Guest Blogger: The Navigators

Editors’ Note: We are very excited to publish our second guest blog entry! (And while we’re at it, we’d like to apologize to the esteemed authors of the *first* guest blog entry [“Israeli Sausage Toast”] for our general lameness in failing to follow it up with additional posts and pictures about our adventures in Israel. We really are working on those posts, S&I! Stay tuned!) But back to Italy… As most of you know by now, we recently spent a week in Tuscany with Laura’s mom (Mary), dad (John), sister (Teresa) and uncle (Buzz). Thanks to a lot of hard work and planning by Mary, we were able to spend the week in an old (as in, the 13th century!) villa outside of the sleepy town of Stigliano near Siena. It was a wonderful week full of amazing food and wine and beautiful countryside, but as you’ll see in Mary’s post below, it wasn’t entirely stress-free.

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The Land of the Thunder Dragon

The first thought you have after your plane lands in Bhutan is: I’m never flying here again. No one prepared us for the approach and landing at the Paro airport (the one and only commercial airport in the country), which is probably a good thing because I’m not sure I would have gotten on the plane had I known what was in store for us at the end of our hour-long flight from Kathmandu.

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The Diving Boys and the Shutterflies

We were on Pentecost Island for less than 24 hours, but it was easily one of the most memorable parts of our entire stay in Vanuatu — and not just because we were lucky enough to witness the amazing land-diving ceremony there. But before we get to land-diving, a few other highlights from our whirlwind trip to Pentecost…

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Roadtrippin' With Dr. Spacevan

What do you do when you learn that a Category 4 tropical cyclone is headed directly for the set of islands where you are planning to do a 3-day sailing trip? If you are Lustin — and especially if you are Lustin after just spending three days on a heaving, tossing ocean — you aren’t all that eager to tempt your fate with the seasickness gods again. Nor are you especially excited about sailing around normally sun-soaked tropical islands in the pouring rain. So, you do what any rational person would do — you change the entire itinerary for the remainder of your time in Australia less than 12 hours before your next flight is supposed to take off.

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John, Paul, Gorge and Dingo

It’s a bit easier to write about our Outback experience now that the constant, maddening (infuriating!) buzz of the flies in our faces is more of a fading memory than the recurring nightmare that it was in the moment. It’s really hard to describe how challenging it was dealing with the flies, the heat, sleep depravation, the flies… I kept thinking it was a lot like the game of golf: you endure many, many frustrating moments where you swear you’ll never play the game again, but you have *just* enough long, straight drives and sweet putts to make it all worthwhile (with the help of some selective memory). Despite our frustrations with the flies, sleeping on the ground exposed to the elements and creepy crawlies, and a few insanely early wake-up calls, we really did have a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the Red Center (although we both agree that we probably wouldn’t go back for more).

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Love in the Time of a Head Cold, the Frayzhe Edition

We’re wrapping up our month-plus in New Zealand by spending our last full day here online (two computers at once!) at a computer lab in Christchurch. This is all well and good, except for the fact that outside these dreary lab walls, Christchurch is experiencing its sunniest, warmest day of the summer. If we weren’t subject to the NO COMPLAINING EVER rule, I might whine a little about this, but instead I will go about blogging and emailing with a smile on my face. :) (—-> See, that’s me smiling!)

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Chaos With Curry

We woke up on Sunday morning in Picton after three tough days on the Queen Charlotte Track, and we were glad to know we didn’t have to rush for an early Stray bus pickup (the new bunch we were joining up with had taken the 8AM ferry from Wellington, so they wouldn’t be coming through Picton until close to noon). We enjoyed a really great breakfast at a place called Gusto – it was maybe the best breakfast we’ve had so far on the trip. It also arrived at our table in less than 45 minutes, which is more than we can say for the dinner we had at the place down the street the night before. After a bit of email and blogging back at our hostel, it was time to meet the new crew.

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Gumboots Special Olympics

Our final three days traveling with Mr. Scoobs and Mambo were pretty unexciting, unless you count getting rained out of doing the Tongariro Crossing, a minor gumboot mishap, a semi-major medical emergency (not one of us, don’t worry Moms), and a full-on breakdown of Mr. Scoobs on our way to Wellington.

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Mr. Scoobs on Life Support!

Lustin is currently stranded in a town called Taihape thanks to an ailing Mr. Scoobs. You may recognize Taihape as the home of Gumboot Day, which includes the world’s largest Gumboot (i.e Wellingtons) Throwing Competition. (Be sure to ask Dustin how he did today when he tried to throw a gumboot. Let’s just say that he would probably qualify for the Gumboot Special Olympics if there were one…)

Today was scheduled to be our last day with Mr. Scoobs, and we thought we were in the clear — but the old bastard had one last trick up his sleeve. The starter engine won’t start or something like that, and we’ve currently got a local mechanic working on it. Not sure when we’ll get to Wellington tonight — it’s still 3 hours away.

We’re currently using the first free WiFi we’ve found in this country (in the local library — imagine that!)… we’re so happy about it that we may just abandon the rest of the trip and move here.

They Call Me Mr. Scoobs!

We woke up Thursday morning to a sunny day in Auckland and got ready to begin the next leg of our trip. I was already feeling much better (thank you, Zicam!), and Dustin was miraculously still healthy despite wading through piles of my used Kleenex over the previous 72 hours. Unlike our short trip to the Bay of Islands, we knew that the bus driver and majority of backpackers we started with on this leg of the journey with Stray would probably be with us for a while, so we hoped for the best.

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