Driving in middle earth...

Well what a wonderfull week that was... I'm now in Brisbane Australia, tonight I fly onwards to Carins where I will venture northwards into the tropical forests and do scuba diving along the great barrier reef... at the moment I'm figuring I'll rent a car to see as much as I can northwards before decending back, over the course of 10 days, to brisbane to meet up with Ihor.

I'm really looking forward to another dose of the tropical heat and beauty i've had in the south pacific - 1 week of NZ cold weather has reminded me how nice it is to have sunshine, blue waters and palm trees for breakfast! [and lunch, and dinner...]

In NZ we went up the sky tower, saw lots of people banking on the "extreem this - extreem that" hype of NZ's image - jump from a tower, jump from a bridge, reverse bunge, bottle flip bungee, blind folded bungee, sky dive, or just tie yourself into the inside of a giant inflated ball and roll down a hill - or jump into a ball with water and slosh down a hill - Walter enjoyed that one... I thought it was a bit of a rip off [90$ for 1 go! geesh]

What i did do was black water rafting; gear up in triple layers of wet suit, get a helmet and inflated tire and then slosh, paddle and slide through undergrond river netoworks with glow worms. Was defiently fun; but actually far too tame [i was hoping for more intense rapids and water falls than we ended up getting...]

The vegetation in NZ is great, you have these rolling hills which have this magical - dare I say it.... irish green to them; infact, their hills naturally have this golf course kind of look to them. which might have something to do with the fact that NZ actually has the most golf courses per person on the planet of any country...
;)

We went up a bit to mount moordor [at least, what it was called by tolkein...] - and also to this gargantuan volcano on the western front - both were covered in cold intense snow and thick fog... i had to drive at one point with 15 meters vgisibility! quite wicked! the trek at the western mount topua was impressive, lush high altitude tropical rainforest; dense moss and beautiful half fern - half palm tree like groves... there were kiwi's about, but i didn't see one.

If you didn't guess yet, I was driving in NZ for a few days... I had to re-learn how to drive - and - adjust to left side of the road rules! Not the ideal combination, but I must say that after just 1 day on the road it felt like I had never stopped driving for 3 years and left side driving was not all that hard to get used to. Having a car was a fabulous idea, we did so much more than would have been possible...

While in NZ I had lots of intense dreams, and I've been contemplating my 6 or 7 long desire to be there/here...

since it has all been based on a "hunch" [a little voice which says "sebastian, you must go to NZ..."] - i can't really say why i was there, and what it is exactly i was looking for [i dont know whether to write in past or present tense anymore, so please forgive any confusion]. In the end I came to the conclusion that I'm just going to opperate on patience and instinct:

- if i feel i want to do something, i do it.
- i'll be staying in the country until i know its time to leave [and even though I dont know when or what will trigger this, I do know that I will know when this will be... [confused yet?]]
- patience will be my virtue, and in the present I will simply keep on flowing with the days as they present themselves, catch the oppertunities that present them selves, meet the people I see and let time and order do the rest.

As for how whether I am going to do some farming there, I'm not sure yet...

I'll be in Australia now for at least 5 weeks, maybe 7 weeks and this is what I will be focussed on now, probably once I get to ihor's house i'll be able to figure out how broke I am, and decide what my 'tentative' plans will be; until then I'm just letting things happen.

time is up! sorry no new photos today, will upload soon!