Archives For January, 2008

Everybody who has been travelling for a bit longer knows that eventually there comes a time when all that saved up money doesn’t amount to that much anymore. You’ve probably seen it coming and acted on it by having rice and sweet chili sauce three times a day, all washed down with a yummy glass of water. The times when you look at your bank account grow longer in the hopes that the problem will just disappear. Then you realize that the first step to solving your problem is to acknowledge it, so you decide to deal with it by listing all your possible options. One option is to just go home, although this is just a temporary solution. What exactly will you do when you get back home? Most likely find some work, save some money and then book another plane ticket. So why not try to get some work while travelling? Now, let’s look at some of the other options out there…

Work & Travel

There is a good chance that you’re from a country that has some kind of agreement with other countries allowing you to work there for up to one year. The most popular destination for that is undoubtedly Australia. There are many more countries out there though. For example New Zealand, Japan or Canada. The maximum age is usually 30 years, which is a bummer really (for me anyways!). It is a very good way of picking up any suitable work, doing it legally at the same time and finding a base for a certain amount of time to chill out. Let’s face it, travelling can be tiring and sometimes you just need a place where you can dump your backpack for a bit longer than just a few days.

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Continuing on from my last post, Frisbee Golf is another activity in Queenstown that is cheap and fun. All you need is a Frisbee, so either buy one (around 12$), steal one or borrow one. Many hostels have plastic plates, they’ll work alright. Make sure to remove all food scraps for best aerodynamic performance. Every player needs his or her own Frisbee. Then just play the 18-hole-course in the Queenstown Gardens. All the rules are displayed at the first Tee close to the entrance of the park. If you have a bit more to spend, then get some booze and drink a shot after every hole. It gets very messy and very funny within a very short amount of time…

After a few weeks enjoying life as a couch potato in the hostel lounge I grabbed the chance to go hiking with a couple of guys from my hostel room. I was gonna climb up Ben Lomond with Jack aka Clumsy Monkey Boy, an Englishman, and Kevin, the original Flying Dutchman. Now, Ben Lomond was Kevin’s choice and Jack and I just went along for the ride. I would have been quite happy strolling along the lake for a few hours, so Ben Lomond was like running a marathon with no training whatsoever. Anyway, Benny Boy, as his friends call him, is right behind Queenstown and towers about 1400 meters above it, his total height being around 1748 meters.

The day we left started quite badly really. All of us were thrown out of our hostel. We were assured that we hadn’t done anything to warrant that move, but we still have to be out by Saturday. Apparently long termers make for an awful atmosphere. Bummer really, but it gave me lots to curse about when the going got tough on the mountain. The walk is advertised as being about 6 to 8 hours return from the top of Queenstown Gondola. Add to that about 2 hours return to the Gondola and you end up with 8 to 10 hours altogether. We did it in 6.5 (including lots of breaks) from the hostel reception to the refreshing jump into the icy lake at the end of the walk. That either shows that my fitness level is a lot higher than I thought it was or, what’s more likely, that the Kiwis are quite conservative in their estimates.

The scenery was really stunning and the beer on the summit the best I’ve ever had, even if it was out of a can. At points I was ready to give up, but a few well aimed curses helped me through that and it was well worth it in the end. It was an awesome day and that just shows that the best things in life are for free, even in the money eating city that is Queenstown. Here are some images from the hike…

I have done quite a bit of travelling over the last few years. Out of the last 8 years, I have been away from Germany for roughly 6 years and out of all the countries I have been to, I liked Indonesia the best. That definitely had something to do with the people and the surroundings and the underwater world, but a big chunk of it was the actual travelling. Getting from place A to place B. As a traveller you spend an unusual amount of your time on various modes of transport and in many countries that can be an extremely dull experience and you actually start contemplating jumping off whatever vehicle you are on right now or even slitting your wrists, just to relieve the boredom a little.

Every self respecting traveller usually has a couple stories up his sleeve that have to do with transport. Most of them are actually quite horrible, yet, when a few travellers come together it’s just a matter of time until the first stories get told. The worse/better the story the more approval the traveller gets. It seems to be some kind of unstated ritual and it actually is really fun listening to all the stories and telling your own. A couple things I noticed were that the vast majority of those stories come from countries where travelling (from point A to point B) can be quite difficult (which should be kind of obvious) and that the stories seem to get worse the more experience the storyteller had with travel on little money. That and a bit of thinking, which contrary to popular belief I actually do sometimes, led me to the development of my theory of progressive travel.

The Theory

The theory of progressive travel states that the more budget travel experience a person has the more he or she will want to travel to remote and inaccessible places and the more he or she will disapprove of travel in approachable and accessible places.

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A few days ago I decided that my pictures in posts needed captions. For all my images I use the excellent plugin NextGen Gallery. In the forums a few times the question had popped up on how to add captions, so I decided to write a little how-to. I had already heavily modified some of the ngg-files, so I thought this one shouldn’t be too hard. Turned out I was right. God, Allah and Buddha know that doesn’t happen too often…

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