THE worst fruit!!!!!!

I guess I gotta take the good with the bad after finding the amazing Custard Apple, but I think this one far out weighs the good. Its called a Durian, it should be called "worse then eating shit, more like stinky cheese then fruit, fruit" It has a texture like warm cream cheese and smells worse then limburger cheese, if you've never ventured to put that to the test, limburger cheese IS as bad as they say it is. I'd describe it as smelling like week old dried armpit stank, and this "fruit" (in my humble yet blunt opinion) is far WORSE. And the crazy thing is, they LOVE it here. Its on damn near every corner. I picked one up cause I had to try it, and i heard that it was rough but if a whole island loved the stuff I thought I could stomach a taste test at least. NO WAY, ended up giving the rest to a local I met and he was happy to receive it (but not nearly as happy as I was to get away from that smell).

So there ya have it, THE WORST (by far) fruit on earth

And if there is anything worse Im sure ill find it!
I hope(?)

Stuff Ive seen

Some cool stuff ive been seeing:
-old lady taking a bath in some crop water
-amazing views of cities and grassy hills
-Balinese carrying unbelievable amounts of goods on scooters, whether that be rugs, chickens, dogs, food vending machines, or their whole family. Overloading couldnt be more of an understatement
-Dogs in Bali arnt as much pets as they are fellow scavenging citizens. They dont react to people like they have been pet much, when you throw them food they flinch instead of try and catch, and id say about 90% of them have at least one leg causing a limp, understandable with all the crazy motor bikes swarming like flies on hot shit.
-Marijuana plants,
-Flatbed full of ginormous pigs with gallons of piss flowing out the back
-Young kids driving huge trucks with cigarettes in their mouths
-And that was just one day of driving, my butt pad has never hurt so bad after a full 9 hours on a late 80s unkempt scooter that i paid $3/day to hire.

12/27
Stayin at a nice hotel (nice for me anyway), its about 25$US/250,000Rp (thats correct, it is NOT fun keeping track of all those zeros) AC, TV, and best of all, what makes it soooo worth the extra coin, the kid @ the front desk, he is super cock eyed and and and (get this) he switchs it up on ya, you know when you meet a cockeyed person, everybody just trys to member the one thats actually lookin @ ya, and the one that is just, uh, lazy. Well this kid will be using one eye the first second then as your trying to keep your train of thought and reply to him he totally switches it up on ya, he looks at you with his other eye! Some might say a freak of nature, I say super human!!!
Think of the ability he has over all(most) else, (to totally distract me, for one) he can be looking @ one person in a group then just focus in on somebody else w/o even moving his eyes! Let alone his head. Well maybe not super human but definitely fun at parties.
:) This kid threw my off so many times it was great.

Bali (Indonesia)

Bali!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beautiful island, and amazing people, but ive come along way since getting here. My first day was pretty rough, money changer slipped off 50$ and found out afterwords, taxi from the airport ripped me off, then he took me to only $$$ hotels with all my shit in tow so i succumbed (hot/humid, disorientated with place/people, and tired (overnight flight)), it was a nice place but 40$(!?), bought a European carry-all and it broke in the first 5 min, thought a good meal would help but I think they over charged me on some taxes, tried to ask about where to find a map/lonely planet and everybody said they knew but they just pointed me into 3rd floor when i was on the 1st, and 1st floor when on the 3rd, literally (I dont think they can say "I dont know" so they just give it their best guess, or most just default to "yes" or point to a distant direction), and worst of all the beer isnt all that cheap, and that was just the first day!

Well I got a good nights sleep in my 60 degree room, took off the "sucker" sign from my forehead and started fresh in the morn. Made alot of ground the following days after learning the essential rule: everybody wants to become your "friend" and by friend i mean take you to a hotel/restaurant/motorbike hire of their friends so they can get a cut'o'cash. In Kuta this is the way of life for most locals a tourist comes in contact with, althou I did meet alot of cool Balinese people. This old guy, who i bought lunch from, showed me around a bit, to cheap hotel rooms down mushroom road, he said he'd make me majik mushroom soup if i want, he says he takes some when feeling down and makes him feel better :) REAL people, they seem happy too, and i found a lonely planet for SE Asia, finally! Its still difficult cause there are no maps with all the street names and, from what i can tell, the straight streets sometimes change names randomly, multiple streets by the same name! Crazy, so basically you just keep your general scence of direction and ask for help, but not just once, because they will just point you in a direction even if they dont understand you, so you need to get a popular majority (at least 3 or more) to get anywhere. Found a cheap hotel (8$/night), so I spent some time in the same area so I could learn the ropes and get my feet back under me. Kuta has all you could want (and some you dont want), full body massages (heh) for about 5$, discos open all night, cheap beer specials, great sea food, cheap internet, cheap hotels (if you find them yourself), the beach within walking distance with great surfing. There are hawkers on the beach under the trees that sell cold beer with a chair for you to sit and enjoy (as long as they can have the beer bottle back for return). The bad: you will hear "hey boss" at least 50 times on your walk to the beach, some along with "you want massage?" some with "what you looking for?" and some with " you want transport?" which is probably the best way to get away from the harassment. Renting a motor bike is about 3.5$/day and the easiest way to zoom past all this and into the crazy seemingly disorganized world of scooter swarming but it all works, somehow.

More to come............

My new fav fruit!!!

Im sure you all are dying to know about my new fav fruit. Its called a Custard Apple. It is sooooooooooooo goooooooooooooooooood. Its grown in tropical regions and is about the size of a mellon, at least the one I had. Matt (from Couchsurfing) took us to one of his neighbors near his fam's farm. They had a real full time farm operation and gave us a bunch of stuff to donate to the Sea Shepherd and a Custard Apple for us to try. They have a very meaty texture but you have to get it when its ripe other wise its more like an apple then like custard. Its kinda juicy but not like an orange and kinda sweet but not really sweet. Ill have to get many more when im in SE asia to help explain them better :)

PERTH

Flew into Perth the night of Dec 2, didnt want to pay for a hostel cause we landed near midnight so I found an open spot near the baggage claim to try a sleep a bit. The next day I took the bus into downtown and found a great hostel. Its an older building with high ceilings,a swimming pool, a bar, free brekie and diner too (if you buy a beer). Perth is a pretty cool city with a really big parks, and the weather is more moderate because its a bit further south.

Last weekend was great, I met up with a guy from Couchsurfing.org and he took me and a car full of other travelers from France to go to his cabin in some mountains for some fruit picking, swimming in his pond and gerneral hanging out (also tried a pretty good local beer Little Creature Pale Ale in Freemantle (near Perth)). We got to met some of his "neighbors" (the closest live about 3km away) so they could donate fruit and vegies for the sea shepard. The Sea Shepard is a boat that keeps an eye on ships that may be attempting to whale hunt and uses various tacticts to prevent them from continuing.

Heres what wiki's gotta say about it:
"Operations have included scuttling and disabling commercial whaling vessels at harbour, intervening in Canadian seal hunts, ramming other vessels, throwing glass bottles of foul smelling butyric acid on the decks of vessels at sea, boarding of a whaling vessel while at sea, and seizure and destruction of drift nets at sea."

So it was pretty cool to be able to load all this food onto the big black ship with white skulls and a helli on top at the steve irwin docks in freemantle.

Check out thier website:
www.seashepherd.org

Matt (from CS) is letting me stay at his house for a couple of days to save on $$$. Matt works alot in western australia to help with the green movement and the night we dropped the food off he went to some sea shepherd diner gathering. He had a coworker over the other night that was talking about just barrelly missing the opportunity to be in on a meeting with one of the guys in the music group Pearl Jam who wanted to know more about the western australia green movement. It was interesting to hear thier political views althou Im sure much was lost due to the political terminolagy, the unfamiliar names, the thick accents and ie's being attached to random words.

One thing they did suggest is for me to claim Canadian citizenship instead of US. They asked if i had had any troubles while traveling and that they have had some problems in other countries for the same reasons as americans do. I guess not many people have a problem with canadians so I dont feel as bad that every time an australian or fellow traveler has tried to recognize my ethnicity it was Canadian. I attributed it to MI being so close to the boarder but I guess when I actually say "cAAAAnaduhh" they pin me as an Uh-merrrrrcan.

Surfs up duuuuuuude

So Court left me to my lonesome in the great big city of Brisbane with a week and a half to kill before I take off to Perth, what to do what to do, heeyyyyy Id yet to catch some sweet waves!!! So I found the cheapest car I could find, which actually ended up being a sweet Toyota hatchback with just enough room to accommodate me and a Maui board for 7 nights. And it was a 6 speed stick shift, so I got to up the antes on my left hand side driving skills, and of coarse the rental with the very minimal insurance to add to the challenge. That is a great car, quick as all get up and great on MPG or I guess to be metrically correct LPKm. Got some tips from a couple of very helpful outdoor store guys on where to catch the best waves, and boy where they right. Actually, I started off catching a bit too much wave, I couldnt even get out beyond the breaking point! They just kept pushing me back into shore. Rented a board and now I remember how hard it is.

I started off at just north of Byron Bay, less people to see me make act a foo but still sposta be great waves. Even though I can see, what seems to me, like amazing waves to ride wave after wave, it is hard to know where they are going to be and be there at the right time. You gotta be at the right place at the right time, which can be a task in itself! Especially when your where there are the biggest waves in the world and your trying to paddle through them with a 7 foot board.
Had about the scariest moment ive had in the ocean. Started getting pushed to an area where waves where comin from both sides. it started pushing and pulling me around and i noticed how far from shore i actually was. So i started to try and swim to shore but it didnt help, i wasnt going anywhere but back and forth parallel to shore and it seemed like i was going further out. I tried to swim parallel to shore, I guess I remember some life saving techniques from watching Baywatch or something, but i could feel the same current that brought me there pulling me back. So I tried the opposite way, also parallel with shore. When I started to feel like id make some ground id look back to shore and realize i was just being pushed back and forth with my efforts resulting to nill. I was getting worried but i could still see people on shore and i could have started yelling for them to get help but i want sure when exactly it was to become a serious situation. I knew that i was NOT in control of where i was going, I knew that i had tried everything i could think of to try and get to shore, I also tried just riding a wave in like id seen so many other kids do, but they seemed to carry me a bit then drop me off for the undertow to take me right back, I was getting tiered but i thought maybe just the right wave hasnt come yet, the ones that when your in the right place and the right time they push you all the way onto shore like id seen so many others do before. I could have been 5 feet away from that perfect place/time and I would have no idea because i didnt know how to identify this. The right place is where the wave is peaking and is about to curl and the right time is when it curls. That is the point sufers ride , THAT point that the water is pulling you toward the oncoming wave and just before the wave breaks its peak, AKA the best USA midnight movie staring Keanu Reeves AKA Point Break. So maybe the next waves gonna take me back in. Or maybe somebody on shore sees Ive gotten into a secretly forbidden area and is about to tell someone to come and get me, or maybe that lone wave-watcher sitting on the beach, who Im sure has at least once noticed me this afternoon looking like a fish outta water in the water. While contemplating all this and reminding myself the most important thing to do is to stay calm, and trying to keep an eye out to shore to make sure im not getting too far out, while stuck in decision making mode I simply get picked up by this huge wave and it coasts me right to shore. Before I had time to realize I was back in 2 feet of water. That was a real reminder of whos in charge and how little and powerless i am when compared to an unimagenable force that has the power to turn a boulder into millions of tiny specks. And said force continues exherting this same amazing energy again and again, wave agfter wave, day after day, millenia after millenia no matter if im there watching or not, no matter if im in the right place or the wrong place, no matter if im here watching and finally understanding it or sleeping or worrying about my little life, those waves are gonna keep on pushin and pulling.

I was told that Coolangotta had THE biggest waves in the world, its where quicksilver and roxy pro hold yearly compatitions.

After a few days of getting tossed around by the waves I drove threw some small towns. Stopped and walked around Mulumbimby, its suppost to be the coolest new folk/hippie area in eastern Australia, they where holding a music festival that night with australian bands. Word on the street is that jack johnson has a house in the area and comes out to play some times. Didnt see any stars but I did meet some pretty cool locals that gave me a tour and bout me some beer. Some older ladies, althou pretty hip partiers and extensive travlers. One of them told me about dating one of the richest men in Japan at the time, she had gone there on a whim and tryed her hand(?) at stripping. She told me about some amazing places she loved in India that I should go.

Dropped the car back off in Brisbane, stayed a couple more days watching people take heroin in some really nice public parks over looking a bridge. I dont have any pics from this time cause my cam was broke. Couldnt handle the harsh conditions of Australia I guess :)

Australia!!!

Sooooooooo, Australia, theres been sooo much that has happened that I would be on here for days trying to put it all down, Ill put what i can and maybe add more later as after thoughts.

Start at the begining?
I came into Sydney Nov 2, walked around in the blazing hot sun and warm breezy nights for a couple of days checking out the amazing parks and wandering the city. The first day I went to a park near the harbor to see the iconic bay area and I found something more entertaining, huge bats! Huge red furried bats flying around in the bright sunlight, and it wasnt just a few, it was hundreds of these things hanging from trees. It was like i was in a zoo, and there are parrots flying around, as frequent as seagulls in MI, and some crazy long beaked bird walking around (check my pics). The park I was at was really great and all the different vegitation, it all had similarities to what Id seen before but it was just different in some way, like the huge rooted trees, all the diffrent palm trees, pine trees with vertical needle bunches instead of horizontal, trees with branches that had roots dangeling down and some that had gotten to the ground and looks like a seperate tree, trees with multiple trunksgoing down to the ground, on and on...

Some other diferent stuff in Australia:
-They have car/trucks!!! they sell them new, theres two of them: a ford falcon or a Holden/GM Commador Ute, sure wish they'd sell them in the US!
-A cool little van called a Suzuki Carry, google it...
-There are also ALOT of flat nosed smaller economical vans on the roads, lots for businesses and lots of travelers.
-Locals really dress up when they go out to eat and to the bar at night time
-There are drinking fountains @ cross walks in the city!!!
-There are Australian black crows that sound like that redrum kid from the movie The Shining
-The good surfing areas remind me of So Cal, vacation areas remind me of florida, and the cities kinda remind me of canadian cities turned tropical.

Court came in from Iraq after a couple of days and it was great to see her again althou she was dead tired after a long flight and crazy time travels. We hung out in Sydney for a few more days checking out the seafood market, flee markets, finding cheap eats, playing on monuments and hitting the Op-Shops harrrrrd (Op-shop = thrift/opportunity). Court actually had to get a 3 teir expandable suitcase to accomidate all the sweet finds.

We hit the road starting off visiting the Blue mountains (the color comes from the haze of eucaliptis), and back to the coast to visit cities like: Booti Booti, Gympie, Mooball, Coolingotta, Pimpama, Surfers paradise (that actually doesnt have very good surfing compared to near bye places), Tweed heads, and this is just the east coast...

We found some amazing beaches, picture perfect everytime and desolate as can be, partly because the whole coast is full of them so you just pull over and take your pick. One of the campsites we stayed at was a 20km drive down a bumpy backroad, something I vowed never to attemped again after Edweena's little "incedent", but it was well worth it. We where in the middle of nowhere with a beach to ourselves as far as my eyes could see. We played with the waves a while, played frizbee a while, and just enjoyed each others company and lack of company. The waves where amazing, we would be about 10 feet out from shore and a big one would hit us and knock us down. Some would swipe you off your feet and tumble you towards shore losing track of which way is up. The coolest one picked me off my feet and dragged me with my shoulder being the only thing suporting me, for about 10 feet! There where many times I would watch Court playing and a sec later Id see just her feet straight in the air! Its an amazing power with relatively limitless energy.

When we got further north, closer to the Queensland boarder, we finally saw some kangaroos! It was interesting actually see how when they are eating and want to just move forward a bit they use thier tails like a 3rd set of legs to move them forward. And to see them hop around, i cant even imagine how strong thier legs and tails are to be able to move that much mass as swiftly as they do. We stopped at a koala park later on the trip to try and find one but no such luck. And near a spot where a local said we just missed the whale watching by a week, it was a spot where the humpback whales pass by on there way south with thier new borns to go back to their feeding grounds. The southern ocean is where they feed and store up for the swim north during which they dont stop and eat. They then travel about 12000 km to get from the southern ocean to the tropical breeding grounds in the coldest months. They head back threw before the southern hemespheres summer time with their newborns with the peak time to see them being around Sept. So we missed the last few whales coming through but I did see what seemed to be a dolphin from the beach one early morning.

We got to the resort near Bundaberg (why yes they make a rum there, and why yes we had more then our share of sampling) after a few days of beach combing the coast and it was a nice relief to be able to get a good nights sleep, WITH AC!!! So we where livin the good life :) The area was one of the only spots to get to the Barrier Reef from the beach so we checked out snorkling for a couple of days and saw a sea eel and snake, a ray, a small shark!, many beautiful fish, coral, sharp barnacles, no sponge Bob to my multiple shagrins. Snorklin is fun and all but BEWARE! The most dangerous thing about it is not even in the water, its being in the water mid-day, getting lost in this other world while your backside is getting TOASTED! Well worth it though, FO SHO!!!

Near the resort in Bargara we found Mon Repos which is one of the two largest Loggerhead turtle rookeries in the South Pacific Ocean! So we were rockin on the turtle watching, very quitly mind you, so as to not disturb the moma poopin her eggs out. And boooyyy did she have a load, 100plus! cant member the exact # but it was alot, when I get the pics up you can countem yerself if ya like. After we watched moma crawl back to the ocean (which itself is an amazing thing, how she is able to move that huge mass) Me and Court got to help move the eggs to a safer location that is less likely to get washed into the tide. I squeezed one of the eggs, VERY gingerly, and it felt like a soggy pingpong. They mark, record and keep track of all the different locations of eggs to better understand the turtles. They did say that the lights kept on overnight in the nearby towns distract the young when they hatch and waddle back to the sea. They look for the light on the horizon to know which direction the water is and whith competing lights they get diverted which may result in more fatalities. All the more reason to shut your lights off when your not using them, AND another thing to keep in mind, balloons, cute little baby turtles love to try and eat those brightly colored death traps, so next time you think about getting a ballon as a gift, FORGET IT! Unless you want that out weighing your karma.

Here's the start of my adventures.....

My bro and maw drove me out to the airport after picking up a traveling gift from my maw, a global phone ($) NOTE: that Ill be using primarily for txting, even that is .50$ for out going! But only .05$ for incoming so dont hesitate to txt, THX MAW :) Before boarding the second leg of my itinerary I saw a couple of bright orange dressed individuals with shaved heads, sure sign of a devout ascetic. I kept up hopes to talk to them or pictures or something but they boarded after me, unboarded before me, and I didnt think it was appropriate to approach them on the plane. Bummer, but Ill be sure to see alot more where they came from in the, o so near, future.

Flight went alot easier than i had expected, i planned on kickin some sudoku ass all over the whole book full uv em but my only pen mysteriously burst its bubble while i fell to a quick nap, it was clearly intimidated by the challenge. No problem, the hours flew by (heh), talked to some guy from a town between Melbourne and Sydney for a bit. He told me about him taking his fam out to Vegas to renew their vows and how good all the food is in Australia, and about his stock pile of home made wine. He was a nice guy for the most part, and a lovely wife, apart from them being increasingly dependent on my superior technical skills of navigating the individual television monitors. But I had my share of free wine, red/white/sparkling/"bubbly" you name it, so needless to say things went smoothly.

Spent the first day mostly realizing how crazy expensive this place is and enjoying the sun, althou it is still pretty cold out in the shade. I rented/hired a car because I was unable to find anybody else to tote me around, station wagon which has been plenty enough for just me to sleep and drive in, esp. with gas/petrol prices working out to be about 4.50$USD/Gal!!! (1.60$NZD/liter if you want to check my math), rough. But man it couldnt be more worth it, driving has been one of the best things about the trip. The landscapes here are the MOST amazing ive ever seen in my whole life, its like a mix between grassy mountains of Ireland, countryside of Cali, the mountains reminded me of the ones Ive seen in Whistler, and with cattle farms and sheep everywhere roaming around the huge grass hill/mtns. Ive seen pigs, sheep, cows, what looked like elk, HUGE cattle/closer to buffalo, goats, no kiwis thou, I guess they only come out at night and I was told all the possom are running them out cause they are eating the vegitation and they have no preditor around here cause they where brought in from the UK or somewhere. Its so unusual, its very flat where its flat right up untill the mountains then the mtns go on and on, and the windiest/narrowest 1 and 1/2 lane roads ive seen.

In the hostel I was first staying at I roomed with some guys from Czech that planed on working for a year in NZ but wernt sure how or where to get started, and they had trouble with english so that limits their working possibilities. After deciding I had to get a car to get anywhere, I decided Id offer to givem a ride down to Napier where there where more farm land and warmer weather to start the season off. We spent the day driving down there and enjoying every second of the amazing view. They have trees that are cut so that it works like a huge fence, prolly 20 feet tall and about a meter deep with dense tree stuff. After helping them find a hostel in Napier they took me out to eat and to the bar for a couple of Guinness's worth of gratitude. One of them was really into rock climbing and told me that there is some of the worlds best down in the south island (damn).

Ive gone on a couple of hikes, two of them where on the "great walk" list and well worth it. One of them was an AMAZING hike/tramp, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in Torgariro national park which is the oldest national park and a dual world heritage area, in American english: It is recognized to have world heritage status for both natural and cultural values. Ill get the pics up when i can, they turned out amazing! I hiked the closest i could get to the volcanic craters without requiring crampons and ice picks. One of the routes was closed off because of all the noxious gasses (i know what your thinking but that was before i even got there). When I got closer to the top you could see steam rising from the ground, people where kneeling down to feel the ground so i joined in and realized that it was hot! Crazy to think what was going on under there, best not to think bout ti! So now Im headed back to Auckland to return the car and hang out till my flight to Sydney on Monday. Supposed to be warmer there so that will be nice, I guess its a little bit farther north.
Hope all's well with everybody!
Love,
Nick

Blogging???

Thought Id givit a gooooo.........