Ginny and Duncans Big Adventure

In the end, we had a night off campsites and spent Saturday night in a familiar spot: the Auckland Airport Holiday Inn.  A good bed, shower and unlimited WiFi helped restore our spirits and in the morning we set off south, destination: Matamata.  Tomtom said we had a couple of hours drive ahead, long enough to get to know our new vehicle. Thankfully the roads are a lot wider and easier to drive than in the Northland, and we watched the rolling countryside all around us.  It is extraordinary how green and unspoilt this country still is, but then being a similar size to the UK, with a population of 4.5 million, it's not that surprising.  Hobbiton!! Matamata, our destination, is known for 3 things:  horse breeding, farming, and the location of Middle Earth, the home of the Hobbits in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies.  It's sounds like a bit of touristy thing to do, but I'd had on good authority that Hobbiton is a Must See.  In fact, it's...

SPOILER ALERT: Anyone who's a bit fed up with reading about what an amazing time we've been having is going to like this post... The beast New Zealand was the top of the list for both Duncan and I in terms of destinations, so we were very excited to finally have 6 whole weeks to explore it.  Unfortunately, that excitement quickly turned to despondency as things started to unravel pretty much as soon as we'd arrived.  We got into Auckland very late last Tuesday, and on Wednesday lunchtime picked up our motorhome.  We'd booked a motorhome for the entire 6 week period, with a romaticised dream of driving round magical landscapes and doing lots of hiking and exploring on foot.  Unfortunately the first 4 days turned out to be anything but.  The motorhome we picked up was huge, officially sleeping 6, it was definitely spacious enough for the 2 of us.  We had our run through on how it worked, and off we set.  Meanwhile, I was very aware that my throat...

You'd think that after doing something as gruelling as climbing a 4000m-plus mountain​, we'd disappear for some well deserved  R & R. And in hindsight that's exactly what we should have done. But no. We had something else on the itinerary; a night's stay in a traditional longhouse. We'd come off the mountain absolutely exhausted, and were met by Reynold, who by this time we'd found to be a real joker, and driver, Hans. Lunch over (we'd already had two breakfasts!) we were back in the minivan for a drive north to the tip of Borneo. Although we'd have loved to nap, the bumpy road, coupled with Nissan suspension, made it impossible, so we stayed entertained by Reynold's jokes and local tidbits. Rungus Longhouse We reached the Rungus longhouse mid-afternoon. Entirely constructed of bamboo on supporting wooden stilts and beams, it was about 30 meters  long, with 10 (bed)rooms occupying a third of one side and a communal open space taking up...

Mount Kinabalu The past 2 days were the most difficult of our trip so far.  But that's what we expected.  We planned to climb Mount Kinabalu, the highest  mountain not only in Borneo but in the whole of South East Asia. Fook Yuen breakfast We were picked up early from Hotel Sixty3, by Reynold, our KK area guide for the next few days, and Hanifi our driver (Hans for short), after having popped out to one of the local favourite breakfast spots: Fook Yuen.  There wasn't a single item on the self service counter that a bona fide European would have recognised.  Fantastic: we were finally eating like Malays. 😁 Totally yummy,  if a little unorthodox for the only white faces in the joint. Orchids, and a pink imposter Day 1 was for acclimatisation, thus we headed into the foothills to the Kinabalu Nature Reserve, a rich tropical botanical garden, bursting with hundreds of different orchids, along with ferns and palms growing as epiphytes on their ...

Our morning jetty visitor After our stupendous day yesterday, we didn't expect much from our 6.30am nature boat ride today.  A massive rainstorm during the night had made the boardwalks very slippery (and woke us up extremely early), a situation made infinitely worse by the scattering of monkey poo. Naughty macaques. In addition to Abas, our gang consisted of Charles & Jane, a retired Scottish couple from Leicester, and Rob & Amelia, a honeymooning dentist - very handy for advice on Duncan's painful tooth! We'd bonded on our epic nature cruise yesterday and were ready for anything today. Except big snakes. Which was a problem as there was a rather large python wrapped around the steps to the jetty. Thankfully one of the boat guys offered to get a picture for me. He got a lot closer than I ever would have! Re-building a rainforest Our morning trip revealed more monkeys, including proboscis and another orangutan. You may think that this is norm...

We arrived on the island of Borneo on Friday afternoon. Up in the air we'd flown over the mountainous interior to the Sabah province on the north east side of the island, specifically Sandakan, a city on the bay of the same name. Surrounded by a swathe of lush hills and, sadly, ever- expanding palm oil plantations, its big draw is its proximity to the Kinabatangan River, whose 560km wind their way through some of the most dense rainforest in the world. We were to spend the next 3 days exploring it. 1000 yr old Yellow Seraya Canopy walkway Our first night's port of call was the MY Nature Resort in Sepilok.  Built as cabins backing on to the jungle, the first thing that hit us was the intense humidity - way hotter than KL! Even though the Rainforest Discovery Centre was a 10 minute walk down the road, we were ferried there in air-conditioned comfort only to emerge 2 hours later having lost about half our body fluid. I'm joking, but under the canopy of the trees, s...