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(FILE 30 is new from Chile, then it’s W34, W35, W36, and W37)..bit of a back log due to camera issues.

Okay so firstly all is good and no more break ins so far. Right, which movie is this from? ‘BAAAA BAAAA Suuussshhhhhhh!’? It’s The Silence Of The Lambs ha ha ha, and that leads me neatly onto the fact that sheep in this country out number humans just shy of 8-1. Now that really becomes obvious as you travel around, I mean there are sheep just about everywhere. You know that scene in Wallace & Grommit, where there are sheep in the sofa, the TV, the fridge well it’s just like that, even serving in chops, sorry, shops. So far in just under 3 weeks we have covered a staggering 3100kms and as you will see from the photos the scenery is really quite stunning. To be quite honest, it’s like pulling into a BP service station and buying 12 of those tress air fresheners and then jamming them up each nostril. The smells are; Apple blossom, Peach, Pine, Sea Fresh, Sheep, Fresh Cut Grass, Water, Fresh Mountain stream - You get the picture. The thing that gets me is that around every corner there holds a new surprise or view. Try that in the UK and you are lucky to find a Chav spray painting a stolen Ford Cortina or a 12 year old holding up a Granny with a flick knife whilst his 8 year old Muslim mate videos it to put on youtube.com. I guess what I am trying to say is that it’s stunning here, completely stunning.

‘Jesus Christ did someone just stand on a Duck?’ said the Police Officer from the Sniffer Dog Section inside a Rhododendron bush at 4.25am. ‘Err, sorry, that was me’ I said. ‘Bloody Heck Mate, think of the dog will you?’ Okay so to end the quite sickening events that effected us last week, we’ve moved on and would you believe this, the very next campsite we went to, some 140kms away got hit the night before we arrived. So at night our truck now resembles Fort Knox and has signs in the windows saying ‘NO MONEY LEFT IN THIS TRUCK’. Trust me when I say that a Balaclava wearing thief inside your tent at 4am is enough to test even the strongest and thickest pair of underpants.

So, as I said, we are okay and have moved on. We had to be finger printed at the local Cop shop which as you can image caused a few fun and games, and what I believe was actually quite a genuine threat from a Sergeant  of, ‘If you don’t stop f*****g around I’ll nick you myself now put your fingers on the paper and not on my new book’. But thanks to all the people that mailed asking us if we were okay.

I must show you these as this was so funny. We were on top of the mountain range where they filmed part of Lord of The Rings, as I said in the last story. Well there was this sort of ice bear hole in the snow, so of course guess who climbs up into it as Blondie takes a photo. ‘Pose for me babe’ she yells, and as I did, this happened.

And yes, for the eagle eyed amongst you, that is a solid 3 million year old lump of solid rock that I ever so gently slivered into face first using only a £350 pair of Oakleys for protection. As for Blondie, well it took almost an hour for her to stop wetting her pants at me! Nice.

Good news on the camera front. I have been experiencing massive problems with all my Canon kit but I am glad to report it all seems to have been fixed by the wonderful people at Canon NZ. (thanks Gary & Jessica). So there are quite a few images in the latest batch of photos. I’m also happy to report that the shoot for the Wave Contest has made a small but nonetheless wonderful donation to The Children’s Cancer Charity here in NZ so I feel a bit chuffed about that. If anyone has £10 or even £1 spare email me and I’ll give you the details on how to make a donation on-line.

Now here’s a funny one. New Zealand News. Now this is quite something to behold. Now it’s time for a bit of ‘audience participation’ here, so all join in. Now, in your best Kiwi accent I want you to say the word, ‘BRUCE’……..good attempt but that was Aussie, now go a bit deeper, and try not to sound like it’s a question, but a hard guttural statement,……… ‘BRUCE’. That’s better. Now say it in as deep ,growly and gravelly voice as you can, and image you have a sheep under one arm that you are shearing and a bucket of Tui beer in the other……okay, so now that’s just how the women talk. Seriously though, this brings me onto the News. Okay so this is real, this actually happened. This came out of the radio the day of the Indian Bombings. (Remember deep voices and sheeps okay) ‘We now go over to our reporter live in India who was there when all this happened, Kevin are you there?

‘BRUCE??? BRUCE??’ came the booming reply over the air. ‘Yeah mate I’m here mate’ ‘I can tell you that bang was loud and they are shooting people, but not as loud as when New Zealand won the Rugby, yeah that was a game alright, did you see the game Bruce? What a game eh?’………and then they just start chatting about the Rugby in the middle of the news. Funny as.

Oh another funny here is that unlike the chavy UK population who start every sentence with, ‘No but, Yeah but, No but’ or finish every other sentence with ‘Like’, well in NZ it’s so funny because most people pause at the end of a sentence and almost like a new Policeman on his first day in the job forgetting to say ‘OVER’, they seem to then add ‘Ayyyye’ as an after thought, but it is almost impolite to speak until they have said this. It’s almost like they say it when it’s your time to speak again. It’s like a drawn out ‘Hay’ but without the H. Even the Politicians do it and add to that the fact that November in NZ is Cancer Charity month and everyone grows Hombres moustaches it looks like a huge YMCA convention everywhere. Seriously, everyone looks like they have a dead ferret stuck under their nose.

One thing about this country that we have been very much awoke by is the fact that when you live in the UK you know that you live on a planet and that in the middle it’s a bit hot and every now and then they make a film about going there in a big drilly space ship thing with Dennis Quaid or Tom Cruise saving the day. Well, when you come here it wakes you up. What I mean by that is the fact that, it makes you realise that you live on an actual living and breathing thing. It pulses, it cries, it bleeds, it gets angry, it can be fun, but through it all as Mr Williams once said, it really wakes you up to the fact that this planet is very much alive. We went to a place called THE CRATERS OF THE MOON (said in a loud booming voice). See the photos in file W36

Well it was incredible. Mud pools bubble as steam and smoke rise from the ground that has travelled thousand and thousands of metres from the earths core to ‘plop’ loudly next to you in the mud pool. Part of where we went to was where they filmed Walking With Dinosaurs and I fully understand why. You can truly see what it must have been like in the time of Pterodactyls and Diplodocus, not to mention good old Mr Triceratopses. Or my person favourite of the Dinosaurs, the Dinosaurs dog with no eyes, ‘Doyouthinkhesawusrex’, now that is funny. Anyhoo, look at the images as one or two of them have made it into my all time favourite photo collection.

A funny thing happened here the other night. We went to a Chinese restaurant and I said to the man on the door, ‘Do you serve Chicken?’ He said, ‘We serve anyone mate now come inside’. So I said, ‘Do you deliver?’ He said, ‘No sorry mate, only Chicken or Beef?’ But when we got inside they served us Chicken, I said to the waiter, ‘Excuse me mate but this chicken tastes rubbery’, he said, ‘Ahhhh fank you velly much’……..what can I say???!!!???

Oh yes and get this…..Jack Daniels and Coke in a can the size of a Stella can!!! 8.5% wahoooo for less than 80p a pop, there is a God after all. Two of those in the afternoon sun and you are rocking in your chair like an old granny hillbilly going down a bumpy road on a pogostick. One thing here as well that is quite funny, is that we get the p*** taken out of us. I mean properly. Kiwi’s do it for fun but they really mean it. I’ve been called Pommy before but never by someone who meant it. Well here they really rip into you and its hysterical because they have it down to a tea. ‘Bloody Pommy B*astards’ they like to yell, but I respond with, ‘I think I know you don’t I, aren’t you related to an old criminal grandfather of mine’, that normally shuts them up ha ha ha. 

The Maori culture is something that is very much here and there are lots of them, but it sort of makes you a bit, well, scared to talk to them. Firstly, they are huge, I mean massive, MA-HOO-SIVE and the women are bigger than the men, by quite a long way. It seems to the untrained eye, that as we, as normal people look at Mr Pitt, Mr Clooney or Miss Cole, or Miss Longoria we see something different. The Maori ’sassy gene’ seems to have suffered some bizarre Rick Moranes incident whereby the title would be ‘Honey I Inflated The Doris’. Seriously though and I mean no disrespect by this, they are massive, huge, even dare I say, Gargantuan. It’s like the bigger the better. Seriously, my 9 meter wave kite is smaller than some of the pairs of knickers I’ve seen on washing lines. Sweet Jemus and when they fart in a shop……ARMAGHEDDON.

As for the men, well most have a sort of dreadlock hair affair going on and my god are they hard. I saw a man slap a kid in the mall the other day that would have felled my without doubt and this 5 year old kid just stood there and looked back at him in defiance. They truly make even the hardest UK gypsy look like Andy Pandy wearing lipstick. Add to this the fact that their faces are covered in tattoos. Now for me, as a photographer the chance to get close and shoot an angry Maori face is something that I really want to do……so more on that front next time. It’s a photo that I have always wanted to capture and seeing as though I am not allowed to chase my dream job, a front line War Zone Photographer or of course any job working in a Bra fitting shop in Marks and Spencer, well I’m just going to have to get these images. But my problem is they must be real and not from some daft tourists show in a theme park, I want real, I want edge, I want to capture in an image the word ‘MAORI’, hopefully without getting the crap kicked out of me. Interestingly it isn’t pronounced Mou-er-ie, it is actually Mah-riie

I know that there are a lot of waterfalls in these photographs but it just seems that, when you are in South America it’s all about the ruins, well here, it’s all about the waterfalls. Having a 4×4 helps us get to see a lot more than most but in some cases I’m not entirely sure that the squirrel lovers and the ‘very rare bird’ watchers agree with our routes taken to bring you these pictures. A good case in point being this little number. But all was okay because judging by what they shouted at us the duck was off anyway!

And finally, let me tell you quickly about The Tui bird. This is a native bird here that’s kind of like a big black bird that has been stretched to 3 times in length. What makes it so funny is the noises it makes. You know when an old person buys a mobile phone and they then keep going through the ring tones stopping on each one for a split second, well ladies and gentlemen, meet the Tui bird. They have a habit of hanging around in pairs and beeping and sqweeking at you from trees. One really funny thing they do is to sound exactly like Microsoft switching off. ‘Do-do-da-da’ The other one is to do a Tweeky from Buck Rogers in the 21st Century (those of you under 25 Google it)……’Biddy Biddy Biddy, Okay Buck!’ Oh and non indigenous ‘The Ballsy Miner Bird’. These thing love to play chicken with cars and yes I have slammed on the anchors at least 4 times, and I swear they sit in the bushes laughing at you after you have driven off.

Right well that’s it for this episode. Be safe and from what I keep hearing from good old blighty, we are going the right thing by staying away until it’s all over. MFI going bust now that I can understand because I’ve fitted their ‘kitchens’ but Woolworth’s? For crying out loud No. They are a British institution. They are as British as Fish & Chips, as British as getting into the last round and then crashing out, as British as rain on the 2nd week of Wimbledon, as British a looking at your watch when someone asks you if you want a beer, as British as Mr Raj Mohammed Ikillalotawhitepeople Patel Smith (er, that’s probably just put me on a CIA watch list)….well if I wasn’t after what Mr Simon Plumms suggested I look at the other day on redtube.com then I will be now. Quite incredible how that young lady walked home, never mind ping-pong balls, personally I shall never look upon a game of Rugby 7’s again in the same light.  

More next time about my brand new Cabhrihna Switchblade 2008 10m wave kite for £500 and another spankingly new Liquid Force Assault 9m for £225, anyone want me to buy some kites and send them home?????

Bestest regards to you all and god forbid redundancy should be heading any of your ways, trust me when I say, that personally, and for 90% of the people we meet travelling who it has happened to, it is a bizarre experience but one that should be grabbed by the horns. Had it not have happened to me, I would not be here. Take the money and go live a bit.

Chris and Blondie xx

Categories: LBS News