Vanuatu pictures

Here's a link to some more photos from Vanuatu:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057042&id=29301533&l=2fc1926db1

Leaving western Australia tonight for Melbourne and the east coast. 3 weeks over there and then onto Bali!

Australia: Fremantle

Sunset after big storm in Freo
Back in my old stomping grounds of 2005, Fremantle, Western Australia. It's good to be back, meeting up with mates, going to favorite places and hitting the beach.

Things have been great, and the weather has been super hot until this afternoon when a big storm came in and just dumped the area with buckets of rain, plus some golf sized hail. The place where I'm staying, with 2 mates, had the back patio start to flood and we spent quite a while bailing it out and keeping the house from getting flooded. At one point, we were just 1 cm away from overflowing. But we kicked butt and got it down. Pretty amazing sunset afterwards before the rain came again. Whipped up some homemade pizzas and chilled inside, dry and warm.

Planning on more beach time, a trip out to Rottnest island to visit the marsupials, the quokkas, which look like big rats. Always a good time riding around the island. Just chilling with mates and living it up.

Vanuatu 2: island of black magic

Ambrym
On top of old smokey, all covered in rain
View from the plane
Cruisy way to travel
The jeep I rented in Port Vila
So Alisha and I flew out to her island, Ambrym, on a small 12 seat plane, with no doors to the pilots and amazing views of the islands out the windows. Landed on a grass airstrip surrouned by beach and jungle and then hiked with her host family to her village, a half hour away.

Black sand everywhere, the island is filled in the middle with volcanoes which affect the trees and crops due to acid rain and not the best soil. But there's still lots of produce coming from the ground, mostly root vegetables and coconuts. They make money off the coconunts and eat the other stuff, overall living a simple life and not needing money overall.

There was no electricity in the village, just one generator and a few solar panels, but otherwise, people wake up early with the sun and go to bed when it goes down. There's no fresh water on the island either so they collect rain water in wells.

We snorkelled around her beach, seeing a sea turtle and pretty much the whole cast of Finding Nemo except for Nemo himself. Had some big hikes around the area, to the gardens and up a small mountain to get to a sacred rock overlooking the beach. On the Friday we went on a hike up the volcano, which was amazinig, but was in pouring rain for the first 3 hours. Pretty soaked at the top, there was still an amazing view with a yellow red sky.

Alisha has two pets right now, Penny the pig and Lucky the dog. Both were awesome and playful, although both could be too noisy at times. She's got a cat on the way too, so it felt like a farm at times in her house.

And now I'm over in Australia, after 7 days in Vanuatu and living the easy life, getting a little dirty in the jungle and having a blast.

Vanuatu: south pacific island life

So I've been in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu for a few days now with my cousin Alisha who is here in the Peace Corp. Got lucky with her picking me up at the airport due to cyclones around the islands and her flight being cancelled for the previous 4 days, but she made it in time to meet me and then get rid of a chicken that she had in a bag that her village had given her as a present for a friend in town. Small island life where anything goes on a plane, and there is family on every island to meet.

We've been cruising around town and keep running into other peace corp volunteers. Been crashing at 2 volunteers flat which is pretty basic, but still a lot better than Alisha's island where we're headed today, land of black magic and volcanoes and no fresh water. Going to be rustic is putting it mildly.

Sadly no cannibals around anymore, last case was lsited in the 70s. Used to eat each other just as a source of meat in certain places. Interesting stories at the cultural center.

Rented a 4wd ghetto jeep and drove around half the island to Alisha's first host family, saw the laid back island life in the hot sun. Stopped off at some awesome waterfalls where we swam under them, jumped over them and slid down some. Definitley the highlight so far.

Drinking some local drinks with the locals which involves a lot of spitting after you drink. Apparently the taste gets worse the more you drink it, so it was a noisy venue and a good thing I was wearing shoes.

So now off to the airport to fly in a small propeller plane where you can see the pilots. Going to ask for wings like I did when I was a kid.

Hope all is well with everyone. The big adventure has started and it's rocking and rolling.

Summertime in Wellington

One Love at the Velodrome
Chillin with couch surfers
Bout to get my feed on
This past weekend was huge for Wellington. On Saturday was the One Love music event, celebrating Bob Marley’s birthday and the whole weekend was the Rugby Sevens tournament, with international teams packing out the stadium, culminating in a huge street party. Plus Saturday was Waitangi Day, celebrating the day the treaty was signed between the Maori and the English, making New Zealand an official super colony.

I went to One Love last year and just like then, we had amazing weather for the festival held in a velodrome. Nice grass pitch in the middle of the bike track. Super sunny, perfect day for hanging outside and listening to good live music while chilling with friends. The music was pretty sweet, although not as good as last year. The highlight was definitely the dub from Scotland. Nothing like a red haired Rasta from the land of Braveheart.

The place was packed, over 10,000 this year. Ran into a bunch of people I knew throughout the masses. Lunch was a hangi, the traditional Maori meal cooked using hot stones in the ground. Damn tasty and filling for a cheap price. 3 types of meat to go with potatoes, pumpkin, kumara and stuffing. Nothing like food cooked through steam over several hours.

For the Sevens, everyone dresses up and parties. It feels like a mardi gras mixed with Halloween. The 35,000 daily tickets sold out in 5 minutes and most of the people were all dressed up at the stadium. Huge screens around town and every bar making heaps of money during the weekend. In the night after the final, the city came alive dancing in the streets with DJs on rooftops and in the streets keeping the feet moving.

Moved into my new flat on Friday as well. In town, close to everything, 5 minutes to work on level ground, and a big room. I’m only here for the next 5 weeks before taking off to travel, so it’s working out good to be in the city centre again after crashing at a mate’s place a half hour away. Loving the city and going out with a bang.

Snow in between spring and summer

Here are a few pics from my couple weeks in the US over Christmas. It was a great time visiting everyone and relaxing in the homeland. Felt a bit different, and full of Americans, but it was still nice to get into the little things that count, like Wheat Thins.

With Boston being super cold, we got some snow. Lots of it, which rocked. Just what I wanted. Looks great, fun to play in, and fits the bill for a stereotypical northern hemisphere Christmas which we didn't have last year in New Zealand.

Highlights include snowshoeing, cross country skiing, making a snowman, a couple Christmas parties with warm drinks and lots of sweets, plus the usual Christmas traditions like cutting down a tree (tried our best, but only shrubs were left so had to buy one) and having a wicked feast of a dinner with the family. Lots of good presents, several good games of darts and lots of static electricity flowing around to shock me.



Snowshoeing with the mom

Playing snow-baseball

Me and Charles Bronsan, my snowman, complete with snow nose and Oreo eyes

Walking the dog with my sister

Lake starting to freeze over it was so cold

Cricket

Cricket, once believed by me to be one of the boriest sports out there, actually isn't half bad. Wednesday night I went with a bunch of couch surfers down to the Basin Reserve, the ancient cricket grounds for a match against Canterbury. What made the game interesting was that it wasn't the long drawn out famous matches of 5 days, but rather 20/20 cricket which means that you have a start to finish and a victor in about 3 hours, with only 120 balls bowled to each team, thus keeping it pretty quick paced.

Having practically no knowledge about the sport before the game other than it's a batsman not a batter as in baseball, it was fairly easy to pick up. Actually wanted to get out there and have a couple of swings myself. Each batsman gets 6 balls in what is called an "over" and there are 20 of these overs in a 20/20 match, therefore 120 balls. In that time frame the team tries to get as many runs as possible, with extra runs given when it rolls out past the fielders over the boundary rope of 4 runs and 6 runs given when hit over the boundary rope. The 6's are the big boys, like home runs and we had a bunch which always gets the crowd going, whether for the home or away team.

Wellington ended up winning, by 7 wickets in fact, pretty damn sweet, not a huge celebration as just a regular season game and the cold wind had been blowing all evening and a bunch of people had already headed to a warmer place. It was defnitely fun and I'd go to another one, preferably in warmer, sunnier weather.

Unicyles, Cricket and Summertime

So I'm back in New Zealand after a couple weeks in the US. Great time up there, cold, but super fun. Got to play in the snow every day, sledding, snowshoeing, snowman etc. Good to hang out with the family and eat some rich tasty Christmas time food.

Now i'ts great to be back in the summer, hot weather and a lot less clothes than in New England. We've got the World Championships of Unicycling in Wellington right now. Pretty funny stuff, city being bombarded with 600 unicyclers all over the place. Watched the freestyle event which was pretty much figure skating routines on one wheeled bikes. Lots of bouncing around, twists and such, which didn't always go to smoothly. Entertaining in it's badness at times and awesome in the creativity at other times. Sadly missed out on the basketball and hockey due to being at work, but hey, just got to check it out some other time.

Going to my first cricket match tomorrow , going to get some of that good old British boring sport action that's world famous. Outside, lots of people in the sun and something random going on in the pitch. Guaranteed to be entertaining.

Santa's coming to town

Who's that?<


So guess who got to decide who's been naughty or nice? Yup, yours truly. Had about 50 kids ages 8 months to 6 years all around me, giddy as hell, waiting for me to call out their name and give them a present. The smiles, the happy faces, the scared faces, the believing faces, it was all good.

I got driven up in a car (wearing a seatbelt of course, must set the good example) waving out the window and ho ho ho-ing. Kids gathering around getting all excited as I got out with my bag of presents. Felt like a celebrity, decked out in a wicked beard and costume, snazzy pillow belly to boot.

Sitting in a throne (what I call it, others might say chair), I was handed presents for each of the kids by my elves (flatmate Hannah and her coworker) and called out their names. Talk about having people's attention, all the parents and kids waiting for the name to be called out, pretty darn cool. Got some compliments on how Santa didn't sound like just a typical Kiwi, but rather international, perhaps from the north pole. At least the northern hemisphere and like he sounds in movies.

All was good, kids were happy, presents were opened and then there was just the one kid right in front of me, super eager the whole time and it turned out he didn't have a present while every other kid did. He was the brother of one of the kids at the school, and all the siblings only got presents if the parents brought one. Turned out they didn't and little Max had a big pout cause he wasn't leaving til Santa gave him a present. Lovely. At that time, Santa was thanked and escorted out leaving the parents (who didn't get him the present in the first place) to deal with the kiddo. More waves and happiness on the exit, a quick change in the car and I was back to being the sex symbol I am.

Good times, good times, giving happiness to one and all. Now I'm packing the bags and getting ready to head up to the northern hemisphere to a little country called the USA for a thing we call a White Christmas. Better get me some snow, none of this cold, cloudy, shite weather. Want the real deal and looking forward to seeing every member of my family that's currently in the US.

Flat roast

Had us a traditional Kiwi roast the other night. Roast pork with roasted veg (sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, potato, garlic and pepper) along with mint peas, gravy and apple sauce. It was a feast and fed all 6 of us. Damn fine stuff cooked up by Laura. Fun stuff to get the flatmates all together for a meal, chatting it up. Good people and been a fun flat so far.
Pic of Laura and Sam cutting up the roast, plus one of the steaming roast on our olive green 70s counter

Roller Derby

Last weekend I went to my first roller derby game. To put it short, it was amazing. One of my workmates is on a team and so as well as supporting her, the fact that women wearing leotards on roller skates bump each other as a sport sounds amazing. Fairly simple rules, the skaters have one person who can score, called the jammer. The jammer scores points by skating past her teammates. The other 4 on the team try to allow her to get by, while the 4 on the other team try to stop her. Simple stuff.

The arena was packed, over a 1000 people there for the championship bout (not a match, or game, but a bout). Signs supporting their favorite players, such as Thigh Voltage, Huttbreaker or Punk Pantha for example. Lots of enthusiasm that just grew with the game as people actually started to understand what was going on. Towards the end, it got close, but my mate's team, Smash Malice won. Big celebration and the crowd loved it.

As Wellington is pretty small, there are only 2 teams so far and they practice with each other, so there's no real animosity. Good natured and yet physical, the girls battled to the finish, with some good time spent in the penalty box for being too rough. I thought it was a great sport, but my mates weren't so sure, with a couple saying one and done, but I'm keen for the bout against Auckland in a few weeks. Here are some pics and videos to check out.

Yesterday hit both the lower and upper parts of society with visits to the mental hospital and a red carpet movie premiere.

One of our most loyal and crazier customers is a local busker named Simon, always in the cafe, from when I get there to at the end of the day at 3am when we close. Quite a character and always with interesting stories and hypotheses. Not exactly everyone's favorite person, but someone you expect to see. Couple days ago we got a call that he was in the mental hospital and wanted to see some friendly faces, so I went with my co-worker, Rebekah, to check him out.

First trip to the land of the crazies was pretty fun. Signing in and then going through 5 long corridors through lots of doors to get to the ward he was in, and then got locked into his ward. Got a big ol' hug and lots new stories, which were still along the same lines as before. He's living large there with free coffee, food and a private room, along with a shrink and the best yet, a basketball court. Fenced in outside, next to the smoking room, we shot a few hoops, watched the short guy try to dunk it over and over to no avail and had Simon demand a tornado to come along with the wind. Hypotheses ranged from the the silent revolution, to how England looks like a man sitting on a pig. He'll be out soon, within the week most likely, as he's not as nuts as the woman who kept talking to herself and pacing the halls the entire time.

In the evening I attended the premiere of the German Film Festival, first annual with the German ambassador, Wellington Mayor and other hot shots, including 2 German film directors. Pretty sweet stuff, being in the largest theatre where they had the Lord of the Rings premiers.

The red carpet led into the foyer where an old Trabi (standard East German car) was chilling. Going on 20 years since the wall fell down, Nov 9th coming up. This festival is to tell the story of Germany and the stuggles around that time, and the film shown did just that. With a reception of free German beer, wine and snacks afterwards, it was quite a nice evening. Saw a bunch of familiar faces from the Goethe Insititute who I'm still in touch with as well as other friends from around town.

Quite a solid day off after a day of beating my squash partner in 3 out of 5 games, damn if feels good to be a gangster.

Ah yeah, sweep of the Cards in the first round. Divisional series coming up. Pretty pumped about it down in New Zealand. Rocking it like they should, a return to the glory days of the late 80s.

Urban Golf

We hit up the streets of Wellington once again for a round of golf in parking lots, alleys and side streets. The fashion was in full effect and there was actually a hole in one, sadly not mine.

For those who don't know, urban golf is the sport of golf played with a tennis ball around the city, finding potholes down alleys to use as holes, going up and down levels, around corners and with many water hazzards (puddles) in the way. It's a blast having people stop and check us out around town, not sure what we're doing, although it's pretty obvious. Golf clubs, golf attire and balls, pretty simple stuff.

Here's some pics for better clarification: