Yesterday morning something embarrassing happened to me. I went to the campsite toilets for a poo, wiped my bum, then accidentally dropped the piece of toilet paper. It went under the divider into the neighbouring cubicle, which happened to be occupied. Worse still, whoever was in there actually pushed it back again. I didn't hang around to say thank you.

After a brief respite, clip's text messaging has now reached a whole new level of activity. Every spare moment seems to be taken up with the incessant tapping. Whenever I ask who she's texting she's always chatting to several people at once. We have to recharge her phone at least once a day. For the love of god PLEASE stop texting her.

The pelican crossings at crossroads in New Zealand are great fun because you are allowed to cross diagonally. Imagine hundreds of pedestrians setting off simultaneously from all four corners. It makes you feel like a member of a motorcycle stunt team.

Back in Auckland we stayed in our first large mixed dormitory at Auckland Central Backpackers; four bunk beds in a room about the size of a garage. All the lower bunks were taken so clip and I slept on two of the top bunks, opposite each other. It was so painful to climb and descend the metal ladders without shoes on that clip had to have her pumps in bed with her. We didn't get much sleep because we were both so worried about falling out of bed or not hearing the alarm clock, or, in clip's case, kicking her pumps over the side.

In the morning we took the AirBus to Auckland airport for our flight to Christchurch on the south island. We checked in, bought two cups of coffee, and sat near a bin in the concourse, making cheese sandwiches. clip forgot where she was and did a huge burp at the old Japanese businessmen sitting next to us. She stood up and walked away without looking back.

We landed in Christchurch to 29C. Someone told us that the unusually high temperature was due to the wind blowing a certain way off the mountains. We were soon to discover what happens when the wind blows the other way.

We took a free shuttle bus to the car rental people and hired a car for the next six weeks for just 10 pounds per day. It's very old and rusty and battered but to us it is luxury; we don't have to carry everything around on our backs anymore!

Christchurch is very English. It's like Oxford and Stratford mixed together. Colourful wooden trolley buses decked out with sunflowers trundle around the streets. People punt up and down the River Avon sipping champagne. University students wear smart grey shorts with their socks pulled up. The Anglican cathedral in the central square dates back to 1880.

The main post office in Christchurch offers a Poste Restante service, where your mail is stored for you until you can collect it. Thanks to my parents I now have my GPS and mobile telephone again. Don't expect a text message though, I've no credit left!

We soon tired of the piledriver next to the campsite and drove north to the craggy coastal town of Kaikoura, home of whale watching in New Zealand. The wind must have changed direction because, minutes after pitching the tent, a violent storm started up and continued throughout the night. The wind felt like a hurricane and it absolutely chucked it down. Some tents got blown away. Some people just packed up in the dark and left. The bad weather continued for several days.

Now there is one thing that really dweebs me off and it's this. You join a queue of people waiting to be served and patiently wait your turn. Finally you reach the front and the person serving recites something on the lines of, "Good afternoon, how may I be of excellent service to you today?" to which you brightly respond, "Good afternoon, do you have any rooms available for tonight please?" Then the telephone in front of them rings and they say, "Excuse me for ten minutes while I deal with this call and leave you waiting like a fool for being so stupid as to show up in person." It drives me mental. Surely it would be better to employ someone else to answer the telephone and allow the servers to at least concentrate on offering their excellently unremarkable service.

At last, in Kaikoura, we managed to use this rude and annoying practice to our advantage. When we arrived at the Whale Watch terminal there were already fifty people in the queue and the tickets had almost sold out. We noticed a public telephone along from the counter and discovered that Whale Watch have an 0800 number. It was almost impossible to stifle the laughter as we telephoned the ticket counter from the same room and got the last two tickets on the 10am trip. My, how we chuckled as we strutted back through the queueing throng.

Kaikoura's whalesome fame is a consequence of it having an underwater canyon just offshore. The water depth suddenly increases from 90m to over 1100m, and this is an ideal habitat for Sperm Whales which can dive to over 2000m in search of food. The Whale Watch trip consisted of a short drive to a jetty in a knackered old coach, then two hours at sea aboard a special boat rigged up with a GPS system to track each whale's last known surface position, and a directional underwater microphone for listening to the clicks the whales use to locate their prey. Their 160dB clicks are the second loudest sound in the animal kingdom (a 737 at full power is 'only' 140dB), surpassed only by the blue whale whose ridiculously loud 180dB clicks enable it to communicate with other blue whales anywhere in the same ocean.

Sperm whales are so-called because, when early whalers caught them and cut them up, they found that each whale had 2.5 tons of a creamy white substance in its forehead. Apparently nobody thought to ask why it was in its forehead. It wasn't until much later when they caught a female and found exactly the same stuff that they realised they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late to change the name!

The whales come up for air every forty minutes, so all we had to do was sit patiently and wait for one to pop out and start panting. They really are magnificent animals. We saw four sperm whales in all, each from about 30m away. They stayed on the surface for about ten minutes while they got their breath back, then, as they dived back under the water, they waved their enormous tails in the air as if saying goodbye. They made clip cry, bless her.

Half a day's driving took us to the seaside town of Picton. Picton is a bit of a dump; it's only real claim to fame is that the interisland ferries happen to dock there. We spent a day hiking more than twelve exhausting miles of the nearby Queen Charlotte track, which runs along the mountainous ridge between the Queen Charlotte and Kenepura Sounds. It was disappointing because the incredible view was frequently obstructed by thick bushes. Bushes encrusted with cicadas whose only purpose in life seems to be flying straight into my face. I can't stand them.

The next day we went to Tuamarina Annual Rodeo and sat on the grass in the sunshine watching cowboys get thrown off bucking broncos and angry bulls. The whole competition seemed to be about who could get most hurt and still manage to stand up, and clip and I found ourselves willing the bulls to inflict more and more painful injuries. The most astounding event was the Sheep Riding competition. Children, all of whom appeared to be under the age of eight, sat astride fully-grown sheep and then struggled pathetically to hang on as the sheep charged manically across the arena kicking its legs. The crowd cheered loudly as little girls in vests and shorts were dragged over the ground alongside the sheep. This is in a country where, by law, you have to wear a helmet to ride a bicycle. One girl was trampled by the sheep and slowly sat up holding her head. Another, who couldn't have been more than six years old, was thrown over the sheep's head and lay limp in the dry mud until someone came out and carried her off. The crowd cheered louder.

We parked our car in Picton and sailed as foot passengers across Cook Strait to visit New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, on the north island. We are staying at the Wellington City YHA hostel and I have to admit it's pretty swanky. We've splashed out a bit on a private double room (9 pounds per night each) as a belated Valentine Day treat. The last time we slept in a proper bed in our own room was more than four weeks ago. This morning we've been to Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum, partly to look at the general exhibits (which are very good) but also to let clip visit the Lord of the Rings exhibition. Apart from seeing the actual costumes used in the film I thought it was rather dull really; you might as well save ten quid and watch the extras on the DVD instead. Plus, the exhibition was full of irritating people who obviously thought that the whole thing really took place. You could see that they genuinely considered it a concrete part of our history. I wanted to bash their heads against the models and shout "LOOK, CAN YOU SEE HOW YOUR FACE IS DENTING THIS PAPER MACHE TOWER? DO YOU SEE? THE WHOLE BLOODY THING IS JUST MADE UP."

After I'd calmed down we wandered up through the Botanic Gardens to the Carter Astronomical Observatory. I visited the observatory last year when I was here on holiday for two weeks but didn't have time to do much more than look at the sun through an old telescope and photograph the sunspots. The sunspots came out very well and, at his request, I later emailed the photograph to the professor in charge of cosmology research and education at the observatory, Frank Andrews. Today, to my amazement, he remembered me, opened up the observatory planetarium, and gave clip and I our very own free private show for over an hour! We've been invited to his house (though I don't think we'll have time to go) and I've been given the names, addresses and phone numbers of some astronomers down at Invercargill Museum so we can meet up with them and see the Southern Lights while we're in the area. Heh heh heh.

Well there isn't much more to tell for the time being. We sail back to Picton tomorrow and continue our tour of the south island. I hope everyone's ok. I'm starting to miss my friends a lot now. Surely someone fancies a cheap holiday? email me.

l8r, clop

For masheadatronic - *** HARIBO PANDA COLA RING PULL ***

We spent a day tramping (hiking) around the Russell Peninsula, through Kororareka Point Scenic Reserve, Waihihi Bay, Flagstaff Hill, Tapeka Point and Long Beach in Oneroa Bay. There is an amazing variety of birdlife. My favourite so far is the fantail; they are really friendly chirrupy birds with a big black and white feathery tail which they flick about like a fan. There is also the tui, a larger black bird with two white pompoms on its throat. When it calls it 'clears its throat', then makes a sound like a recording of a cuckoo being played backwards, so "hchchchch OOO CUCK". We had great fun walking through the forests repeatedly shouting "OOO CUCK" and having them "hchchchch OOO CUCK" back. Well, I did anyway.

Then it was back on the HardLiner Express for a short journey north to Keri Keri. The campsite at Keri Keri is aimed more towards backpackers than the others we've stayed at recently and a scowling clip immediately condemned it as "shabby" and "tatty". By New Zealand standards she's probably right but it's still better than anything you'd get back home. All the campsites we've stayed at so far have had big communal kitchens with free fridges, rows of gas and/or electric hobs, toasters, boiling water, microwave ovens, televisions and loads of tables and chairs. All the showers and toilets (or ablutions as they're called here) are clean and well-maintained (though I'm not convinced by the sloping white plastic ceiling in the gents in Aranga which had been buffed to such a high mirror shine that you can plainly see, and this morning I really wished I couldn't, exactly what's going on in all the other cubicles). There is also stuff like laundry facilities, internet access, and free gas barbecues which I am making full use of (lamb is 90p/lb).

We glanced dutifully at New Zealand's oldest stone building (1835, like, whoopee doo) in Keri Keri Basin then tramped up the river past Fairy Pools to Rainbow Falls where I went swimming in my underpants. I can hardly believe how many cicadas there are here nor what a god awful racket they make. On the plus side they do keep flying into clip's face and hair which is kind of fun.

On the way back we visited Rewa Village, supposedly an exact replica of a Maori village from precolonial times, complete with a riverbank latrine known amusingly in Maori as a "Pae Pae".

New Zealand's cash machines are uber funky. We used one this week that greeted me by name, had an "OTHER STUFF" option in the main menu, exclaimed "OK, GOT THAT!" when I entered the amount, then announced "HERE'S YOUR CASH" as the money came out!

It now appears that possums are not the only creature in the Antipodean speciecide portfolio. Stoats, weasels, ferrets, deer, elk and boar are all on death row. It seems that as soon as we comment on how cute, nice or pretty something is we see a leaflet or poster calling for its urgent massacre, and as usual it is "our forests" or "our kiwis" that are at dire risk. Even the poor plants have not escaped the eagle eyes of the conservation psychopaths:

"DESTROY WILD GINGER BEFORE IT DESTROYS OUR FORESTS!"

"ENVIRONMENTAL WEEDS [pretty flowers],
DELIGHTFUL BUT DESTRUCTIVE!"

I wonder how New Zealand will cope in the future when tectonic plate movements finally bring it into direct contact with a land mass bristling with fearsome small mammals and ornamental shrubs. By then I expect they will have erected an all-encompassing biodome made of bullet-proof glass, with a minefield and remote-controlled flamethrowers positioned strategically around the perimeter.

In Keri Keri we met a lad who was born in the same building as clip! He and his girlfriend had bought a car for their time in New Zealand, having decided this was better than using the Kiwi Experience I mentioned earlier. So far it's been described to us as a "shagfest", the "F&%k Bus" and the "Vagina Experience" but now, after having actually seen one of these coaches and the people on them, I would call it the "Liposuction and Nicotine Addiction Experience".

The weather remains a constant sunny 26C and I am now the brownest I can ever remember being. Unfortunately my scalp got sunburnt through my action man hair and I now look like I am suffering from late-onset cradle cap.

Other things of note:

PYO oranges.
It's been over a month since I last sent a text message.
We keep finding big stick insects (clip says they should be called branch insects) walking up the tent.

Boi, clop

I love New Zealand; of all the countries I have visited so far in my life it is definitely the one I would most like to live in.

This week we have been to the Bay of Islands; a maritime park about 150 miles northwest of Auckland. We bought a couple of backpacker passes for the NorthLiner Express coach service to Paihia and then used a passenger ferry to cross the bay to our campsite in Russell.

The NorthLiner Express has got to be the most uptight coach company on the earth. There was a sign at the front of the bus spelling out the many rules, and these were forcefully reiterated by our driver "gentle" Ben (Beeyen), whose thick white support socks were pulled right up to his knees. No smoking. No drinking. No eating. No putting your feet up on the seat in front. No looking out of the windows. No smiling.

The ferry from Paihia to Russell takes about 15 minutes and costs 2 quid each way but we managed to persuade the skipper to sell us a "strictly for non-commerical use" (residents only) 10 journey kerching-a-strip for 8 quid. Heh heh heh.

The Bay of Islands, as its name suggests, is a coastal bay with lots of islands in it. It's very scenic and there are lots of water-based activities on offer - island cruises, dolphin-watching, fishing, kayaking etc. Paihia is bigger and more touristy than Russell (but then, so is Kitchenroyd), but they are both relatively small and sleepy; the only off-licence in Russell closes at 8pm! Both towns played important parts in New Zealand's history - Russell was the site of the first European landings around 1830 and served as New Zealand's capital "city" until 1840.

One thing that has really struck us about New Zealanders is their wanton selective cruelty to animals, couched in hypocritical self-righteous "patriotism". The Brushtail Opossum was first brought to New Zealand from Australia in 1837 and there were numerous releases of both Australian- and New Zealand-bred stock until 1930. Today there are almost 80 million possums in New Zealand and they are damaging crops, trees, and the future survival of native wildlife such as the Kiwi bird, New Zealand's national symbol. New Zealanders therefore despise the possums and do everything they can to kill them and convince visitors to do the same. In towns there are posters of stoats, weasels and possums headed "WANTED DEAD!" You can actually pay money to go on an "Awesome Adventure" called the "Ultimate Shooting Experience" where you are given a gun and taken through a forest at night to shoot possums out of trees for fun. You are encouraged to drive over them as they cross the road. You can buy possum fur goods and pelts in souvenir shops, where they are marketed with statements like "by buying this product you are helping to save our native forests from devastation." This simply cannot be true. Since colonisation, 90% of New Zealand's native forests has already been chopped down or replaced by the faster-growing (and therefore more profitable) radiata pine which was introduced from America. Perhaps the real issue here is one of ecomony. I can see that there may be a problem and I don't have a ready solution, but the sick and gleeful attitude of the people here is disgusting. They justify it to themselves with a combination of anti-Australian racism and a smug but mistaken sense of conservation. New Zealanders can't be animal lovers because they only consider an animal's life to be worthwhile if it happened to live here over 250 years ago.

As an alternative to murdering tens of millions of innocent animals for the sake of having a national symbol so rare that you never get to see any anyway, I suggest they go out and shoot the few remaining Kiwis, sell their beaks and feathers to tourists in souvenir shops, and make the Possum their national symbol instead.

Hi everyone.

It's almost four weeks since I stopped working! This is the longest I've not worked in the last decade.. it's wicked. Everything is so slow and relaxed.. no more worrying about increasing productivity and reducing costs when the quest for money has been taken away.

We're back in downtown Auckland for the day, sorting out some stuff for our time in New Zealand, most imporantly transportation. There are lots of different passes available; the Kiwi Experience (a bit of a shagfest apparently) coach pass for 240 quid each, a Magic (more mature) coach pass for 260 quid each, an InterCity Travelpass (boring) for 250 quid each, or a Best of New Zealand coach, ferry and train pass for 230 quid each. All these options have strengths and weaknesses, and for the price of two passes (around 500 quid) we can hire our own car for 6 weeks, including petrol, and be truly independent. After we've finished messing around on the internet we're off to check out the Rent-A-Wreck prices.

Auckland certainly seems to have more than its fair share of turbo-charged boyracer dickheads. Walking along the city streets you can barely hear yourself think over the bloody "vroooooommm SSSSSS vroooooommm SSSSSS" racket.

Our campsite is very nice. Most of the people staying here are European, chiefly British, French and German, and it's great having hot water again (there was no hot water in Fiji). In true dogshit-on-my-shoe fashion we've managed to pitch our tent right next to the uber-squeaky communal campsite trampoline; who needs an alarm clock when you can be woken up at dawn every morning by some little French twat bouncing and squeaking away, inches from your head.

If anyone's interested in some numbers, we've spent a total of 1450 quid in the month we've been away. America was very expensive but our daily spend is now quite low. Our accommodation over the last two weeks has cost an average of 3.48 quid per person per night!

Hopefully there will be more to write about in the next entry.

clop

Hello from New Zealand, I'm so happy happy happy to be free of Fiji. No more bugs, no more mind-numbing boredom, no more clamminess hoorah tum te tum fa la la la. Now I'm away from Fiji and look back at the pics, it was really quite a pretty place. So, if you're a beach lover that likes doing bugger all day in day out day in day out day in day out, then Fiji is fantastic. I'm not going to say any more because I'm really struggling not to say horrible things about it.

New Zealand, however, seems pretty cool. Nice people, good weather and cookies!! Once you get past the power-crazed dungaree wearing MAFF women it's ok. (I'm sure clop will explain fully in his bit).

The "hellhole" of Fiji sits quietly in the Pacific Ocean, just 18 degrees south of the equator, and apparently more than 1500 miles from the nearest continent. Although the interior of Fiji is craggy and volcanic, it is a very green and lush place and much of the low croplands seem to be taken with growing sugar cane. We spent an hour paddling around our coral lagoon in a tandem sea kayak but couldn't see the fish very well, so we hired some snorkelling gear and swam out with that. The sealife is incredible. There are different types, shapes and colours of coral; some is pinky red, some green, some is pale blue. On the coral there are blue and yellow starfish bigger than my hands, spiralling blue anemones, and big fat black and orange-spotted sea cucumbers, and swimming around the coral are hundreds of fish of every conceivable pattern and colour; just when you think you've seen all the different fish possible a new one comes along that takes your breath away. The Beachouse is situated in the middle of a coconut grove just off the beach (literally 15 yards from the tent to the sand) but there is a wide variety of other plants around the tent like breadfruit and avocado trees. More birds we have seen include Pied (?) Kingfishers, and blue and yellow Kingfishers

There seems to be a fair degree of racism in Fiji, mainly by the Fijians towards the Fijian Indians who were originally brought here from India a generation ago as labourers and who have now proliferated and are doing considerably better than the native Fijians. Most of the shops seem to be run by Fijian Indians and they have had to protect themselves from attack by installing huge walk-in cages - you have to point at things and have them passed to you through a hole in the cage. Fijian shops boast such amusing products as "Glad" oven bags and superior quality "BOOM" washing powder. clip wouldn't let me buy any sliced goat's neck.

Fijian women seemed to be quite "big-boned" and most sport a huge affro. The roads, education and general living conditions are much better than those in India but the Fijians' houses are still very basic - most live in shacks made out of leaves and corrugated iron, and wash in the sea. The roadsides are dotted with stalls selling fruit and vegetables.

We finally discovered that our sickness (and my super-orange wee) was caused by bad mayonnaise. The Retchouse chef apparently spoons the same mayonnaise into the salads each day so it's not surprising so many of us got ill - at least 20 people were sick because of it. It was funny in a way - each morning as I was taking a shower I could hear people sprinting across the wooden bridge to the toilet block, slamming the toilet door, and throwing up or pooing loudly. On one occasion I actually heard a girl retching continuously for the entire duration of my shower.

After leaving the Retchouse we took the bus to Nadi where we stayed overnight, ready for our flight to New Zealand. If we thought that the bus back from Sigatoka had been cockroach-infested we were mistaken. The bus from Nadi to Wailoaloa seemed to have cockroaches on every available surface. They crawled around the windows, across the seats, round the rucksacks, and up clip's back. She was very brave. Sometimes, once clip has decided that she doesn't like somewhere, she'll insist on not enjoying herself for the whole time, even if interesting or nice things happen. She hated Fiji which was a shame because it really wasn't that bad. We'd originally planned it as a short stop-off to break up the journey to New Zealand but the place is so interesting and beautiful that I'd have liked to have stayed for a couple more weeks and explored some of the other islands. I guess this is the compromise of travelling with someone.

We stayed in a hostel in Nadi Bay, in a dormitory room with 4 girls and 1 toilet that didn't flush, and took the school bus to the airport early the next morning. We were supposed to fly to Auckland and then get a connecting flight to Christchurch but on consideration we decided to postpone the connecting flight for a week. This gives us time to look round Auckland and visit the Bay of Islands before moving to the south island. Funnily enough, the new flight connects in Wellington so we might be cheeky and get off there instead.

When we landed at Auckland the pilot announced, "Could those passengers in need of wheelchair assistance please stay seated for the time-being" to which the lady sitting next to me responded, "Well they don't really have much choice do they?" How we laffed.

It's Daylight Saving Time in New Zealand at the moment so we are now 13 hours ahead of GMT.

After clearing immigration and customs we had to go through quarantine, filling in a MAF declaration detailing our route and camping activities so far; this is to prevent people bringing unwelcome parasites or crops into New Zealand. Our tent had to go off and be inspected for 15 minutes. During this time we rang a nice-sounding hostel in one of Auckland's suburbs to ask if they had any vacancies. The guy at the other end of the phone started laughing and, when I asked if he could suggest somewhere else for us to stay, told me to get my guidebook out and ring every number in it. Everywhere is full because of the America's Cup sailing competition. We rang a "local" campsite in Manukau and they agreed to let us camp there, but when we went to pick up our tent we were informed that they had a found a weevil in it and that it would have to be fumigated. They asked where we were staying and we replied, "in the tent" so the lady frowned and went away for a bit. When she came back she said that, as they had only found one weevil, they had decided not to fumigate the tent after all. Her friendly parting words were, "Next time you might not be so lucky." An American lady next to us had missed her connecting flight (and lost the money) because they had insisted on cleaning all her shoes and outdoor clothing. It does seem a bit silly, especially if they are going to cut corners for some people and not others.

We pitched the tent and walked to the local supermarket for some food. We now hold discount membership cards for Safeway in California and Foodtown in Auckland; I wonder if they will write to my dad. When we got all our lovely food back to the campsite we discovered that there were no pans or crockery provided so we had to cadge some off another camper. The nights are a lot cooler in New Zealand but it is still very hot and sunny during the day. It's odd seeing Orion upside down again, with Sirius so high in the sky, and the sun and moon move from right to left across the north sky, instead of left to right across the south as they do at home.

I think clip and I may have made a mistake coming away together for so long. For me the trip is an opportunity to get away from the UK and experience a different way of life but clip says she is homesick and each morning she wishes she were back home again. Her text messaging is increasing all the time and it's a constant link to the UK that is ruining the isolation for me. It is also important for me to be able to spend time on my own each day but clip prefers not to spend any time on her own at all. If I suggest time apart doing our own thing clip gets upset, but not having any privacy is driving me crazy. It's difficult to know what to do for the best.

I've just had my hair shaved off - I've got a grade 2 all over and clip says I now look like a yob.

Until next time.. clop

It's not hard to deduce that the frequency of these updates is directly proportional to my level of boredom.

clip was so itchy from her bites last night that she couldn't sleep so today we went to the chemist's in the local town (Sigatoka) to buy some anti-histamines. These made her so drowsy that she could barely stay awake on the bus journey back to the campsite, probably a good thing as it helped to take her mind off the half dozen cockroaches crawling about on the seat next to her.

There are two days left before we leave what clip has coined "this hellhole".

After my last entry we saw some red, blue and green parrots (lorikeets) in a tree next to our tent, then had some yummy sausages off a barbecue and went to bed early.

At midnight our amorous new neighbours mistook their thin nylon tent for a soundproofed room and woke us up "porn audio" style.

At 1am clip started throwing up violently. I started throwing up at 11am. We spent the whole of the next day in our tent with flies buzzing round us, unable to move except to throw up occasionally.

Well today we both seem to have recovered completely thank god. That was really awful.

During the night a rat or a coconut crab came into the tent and stole one of clip's new flip-flops. We managed to find it under a bush, slightly nibbled.

clip has "cut my hair" for me with a pair of sewing scissors.

I've been out swimming in the coral reef lagoon today. There are hundreds of electric blue, yellow, orange, red stripey and spotted tropical fish everywhere, bright blue starfish, colourful sea anemones, sponges, coral, a yard-long hagfish (?) with tentacles coming out of its mouth, you name it!

It is amazingly sunny and hot pant pant pant, currently 32C.

What a life eh...