TravelStream™ news feed for member butterfills on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/butterfills en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:51:15 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1260480475/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1260480475/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1260480475/tpod.html Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:51:15 -0500 FINALLY!

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Rarotonga, Southern Cook Islands, Cook Islands

Although it only took three and a half hours to fly from Auckland to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, we had to put our watches back by twenty three hours when we landed, which meant that we gained an extra day's holiday (which after eleven months of holidaying was much needed) and we also got to live through two Tuesdays that week (great if you are not working).

Accommodation is expensive in the Cook Islands, so we had booked a couple of nights at the Rarotonga Backpackers on the west coast of the island. We had our own self-contained hut right on the beach overlooking the South Pacific and next to the swimming pool. There were lots of animals wandering around the grounds (dogs, cats, cockerels, backpackers and chickens) and within a day of arriving, a very soppy stray dog and two hungry cats had practically moved in with us (a wise decision on their part seeing as we were the only people around who were prepared to feed them regularly). Apart from being awoken at all hours of the night by the bloody cockerels, we really liked it there so we decided to stay for as long as we could, which was six days before our hut was booked out again. Fortunately, just as we were in the process of checking out, the hostel had received a cancellation and they offered us a two-storey house a little further down the road for the same price. The place was a little rustic, but was large enough to sleep six people and sat on a deserted strip of beach amongst the palm trees. The front of the house consisted entirely of large glass windows that overlooked the ocean and from where we could watch the most spectacular sunsets in the evenings. It also came with a TV and DVD player which, if truth be told, is what really sealed the deal. We were more than happy with it and for the price, it was an absolute bargain (although we missed our dog and the two mangy cats). There was hardly anyone else around, apart from the four young Australian lads who were staying in the house behind us. Two of them sported very dubious looking moustaches and one of them resembled a young Arthur Scargill, complete with yellowing hair the texture of shredded wheat and styled in a fetching comb-over. We couldn’t decide whether he had lost a bet with his mates, or whether his hair was being serious. Either way, we decided to give them a wide berth.

We quickly discovered that Rarotonga only has one TV station which broadcasts a limited selection of programmes from Oz, a terrible soap opera from NZ and also various cheaply-made local information programmes. One particularly amateurish programme was about the devastation caused by tsunamis and what to do in the event of one occurring (basically run for the hills, unless it happens during the night when you are in bed, and then you should kiss your ass goodbye). As our house was only 20m from the ocean and we could hear the waves crashing loudly onto the reef from our bedroom, Tracey awoke constantly, convinced that our plywood beach house was going to be consumed by a huge wave at any moment.

What we wanted from the final twelve days of our one year trip was a quiet place to relax and get some sun before returning to London. Rarotonga turned out to be the perfect place to do just that with deserted, white sandy beaches fringed with palm trees and the crystal clear turquoise waters of the South Pacific set against a backdrop of jagged mountains clad in dense jungle. Rarotonga, although the largest of the Cook Islands, is very small. The circumference is only 32km and we could zip around the entire island on our scooter in around an hour. We found the island to be extremely clean and litter-free with very little traffic and not too touristy or over developed.

Nosh and Justine had put us in touch with a friend of theirs, Vikki, who manages a hotel close to where we were staying and who gave us lots of information and advice on things to see and do on the island. We were also given the use of her infinity pool which looks out over the ocean. We arrived during the week of the Vaka Canoe Races which is one of the main annual events in the Cook Islands. The canoes are the same six man outrigger canoes (think "Hawaii Five-O") that Nosh and Justine race in Sydney. On the final day of the races, we watched the "Round Raro" men’s and women’s races where teams race each other around the entire island. The races take approximately two and a half hours for the men’s teams and three hours for the women’s teams. In the evening, we went along to the closing party at “Trader Jack’s” which is one of the main bars in the town. We were both really up for a big night out, but unfortunately the band that had been hired to play at the party resembled a lame hotel cabaret act and were churning out naff soul hits from the Eighties, so we decided to leave and try one of the local nightclubs instead. The club we went to was playing terrible RnB (is there any other form?) and we decided that we would rather stick pins in our eyes than listen to three hours of totally crap “music” whilst also paying for the privilege. Our hostel had arranged to collect us from town at 2am and by this time, it was only 11pm. Rather than wait it out in RnB hell for the next three hours, we decided to try our luck at catching the night bus or getting a taxi home instead. After thirty minutes of waiting on the street with neither a bus nor a taxi in sight, such was our determination to avoid having to go back to the club that we decided to hitch a lift back. A couple of vehicles did pull over, but after clocking the state of Dean on a few beers, they hurriedly drove off again. Finally, after about an hour on the roadside, a taxi suddenly appeared and we managed to make it home with our eardrums (and our sanity) in tact and were happily snuggled up in bed shortly after midnight. What a couple of old farts!

Even though both of us are confirmed atheists, Nosh had persuaded us to attend a church service on Sunday morning, purely to listen to a traditional Polynesian church choir. The first missionaries arrived in the Cook Islands in the 1820’s and the majority of the Islanders are now Christian with all evidence of traditional Polynesian religion wiped out. The service we attended was held almost entirely in Maori so we could understand very little of what the pastor was saying, but Nosh was right - it was worth going to for the beautiful and uplifting singing. However, we did have to put up with an American Evangelist preacher from Hawaii banging on for half an hour at the end of the service which ruined the experience somewhat.

During our time in Oz and NZ, we had gone quite a bit over our travel budget (quite some feat seeing as for most of our time in Oz, we didn’t have to pay for accommodation). As we had pretty good kitchen facilities, we decided to try and eat in as much as possible in order to try and claw back some cash. Unfortunately, the Cook Islands are heavily dependent on imports, mainly from NZ, so the cost of food in the supermarkets is pretty steep. Also, the choice is somewhat limited with rows and rows of such culinary delights as corned beef, spam, tinned spaghetti (and Tracey’s personal favourite, tins of whole peeled lamb tongues) lining the shelves. We pretty much lived on cereal, tuna sandwiches and variations on tuna with pasta during our stay. On the occasions when we did eat out, the food in the restaurants was pretty good, although again, not cheap. One evening, we went out for a “progressive dinner” which involved being driven around the island and stopping at a different local home for each course of a meal, all the while being serenaded by our driver and hosts. All the ingredients were produced locally, the food was delicious and the hosts at each home were really warm and welcoming, although we could have done without the three renditions of “Please Release Me” throughout the course of the evening.

We spent our days lazing in hammocks, reading, watching movies, swimming, snorkeling and fishing. Even the shallow waters absolutely teemed with fish, so much so that even Dean managed to catch a couple. Not content with torturing the fish directly outside our house, Dean also decided to go on a deep sea fishing trip one day to torment the fish beyond the reef. He managed to catch a 25lb Wahoo (which is similar to a giant mackerel) which we cooked up for supper the following evening.

December is the beginning of the wet season (and also potentially, the start of the hurricane season), but thankfully we only experienced a couple of days of cloud and rain. During the rest of the time, the sun shone and the temperature was perfect – warm enough to wear practically nothing during the day and cool enough to be able to sleep comfortably in the evenings.

Feeling very relaxed and with our tans sufficiently topped up, we left Rarotonga on a late night flight to L.A. which took nine hours. After a five hour wait at LAX, we then boarded a ten hour flight home to London where we were met at the airport by Dean’s mum Gill and his cousin Vicky.

Our one year round-the-world trip had finally come to an end. We had survived a mad sleep-deprived driver in India, extreme partying in Thailand, tarantulas and scorpions in Cambodia, crossing the roads in Vietnamese cities, eating fishheads and beetles in Laos, flying phlegm in China, excessive drinking in Hong Kong, living in a shoe-box in Japan, life in the Big Brother house in Singapore, malaise in Malaysia, leeches and ticks in Borneo, boredom in Brunei, rabid dogs in Bali, sleep-deprivation in Java, filthy bathrooms and monsoons in Sumatra, crook campervans in Australia, kayaking through a freezing cold hailstorm in New Zealand and twelve days on a diet of tuna and pasta in the Cook Islands. Miraculously, our relationship had also survived spending twenty four hours a day together, seven days a week and, more often than not, in extremely close proximity. Would we do it all again? Absolutely (although maybe in shorter bursts in the future).

Thankfully, we have arrived home safe and sound and with all our belongings in tact. We have gone over budget, which was mainly due to the weak Pound and the terrible exchange rate we got everywhere we went. (We calculated that if we’d embarked on this trip two years previously, it would have cost us around a third less). But it was worth every penny, as we have had the most amazing experiences, seen the most incredible sights and met some fantastic and inspiring people. We have also had the opportunity to catch up with quite a few old friends around the world. And best of all, it’s not “back to reality” just yet. After a month of catching up with family and friends in the UK over Christmas and New Year, we have three months of skiing in Canada to look forward to. But that’s another story………………
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Auckland, North Island, New Zealand

We spent our first day in New Zealand trying to locate a decent campervan that was available immediately and wasn't going to cost an arm and a leg. Eventually, after enquiring at a couple of depots, and then spending hours on the internet, we managed to find a 6-berth van that needed to be relocated and could be collected immediately. Unfortunately, the van was in Christchurch on the South Island and we were in Auckland on the North Island. The deal was so good, however, that we decided it was worth flying to Christchurch and then driving back to Auckland. So the following day we found ourselves back at the airport for an early morning flight. As we were descending, our pilot cheerfully informed us to expect a very chilly 6-degrees in Christchurch. We had left behind a fairly pleasant and mild 18-degrees in Auckland, so we were seriously starting to wonder whether we had made the right decision after all. We emerged shivering from the plane to discover that not only was it as freezing cold as we had been warned, but there was also heavy sleet. Not the best of starts to a camping holiday.

Fortunately, the campervan company was based close to the airport. Our van (which we named Big Bertha) was huge and although she was an older model, she was in pretty good condition and came fully equipped with everything we needed, including a TV and DVD player. Although she was pretty spacious to live in, with room for three double beds, her size meant that she was a little tricky to drive and maneuver, especially around cities. We had twenty-three days in which to get Bertha back to Auckland. We gave ourselves sixteen days to tour the South Island and managed to get around pretty much the entire island during that time, although it meant that we weren’t able to linger for too long in any one place. Driving around NZ turned out to be a completely different experience to driving around Oz. The landscape is extremely mountainous and the roads are very narrow, steep and winding in places, sometimes with precipitous drops to the side. At one point, whilst trying to maneuver Bertha on a particularly steep hill, the van filled with the aroma of burning clutch and we were worried that we had wrecked yet another campervan.

NZ has one of the most varied and spectacular series of landscapes in the world, with snow-capped mountains, rolling green hills, glaciers, rainforests, waterfalls, volcanoes, canyons, gorges, turquoise blue lakes, rivers and creeks, geysers, bubbling mud pools, hot springs, rugged coastline and windswept deserted beaches. Experiencing NZ in the spring meant that there was still some snow on top of the mountains and with the hedgerows and shrubs in full bloom and newborn lambs gamboling in the pastures, we both agreed that it was probably the most stunningly beautiful country either of us had ever visited. Unfortunately, it also meant that the weather was extremely changeable and we experienced everything from thunderstorms, hailstones, snow, sleet, rain, gale force winds and sunshine (and sometimes all of the above during the same day). It was pretty chilly for most of our visit, but thankfully we had both electric and gas heaters in the van and we also had sufficient bedding for three beds, which meant that we could sleep under all three duvets when we needed to.

NZ is a fantastic country for walking and there are countless short walks and multi-day hikes that can be done. During our time there, we did quite a bit of walking, including part of the Milford Track, the Queen Charlotte Track and the walk to the Hooker Glacier at Mount Cook. Unlike Oz, we didn’t have to worry about snakes and poisonous spiders whilst we were tramping through forests. However, what NZ does have in abundance are sandflies. Unlike mosquito bites, sandfly bites turn into blisters and the unbearable itchiness lasts for weeks. If you succumb to the irresistible urge to scratch (which we both did), the blisters then turn into scars. Well, at least we will have something other than photographs to remind of us of our time in NZ!

The highlight of our trip to the South Island was, without doubt, Milford Sound in Fiordland on the west coast. The scenery was staggeringly beautiful and atmospheric with sheer dark cliffs rising out of the still waters of the fiord, surrounded by dense rainforest. Fiordland is one of the wettest places on earth and during heavy rains, the rock walls stream with waterfalls. We had decided that the best way of experiencing Milford Sound was to kayak across the waters. As we were heading back to the shore, we were caught in a thunderstorm and were pelted with hailstones. Despite wearing thermals, heavy fleeces and waterproofs, by the time we reached land, we were so cold that it took some time before we were able to prise our frozen hands from the paddles. As we hadn’t seen as much of the Sound as we had hoped (due to the fact that we had been blinded by hailstones) we decided to take an early morning scenic cruise the following day around the Sound and out to the Tasman Sea. We were surrounded by snow-dusted mountains, waterfalls cascading down rock faces, penguins in the water and fur seals basking on the rocks. It was extremely cold and wet, but the scenery was so breathtaking that we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the deck.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to experience NZ’s culture, although we did visit the fantastic Otago Museum near Dunedin which houses a wide variety of exhibits, including an excellent display of Maori artifacts. Whilst staying with Jeremy in Oz, we had watched the movie "The World’s Fastest Indian", starring Anthony Hopkins. The films tells the story of Burt Monro from Invercargill who claimed the world land speed record in 1967 on his 1920’s Indian Scout motorbike, a record which still stands to this day. We stopped in Invercargill for lunch one day, so we decided to go and see the original motorbike and also the replica used in the filming of the movie which had been purchased by the local hardware store. As this is the main highlight of Invercargill, it is fairly safe to say that New Zealand’s towns are not quite as exciting as the countryside. In fact, John Cleese once said “if you ever want to kill yourself, but lack the courage, a trip to Palmerston North will do the trick”. Needless to say, we gave that particular town a miss. Before leaving the South Island, we spent a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days around the Marlborough Sounds, kayaking the beautiful waters of the Queen Charlotte Sound and wine-tasting and lunching in the Marlborough Wine Region.

Getting Bertha over to the North Island involved a three hour ferry journey across the Cook Strait from Picton to Wellington. We had seven days left before we had to drop her off in Auckland. We decided not to spend the entire time driving around frantically trying to see as much as possible, but instead to base ourselves in one place and then do some activities. After doing some research, and talking to a very drunk but knowledgeable North Islander who we met at a campsite in Marlborough, we opted for the area around Lake Taupo which is NZ’s largest lake.

NZ is the adventure capital of the world with numerous extreme sports to indulge in. As both of us had previously participated in bungy-jumping, sky-diving, paragliding, white-water rafting and quad biking (although not always willingly), we decided to try some activities that we hadn’t experienced before. On the day of Dean’s 46th birthday, we went white-water jetboating on the Aratiatia Rapids. Jetboats are fitted with 500 horsepower V8 engines and we blasted down the Waikato River, often doing 360-degree spins en route, before heading full tilt into the rapids which resulted in a thorough soaking. During the afternoon, we did an adventure ropes course which involved throwing ourselves sideways off a 50ft high platform whilst clinging to a rope, which was a very similar experience to that of a bungy-jump. Dean decided to also experience the added thrill of walking across a 20ft long log, suspended around 40ft in the air, both forwards and backwards, and also climbing to the top of a vertical 40ft pole to then hurl himself from the top onto a swinging trapeze! Having decided that his mid-life crises had been fully addressed (with the exception of acquiring an Aston Martin V8 Vantage) he opted for the more sedate activity of fishing the following day, although the people of Taupo had no need to worry about their fish stocks becoming depleted.

After dropping Bertha off at the van depot in Auckland, we checked into a decent hotel in the city centre, complete with swimming pool and gym. After twenty-three days of living in a van, it was heavenly to have a hotel room to stay in and a long soak in a hot bath was most welcome. By sheer coincidence, our friends from Dubai, Andy (better known to Dean as Tiny) and Jane had arrived in Auckland the day before us to visit family and friends, along with their 6-month old son Johan. We had dinner with them at their friend Anna’s lovely house in the trendy suburb of Ponsonby on Saturday night and met up with them the following day for Sunday brunch, and again for lunch on our last day. We hadn’t seen Tiny and Jane since they flew to London for our wedding over four years ago, so it was great to catch up with them again and to meet Johan.

After four days in Auckland, the weather still hadn’t improved, so we made the decision to leave NZ earlier than originally planned and, on the advice of Nosh and Justine in Sydney, we decided to spend the last twelve days of our trip getting some much needed sun, sea and sand on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands instead.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1257565922/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1257565922/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1257565922/tpod.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:22:49 -0500 FINALLY!

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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

We left Broadford on a dull, wet day in our little Hyundai "Hairdryer". Our plan was to take three days to drive to Sydney, taking it in turns to drive. However, the Hairdryer had different ideas. Every time Tracey got behind the wheel, the car refused to start no matter what she did. Once Dean was in the driver's seat, however, it started first time. At one point Dean started the car and then Tracey jumped behind the wheel. However, when we stopped at a junction, the car stalled (which obviously was nothing to do with Tracey’s driving) and refused to start again. Tracey came to the conclusion that the car hated her, so she gave up and Dean was forced to drive the entire way.

We drove north up the Hume Highway to our first stop at the town of Echuca. The landscape was completely flat and featureless and the drive was so dull and boring that it became difficult to keep our eyes open. Echuca is situated on the Murray River and is known for being the world’s paddle-steamer capital. As it was so grey and rainy on the day we visited, we decided to give the paddle-steamer cruise a miss. Instead, we had lunch in a quaint, old-fashioned tea room and after a brief wander around the town, we got back in the car and continued on our way. We drove as far as the town of Albury, on the border of New South Wales, and booked into a motel for the night.

The following day, we drove over the beautiful winding roads of the Snowy Mountains and through the Kosciuszko National Park. The scenery was spectacular and there was still some snow on the mountains. We stopped at the ski resort of Thredbo to have some lunch. Even though there was still some snow and the ski lifts were open, the town was completely deserted. After lunch, we drove over the mountain and headed for the east coast where we stopped at a motel at the pretty fishing port of Bermagui for the night.

The next morning, we got up early (well, early for us) and drove to Jervis Bay. The weather had improved somewhat, so we decided to hang around after lunch and spend the rest of the day there. We booked into a motel in the pleasant town of Huskisson and went for a long walk along the beautiful beach at sunset. The next day, we continued our drive to Sydney along the stunning Grand Pacific Drive and over the Sea Cliff Bridge where the road swings out from the cliff over the Pacific Ocean. This is the road that is featured constantly in adverts for holidays to Australia (usually with a gorgeous young couple in a sporty convertible rather than a weathered middle-aged couple in their Hyundai hairdryer).

We had arranged to stay with some old friends of Tracey’s, Dave (better known to Tracey as Nosh) and Justine, and their children, Chester, who turned 18 the day before we arrived, and Scarlett who is 12. Their house, which they are in the middle of renovating, is in the beautiful suburb of Cronulla on the coast just south of Sydney, near Botany Bay. Tracey had been living next door to Nosh and Justine in Sydney in 1991 when Chester was born and had, by coincidence, moved back again in 1997 just after Scarlett was born. Although we had briefly caught up with Nosh in London last year, Tracey hadn’t seen the rest of the family in twelve years and it made her feel rather old to see the kids all grown up. Nosh and Justine were absolutely fantastic and really looked after us during out stay, taking lots of time out of their hectic schedules to spend with us. The following eleven days consisted of a constant round of barbecues in the back garden and meals out in great restaurants. One evening, they took us out to their local music venue to see two Irish singer-songwriters, Minus Circus and Mundy, who we watched perform over a meal and a few good bottles of wine.

It was great for both of us to be back in Sydney again and Tracey was keen to re-visit the places where she used to live and hang out - Kings Cross, Woolloomooloo and Paddington. We spent a Saturday afternoon wandering around Paddington Market and fantasised about owning one of the beautiful Victorian terraced houses just off Oxford Street. We also re-visited the Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Darling Harbour, The Rocks and the Royal Botanic Gardens. One afternoon, we got the ferry over to Manly for lunch with Nosh, Justine and Scarlett and then visited the Museum of Contemporary Art which was exhibiting the works of young Australian artists, most of which we just didn’t “get”, and a couple of which we found a little disturbing.

We managed to catch up with some old friends of Tracey’s that she hadn’t seen in years. We met up with Gail and Maria for lunch in Cronulla one afternoon and one evening, we went out for a meal and a few drinks in The Rocks with Paul, who Tracey used to work with, and his wife Fiona. We also took the opportunity to catch up with an old school friend of Tracey’s, Adam and his wife Liz, and our ever patient golf instructor from back home, Tom and his wife Penelope, over pizza and a few bevies. Adam has been living in Sydney for over two years and working as a scuba diving instructor, but is moving back to Tracey’s home town of Thanet in December. Tom and Penelope are in Sydney on working holiday visas until February when they leave to go off travelling again.


To give Nosh and Justine a much-needed break from us for a few days, we hired a car and drove up to the Blue Mountains, one and a half hours west of Sydney, to stay with Niki and Jim and their children, Oscar and Coco, who moved there from London four years ago. The Blue Mountains are so-called because of the blue mist of oil that exudes from the eucalyptus trees. The scenery is stunning with sandstone plateaus, forests of gum trees, limestone caves, gorges and waterfalls. We wandered around the towns of Leura, where Niki and Jim live, and also Katoomba, and went to Echo Point with its stunning lookout over the Three Sisters rock formation. At Niki’s suggestion, the following morning, we did a short hike to the Minnehaha Falls. The area was completely deserted so Dean took the opportunity to get at one with nature and jumped in the waterfall to cool down. On exiting the very cold water, it certainly was a case of “mini” and “ha ha”!

Nosh and Justine are both involved in outrigging (which is a form of paddling in six-man canoes) and they also each have their own one-man canoes. Nosh took Dean out early one morning on their canoes to paddle around the bay for a couple of hours. He also got Dean involved in an outrigging race one afternoon for around 15km around Botany Bay. One particularly hot afternoon, Nosh took us out in his speedboat around the bay where Chester, Dean and Nosh took it in turns to wake-board from the back of the boat. Tracey and Justine both decided to give it a go for the first time. Despite Nosh giving us lessons from the water and Chester shouting instructions at us from the boat, neither of us was able to get up on the board and a lot of sea water was consumed that afternoon! After around six unsuccessful attempts, we decided to give it up and we both came to the conclusion that we are natural born skiers rather than boarders. Dean also spent one afternoon kite-boarding with a local instructor for three hours and after swallowing half of Botany Bay, finally managed to get up and ride in both directions for the first time ever.

We both fell in love with Sydney all over again and it still gets our vote for favourite city in the world. After a thoroughly enjoyable but exhausting time, we left Australia for New Zealand – and a detox and a rest!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1256346326/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1256346326/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/butterfills/1/1256346326/tpod.html Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:28:27 -0400 FINALLY!

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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

For our drive from Adelaide to Melbourne, we had hoped to find another campervan that needed to be relocated, but the only van we could find on the internet was not available for another week. Instead we hired a car, a nippy little Suzuki Swift, which after driving campervans for the previous few weeks, felt as if we were driving a sports car.

We left Adelaide for the rugged Limestone Coast and drove as far as the town of Mount Gambier, stopping off at the town of Meningie and the quaint historic seaside resort of Robe for refreshments along the way. The roads were practically empty and the landscape was beautiful with lush, green rolling hills, fields of grazing cattle, vineyards and lakes, very different scenery from our drives to Ningaloo Reef and across the Nullarbor Plain. Mount Gambier is famous for its volcanic crater lakes. Unfortunately, it was so cold, grey and rainy on the day we visited that we didn't want to spend too much time outside staring into craters. We spent the night in a motel in the town and the following morning, we drove to the town of Warrnambool where we started our drive along the famous Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road is a long, winding road that passes over rugged coastline, sheer limestone cliffs, crashing seas, and a series of rock stacks and gorges. We stopped along the way to view the Bay of Islands, the Grotto and the Twelve Apostles (although there is now only five of the rock stacks left). As we passed through the Great Otway National Park, the landscape changed to rolling hills and pine forest plantations. We spent the night at a motel in beautiful Appollo Bay and the following day, we continued our drive through the lovely surfing towns of Lorne and Torquay. Unfortunately, the weather hadn’t improved by this time and it was too rainy and cold for us to enjoy the gorgeous beaches along the way.

We arrived in Melbourne in time for the last weekend of the Fringe Festival, the first weekend of the International Arts Festival and also the Melbourne Marathon. As there was so much going on, we figured that most of hotels in the city would be fully booked. As we had read an excellent review of the YHA in the north of the city, we had booked three nights there in advance, which is something we would not normally do without checking the place out first. When we arrived, we were rather disappointed to find that our room resembled a prison cell with depressing grey breeze-block walls and very little in the way of home comforts. Our room was also directly opposite the men’s bathroom which meant that we would be able to hear the door opening and closing throughout the night. As it turned out, this was the least of our problems. Sharing our floor was a very large party of teenage school kids. The noise of laughing, swearing, shouting and doors banging, and the sound of their teachers yelling at them to be quiet, resounded all around us until well after midnight. The following morning, the entire school party arose at 6am sharp and the noise of around a hundred rowdy kids all getting up at the same time was deafening. Dean had to physically restrain Tracey from going out into the corridor in her nightdress and curlers and giving the teachers (who were even noisier than the kids) a piece of her mind. Instead, she stormed off to reception, complained to the poor man behind the desk and then spent the next hour on the internet trying to find a hotel that we could check into immediately. Needless to say, that really is the last time we will EVER be staying in a youth hostel (not withstanding the fact we are far too old to be hanging out in hostels anyway).

Miraculously, considering how busy the city was that weekend, Tracey managed to find a last minute deal at a business hotel near the seaside suburb of St. Kilda. The hotel turned out to be really nice and we were given a deluxe room on the top floor overlooking Albert Park and the cricket ground, all for only $20 AUD a night more than the cost of the horrible prison cell at the YHA. Not only that, but there was a big cycle race taking place that weekend and all the cyclists were staying at the same hotel. Dean was most impressed to see our British Olympic champion, Bradley Wiggins, being interviewed in the foyer and Tracey was most impressed to have a load of very fit, lycra-clad males milling around everywhere!

As there was so much going on that weekend, we were spoilt for choice when deciding upon the weekend’s entertainment. We ended up going to see a British comedian / mind reader called Philip Escoffey as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. In an attempt to be cultured, we went to see the British Film Director, Peter Greenaway, give a lecture entitled "Nine Classic Paintings Revisited: a Dialogue between Art and Cinema" as part of the International Arts Festival. The lecture was supposed to run for an hour, but Mr Greenaway had only made it to painting number two after an hour and a half. As Tracey’s snoring was starting to bother the rest of the audience, Dean thought it best that we left so we missed out on the remaining seven paintings. We spent the rest of our time in Melbourne sampling some of the city’s fantastic restaurants and fine wines. And on our last morning in the city, we opened our curtains to find the Marathon being run in the street directly below us which was great to watch from the comfort of our hotel room.

An old school friend of Tracey’s, Jeremy, had emigrated to Australia four years previously with his Finnish wife, Outi. They very kindly invited us to stay at their home in the small town of Broadford, about an hour north of Melbourne. Jeremy’s place turned out to be a 50-acre farm, complete with paddocks, a vineyard, tennis courts, a swimming pool, dogs and horses. The location was stunning and we could see nothing but fields and rolling hills from the house. (The Shiraz produced from their vineyard was particularly good too!) Jeremy took a day off work and drove us to the towns of Kinglake and Marysville and showed us the extent of the damage to the surrounding areas caused by the Black Saturday bushfire, a particularly severe bush fire that had occurred back in February.

After two nights with Jeremy in Broadford, we left to start our three day drive to Sydney.
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

The drive from Perth to Adelaide was to take us four days in our new campervan. On our first day, we drove for approximately 500km as far as the Boorabbin National Park where we camped overnight at Boondi Rock. We climbed to the top of the rock and watched a gorgeous sunset over the National Park. The following day, we joined the Eyre Highway which stretches for 2700km to Adelaide (the same distance as driving from London to Moscow) and crosses the southern edge of the vast Nullarbor Plain, which is a barren and isolated plain on the Southern Outback.

During the second day, we drove for around 600km as far as Cocklebiddy. We passed very little along the way – a few other vehicles, the odd cyclist (and you would have to be very odd to want to cycle across the Nullarbor Plain), a couple of roadhouses and a flat and featureless landscape with the exception of (bizarrely) various trees decorated with bras, old boots and one covered with hats. In order to break up the monotony of the journey, we took it in turns to drive so that one of us could snooze or read while the other one drove. With a population of only eight people, Cocklebiddy is more a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere than an actual town. We parked the van up for the night in what was effectively the car park of the roadhouse. The following day, we made our way 300km to the border with South Australia where we stopped to make some lunch before driving into the Nullarbor National Park. We stopped at the beautiful Great Australian Bight Marine Park, which is a significant breeding area for endangered Southern Right Wales, and where we were lucky enough to spot a couple of whales passing by us very close to the shore. That evening we parked up at a caravan park in the small and rather forgettable town of Penong for the night.

The next day, we continued our drive on the Eyre Highway for around 450km as far as the town of Port Augusta, which is known as the "crossroads of Australia". Along the way, we stopped off at Pildappa Rock and the town of Kimba which is geographically halfway across Australia. We parked up in a caravan park in Port Augusta for the night before driving the final three hours into the city of Adelaide. We checked into a youth hostel in the city centre after first dropping the campervan off at the depot. The hostel was spotlessly clean and had great facilities (including bins for used syringes in the toilets), but after a couple of weeks of living in campervans, we decided to treat ourselves to a five star hotel for a few nights. We had been told about a website where you could find great last minute deals on hotels in the business districts of cities, especially on the weekends. As it was a public holiday weekend in South Australia, we got a really good deal on four nights at a five star hotel in the city centre. We were given a very stylish and comfortable suite complete with plasma TV’s in each room and a proper kitchen. The hotel also had a rooftop pool and a sauna and we made full use of all the facilities during our stay (this backpacking lark sure aint easy).

Adelaide is a very pleasant and attractive city with wide streets, plenty of green spaces and parks, and numerous stylish restaurants and bars. There are also lots of museums, art galleries and music festivals taking place. Unfortunately, it was really cold while we were there, so we had to spend our second day in the city shopping for warm clothes and boots (Tracey was looking for any excuse to buy yet another pair of Ugg boots). It felt really strange to be “fully clothed” again after spending so long in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops.

A friend of Tracey’s, Simon (also known as Baz), had emigrated to the Adelaide Hills from London in 1997. On Friday night, we met up with him and his girlfriend Nicole and he treated us to dinner at his local restaurant in the very pretty town of Stirling. All the ingredients were produced within 100km of the restaurant and the food was great. The wines were rather too good, however, and we awoke the following morning with raging hangovers which resulted in us spending most of Saturday in our hotel suite, ordering room service and watching movies. On Sunday, Baz and Nicole picked us from our hotel and drove us around the beautiful Adelaide Hills. We had lunch at the very stylish Stirling Hotel and once again, tucked into a few bottles of very good local wines.

Our last day in Adelaide was a public holiday, so the city was extremely quiet. We spent the day wandering around the beautiful Art Gallery of South Australia, the Botanic Gardens and the National Wine Centre (where we managed to resist doing any more wine tasting!)
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Perth, Western Australia, Australia

We decided to take the Greyhound bus back to Perth rather than fly back, as although the journey took a total of 20 hours, the bus tickets were half the price of flights. We also had so much stuff with us with the equipment we had borrowed from Ilija – an awning, a heavy picnic table and fishing equipment, in addition to our heavy backpacks, that we were well over the maximum baggage allowance. We boarded the bus at around 9pm and unfortunately had to change buses at 1am at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. Luckily we had purchased some sleeping tablets in Thailand for times such as these and as soon as we were settled onto the second bus, we popped one each and slept pretty soundly throughout the night.

There were a couple of places that we had planned to stop off at on the way back in the campervan – the Kalbarri National Park and the Pinnacles Desert, which has thousands of limestone pillars scattered across the desert floor, so it was rather frustrating to pass these places on the bus and not be able to stop and spend some time there. However, we couldn't really complain, as we had travelled from Perth to Ningaloo pretty much for free, with the exception of paying for fuel on the way up and for bus tickets back. We also had an additional couple of days at Ningaloo, so things had worked out pretty well all in all.

The bus arrived into Perth at around 4:30pm. Ilija was waiting for us at the bus terminal and drove us back to his place in Darch where we spent the next couple of days. That evening, as Mato and Lola had sleepovers with friends, we took Ilija and Vicki out to a restaurant in Cottesloe to thank them both for looking after us so well during out stay.

We had planned on flying to Adelaide next and the following morning we started to check out flights on the internet. We were then planning on driving from Adelaide to Sydney, via Melbourne, so we had a look at the cost of hiring a campervan or car from Adelaide. Whilst checking various internet sites, we came across a campervan that needed to be relocated from Perth to Adelaide immediately. The deal was that we would hire the van for only $1 a day and would be given $250 towards the cost of the fuel. The only disadvantage was that the van had to be in Adelaide within five days which didn’t give us much time for detours along the way. Although it would involve driving for more than 2,700 km (the same distance as driving from London to Moscow), we decided to go for it as it meant that we could travel to Adelaide for free and we would also get to drive across the infamous Nullarbor Plain. Ilija very kindly drove us over to the depot to collect the van. We were not sure what condition the vehicle would be in, but luckily it was only a year old so was in excellent nick. It was very similar to our previous campervan but a little bigger, so we were really pleased with the deal.

As Tracey hadn’t yet seen anything of the city centre of Perth, we drove around in the van for a while so that she could take a quick look around before we headed back to Ilija’s in time for dinner. Although it was a Saturday afternoon, it was the day of the Australian Football League final, so the city was absolutely deserted of people and traffic which meant that it was the perfect time to be driving around the city. That evening, Ilija and Vicki cooked us dinner and we ended up tucking into the cheese, red wine and port until the wee small hours of the morning.

The next day we both awoke with raging hangovers - not the best of starts to a very long road trip ahead and we ended up leaving Ilija’s two hours later than originally planned.
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Exmouth, Western Australia, Australia

We arrived into a very rainy and waterlogged Perth at 6:30 in the morning. We were rather surprised to be met at the airport by Ilija, an old friend of Tracey's who emigrated to Australia in 1997. Although Tracey had given him our flight details, we were not expecting him to come out and meet us so early on a Friday morning. We were intending to book into a hotel and then arrange to meet up with him and his family at some point during the course of the weekend. It turned out that he had arranged to take three days off work in honour of our visit and he promptly whisked us off to his house in the suburb of Darch, a 30 minute drive away. We spent the next four days staying there with him, his wife Vicki, their two gorgeous kids Mato (aged 7), Lola (aged 5) and their adorable Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Casper. They made us feel very welcome and really looked after us – ferrying us around everywhere we needed to go and showing us the sights of nearby Cottesloe Beach, the Freemantle Markets and the Yanchep National Park where we saw koalas, kangaroos and went on a tour of the Crystal Cave.

Although this is Tracey’s fifth visit to Oz, and despite living in Sydney for a couple of years during the nineties, she had previously only traveled the east coast as far north as Cape Tribulation. This is Dean’s second visit to Oz and although he had spent some time in Perth and the southern part of the west coast, he hadn’t ventured north. We therefore decided to hire a campervan and travel the west coast from Perth as far north as the town of Exmouth and the Ningaloo Reef. We did some research on the internet and found a company that appeared to have decent, well-equipped vans at reasonable prices. Luckily, they were based quite close to Ilija’s place so he drove us over to the depot so that we could check out the vans. We ended up hiring a van which was only a couple of years old and appeared to be in excellent condition both inside and out. It came fully equipped with a shower, toilet, two comfy sofas that folded down to make a large double bed, a cooker, fridge, microwave, TV and DVD player – pretty much everything we needed to be fully self-sufficient.

The following day, we set off from Perth for the Brand Highway. Within half an hour of leaving Ilija’s, it started to rain and the weather steadily got worse the further north we travelled. After three hours of driving, we stopped in Jurien Bay to put the kettle on and make some lunch. Unfortunately, it was raining so heavily that we couldn’t get out of the van to check the place out. After lunch, we carried on driving through the rain as far as the seemingly deserted holiday towns of Dongara-Port Denison. We decided to park the van up in a car park overlooking the Indian Ocean and have dinner in a restaurant close by that had been recommended in the Lonely Planet. The food and wine were pretty good, but after spending the previous eight and a half months travelling around Asia, the bill seemed extortionate so we decided to shop for groceries and cook dinner in the van each night instead.

We awoke early to a dry and sunny morning. As there didn’t appear to be much going on in Port Denison, we decided to leave immediately and spend the day driving up the North West Coastal Highway as far as Shark Bay. The highway was practically deserted, except for the odd road-train or campervan, and the landscape changed from green countryside and colourful shrubs to rugged coastline with huge sand dunes and then to scrubby bushland and red sand. We passed a few emus along the roadside and unfortunately, the gruesome remains of numerous dead kangaroos. We stopped at the town of Denham, which is Australia’s most westerly town, to pick up groceries and supplies and then parked the van up on the beach at Fowlers’ Camp, overlooking the sea. We watched the sun go down from the beautiful deserted beach with a couple of cold beers. We weren’t able to get a signal on the TV, but luckily we had bought loads of DVD’s in Indonesia, so we had plenty of things to watch after eating dinner in the van.

Early the following morning, we drove to the Monkey Mia Dolphin Reserve. Monkey Mia is famous for the wild dolphins that appear in the shallow waters just off the beach each morning to be fed. Although it was a sunny morning, the sea was freezing, but nevertheless, we waded into the crystal clear waters with around ten female dolphins and their calves. It was amazing to get so close to them. That afternoon, we went on a wildlife spotting cruise on a catamaran. We were lucky enough to see some rare dugongs and numerous pods of dolphins that swam very close to the boat, but it felt absolutely freezing on board despite being wrapped up in three layers of clothes and huge waterproof coats.

The next day, we drove as far north as Coral Bay, stopping off at Shell Beach along the way. Shell Beach is made up entirely of billions of miniature white cockle shells, which are up to ten metres deep in places. On the day we visited, the place was practically deserted, the sun was shining and the sky was a cloudless deep blue. With the turquoise sea and the bright white beach, the place was absolutely stunning. Before we hit Coral Bay, we stopped at the town of Carnarvon to fill up with diesel and pick up supplies. Although it was early on a Saturday afternoon, the place was deserted. Most of the shops were closed and there was hardly anyone about. As this is supposedly the high season in this part of Australia, we couldn’t help wondering where everyone was. It was early evening by the time we arrived in Coral Bay and we decided to park the van up in a car park overlooking the ocean for the night rather than check in to a caravan park, which we were trying to avoid whenever possible. Unfortunately at around 9pm, after dinner and quite a few glasses of red wine, and whilst in the middle of a particularly riveting episode of "The Sopranos", there came a very loud bang on the van door from a rather angry Ranger who informed us in no uncertain terms that if we didn’t move the van before the morning, we would have to pay a $200 fine. Needless to say, despite the amount of red wine we had consumed, we moved the van immediately and parked up in a caravan park instead.

We decided not to hang around in Coral Bay, which is at the southern tip of the Ningaloo Reef, but to head to the town of Exmouth on the northern tip instead. We left the next morning at 6am. It was a beautiful sunny morning and as it was so early, we passed quite a few kangaroos (live ones this time) along the roadside. Kangaroos are mainly active from dusk until dawn and it is therefore advisable only to drive during daylight (unless you are driving a large vehicle and have a roo bar fitted to the front). After around forty minutes on the road, the van started spluttering and losing power, and the temperature gauge started behaving rather oddly, so we decided we had better pull in to a parking bay and check out the problem. Dean opened up the bonnet and we found the engine splattered with oil. There was also oil spilling out from underneath, so we decided that we had better not drive it any further. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of nowhere and neither of us could get a signal on our mobile phones so that we could call out the breakdown services. As it was so early in the morning, we decided to put the kettle on, make some breakfast and then try and flag down a passing motorist when there were a few more vehicles on the road. Thankfully, the first vehicle we flagged down pulled over and gave us a lift back to the turn-off from the highway to Coral Bay which was the nearest town. Within about fifteen minutes, we managed to blag another lift from a couple of German girls in a campervan, who took us to Coral Bay. As we still couldn’t get a phone signal, we had to use a payphone to call out the breakdown services and to report the problem to the hire company. We then had to hitch another lift back to the van. An Austrian couple, Jens and Claudia, very kindly drove us the forty minute journey back to the van. As they were also headed for Exmouth, we swapped phone numbers and promised to take them out for a few beers once we had sorted out the problem with the van. After a couple of hours of waiting, a mechanic with a tow truck appeared. Within seconds of looking under the bonnet, he declared the van technically “buggered” and without further ado, drove it onto the back of the tow truck to be taken the 110km to Exmouth.

Our tow truck driver, Aaron, delivered our broken van to a caravan park which luckily was fairly pleasant and had the added bonus of a swimming pool, which although was freezing cold, was large enough to swim laps in. It was decided that the van would have to be towed all the way back to Perth to be repaired. The company we had hired the van from told us that they would be unable to get a replacement vehicle to us so would refund the entire amount of money we had paid even though we had lived and travelled in it for six days prior to it breaking down. Helpfully, Aaron informed us that we could continue to live in the van at the caravan park for as long as we needed to and he would arrange for it to be towed back to Perth once we had left Exmouth. This suited us perfectly as Exmouth was as far north as we had planned to travel anyway, which meant that the entire trip had pretty much cost us nothing. As there were quite a few things we wanted to do and see at the Ningaloo Reef Marine Park, we decided to hang around for four days and make the most of it.

The Ningaloo Reef has numerous deserted windswept beaches and is home to humpback whales, sharks, dolphins, dugongs, turtles, manta rays, more than 500 species of fish and over 220 species of coral. We had been hoping to swim and snorkel with whale sharks, but unfortunately we were six weeks too late as they leave the area by the end of July. Luckily, however, we were there at the right time to see humpback whales swimming very close to the shore.

We got in contact with Jens and Claudia and they arranged to collect us from the caravan park the following day. We spent the day with them snorkeling at the beautiful Turquoise Bay, hiking the Mandu Mandu Gorge in the Cape Range National Park and then whale-watching from the viewpoint at the lighthouse.

One evening, we went on a sunset whale-watching cruise and saw humpback whales and their calves everywhere we looked and the sunset over the Exmouth Gulf was breathtaking. The following day, we went on a boat trip to the Muiron Islands, about two hours from Exmouth. The waters surrounding these two deserted islands are teeming with corals and a large array of tropical fish. Dean did two dives and Tracey snorkeled in the turquoise waters close to the shore. Unfortunately the waters were so chilly that she could only stay in the water for 20 minutes as her teeth were chattering so much that she was finding it hard to keep the snorkel in her mouth. On the way back to Exmouth, we were extremely lucky to witness three large humpback whales breaching out of the water very close to the boat. One after the other they launched themselves out of the water and slammed onto their backs as they fell back to sea. It was incredible to watch and this sight alone was well worth the long drive from Perth. Frustratingly, it was at this particular moment that the battery in our camera ran out and we were unable to capture any of the footage.

On our last day in Exmouth, we hired a car and drove around the peninsula to Wobiri Beach. Dean had borrowed Ilija’s fishing equipment and an awning and we set up camp for the day on the deserted beach. The waters were crystal clear and we watched numerous turtles swim past us. It was fortunate that we had already decided to go out for pizza that evening, as there certainly wasn’t the option of having a fish supper!

After ten days of living in the van, we had become quite attached to it and had loved life on the road, so we were very sorry to leave it behind us as we headed to the bus stop to take the Greyhound bus back to Perth.
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Koh Samui, Surat Thani, Thailand

The day we were leaving Sumatra coincided with the day that our friend Keith was going back to Koh Samui for ten days. Tracey's sister, Suzy, had also just returned to Samui after spending the summer in Europe. Samui is pretty "close" to Sumatra so we decided to backtrack and fly back to visit them both before continuing with our round-the-world ticket. Unfortunately, when we came to book the flights, we discovered that flying from Medan to Samui was not that easy and would involve taking three flights, via Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. However, the flights with Air Asia were so cheap that we decided to put up with an entire day of travelling and go anyway.

It was great to see Keith again, but more importantly, he had brought with him some "essentials" that we were missing from back home in the UK – the latest “Sunday Times” still in the plastic wrapper, the latest “Car” magazine, some plain chocolate Bounties and some Molten Brown toiletries - well worth the three flights from Sumatra!

It was lovely to catch up with Suzy and to be back in her beach house again. We spent a thoroughly enjoyable ten days of swimming in the sea outside the house, revisiting all our favourite haunts on the island and in Tracey’s case, having lots of spa treatments with Suzy. Dean and Keith went out on a boat trip around the island with a couple of the girls we met when we were in Samui back in February, Emma and Roz. One of their friends was having a “pirate cruise” birthday party which, unsurprisingly, involved everyone dressing up like pirates. Tracey and Suzy decided that rather donning bandanas and fake beards, they would rather spend the day being pampered and pummelled at the Samui Spa. This turned out to be a very good decision as the sea was rather choppy that day resulting in everyone on board becoming a little nervous and feeling queasy.

After six months of very little partying and not even much drinking, we were very much looking forward to a night of clubbing. On the Saturday night, we went out with Suzy, Keith and Emma to a couple of the clubs in Chewang. The two of us managed to outlast everyone else and we rocked home at a very impressive 5am. However, the smug grins were soon wiped off our faces as it took us until the following Tuesday before we were able to prise ourselves off Suzy’s sofa and venture out of the house again.

After a total of eight and a half months of travelling around Asia, it was time to leave and head to Australia. We bade a very sad farewell to Keith and Suzy and left Samui for Perth via Singapore.
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Iboih, Aceh, Indonesia

The morning following our return from the jungle trek, we left Bukit Lawang on a public bus headed for Medan. We stored our backpacks at the rear of the bus, just in front of the back seat. The bus itself was a clapped-out old coach and the roads were so broken up in places that we bounced along at around 20mph for the first hour or so. The driver also kept stopping for long periods of time for no apparent reason. We had a plane to catch and at one point we wondered if we were going to make it to the airport in time. We needn't have worried. Maybe sensing our anxiety, our driver suddenly turned into Lewis Hamilton and put his foot down. We started hurtling along overtaking everything in our path and we felt as if we were on board the bus from the movie "Speed". As we rounded a corner at full pelt, unbeknown to us, Tracey's backpack rolled across the floor and fell out of the open back door, landing on a verge on the side of the road. Thankfully, a French girl who had been sitting at the front of the bus with her two friends had literally just moved to the back seat a few moments before so that she could lie down and had witnessed the whole thing. She shouted to the driver to stop and the conductor jumped off and retrieved it. If she hadn't moved seats when she did, we wouldn't have realised that the bag was missing until we arrived at the bus terminal some three hours later, which would have been fairly disastrous. We arrived in Medan with plenty of time to spare and took a taxi from the bus terminal to the airport.

The flight to Banda Aceh only took an hour and we arrived during early evening. We bumped into Hannah at the airport and arranged to share a taxi with her to our hotel. As we were only to be in Banda Aceh for one night and would be leaving very early the following morning, we had pre-booked a cheap hotel which we had read in the Lonely Planet was basic but clean, which is all you really want if you just need somewhere to lay your head for the night. When we checked in, we discovered that not only was the room not clean, but the sheets and pillowcases were dirty and the towels looked like they had been used in place of the toilet paper. It also appeared that the bathroom hadn't been visited by the cleaner since 1998. Luckily, we carry our own sleeping bags, pillowcases and towels for times such as these so it wasn't the end of the world. Hannah, whose room was even grimmer and grimier than ours, checked into a guesthouse across the road instead. After a quick supper with Hannah at a street stall opposite our hotel, we returned to our sumptuous hotel suite and settled in to watch "Miss Universe 2009" on the TV, which was the only English language programme we could find.

The next morning, Tracey awoke feeling rather unwell. We shared a taxi with Hannah to the ferry terminal where we caught the fast boat to the island of Pulau Weh, less than an hour away, where we were intending to spend the next six nights. Pulau Weh is just off the northern tip of Sumatra in the Andaman Sea. Unlike Banda Aceh, it only suffered minor damage during the tsunami of 2004, most of which has now (supposedly) been repaired or rebuilt. The island is known for its fantastic diving and snorkeling and Dean was intending to spend three days of our time here doing the PADI Advanced Open Water scuba diving course. By the time we arrived, Tracey was feeling decidedly worse for wear and was looking forward to falling into bed and attempting to sleep off whatever it was she was coming down with. We had decided to stay on the beach at Gapang, which was 45 minutes away from the ferry terminal by mini-van. Gapang Beach can be described at best as "rustic". The sea is a beautiful shade of turquoise, but the beach itself is a little scrubby with a couple of restaurants that are pretty basic shacks with not the cleanest of kitchens. There is no music playing anywhere and the entire place is absolutely dead by 9pm each night. However, we had read that the dive school there had some lovely bungalows for rent, but when we arrived, we discovered that they were fully booked. We were told that if we turned right out of the dive school that is where we could find the more basic accommodation and that if we turned left, that is where the "upmarket" accommodation could be found. We decided to turn left and headed up the hill to see what we could find. The first "resort" that had been recommended to us consisted of some old wooden sheds that had definitely seen better days. They were situated on the other side of the road away from the beach and weren't sheltered under any trees. We were shown around one of the sheds and as soon as the door was opened, the heat hit us head-on. We felt as if we were walking into a furnace and the place had no air-con or even a ceiling fan. It was also swarming with mosquitoes and we were set upon and bitten as soon as we went inside. The beds had no mozzie nets over them, the headboards were stained and the chairs were ripped with the stuffing hanging out of them. The place was filthy and smelt extremely musty. We left hurriedly and headed for the next hotel up the road. Again, this was another of the supposedly upmarket places, recommended by both the Lonely Planet and the dive school. It was much the same as the last place we had looked at and was very depressing. If this was the best that Pulau Weh had to offer, we dreaded to think what the more basic accommodation would be like. By this time, Tracey was feeling even worse and traipsing around in the midday heat getting bitten by mozzies was not helping matters any. We wandered back down the hill and decided to check out the huts next door to the dive school. We looked at one that was smaller than the huts we had just looked at and was even more basic, but at least it overlooked the beach and was set under some trees so it felt quite cool inside. The furniture consisted of just two single beds pushed together with a mozzie net draped over them and an electric fan. The mozzie net was full of holes, some of which had helpfully been plugged up with old pieces of chewing gum and plasters. The walls were stained, the bedding was dirty and the room smelt of stale bodies. The outside bathroom, which consisted of a squat toilet and a concrete tank filled with water with a scoop for washing, was absolutely disgusting. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned for weeks and was filthy. There were pieces of used toilet paper and other bits of rubbish strewn everywhere and it was also being used by the builders from the building site directly next door. At the thought of this place being our only option for a bed for the night, Tracey promptly burst into tears. Considering this was the only time that any tears had been shed during our entire eight months of travelling (apart from when we found out from our friends Paul and Fia that our cat Munchy had died), this illustrates just how bad this place was. In an attempt to make things a little more bearable, Dean arranged for the sheets and pillowcases to be changed and then went and cleaned up the bathroom himself. Once the bed was clean, Tracey climbed in and cried herself to sleep. The thought of six nights staying in this hovel was simply more than she could bear.

To top it all, we had arrived in Pulau Weh at the beginning of the month of Ramadan, when the Muslim population fast between the hours of 4:30am and 6:30pm. This meant that the builders who were working at the building site next door to our hut worked throughout the night instead of during the daytime so that we had to endure the sounds of sawing and banging all night. Luckily, a bungalow became available at the dive school the following day for one night only and we jumped at the chance to move out. Our new bungalow was lovely with crisp white bedding, fluffy white bath towels and a spotlessly clean bathroom. The second we checked in, Tracey jumped straight into the huge comfy bed and more or less stayed there all day long, sleeping off a bad cold and an upset tummy. This was the day of our 4th wedding anniversary and we had pre-ordered a whole BBQ fish for our supper at one of the beach restaurants for that evening. When we arrived, Hannah happened to be in the same restaurant so we asked her if she wanted to join us for supper. When the fish was brought out whole, Tracey suddenly felt rather queasy and hurriedly left the restaurant to go back to the bungalow for a lie-down, leaving Dean to enjoy our anniversary dinner in the company of another woman. However, it was fortunate that Tracey had left when she did as a few minutes later, the restaurant owner's 3 year-old daughter (who had a habit of helping herself to the customers' food with her fingers) jumped onto a chair, reached over and gauged the eye out of the fish and popped it into her mouth! She obviously found it delicious as she then proceeded to do the same thing with the other eye.

Despite pleading with the dive school to let us stay, we had to move out from our bungalow the following day. Not being able to bring herself to move back to the hovel we had been staying in previously, Tracey was threatening to travel back to Medan to check into a decent hotel instead. Dean decided to check out the rest of the accommodation on Gapang just in case there was anything better available. There wasn't. To call these places basic was akin to calling The Titanic seaworthy. One place he viewed was practically derelict and another place had a filthy bathroom that we would have to share with the customers of the restaurant next door. Not wanting to have to return to Medan, he managed to get a lift in a speedboat around the bay to the beach at Iboih. After checking out a few places that were very similar in style and cleanliness to the places in Gapang (i.e. more hovels), he finally stumbled across some fairly new huts that were built on stilts directly over the sea. Thankfully, although basic, they were clean and cool with comfy beds, inside bathrooms and hammocks strung over the balconies. He immediately checked-in for the following four days and took a motorbike taxi back to Gapang to collect his ailing Missus and all our belongings.

We had read that Ipioh was even more rustic than Gapang, but it was actually nicer with a decent stretch of beach and a handful of restaurants that had relatively clean kitchens. The plan was for Dean to book in for his dive course, while Tracey was happy to laze around for a couple of days in the hammock, reading, snoozing and recovering from her illness, before hopefully spending the last couple of days doing some snorkeling. The sea directly underneath our hut was a perfect spot for swimming and snorkeling and even from our balcony, we could see the most amazing coral and brightly coloured fish. Dean went snorkeling when we first arrived and saw turtles, enormous Moray eels and many different species of the most beautiful fish. However, that afternoon the sky clouded over and it started raining torrentially. Our plans were completely thwarted as the heavy rain continued for the entire four days. Dean did manage to go out on one dive, but the water was very choppy, the currents were strong and visibility was poor. Tracey didn't manage to do any snorkeling at all and there was nothing else for us to do but to stay in our hut and read books. Unfortunately, the roof of the hut was made of tin and the constant noise of the rain echoing overhead drove us both crazy. We were both extremely bored and each morning when we awoke to yet another day of rain felt like Groundhog Day. Either because of Ramadan or because of the constant torrential rain, often the restaurants didn't bother to open. When they did open, they had very often run out of food. One lunchtime, the only food that was available anywhere was a cabbage sandwich and one morning, we searched high and low for breakfast but couldn't find a single café that was open. We had to wait until 10:30am when one of the "shops" opened and make do with a packet of dry biscuits between us. We had stuck it out for as long as we could in the hope that the rain would eventually stop, but once the food situation started to worsen, we decided that we couldn't take it any longer and we left a day early and traveled back to Banda Aceh with Hannah. As the ferry left the harbour, we felt extremely relieved to pull away from Pulau Weh! We checked into a relatively decent hotel for the night and left the following day on a flight back to Medan.

Because we had spent hardly any money during our time on Pulau Weh, we decided to treat ourselves to some much needed five star luxury and booked into the JW Marriott Hotel for the night. After six days of rain, mud and cold salt water showers, it was absolute bliss to be staying in a room with a huge power shower, sunken bath and enormous fluffy towels that were changed twice a day. We swam in the rooftop pool, worked out in the gym and ate a delicious buffet dinner that evening before flopping into the most comfortable bed we had ever slept in and watching a movie on the huge plasma TV screen. Whoever said that staying in five star hotels isn't really "travelling" should go and spend a week on Pulau Weh!

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Bukit Lawang, Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia

We left Lake Toba early in the morning and caught the ferry from Tuk Tuk to Parapat. Our travel agent was waiting for us at the harbour and was very apologetic that he would be unable to accompany us to Bukit Lawang as planned. We both breathed a huge sigh of relief as we had been dreading a long car journey with him barking into his mobile phone the entire way. As our stay in Lake Toba had been so cheap (the total bill for seven nights at the best hotel in Tuk Tuk in one of their nicest rooms came to the equivalent of £130 for the two of us, including two meals a day, sometimes three, motorbike and bicycle hire), we had decided to treat ourselves to a private car to take us to Bukit Lawang as the journey by public transport would have involved four buses. Our travel agent was true to his word and provided us with a practically brand new people carrier with air-con and reclining seats. The seven hour journey was really quite pleasant and passed without incident.

Bukit Lawang is a small village on the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park. It is home to approximately 7000 orangutans, as well as many other animals. Neither of us felt particularly ready for another jungle experience as Dean has only just started to feel normal again after our trek in Borneo. Since the incident with the tick, he had been feeling lethargic, nauseous and has suffered from headaches and a loss of appetite. When we were last in the jungle, Tracey developed a fungal infection on her toenails which is growing out and she was reluctant to make it worse. However, we both really wanted to see orangutans so we decided to brave it. As orangutans are now only native to Borneo and Sumatra, this would be our only chance to see them in the wild.

Our driver dropped us off in the village where we met with our trekking guide, Muhdi (renamed Mowgli by Dean) at the Eco Lodge to discuss the plans for the trek which was to start the following morning. We had booked a room at the nicest guesthouse in the village, the Jungle Inn, which we discovered was a 20 minute hike upriver. It was pretty hard going as we had to walk with our full backpacks uphill and it was very humid. We arrived at the guesthouse dripping with sweat, only to be told by the owner that he had given our room away! He then informed us that he only had one room left which was their most expensive one and was twice the price of the room we had booked. We were absolutely livid and Dean demanded that he let us have the room for the same price. After some hard negotiating, he finally agreed that we could pay just $5 extra. It was well worth the extra money as the room was extremely stylish with an outdoor tropical bathroom and a balcony with a hammock overlooking the jungle and the river. The owner then proceeded to try and sell us a jungle trek. When we told him that we had already booked a guide for the following morning, he wasn't very happy and refused to store our backpacks for us while we were away trekking, despite the fact that we were booked in to stay there for another night when we returned. We were less than impressed with his attitude so we checked out the following morning and lugged our backpacks all the way back to the Eco Lodge where we were meeting Muhdi and his colleague.

We set off for the trek along with Christian, a German guy doing an internship in Medan, and Hannah, a Scottish girl who is almost at the end of a 6 month stint of travelling around Asia. It turned out that Hannah was sitting behind us on the ferry from Lake Toba and is also booked on the same flight to Banda Aceh.

After only a few minutes of entering the jungle, we were dripping with sweat due to the extreme humidity. Within fifteen minutes, we saw our first orangutans – a female swinging around on some vines with her baby close by on top of a tree. As the orangutans are protected in the Park from poachers, they are not under any threat from humans so are very relaxed with people observing them and taking photographs. It was fascinating to watch them. After about 20 minutes, they swung away from us and we continued our trek deeper into the jungle. The trails were extremely muddy and slippery, paved with gnarly tree roots and rocks. Our guides were very good and managed to spot two more orangutans, gibbons, Thomas Leaf monkeys and long-tailed macaques who were completely fearless and surrounded us looking for food.

At lunchtime, we stopped in a clearing and our guides started unpacking the food they had prepared. Tracey took the opportunity to have a pee behind a large tree. While she was pulling up her trousers, she spotted a large orangutan out of the corner of her eye heading towards us at some speed. She quickly alerted the others and everyone got their cameras ready. However, as the orangutan had suddenly become a little too close for comfort, our guides told us to quickly pick up our bags and get moving into the forest, while they hurriedly packed up all the food. Although orangutans are gentle creatures they can become aggressive when searching for food, so we didn’t need to be asked twice.

After we had eaten lunch, we continued the trek for another couple of hours to the place where we would be camping for the night. The trek involved a lot of clambering up steep muddy banks using rocks and tree roots for support and then sliding down slippery trails, often with precipitous drops to the side. As we were climbing up a particularly steep verge, Tracey slipped and fell. Luckily Dean was right behind her and, ever the hero, caught her and managed to prop her up by her bottom to prevent her from sliding down the bank any further whilst she frantically tried to find something to hold onto and regain her footing. This trek was much harder than the one in Borneo, as the terrain there had been mainly flat. Thankfully, however, this time there were no leeches, ticks or sweat bees to contend with.

As relieved as we were to reach the camp, we were somewhat dismayed to find that the accommodation was even more basic than Prison Camp 5 in Borneo. The campsite itself was in a beautiful spot, set in a clearing beside the river. The sleeping area for the six of us was basically a large sheet of thin plastic secured to some bamboo poles with a sheet of tarpaulin on the stony ground. Our beds were very thin mats that must have been slept on by hundreds of people before us as they were so worn and compressed that it was like sleeping on wafers. There was a second sleeping area set up for another group and a small cooking area in the middle. The toilet was wherever you could find a bush and the shower was the river. It was the most basic accommodation either of us had ever experienced. Completely the opposite of "Glamping", this was “Tramping” at its finest. However, it was blissful to jump into the river to swim and wash after the intense humidity of the trek and the water was very clean. The other group turned up shortly after us and consisted of two English guys in their twenties, a Spanish couple and their two guides. It appeared that the Spanish woman was under the impression that she was being filmed for “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”, as she spent the entire time wandering around the campsite wearing nothing but a very skimpy bikini teamed with a pair of hiking boots. This attire was completely inappropriate for the jungle, firstly because there are loads of bitey insects around and secondly, Sumatra is a Muslim country and our guides were Muslim. On the other hand, if you have had to pay for breasts then you may as well show them off to all and sundry and get your money’s worth. The following morning over breakfast, Tracey (especially) was most amused to see that she was covered from head to toe in mosquito bites and took great delight in muttering “I told you so” under her breath.

While we were waiting for dinner to be served, a monitor lizard appeared in the campsite searching for food. Monitor lizards are huge and can grow up to 6ft in length, although this one was probably half that size. Our four guides produced a delicious spread for the eight of us, quite some feat given the very limited facilities available. After dinner, we were looking forward to an evening of sitting around the camp fire exchanging stories, but literally as soon as the plates had been cleared away, there was a clap of thunder, a flash of lightening and it started to pour with rain. We had to run to our “tents” for cover. As there were only a couple of candles for light, there was nothing else to do but go to bed and it was only 7.15pm. Neither of us felt even remotely tired and our mats were extremely uncomfortable. Tracey finally managed to drift off to sleep at around midnight only to be awoken by a frog using her as a springboard who then lodged itself directly above her head. The rain lashed down noisily on the plastic sheeting above our heads all night long and we had to remain in the tent until around 7am the next morning. Twelve hours of lying on a bed of rocks resulted in very stiff necks and sore backs. Tracey was also parched with thirst as she had avoided drinking any water throughout the night so that she wouldn’t have to venture out alone into the rainy jungle for a pee.

Thankfully, by breakfast time, it finally stopped raining. The plan for that morning was to trek back into the jungle again for another three hours before returning to the campsite for lunch. Given the heavy rainfall the previous night and also our lack of sleep, we decided that another three hours of slipping and sliding around in the mud was not for us and we decided to give it a miss. The Spanish couple had also decided not to bother and to hang around the campsite instead until the others returned. Thankfully Miss Barcelona 1989 had decided to cover up by this time. The other four trekkers went off with the guides until lunchtime. When they returned, they reported that all they had seen was one very large butterfly and a poisonous centipede, so we were rather relieved that we hadn’t bothered to go with them.

We had paid extra to “raft” back to the village rather than trek back. This involved sitting in the middle of some inflated truck inner tubes tied together with rope. The journey downriver through the Sungai Bohorok rapids lasted for around thirty minutes and was a much more enjoyable experience than trekking. When we arrived back, we took a room at the Eco Lodge for the night. Although it was pretty shabby and basic with no air-con and a cold water shower, after a night in the jungle, it felt like The Ritz.

Although it had been amazing to get so close to orangutans in the wild, we both vowed that this would be our last ever jungle trek. The jungle is just not designed for man. It doesn’t want us there and makes that sentiment felt at every available opportunity.


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