Our bunch of fives to finish

5am Fri 27 June: Our Buenos Aires-London flight has just brushed the north-west tip of Spain, so our nine months' travelling has only two hours left.
I've blatantly stolen a 'bunch of fives' idea from another blog, so to run down a few highlights of nine months RTW, our top fives are below.
We're so fortunate to have had this trip and so many awesome things have happened that, looking back, they seem scarcely believable. If you're in the mood for a read, click on a previous blog link on the right.
If we met you while travelling, thanks for being part of our brilliant, enlightening trip. And if you're from England, let's hook up for a nice pint of Magners.
Now it's back to life in London, a fantastic, thrilling city, just one that's a bit more familiar than some of the places below.
Pics online at: http://picasaweb.google.com/agrantabroad/PublicFirstTravelling
http://picasaweb.google.com/agrantabroad/Alinatipics
You can comment by clicking the ‘COMMENTS’ tab below. Click on 'Anonymous' to publish comment. We hope you've enjoyed reading...now it's over the bunch of fives:
Ali & Nati
TOP FIVE NIGHTS OUT
1 Club Yellow & Club Air, Tokyo, Japan: Japan's two best clubs. One night. Unbelievable techno.
2 The Hitmen hard dance, Melbourne, Australia: Harder-than-hard-trance heaven. An endomorphin-producing conveyor belt of tunes.
3 Full Moon Party, Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand: Xmas Eve, dancing on the beach, a rip-up.
4 Pacha, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Hands-in-the-air funky house upstairs. Like it was in 2003.
5 Dive club balcony, Gili Trawangan, Lombok, Indonesia: Great house music, Tuesday night on a first-floor terrace under a sky full of stars.
TOP FIVE BEACHES
1 Tereia Beach, Maupiti, French Polynesia: Whispy white sand with a shimmering turquoise lagoon, coconut tree shade and a motu (reef island) you swim to offshore. A breathtaking place.
2 Motu Tuanui, Maupiti, French Polynesia: An arcing low-tide white sand-spit, reaching out from the motu towards mountainous Maupiti and allowing a mesmerising mid-lagoon swim.
3 Gili Air, Lombok, Indonesia: Crunchy white sand shelving to the warm ocean, with the mainland in the distance and fluffy clouds above.
4 Koh Bitsi, Ko Tarutao, Thailand: Breezy white sand backed by forest, with two perfect driftwood swings and superb snorkelling offshore.
5 Whangamata, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand: A Kiwi classic; wide bay, crispy sand, rolling surf, islands offshore and grassy dunes.
TOP FIVE PLACES WE STAYED
1 5* boat, The Nile, Egypt: Wood panels, monument visits, belly-dancing classes.
2 1551 Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Mansion with 7-metre-high ceilings, exposed brick walls, amazing breakfasts.
3 Fat Yogi's, Kuta, Bali, Indonesia: After a hovel on Flores, this darkwood-cream hotel blend with pool and air-con was heaven.
4 K's House, Kawaguchiko, Mount Fuji, Japan: Our fave hostel: great people, tatami mats, awesome, modern facilities, friendly.
5 Mac Bay, Ao Ban Tai, Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand: No, Mac Bay's not in Scotland. Tidy hut actually on, not next to, lovely beach. Hammock, coconut trees, amazing sunsets and Christmas dinner.
TOP FIVE MEALS
1 Jimbaran beach restaurant, Bali, Indonesia: Almost a kilo of giant prawns between us, in garlic sauce. Oh my God.
2 Street restaurant, Bangkok, Thailand: Pot luck but 75p for staggering green chicken curry, soy veg and a big Chang beer. Amazing.
3 La Cabrera, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Juicy, two-and-a-half-inch-thick rump and 12 side dishes. Burp!
4 Chez Vilma, Lima, Peru: Nati's Masterchef Mum does it again: sopa de carne, lentejas con pollo a la brasa y torta de Alberto. I'm stuffed.
5 Lonely Planet tip restaurant, Cairo, Egypt: Dips and more gorgeous dips with unlimited, crisp bread, chicken and salad.
TOP FIVE TRAVELLING MOANS
1 Bev & Mick's Backpackers, Melbourne, Australia: Favela backpackers; dirtier than a rubbish truck, pounding music vibrating our floorboards until 4am. More suited to animals.
2 Royal Jordanian Airlines idiots: Cancelled not only our Cairo-Bangkok flight but, helpfully, every following flight. Have you tried explaining that in Arabic? A month later, they cancelled our Cathay Pacific flights.
3 Welcome to Thailand: Bangkok Airport; Screaming woman pulls our bags off bus after we object to paying for four seats when we take up two. Most Thais are great, some in tourism give the country a bad name.
4 Egyptian tourist rip-off: You know feluccas, the boats King Tut used to take down The Nile? No? Have a google. Well, we agreed a fee and hired one. We refused to pay double so our, ahem, captain, abandoned us on a building site on an island.
5 French Polynesia prices: £10 for burger & chips? £600-A-NIGHT in an over-water bungalow? Please! Staggering place...just take your credit card.
TOP FIVE COUNTRIES
1 French Polynesia: Motu sand-spits, transparent turquoise lagoons, mountains. Paradise does exist.
2 Egypt: The staggering Pyramids and Abu Simbel, Nile cruise, Dahab dive/snorkel heaven.
3 New Zealand: Lakes, giant valleys, glaciers, surf beaches, Monteith's lagers and the fabulous Felix.
4 Australia: It's amazing. Just go, there, ok.
5 Easter Island: Majestic moais, history mysteries and wild skies in the most remote place on earth. (Not actually a country of its own but amazing nonetheless).
TOP FIVE MOMENTS
1 The Pyramids at sunset, Egypt: (Just behind Bolivia's Uyini salt flats in my top sight ever) Ramadan meant the Pyramids closed early, meaning our camel strolled down the giant sand-dune with the famous six-pyramid view, past the Sphinx, all alone. Amazing.
2 Sharks, Bora Bora, French Polynesia: Freakish snorkel and dives down above 2.5m lemon sharks.
3 Ahu Akivi, Easter Island: After a day of rain, sunset rays burst through and a double rainbow suddenly, amazingly, broke out over seven moai statues. A truly incredible moment.
4 Boogie-boarding, Whangamata, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand: Nailing big surf waves on a stunning, breezy bay with islands offshore.
5 Rutherglen sunset cycle, Victoria, Australia: (This one's a moment for me, not Nati) Racing past olive green gums and sun-baked fields, with purple-edged clouds and sunset above.

The end of our world: Sirloin, rump, platters, ice cream, a clubbing odyssey, another crazy gym and subliminal shopping

8pm Thu 26 June: Buenos Aires, great as this city is, has one huge problem: just how, I mean how, how on earth, do you choose between the sirloin (lomo) and rump (chorizo)? The tenderest steak cut...or the tastiest?
Nati and I bravely faced this daunting dilemma, and, after munching inch-thick slabs for the last nine days of our nine-month trip, we can confidently announce the winner is...the...wait for it...rump! That's because, in BA, the tastiest is also the tenderest.
Our favourite was at La Cabrera (also visited by our pals Marcus and Colette on their honeymoon a month ago (congrats!)); a two-and-a-half-inch-thick chunk of beef with TWELVE side orders.
Marcus: if, as you claim, you really finished the whole thing plus sides, you're more of a man than me.
Tearing ourselves away from the steaks, we demolished a couple of ham, salami, pate, cheese and olive platters
As if that wasn't enough, the ice cream (fruitilla and dulce de leche for Nati; chocolate & almonds...oh my God...for me) makes Mr Whippy taste like Aldi Value.
And the wine, oh the wine, the red, red, beautiful wine...sorry, lost focus there...is soooo drinkable. Tough to squeeze in a Quilmes 1-litre beer or two.
With all this amazing food and drink, it's not that surprising BA, South America's most European city, has restaurants on EVERY corner. The rest of town is an addictive mix of giant Palermo and Recoleta mansions, towering apartment blocks, porteno locals, their egos, and gritty streets like those in Boca.
Nati and I actually met in hostel in BA's San Telmo district three years ago.
We called in for a drink this time but upgraded our accommodation to the gorgeous 1551 Palermo (http://www.1551palermo.com/), a snip at £20-a-night for a double in a gorgeous mansion, with 7-metre high ceilings and a resident sculptor, Reynaldo, on reception.
BA time runs three hours behind England, so we got up at 11, had lunch at 3, dinner at 11 and at 2.30am, went clubbing. Yes, as in ARRIVED at the club at 2.30am.
Our BA clubbing odyssey actually started badly.
Opera Bay, modelled on Sydney Opera House and undoubtedly one of the world's coolest clubs when I last visited, has been criminally demolished to make way for a hotel.
Bad went to worse when our cab pulled up at Mint, the best Friday option, to find it closed for four months.
Our luck improved at Crobar, an unheated (it's winter in BA) modern version of London's Cross (also criminally demolished last year) with some smashing electro house.
The next night, we hit BA's branch of Pacha, a white, Ibiza-esque superclub with an overcrowded, smokey main floor and cooler, pumping funky house room upstairs.
Toca's Miracle by Fragma might not be the coolest tune in a DJ's box but, boy, it still rocks 10 years on.
BA is great but not without it's problems. Graffiti defaces most buildings and piles of dog dirt make an unpleasant pavement obstacle course.
But the good outweighs the bad.
We hit the gym, a small room jammed with so many machines and equipment that people were lifting weights over each other; saw Evita's grave; watched Boca Juniors thump Tigre 6-2 in a meaningless but fun end-of-season game - and went shopping.
Now shopping is usually Nati's artform and, in fact, her raison d'etre...but, either she drugged me or the Sex and The City movie had a subliminal message targeting men - as I got addicted too. I even dreamt about shopping last night. What a loser!
So BA was an awesome way to end our round-the-world trip. If you get chance to go to BA, do it. Hi to everyone and thanks for the blog comments. You can comment by clicking the ‘COMMENTS’ tab below. Click on 'Anonymous' to publish comment.
Ali & Nati

Hairdressers, cuy, toe-pokes, gym posers, the Peruvian 'winter'...and now Buenos Aires

3pm Thu 14 June: I'm in Nati's hairdressers with bleach on my head, so have an hour to write a blog in my notebook.
Our eight weeks in Lima are up as, on Tuesday, we head to Buenos Aires (in my top three world cities with Melbourne and Sydney) before London on June 27, nine months and nine days after we left on Sep 18 last year.
We've enjoyed our time in Peru. I couldn't just sit here and do nothing, so, now, I can understand just about any conversation in Spanish; my irritating shoulder problems are improving after gym sessions which also gave me (more!) muscle, and; thanks to the internet, I've polished off nine months of business and personal tasks which awaited me in England.
The world makes a lot more sense now, too, thanks to the great history book mentioned in previous blog (below).
Did you know the reason Britain became a world power was because the 1381 Peasants' Revolt ended the feudal system 400 years before countries like France? No? Well, now you do.
The weather here's got an England-in-September feel to it now, but this is 'winter.' Peruvians love complaining about how 'cold' it is...even running for shelter when a ferocious storm of light drizzle broke out the other day.
The food in Nati's family's house is as sensational as ever (oh, those beans...bring it on!).
There's some cuy (guinea pig, Peru's second-most famous dish after ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon)) in the house at the mo...but unfortunately won't be eating it as it's running round the garden as the new family pet.
Still playing football with my Limenos pals, although some aspects of the sport here may explain why Peru were 4-0 down to Mexico in 28mins the other day.
Apart from not passing and shooting from impossible distance or angles (often both), deliberate handball is perfectly acceptable, as is standing 20cm from the subsequent free-kick.
It doesn't stop there.
The toe-poke, derided as a skilless punt by anyone over the age of eight in England, is the preferred style of pass and...you've guessed it...shot.
An hour in a Peruvian gym is equally amusing, but with a colossal dollop of vanity thrown in. Duncan, even you would wince!
The most popular technique is this:
1 Noisily drag bench to most prominent space available (blocking walkway if possible).
2 Take ridiculous position, preferably lie-on-back-at-45-degrees-angle-with-legs-in-air, grunt louder than Maria Sharapova hitting a booming forehand and lift weights too heavy for you, so pals have help you complete lift.
3 Dramatically toss dumb-bells on floor; flex muscles in mirror for minimum 10secs.
Note: Never put weights back on rack, leave on floor for someone to trip on.
Other techniques: One short, actually-quite-fat guy squat-jumps across the gym with weights, attempting to get as much attention as possible afterwards by appearing exhausted as if on the verge of death. Then, he does sprints across gym, dodging people lifting 50kg, followed by the point-of-death routine again.
Two other guys whipped their shirts off for a photoshoot on their friend´s mobile phone camera. Then, the other day, one of them took his top off in a packed gym, to parade in the mirror front of everyone. Oh my God...loser!
Ok, my blog's finished and so is my hair-dying. It's not all blonde...I´m too mature for that...just highlights.
Thanks from both of us for the emails and remember you can comment by clicking the ‘COMMENTS’ tab below. Click on 'Anonymous' to publish comment.
Saludos to all. If you're in Peru, hasta luego and, if you're in England, hasta pronto.
Ali y Nati

Spanglish humour, fruit madness, footballers who don´t pass and Thundercats

7pm Wed 28 May: There have been some unfortunate moments during my DIY Spanish lessons in Lima.
Like the time I used the handy tip that many Spanish words are the old-fashioned English ones with an 'o' or 'a' on the end.
Errr...apart from embarazo and yo caliente.
They don't mean embarrassed and I´m hot...but pregnant and I´m horny. Oh, that's why Nati's family were laughing.
Dropped an even bigger clanger yesterday.
Announcing to Nati that my pal Cago had emailed me, muffled guffaws broke out, as Nati explained cago actually means I´m sh*tting!
Moving on...we´ve had five fun weeks in Peru. It's very different to England and attracts 60,000 British tourists every year.
If you want to find out more about the Land of the Incas, do one of the following: ask Nati and I; ask Neil and Jules (they visited a couple of years ago); watch the new Indiana Jones movie (see those Nazca Lines? Bounced over them in a shaky four-seater Cessna a few years ago), or; click on http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/peru/
My favourite trip wasn't to an Inca ruin or old church, but to Lima's colossal fruit markets. Think entire indoor calles de platanos (streets of bananas)...went a bit crazy and we've just finished (thank God) a crate of 100 tunas (delicious cactus fruit, watch the spikes) and another of 100 oranges. Please never show me an orange again, I will have to punch you.
Playing footy every Saturday with friends of Nati's cousin, Martin. It's enjoyable but the word 'pass' has obviously never been translated into Spanish.
And educating myself (don't say it...) with this excellent world history book:
http://www.amazon.com/History-World-Plantagenet-Somerset-Fry/dp/0756612446
Lima has just ground to a halt (literally - they closed all the main roads) for a big conference in which Venezuela president Hugo Chavez accused Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel of sharing Hitler's ideas.
When the roads are open, you have to remember a golden rule when crossing: always look the wrong way, even if it seems inconceivable that a tiny moto (tuk-tuk) would shoot the wrong way down a dual carriageway. Believe me, they do.
I still love my favourite internet cafe - I've now got my own chair and they even watch Thundercats, my favourite cartoon as a child and funnier when Lion-O speaks dubbed Spanish.
Going to Buenos Aires for a week at the end of June, then heading back to London at the start of July.
Hope you are well, thanks for the emails and look forward to seeing you soon.
Ali y Nati

I've finally given this blog a big update...so grab a coffee, put your feet up, have a read below and I might even entertain you.
Let us know what you think by clicking the ‘COMMENTS’ tab below. It takes two seconds - click on 'Anonymous' to publish your comment.
You can now check out some cool pics from our last five months on the road here: http://picasaweb.google.com/agrantabroad/Alinatipics

Lima, www.di.fm, the best food, aerobics, habla espanol & ceviche,

3pm Apr 25: I'm in my favourite Peruvian cybercafe (quick broadband; 1 sol or 17p an hour; 1min to Nati's house), listening to undoubtedly the internet's best invention, the marvellous, thumping home of house and trance music which is http://www.di.fm/.
You may have heard me rave about di before - but click on the 'Listen Now' tab and your net time will never be the same, I promise.
Nati's very happy to be with her family again and I'm really enjoying being in Lima as well. As usual here, I'm loving genuinely the best food I've ever tasted from Nati's amazing mum. Sorry, mum, she's better - it's true!
Joined a gym for hardcore aerobic dance classes (!!) and to sort out my dodgy shoulders once and for all, and studying Spanish every day.
Also signing up for a footy team, brushing up on my world history with the great book my Lincoln pal Phil's lent me, and celebrating my 31st birthday tomorrow with Peru's best food, ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceviche) and a particularly massive night out.
Lima can get a bad rep from backpackers. It's true parts aren't that nice...but, hey, this is South America, man, and anyone been to Brixton lately?
We're having fun with Nati's family and friends, hitting the mall and spending time with Nati's abu (granny) in Chosica, a nice town with a beautiful Plaza de Armas (main square) full of old men playing chess.
It's autumn here now, and that doesn't mean cold, dark, rainy days but mid-20s sunshine all day every day, perfect shorts & T-shirt weather.
Now I have time to catch up on the net, I'll blog again soon.
Saludos a todo
Ali y Nati

VIP, aramettos and Santiago's coolest suburb

7pm Sun 20 Apr: We're en route to Lima and are abusing the food and bar (ok, it's mainly me) in Sao Paulo airport's VIP lounge (British Airways card blag!), so I've got time to write a notebook blog about Santiago before ordering another amaretto liqueur...hic.

Chile's capital seemed a bit boring when I visited three years ago, but this time, with a tip from LAN's in-flight magazine, we found hip Barrio Bellas Artes.

This triangular suburb of characterful buildings and pavement cafes is a stroll through Parque Forestal from the city centre.

Had a very pleasant (romantic even) couple of days sipping hot chocolates and admiring grand old architecture. Also hung out with Natalie from France, seen with Nati admiring 20 different fruits on offer in the pic above.

Chilled out in artists' favourite Valparaiso, a rather grubby port with hillsides full of gorgeous, pastel-coloured homes.
Right...that's enough blogging...barman! Another of those nice amaretto things...obrigado.

Moais, Long Ears, Short Ears, wars, birdmen, Kon Tiki & an old jeep - in the most remote place in the world

8pm Fri 18 Apr: We're in busy Chilean beach town Vina del Mar on a chilly autumn evening - so I've got time to scratch my head over one of the world's biggest mysteries, in the most isolated place on the globe: Easter Island.
The planet's most remote inhabited island, famous for its giant Moai heads, is 3,700km west of South America and 1,900km east of Pitcairn Island (population 50 and of Mutiny on the Bounty fame; see French Polynesia blog below). In fact, EI, or Rapa Nui in Polynesian, is so in the middle of nowhere that, although it's a Chilean territory, it's actually in Oceania.
The stone Moais, up to 10m tall, stood on the 245 ceremonial centres which once packed this tiny 6km x 20km volcanic speck.
How on earth did people from Indonesia & the Philippines first travel here 1,200 years ago? Why did their society split into the Long Ears and Short Ears? How did they carve moais using not chisels and hammers but blunt rocks...and then move them up to 18km? Why did their civilisation destroy itself in wars which toppled every moai? And how did the even-more-mysterious birdman culture take over?
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/easterisland.shtml and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island for more on this fascinating, baffling place.
For me, the most amazing thing is that the moais, which resemble the remains of a culture like the ancient Egyptians or Greeks, were knocked down fewer than 200 years ago.
And the birdman cult - the real deal, not Alcatraz - sent men tumbling down cliffs, rafting to a wild island, searching for bird eggs, with the winner living in a cave for a year, until 1867.
This is the story which the amazing Thor Heyerdahl (of Kon Tiki fame; http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4397210,00.html) tackled by arguing the vast Pacific's islands were settled not by Asians, but by South Americans.
Something really amazing actually happened on EI.
We hired a jeep as old as the moais themselves and bumped down one of the island's many abysmal tracks on a day when it had rained continuously since 8am.
Walking round Ahu Akivi's seven moais by ourselves in the rain, the sun surprisingly ducked beneath a cloud over the sea, flooding the statues in sunset light and creating a double rainbow (one thick, paint-like), arcing perfectly over the moais.
It was absolutely unexpected and, genuinely, one of the most breathtaking moments in my life.
Alongside that time Lincoln City beat Grimsby, of course.
The Easter Island photos which blog readers may recognise are of Ahu Tongariki, a line-up of 15 moais on a plain between two volcanos, backed by crashing Pacific waves, and Rano Raraku, the bewildering quarry of 600 moais either poking out from green hillside or peering over a giant crater lake.
Being the most isloated place in the world, EI is a bit of a country bumpkin place.
This really hit home on a night out, which made Ritzy in Lincoln, the Watershed in Wimbledon and that awful 10p-a-pint, late-night Irish pub whose name escapes me in Southampton, seem like a Ferrero Rocher ambassador's reception.
Arriving at EI's (only) pub with our nice Chilean friend Mariana, locals including pensioners were either slumped (asleep or semi-conscious) over their tables, or dancing wobbily to a so-called DJ's ridiculous song selection. First was synth-pop panpipes, then salsa, then techno, then remixed Erasure.
At least we didn't come to the most remote inhabited place in the world to go clubbing.

Mutiny on the Bounty, black pearls, pamplemousse, do nothing, a ray ride & Finding Nemo

FRENCH POLYNESIA

Depending on the person, the word 'Tahiti' brings to mind images of honeymoon bungalows on stilts in the sea; white-sand atolls; the Mutiny on the Bounty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty); amazing coral and surf; and tales of South Seas black pearls.

However...the reality is that overpopulated, black-sand Tahiti (in vast French Polynesia) does not fulfill these Robinson Crusoe fantasties.

But the really, really great news is that the surrounding islands do that and more.

Scattered across the South Pacific, the Society Islands, which we're visiting, are ancient volcanic peaks, now bursting with plants and trees and sticking out of lagoons of varying jaw-dropping shades of blue-green-white. See pic above.

These lagoons (swimming heaven) are surounded by reef and coral islands ('motus', full of coconut trees), onto which big waves pound.

Maupiti was our favourite spot amid this baffling beauty, and not just for a reason some of you have heard about! This 4km-wide island, population 1,000 and more beautiful than Bora Bora, amazingly attracts almost no tourists. There are no hotels, only pensions.

There are also virtually no food supplies, due to a boat row, meaning the options for us (two of the world's leading fruit fans) were the fantastically-named pamplemousse, more pamplemousse and even more pamplemousse.

It's an enormous grapefruit, sweeter than in England and sometimes the size of my head.

Pamplemousse problems aside, we stayed Chez Manu, a lovely, plump Polynesian lady who had a sideline in paninis and had a very thin, lazy boyfriend called Jean-Claude.

Many women in these parts are big girls, and we found out why when Manu's long-overdue panini cafe food delivery arrived. A fully-stocked van was unloaded, consisting, to my amusement, entirely of Coca-Cola and Fanta.

We got stuck into another pamplemousse and quickly adopted to the locals' way of life, which consisted of doing nothing all day, then going to bed at 9pm.

The people aren't lazy - there just aren't any jobs in this tiny place, as is the case on many of French Polynesia's 118 islands spread across 2.5million square km of the South Pacific.

Major activites are drinking Hinano beer and playing ukeleles and petanque (boules).

We passed the time at a majestic beach, which we visited on bizarre bikes with fixed-chain brakes, and kayaking and swimming. This included - breathtakingly - a dip in the middle of the lagoon, with a volcano on one side and motu sand island on the other, possible after wading out on a submerged sand-spit.

Bora Bora is like a bigger Maupiti, but not quite as nice. It's jammed with tourists thanks to honeymoon holiday marketing continuing the popularity which began with American soldiers based here in World War Two.

To be fair, it's still pretty amazing, though.

The breezy balcony where I'm writing this blog is lovely and we had a crazy day yesterday snorkelling with 1.5m black-tip sharks, 2.5m lemon sharks and 1m-wingspan stingrays.

The rays were so friendly, somewhat alarmingly brushing their jellyish skin on our chests. Managed to briefly ride a ray - not every day you can say that! - dangling a fish in front of his mouth before the big fella sucked in (they have no teeth) his lunch so strongly he almost took my fingers with it.

Dived into French Poly's tumultous history of settlement (by catamaran canoe from Indonesia...Sir Steve Redgrave eat your heart out), explorers, whalers, missionaries, conquest and the almost-total destruction of native Polynesian culture.

That is is one thing travelling has taught me: every country I've visited where European colonists took over had its natives die in apalling numbers, through persecution, wars and, most devastatingly, disease - as these people had no natural immunity against European illnesses.

Got in touch with the locals in French Poly by learning their surfers' hello gesture (outstretched thumb and little finger)...this is where surfing was invented, after all. Also got picked out at a dance show to join in a mini-Tahitian traditional Olympics, throwing spears at a coconut and lifting a giant rock to head-height. Didn't try the open-a-coconut-with-your-teeth trick, though.

Now time to put right a few misconceptions about Tahiti and French Poly.

There are almost NO sandy beaches here. Even on the motu reef islands, beaches are sometimes beautifully sandy but equally as often scattered with spiky coral.

And as for the underwater coral itself, it's often not that impressive, certainly compared to reefs in Australia, SE Asia and Egypt.

What are impressive are the staggering lagoons and the fish - and the phenomenal quantity of them. Spotted dozens of species we'd never seen before, including the Nemo clownfish, found hiding in their anemone house on an island called Huahine, which strangely and amusingly (well, for me, anyway), translates as 'vagina.'

As French Poly is so remote, with almost everything imported, it's extortionately expensive, more than twice the price of England and above prices in Japan, Norway or Switzerland. The problem is the quality of accommodation and general infastructure is closer to that of Thailand.

The good news: a package holiday (which we didn't do) slashes the £600 A NIGHT cost of a hotel bungalow on stilts in the sea.

We juggled the costs, made a load of friends hitching around (public transport is almost non-existent)...and...what's better than sipping a bottle of gorgeous French wine on a Bora Bora pension balcony anyway?

The fabulous Felix, giant plastic balls, Barmy Army, helllooooo, blue lake waves & Morris Minors in cinemas

NEW ZEALAND
Nati had always told me we we just had to visit her family here. And now I know why.

Stayed with her fabulous Uncle Felix and his family in Hamilton on the North Island. I have bags of energy...but Felix...he is a Duracell battery of a man who made us feel liike sloths on a lazy day.

We were made to feel so welcome (well, apart from the time Nati's cousina Greta, 17, kicked my ass at tennis).

Felix showed us round, taking us boogie boarding by his bach (beach house) on the Coromandel; soaking us under an ice-cold waterfall; marching us up every hill he could find including Auckland's majestic One Tree Hill volcano, and; bouncing he and I down a hill inside a giant plastic ball in Rotorua (the home of zorbing; see pic above).

Nati's family laid on welcome and leaving parties and we must say thanks to Felix, Megan, Romelli, Greta, Adler, Jonathan, Nikita and Sophia.

Also caught up with Chrissy from uni for a beery day in England's Barmy Army at the cricket v NZ.

The North Island is great - but a week on the south island beat it for scenery.

If you haven't been to NZ, you really should go. You want a reason? How about the vast, flat-bottomed valleys with rivers bright blue from glacier sediment, weaving a path through the expanse of pebbles?

My favourite moment was clambering through bushes and into the middle of one of these valleys (Haast) and sending 'helllooo' echoes and whistles bouncing off the mountain walls. I felt soooo small.

How about Fox Glacier? We climbed the 13km-long chunk of ice on a day hike. It's toothpaste-blue and split by crevases, waterfall holes you can't see the bottom of...and arches, as on Nati's pic above.

The lakes are another reason to visit.

Lake Wanaka is epic and Hayes, with wind transforming its blue glacier water into giant waves, was closer to the sea and my favourite. Pukaki is a beauty backdropped by Mount Cook and Tekapo was surrounded by autumn colours and squashed between the 360-degree skies of the high-altitude MacKenzie country.

And then there is Wakatipu, a dark blue monster snaking 80km past Queenstown - the reason most people visit NZ.

Adventure sports Mecca QT is great fun, packed with tourists, endless activities and great burgers - and in a stunning setting beneath The Remarkables mountains. It's a place Nati and I loved and hope to visit again one day.

That would allow me another crack at the superb Seven Mile mountain bike course, the most advanced and challenging single-track runs I've ever cycled...and fallen off on. Think balancing along a tree-trunk with a jump at the end!

Going back would also make Nati happy as we'd visit her favourite cinema - Wanaka's retro-style theatre with sofas, home-cooked cookies and ice-cream. And a Morris Minor convertible parked in the stalls, as you do.

Rain, more rain, more rain, a sinking raft, mountain-biking, surfing, barbies & soup cans

2pm Thu 3 Apr: There's a strong breeze rustling the coconut tree by our balcony overlooking Bora Bora's famous lagoon, smack bang in the middle of the South Pacific.
Nati is preparing a Peruvian cooking masterpiece of lentejas con carne and I'm catching up on our blog. To keep things simple: there's an Australia blog below and New Zealand and French Polynesia blogs above, in the order we visited.
AUSTRALIA
The one thing about travelling is this: you just have to do your research. We didn't before we flew from Sydney to Cairns, so we arrived in Queensland's wet season (Nov - Apr). And by wet, I mean pelting, torrential rain, the sort of thing that turns streets of Cairns, Rockhampton and Mackay into rivers - as it did when we were in town.
Dumped the idea of sleeping in our hired Hipper Campervan (flower power! Peace man!) as we might have well have slept in a sauna.
We faced the rain and snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef in a monsoon, nice reef and fish but not as good as further south near the Whitsundays. Saw Barron Falls at their most thunderous - best waterfalls I've seen after South America's colossal Iguazu - and cooled off with swims in rivers like the gorgeous Mossman Gorge.
And made it to Cape Tribulation - finally. Last time I was near here, with my uni pal Andy three years ago, we were too tight to pay for the ferry. This time, we shelled out a massive £7 return but actually didn't find Cape Trib all it's cracked up to be, although Daintree rainforest is absolutely bursting with every shade of green.
Also saw the rainforest from a white-water raft...well, I did until our raft started sinking due to a hole right under...me. It was our guide's first puncture in eight years.
It was still raining, so three days' drive south, past flooded fields, the humidity and rain disappeared at Noosa, a posh beach town with lovely river kayaking to low-tide islands...and the completely awesome mountain-bike heaven which is Tewantin State Forest. It's single-track bliss, darting through eucalyptus forest despite hills closer to cliffs.
Home comforts arrived with my uni friend Ed and his lovely girlfriend Sarah, who live in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane. Had a couple of classic Aussie days. Went surfing (well tried to, thanks for the lesson, Ed) and boogie boarding, which Nati loved until a dizzy spell after a particularly nasty wipeout. Set a meat-eating record at our BBQ, went swimming in Ed & Sarah's pool and checked out the house they're having built - nice, mate!
Steve Irwin's got one hell of a croc collection at Australia Zoo - I got crunched (scroll down for pic) then we hit cool Byron Bay and got a great feel for Brisbane staying with my mum's pals Margaret & Ken at their fairytale Aussie 'Queenslander' house. Their beautiful wooden home even had a verdanda popular with possums at night.
Thanks for the great hospitality, Barbie & Ken! My mum's other friends Karen & Don took us out on the town, so big thanks again.
Brissie's a super city (Nati's favourite in Oz), where you avoid road traffic on their mega-quick Rivercat boats, a smooth and stunning ride by any city's standards.
Ended two months in Oz with a jazz jam and a wicked Andy Warhol late-night exhibition. I never knew soup cans could be so cool.

OUCH!

11.30pm Thu 20 Mar: It's almost midnight in Hamilton, NZ, and here's a stop-gap blog until I have time to write a proper blog in a few days' time.
I'm afraid to say I've abandoned my love of writing in favour of stackloads of sensational gallavanting around Queensland, Australia (very wet but fun nonetheless) and New Zealand (simply stunning and amazing hospitality with Nati's aunts and uncles in Hamilton, home of the recent England cricket catastrophe).
Check back in a few days for a proper blog...until then, some of you will be pleased to see I finally met my match when I came cropper with a croc.
We're now heading to the most remote places either of us have ever visited - Tahiti and a scattering of other stunning coral islands in French Polynesia, and then Easter Island, which really is the ends of the earth.
Until then...thanks for the emails and muchas saludos to all
Ali & Nati

ALI AND NATI STRIKE GOLD!

8pm Thu 7 Feb: Having just returned from two days swinging a metal detector and pick through the bush near Bendigo, Australia, I am proud to open this long-overdue blog with a bombshell journalism headline: ALI AND NATI STRIKE GOLD!
It's true...the novice mining duo (pictured above; Max, I doff my cap to you for stealing your photo idea) have hit it rich, striking something missed by hundreds of thousands of miners during the 1850s goldrush.
But...and why is there always a 'but'?....we're not retiring yet, and plans to purchase that small Caribbean island are still on hold.
Why?
Well, we DID find gold, but it was 100 specks (value $2), phenomenally-patiently panned from a creek by Nati at superb recreated goldrush town Sovereign Hill (www.sovereignhill.com.au) in Ballarat.
We did trawl the bush, following up a 'red-hot' prospecting tip (maybe of the wild goose variety), but, after two days attempting to decipher unintelligible screeching noises from our hoover-esque kit, digging numerous large holes and earning a handful of blisters...the highlights of our haul were: a bullet, nails and a whole lotta rusty metal.
So...here we are in Sydney, staying not in the Ritz penthouse but a down-to-earth Coogee hostel, but still a damn sight better than the monstrous Favela Backpackers from Melbourne last weekend.
Before that hovel, stayed in a joint familiar to a couple of poss blog readers - 'Mad' Max Feltham and Adam 'Turkish Delight' Chakmak - the establishment being Coffee Palace in Melbourne's yuppie-backpacker-hippie-rollerblader-beach-clubbing-prostitute mish-mash St Kilda.
St K is a crazy place.
Take the time I was making a vitally-important phone call and a tramp, having shuffled into smelling distance, lost control of his trousers and they dropped, like a flag shooting down a flagpole, to his ankles, revealing all.
Or, still on the trousers theme actually, as I left St K's version of Clapham funky house Mecca Inigo the other Sunday night, a guy on the tram stripped to his Y-fronts, delivering a quite brilliant impromptu rap about...trams.
Despite the strangeness, I love Melbourne and gotta say it or Sydney are deffo my fave cities in el mundo. Any opinions?
Super-cool Coogee is my new No 1 Sydney suburb - and Melb is awesome - whether jogging round Albert Park (Aussie GP there March 16); rollerblading down Port Phillip promenade (just the one head-over-heelsers...so that's why they give you elbow pads); dipping in the 2006 Commonwealth Games pool (I now call Nati 'Nemo'); shopping on Chapel St, in Fitzroy and the CBD (ok, Nati forced me to write that bit); or, this being Melbourne, gatecrashing a couple of world-beating clubbing events.
No 1: Sat daytime fluro rave to hard dance (for the uneducated/ignorant, read: harder than really hard house - this is fast…you should have seen my dance moves!).
No 2, without a doubt one of my top three clubbing nights EVER, was a hard trance (read: devastating hands-in-the-air trance-hard house) blitz served up by no-nonsense German duo The Hitmen. My brain must have produced record quantities of endomorphins in three hours of absolute euphoria.
Oz is awesome and the combo of upbeat people & fun-lovin', sporty lifestyle has got me thinking of living and working here again one day.
A few stories...people reckoned we had Buckley's chance - but we hitched back O'Bourke - Hicksville, actually - one arvo in some cobbers' utes.
Saw a load of roos and koalas but no salties (thankfully), cooled down in a billabong; drank a few slabs of tinnies - no goon though; wore thongs; met a few flamin' galahs; and Nati cracked the sh*ts when I called her a Sheila. Fair dinkum!...
And if you can translate any of that nonsense, you're a true Aussie.
Met some bonzer locals when hitching Sydney to Melbourne and around...like dyed-in-the-wool trucker Wes, whose broken air con in 41C heat led to a throat-numbing three-hour shouting conversation...during which we stunned him by revealing England has a winter when it's summer Down Under - and that Norway is amazingly even colder and actually quite close to the North Pole.
Then there was Steve, the drunk cricket club groundsman, who became the (uninvited but entertaining nevertheless) third party in Nati and my supposedly-romantic, veranda cheese-and-wine evening.
On a more genteel note, had a lovely time with Rosa, a fun Melbourne lady we met on the Nile three months ago - staying at her great hol home, sipping whisky, being whisked around the sights and having a vast amount of food forced on us. Thanks, Rosa!
Quick bang-bang of some other ace Oz moments: free Plump DJs rave in Sydney's equivalent of Trafalgar Square; NYE Harbour Bridge fireworks and Hed Kandi clubbing; Yarrawonga's spooky, colossal dammed lake with tens of thousands of dead, grey gum trees poking out; gorgeous yellow grass & green gum trees in the Victorian bush - especially cycling/wobbling sampling Rutherglen wineries' fortified reds and ports; Williamstown (port of the boats variety), beautiful tall ships and some right salty old sea dogs on Australia Day; Bollywood dancing with 2,000 people in Melbourne; the viewtastic Great Ocean Road (despite main 12th Apostle collapsing since my prev visit), and; unintentionally having a beer in the hotel where bushranger Ned Kelly was locked up after his armour-plated police shoot-out.
Before Oz, had fun Xmas in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, in cabin on beach. Xmas Eve Full Moon Party was great but what a mess everyone else seemed to be in!
Good and bad news since my last FMP in 2004. My fave funky house club had become a tacky impersonation Seven Eleven convenience store, but revamped Paradise Bungalows rocked with psy-trance...and found another top f house club, wicked if you stood in front of the two non-broken speakers.
Singapore inbetween Xmas and NY also v cool – unbelievable veggie and beef curries in Little India, before Qantas flight to Oz during which Nati broke world record for number of in-flight movies watched in a single flight.
Fly to Cairns tomorrow for three weeks camper-vaning to Brisbane, seeing Ed Randell from uni and family friends en route.
Thanks again from Nati and I for all the emails - great to hear news from home - and congrats to the people who deserve them...I'd better not reveal your big secrets here!
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All the best from both of us, hope you're well and look forward to hearing from you soon and seeing you back in the UK in the summer.
Now its time for a Tooheys!
Ali & Nati