might start to see through the veneer to the Vegas dark underbelly, and the illusion would be shattered.

As it is, I enjoyed Vegas, it is weird wild and quite amazing – an escape from reality. Walking down the strip, it is so very strange being in Paris, then Venice, then New York, and so on.
But the interior is spookily like a venice street, complete with artifical sky.
Just for completeness, and because I have some photos, here is caesar’s Palace at night.

You may have noticed a lack of updated posts. This is because my laptop (with all my 400+ photographs from the trip) died. Or at least it seemed to. I tried everything to revive it, but I couldn’t get it to boot.

After around a week of figuring out what to do (as it’s not easy getting repairs when you are moving countries all the time), I finally did something I should have done before. I removed the battery. Believe it or not, this did the trick.

Anyway, my laptop is now working, but what originally prompted the problems is still causing difficulties. My HDD is only 30 Gb, and is full. I’ve removed applications to make more space, but it hasn’t helped much. It’s a 1 GHz ppc ibook, and while great for E-mail, it’s rubbish for photo editing (I usually shoot RAW), so I’m going to invest in a new one. So, in the meantime, I’m fiddling about a bit when it comes to pictures, and it’s not helpful for the blog, so I’ll maybe not include so many pictures for a day or so. But you’ll still get my witty(?) prose, so it’s not all bad.

I’m trying to catch up with posts today, so lots of them will have the same date.

If you found yourself in Las Vegas, of an evening, during the sixties and early seventies (and assuming you hadn’t gambled all your money, house and children away), then you could have gone to see The King of Rock and Roll, live at Caesers Palace. Sadly, since 1977’s alien abduc…sorry, death of Elvis this hasn’t been possible – until now!! Trent Carlini has entered the building!

The Sahara Casino where Tren Carlini performs, with the Stratosphere tower in the background. I like the Sahara, it’s like a ‘real’ vegas Casino, without the hoo-ha, pyrotechnics and inflated bar prices.

We booked tickets to see Trent Carlini ‘The Dream King’ at The Sahara, fully expecting to see an over-weight, side-burned lookie-like in a rhine-stone encrusted jump suit, belting out ‘Viva Las Vegas’ to a backing tape. We were in for a surprise!

The show was extremely well thought out, with a full (quite excellent) band, backing singers and movie footage. Trent himself looks, and sounds, spookily like a young Elvis and he covered the full breadth of Elvis’s two decade career. With about six costume changes over the hour-long show, it was fast paced and when not on stage, clever cinefilm footage was shown of ‘The Dream King’s’ early years.
We did get the Las Vegas years at the end, with a red jump-suit and sweat-soaked scarf hand-out to appreciative female audience members. Before going in to the show we got talking to a guy who turned out to be the producer. He said that the end segment was so realistic, it was like the mid-seventies all over again – he was right!
If your only real memories of Elvis involve a large mansion, tight clothes and cheese burgers, then go and see why he was really called ‘The King of Rock and Roll’.

It’s a helluva hotel!

After the calm and serenity of Christmas in Seattle, arriving in Las Vegas is like being woken at four in the morning by a fire alarm…with your trousers on fire!!
Everything is brighter, everything is bigger and everything moves at twice the normal speed. The main centre of activity is Las Vegas Boulevard (The Strip) and if you stay in one of the many hotels on the strip you’re right in the heart of things 24/7.
New York, New York Hotel is at the south of The Strip and has all the good ( and some of the bad!) points of The Big Apple. The main facade has The Manhattan Skyline, The Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge all competing for your attention. Inside there’s Soho, Times Square and Central Park – and, sadly, the ubiquitous Irish Bar with jaunty tunes, ‘Emerald Isle’ stout and hearty meals. On the plus side there’s everything you need inside your hotel – including the ability to gamble to your hearts content – but food and drink was expensive and it’s a good idea to shop around. We found a 24hr food court, on The Strip, selling cheap meals and ate there most of the time – particularly The Panda Express chinese food emporium!
For a cheap night out try the main bar in The Sahara Hotel, you could become very happy for very little money!!
But the best thing to do in Las Vegas, without gambling away your life savings, is just to wander around and look! There’s plenty of free entertainment outside the hotels such as the pirate show at Treasure island and the fountains of The Ballagio.
Sadly it was a bit stormy when we were there so that affected the outdoor shows. but there was still plenty of photo opportunities.