woooooooooooooooooo!!!

WOOOOOOOOO HOO HOOOO. WOOOOOOO!!!!. Thought i'd get that down on paper whilst it was still fresh in my mind.
That was bloody fantastic. Sooo much fun. I wanna go again. Seriously everyone if you ever get a chance to go skydiving then do it. It was awesome. The views from the plane were quality and the freefall is out of this world. Then after the parachute was opened there were still gret views of all the micro sheep in the micro fields with the micro farm buildings and micro cars on the micro roads. Awesome. We're gonna be away for a while after this to do some walks, so will say happy birthday to Birts and Rich birts and Becky H. oh and henshaw but i doubt hes reading this, he'll be off doing his hair somewhere.
take care all. I like half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve!
xx Matt XX

What a difference a day makes! mark 2

Ok so this blog should be before the mt cook one but whilst trying to edit to see if i could add photos i seem to have deleted it and yet i can recover it. i dont know whats going on but anywho it means the blogs are slightly out of order.
So it turns out that in Fiji during the summer it rains, and it doesn't take any prisoners. Yesterday in Suva it rained silly rain- heavy for 22 of 24 hours. Even so the short break gave us time to see the botanical gardens and go in the Fiji museum. Since it was raining we decided to head back to Nadi that evening ready for our bags the next morning. We stayed overnight in Nadi bay and today it is beautiful sunshine and we have our bags back!!!! Oh yes today is a very good day.That was saturday. It is now tuesday afternoon and we have just landed in New Zealand- YAY!!We spent the last few days in Fiji in Nadi bay to stay with the good weather. It was nice but not a great deal to do. Now we are in NZ and the real adventures begin.xx Matt xx

Mountains Gandalf, Mountains!

Ok so now we're in NZ which means my blogs may contain several references to LOTR. I make no apologies for this but thought i would warn you none the less.
We have now met up with my sister's boyfriend Mike and after a couple of days in Christchurch we have headed down to Mount Cook village. Today we walked up to mueller hut and had some spiggin awesome views over to Mt Cook. The walk was only 10k but felt a lot more cos of the amount of climbing involved. We plan to head on down to Queenstown on sunday where we may well do a skydive! Bring it on!
xx Matt xx

Change of plans

Ok so apparently we missed the bus stop for Cuvu which seemed to consist of a shabby bus hut and a muddy road so we decided to stay on to Suva- the capitol, where hopfully there will be some form of civilisation and an internet cafe. So you could be reading this very soon. It is now Friday morning and we are in the aforementioned tinternet cafe. Afer the 5 hour bus trip to Suva we set about finding out some local info and places to stay. We found a fairly decent place with backpacker dorms for FJ$15 (about a fiver), so we had a shower then a bit of a rest which turned into a 14hour sleeping marathon. We had woken in the late evening and it was pissing it down outside so we thought it best just to stay in and sleep. Today has already been more productive, we have established that the next flight from LA arrives saturday morning at 5, we have found some food and also this decent air-conditioned interweb place. After this we are off to the Fiji museum then the afternoon/evening bus back to Nadi so we can get to the airport in the morning. Sorry about the lack of photos in the blog so far i will endeavour to include some in future posts.
xx Matt xx

--------STOP BLOG-------STOP BLOG--------

We interrupt this blogcast on this dark day to bring you some dreadful news.... our bags have been lost!!!! So i am now in Fiji wearing the same jeans for yet another day, only today isn't england or air conditioned airports, Oh no, TODAY is 25 degrees at 8 in the morning with a relative humidity somewhere in the region of 763 Bazzillion%.
Oh well, chin up (ouch my chin), off to the shops to buy some oh so stylish clothes to wear. I am now at Nadi town bus station (stylish clothes in tow) waiting for a bus down to Cuva where we now plan to spend the next 2 days before heading back up to the airport to collect our bags- i'm staying positive on this.
It's a bit of an arse to need to hang around near Nadi for 2 days when we're only here for 5. The kind lady at the airport said that they 'have facilities to transport your bags to the islands'- Yeah right!!- i've not heard a worse idea since 'Lets find somewhere to lie down'.
Anyway if all goes to plan you will probably be reading this when we are back in Nadi, happily reunited with our bags. Which also means you won't be reading this until after Cuvu resulting in some sort of crazy triple edition blogerific bonanza!
xx Matt xx

Sweet dreams my LAX!!

Bula! from Fiji and welcome to my blog.
After an uneventful start with the flights to LA, upon arrival the fun began. HSBC for some reason unbeknown to me seem to have decided not to transfer money into my account i'm using whilst travelling even though they had debited my HSBC account. So after a panic at the cashpoint when Emma suggested i might have accidentally transfered it into someone else's account, we checked online to find it back in my HSBC account. So panic over i'll deal with them later.
On through security- it seems the main prerequisite for working as airport security in the US is to be a patronising asshole- anyhoo we went through to departures for our flight to Fiji. With an hour to kill before boarding Emma came up with the genious idea of 'finding somewhere to lie down'. Needless to say we both fell asleep and woke in time to get to the gate to hear staff on the radios 'we have located Bowles' whilst simultaniously an announcement on the tannoy 'Bowles to gate 105 please'. Which brings me up to now writing this on the plane so you probably won't get to read it before i post one for Fiji as well in some sort of double edition blog opening extravaganza.
xx Matt xx