Camping on the Farm, by Josephine

 Day 1 we set up in the rain. It was HAILING! But at least we got to throw the boomerang.The next day we got to cuddle with the guinea pigs!  Later in the afternoon we got to feed the sheep.  

And we got to cuddle the guinea pigs again. My favourite guinea pig was big and grey. 

We went to the stingrays and it was very windy. The drone nearly flew away, but we spotted a ray on the drone camera!

The next day we cuddled the guinea pigs again then went to the natural spa, but it was too rough and windy to enjoy. Also I fell over on some sharp rocks and grazed my legs and my ankle. We tried to go to the Cheeky Monkey Brewery but it was only serving pizza. We were hungry and I had to hop the whole way for no reason! Instead we went to a different brewery for lunch, then went back to the farm and cuddled the guinea pigs again. Then we went and fed the sheep.

  We had a great time at the farm.

Hamish's Fishing Guide

Hey, I want to tell you about the fishing my family’s done on our trip. Everybody has caught a fish, and everybody enjoys fishing, even though sometimes it does take a long time and you may lose a rig, it’s still fun. 

Now this trip is us kids first time doing proper fishing. JoJo and Sara caught their first fish in Streaky Bay while we were camping at Perlubie Beach, whereas I caught my first in the Coorong while we were camping at Long Point. So far we have caught three eating fish, all leatherjackets, two of them had problems. One fish swallowed the hook, that was the one mum caught and the one dad caught had some sort of parasite crawling into its guts but the one I caught was perfectly fine, Sara and I refused to eat the fish with the parasite. My family’s caught heaps of small fish so far.

 In the Coorong most of the fish we caught were Australian salmon, then at Perlubie it was sand whiting and now in Lucky Bay its sand and King George whiting, with some random ones as well. Mum really wants us to catch an eating sized whiting because at the fish shop in Streaky Bay whiting was 60 dollars a kilo for fillets!

When you’re fishing you need a rig so that’s what I’m going to talk about now. So far we’ve lost a couple of hooks and sinkers, not too bad! I can’t make a rig because I can’t tie knots and mum’s just better at doing it (with the help of the fishing book). 

 Every successful person has a reason behind their success. The reason behind our two eating fish caught is a fishing book, it’s called the “Australian Fish ID Pocket Guide”. It’s got heaps of the popular fish species, it tells you how to tie knot’s and techniques to use for different fishing situations. The book has helped a lot but sometimes it doesn’t tell you what you want, like yesterday mum caught this yellow scaly fish and I caught a light green one but they were not in the book.

 Now this concludes Hamish’s fishing post because we are going out fishing! 

 • BTW me (Hamish) wrote this by myself byeeeeeeeeeee

S2 Ep 1 - South Australia in Fast Mode

 Saturday 2 April and we were off. Years in the planning, months in the organising and now days into packing and final preparations, we were ready to go.

Our first destination was Mount Gambier on the Limestone Coast of South East South Australia. We left Melbourne at 10:15am after cleaning the house and then cleaning it again, and finally (with a little more cleaning) we were off. We had to leave the house nice for the family and friends that are house sitting for us while we were away!

We drove to Mt Gambier via Hamilton, with our first fuel stop on the highway in Geelong, paying $2.07 a litre for diesel. Ouch, thanks Vlad. The fuel cost calculation changes brought on by Putin's war in the Ukraine had, while not exactly blown a huge hole in the budget, it definitely scorched the armour a bit. Nothing to be done for it now other than wince each time we filled up! Onward we set off for SA via Mortlake, where we had lunch from the bakery and ate in the park. We arrived in Mt Gambier around 4pm, set up at the caravan park and we were finally on holiday! 

No trip to Mt Gambier would be complete without a visit to the Umpherston Sinkhole so we ate dinner and jumped in the car to check it out on as the sun came down. The next day was spent exploring the natural delights of the Limestone coast, flying the drone over the Blue Lake, visiting a cave at Tantanoola, buying a new SD card for said drone when I realised I hadn't actually put one in it and going back to the Umpherstone Sinkhole again, this time with the spotlight and heaps more torches. 

It was fun to notice the little differences between South Australia and Victoria. The first one is clearly the weird power poles, made out of an iron girder filled with Concrete, as if there aren't enough trees in SA to make a decent power pole. Then there's the fact that any road of importance in SA is either a Highway or a Terrace. Sure roads and streets exist, but it's Terrace this and Highway that for all the useful ones. 

The next thing is the mid 19th century chaos in naming things that resulted in South Australia needing to qualify place names with SE or NW to distinguish them from a different place in the same state that has the SAME NAME. I present you "Kingston SE", so named because there's another Kingston somewhere else in the state. WTH? I mean surely you would just ring up the smaller one and inform them "Sorry old boy, Adelaide is taken, you will need to name your town something else" but apparently not, just chuck a SE or NE or whatever and ruin data cleanliness attempts for generations of future South Australians.

Thankfully a potato cake is called a potato cake and the local beer is not only drinkable but the best domestic beer sold anywhere in the world (of course I'm talking about Coopers, not West End, that stuff is gross), so the culture shock is bearable.

After 2 days it was time to keep travelling, next stop the Coorong. We drove up the Princes Highway via Kingston SE (not to be confused with the other one!) 

Lunch was in Meningie, which has a monument to "The Birdman of the Coorong", a strange little midget who used to ride around on Ostrich holding up passers by for their valuables.

A monument to the Birdman of the Coorong

 

The Coorong, if you will permit me a short detour on geography, is a sort of very long estuary connected to the lakes at the mouth of the River Murray. It runs almost 130kms south from Lake Alexandrina, but is only around 1 km wide for its entire length. It's very salty, on average 3 times saltier than the ocean and is packed to the brim with birds, fish and Ned Kelly wannabes mounted on Ostriches. We camped at the Long Point campsite, which was very picturesque and had a dock that proved a fruitful fishing ground, with Hamish pulling in 6 Australian Salmon and Michelle almost landing a Perch that was actually eating size! 

We drove out to Narrung, which is situated on the mouth of Lake Albert where it joins Lake Alexandrina, home to Australia's only inland Lighthouse. 

Finally we tried to go and see one of the Goolwa Barrages on Lake Alexandrina. Constructed in the 1930s, the barrages are a series of barriers that keep the river high enough for gravity watering of crops in the lower reaches of the SA part of the river and to prevent salt water from flowing up the Murray when the river flow is low. They sound like quite the feat of engineering, however there was a locked gate when we drove up near them, so instead we had a picnic and then drove back to the camper as it started to rain gently. The rain didn't stop for a good 16 hours, which resulted in a very wet pack up and a change of plans; instead of free camping in the Southern Flinders Ranges near Port Pirie, we decided instead to head up to Port Augusta and stay in a caravan park so we could dry out and do some clothes washing.

 The next day we headed to the Eyre Pennisula. We were intending to camp at Moonlight Bay, which is near Tumby Bay. The Eyre Pennisula is an interesting place, the north end being in the arid scrublands around Port Augusta, getting progressively greener as it goes south and catches the weather off the Great Australian Bight. It's not exactly verdant fields of green - there's only a single perennial water course on the entire pennisula, the River Tod, which is really stretching the definition of a river vs a creek if you ask me - however it gets enough rain to grow lots and lots and lots of wheat. In the north there are huge farms with the kind of massive tractors a Ukrainian farmer might like to test out by towing an abandoned Russian T72 out of a bog and in the south wine growing, dairy and a great deal of fishing.

We stopped off for lunch in Cowell, which is home to a Great Pub on the main street and some excellent silo art depicting a local identity. We also viewed the silo art in Tumby Bay, this one depicting kids jumping off the towns rickety old pier. Moonlight Bay was a fantastic beach front free camp marred only by the 100km/h winds that sprang up in the afternoon and battered us until the morning. 

But as this was our first free camp with no facilities (ie not even a drop toilet), we got to finally break out some of the new gear we'd bought, namely the portaloo. There was much excitement amongst the family as Dad manfully put the camper up by himself as everyone else got involved in setting up and testing out the new facilities. Much commotion followed as the toilet tent was put up, the various chemicals added to the sump and then 3 very excited kids, who were all of a sudden busting to go, christened the loo. I did not try it out and preferred to exercise my right as a man to treat the world as my toilet.

The next day was a short driving day, only 30 kms or so to Port Lincoln for mornos at the bakery, some fuel and then off to Coffin Bay. Port Lincoln was lovely, with houses set up the hills overlooking the bay. Apparently Port Lincoln has more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country, so I guess  most places here have a million dollar view. One thing it certainly does have is a massive wheat processing plant, where they load the grain onto big ships.

Leaving Port Lincoln, we headed off to Yangie Bay, a small bay in the Coffin Bay National Park, to camp for 2 nights in a SA parks campsite.

Those that know Michelle well will be aware of her predilection for seafood in general and oysters in particular. Suffice to say, we were pretty excited to be headed to Coffin Bay, one of the great oyster producing areas of Australia. Coffin Bay is big and quite complicated with a number of smaller bays and islands, including the delightfully named Little Douglas. It's sheltered and pretty swampy, with many places sporting thick black mud that will swallow the thongs of those tempted into the still blue water. The bay is interesting, however the real action is on the ocean side of the peninsula with some truly massive dune systems leading down to long pristine beaches that are positively bristling with marine life.

We set our camp, having to break out the rock pegs to get the awning to stay up. The portaloo made another appearance, despite a serviceable drop toilet in the campground. Setting up also saw us meet our first mechanical problem, when one of the bed ends wouldn't pull out of the camper. After a bit of worrying an errant nut that had come loose was found to be the culprit and it was fixed quickly.

We then headed down to Almonta Beach for a swim which was great fun, if a bit cold. We did some sightseeing of the surrounds, which includes Point Avoid and Avoid Bay, named by Matthew Flinders in 1802 as a warning to future seafarers as the bay and is fronted by 40m high limestone cliffs and nasty reefs.

Almonta Beach

 

Point Avoid Cliffs

The next day we were going to head out on an adventure! A 4WD tour of the National Park was planned with promises to the kids of boarding on dunes and swimming at these amazing beaches. We headed off up the rough track, to be told by a sign that it's 4WD only and you should lower the tyre pressure. I set 4WD on the car and headed off into the never never. The track got very sandy very quickly and soon had me going firstly to 4WD High Range locking centre diff, then to 4WD low range with the locked centre diff. The kids thought the bumping around was great fun for the first 45 mins, however it started to get old even through we would drive over soft sand, up surmountable hills and then huge slabs of rock that formed the road. 

After an hour we had only gone about 15 kms, so we decided to cut our losses and go to a different set of dunes that were easier to get to. I did make one concession to the track for the return trip, dropping my tyre pressure to make the ride a little easier. Little did I know this would set in train the 2nd mechanical problem of the trip... 

Getting back to the easy road we headed up to Gunyah Beach, was has a 4km drive in over large soft sand dunes. The first half is fine, just a rocky track, but then you are confronted by a dune that's 3 or 4 metres high, very soft and, well, sandy. I charged up it and had just enough momentum to get over without spinning the wheels. We carried on, over another smaller hump and then down a long soft section which had Hamish asking me why I wasn't just driving in a straight line. "I can really only suggest to the car where to go here mate" was the best I could come up with. Facing another dodgy uphill, we met a family from Queensland that were also a bit iffy about driving on the sand, so I bravely followed them, thinking if they get stuck then I simply wont drive over that bit. 

We both stopped just before the last downhill section to the beach and had a good chat - Kieren and Hayley from the Gold Coast - they had 12 months travelling planned with their 2 daughters. The kids played on the sand dunes and eventually we drove down to the beach to meet another couple who were from Mornington, who it turns out were mutual friends of Sarah and Trav! A small world indeed. We went for a swim, had some lunch and then decided the beach was better where we had swum the day before, so we decided to head back to Almonta. I charged up the dunes with plenty of speed and had no trouble getting back onto the bitumen. 

A lovely afternoon at the beach and then we headed back to the campsite. Dinner that night was going to be Oysters, Fish and Chips in the Coffin Bay town, so I thought I'd better re-inflate my tyres to road running pressure. I got out the trusty old air compressor and nothing. It cut out as soon as it went to inflate the tyre. I tried a couple more times, finally with the thing refusing to turn on at all. I didn't realise at the time, but I'd actually blown a fuse on the car. Tyres still at 25 psi, we drove into town where I pumped them back up at the service station. 

We finally got those oysters, Michelle, Hamish and I sharing 2 dozen (and some fresh local whiting as well). Yumm! 

The next destination was Perlubie Beach on Streaky Bay, but Before leaving Coffin Bay we had some administration to attend to: we had to dump the portaloo. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "dropping the kids off at the pool", which is of course referring to a bowel motion. Well this is the bit where you need to go and pick the kids up from the pool. It's smelly and unpleasant so I bravely left it to Michelle (with a peg on her nose) while I topped up the water tanks on the camper.

We lunched in Elliston and then drove into Streaky Bay for supplies, but everything was shut so we kept on rolling to Perlubie. Apparently previously little known, Perlubie is a gem where you can free camp on the beach at a lovely sheltered spot with a magnificent beach where you can fish, find razor clams in the seagrass and have a fire. Then someone Instagrammed it and published it on WikiCamps, so now it's more popular than Baby Shark. It's an amazing place to stay and even with 60 other caravans and campers it wasn't over crowded. 

We got set up, I put my feet up and thought "I'd better get a beer and send a photo to everyone who has to go to work tomorrow". I grabbed one from the fridge in the back of the car and thought, "Hmm this isn't exactly ice cold, I wonder what's going on with the fridge" when I saw the dreaded "E1" flashing where the current temperature readout should have been. 

I drank the beer before fixing the fuse

The fridge battery was flat and our fridge/freezer was on the way to being a dark, warm box that ruins food. We put all the perishable food into the camper fridge and set about diagnosing the problem. Pretty quickly we worked out the battery wasn't charging from the car and a short time later found and replaced the offending blown fuse. The air compressor did it! We sorted it all out, however it did take 16 hours of driving the Nullarbor plain to get the battery up to full charge again.

The next day was all about fishing. We would simply walk out from the camper into the water a few hundred metres, cast the line and reel in fish after fish. The kids caught a number of undersized whiting, and then Michelle managed to get a fish that swallowed the entire hook. This caused a great deal of commotion as the fish had pretty sharp, scary teeth and wasn't all that keen on coughing up the hook. Added to that no one knew what kind of fish it was, so we weren't sure if it was undersized and had to be thrown back into the water. Eventually we worked out it was a leatherjacket, so we could eat it, and it was decided that the fish was going to be our first self caught seafood dinner. It came up a treat, and went very well with the gummy shark fillets we had bought in Streaky Bay that afternoon to bolster the fish dinner. 

Fishing action in Perlubie

We needed a good night sleep, as the next day was one of the first real frontiers of our trip - the Nullarbor! Needless to say the Nullarbor is a very long drive. We headed off early, filling up with fuel at Ceduna ($1.85 / litre, cheapest yet), where Michelle's dad John informed us that in 1972 when he was last here the paved road finished and it was dirt up to the border. Well it seems in the meantime they paved it, however they still hadn't painted the lines so we had to guess where on the road we should drive. This wasn't a big issue as there wasn't much traffic going either way.

We stopped to look at the Windmill museum in Penong, which was highly interesting and had the largest windmill in the southern hemisphere (or something like that, can't really remember...). We continued along the never ending road, which had still had plenty of trees up past Yalata. We stopped for lunch, somewhere. Somewhere else we crested a hill and lo and behold it was the plain. No more trees, just saltbush as far as the eye could see. We stopped for a snack at the Nullarbor road house (didn't fill up, $2.80 / litre, ouch) then kept driving, with our destination being one of the many many free camping spots on the Bunda Cliffs, which are the 100m high limestone cliffs that line the edge of the Great Australian Bight. We missed the turn off for the wiki camp spot we had chosen, so we kept going to another one.

Windmill Museum in Penong

The wind was blowing a gale on the cliff top and it was too exposed to stay, so instead we took some photos with the drone, which was struggling to hover with the gale blowing behind it. Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided to put the drone away before it got caught in a gust and fell off the edge of the world, never to be seen again. We kept going to a camp site that was apparently less exposed, stopping about 10km from the WA border. We found a great site that, while still being pretty windy, didn't feel like we were doing a 100km/h down the highway and hanging our heads out of the car window. 

Bunda Cliffs, very windy

Camping at 10km Peg

For our final night in SA we lit a fire and enjoyed the isolation of the edge of the world. All was well, until the gale woke us up at 2 in the morning, but we didn't actually lose anything or have the camper blow away.

That brings us to the end of part 1 of our adventure. We'd done a lot of driving (around 2890km to that point), caught heaps of fish (even ate one), camped on the beach, gone 4 wheel driving on sand dunes, explored the Coorong, ate Coffin Bay oysters at the source and were still on speaking terms with each other. Great Days in SA indeed.

Excellent Adventure: Season 2 - Australia!

 To be honest, I was surprised this blog was still on the internet, what with the great deletions by Google and the like. Like a digital Indiana Jones, I blew the dust off the keyboard, grabbed the "New Post" button and ran from the falling boulders of the new layout designer.

But here we are, firing up the ol' travel blog because, for the first time in a very long time, we are going on an adventure. Not that the last 12 years between posts hasn't being adventurous - we've been very busy - but mostly with things like having 3 kids, buying and renovating a house, living life and dealing with a once in a century pandemic.

Anyway, let me recap how we got into an adventurous position. In 2018, after another expensive holiday staying in a house, we were driving back to Melbourne and Michelle got it into her head that holidays would be a lot more fun (and cheaper!) if we got a camper trailer. My family had one when I was a kid, so I was greatly experienced in the ways of the camper trailer, and we'd seen a number of them while camping at the prom and we were impressed with the Swan Outback. "Sure" I said. So after a number of trips out to Bayswater Jayco and quite a few spreadsheets analysing the 2nd hand camper trailer market, we put in an order for a new 2019 Jayco Swan Outback.

We put it through its paces at the Prom and South East Australia, with notable trips including driving over the Snowy Mountains and a hasty escape from Mallacoota as the fires bore down in December 2019. We also went through a couple of tow vehicles, with a Mitsubishi Outlander proving to not be up to the task so we upgraded to a Pajero Sport, a fine specimen of the Wagon SUV. 

There wasn't much camping when the Coronavirus hit in early 2020, but friends of ours used the first lockdown to plan a SA, WA and NT trip with a giant caravan, which they embarked upon in 2021. Inspired by their Instagram feed we bought a big map and started to plot our own trip.

Planning a transcontinental camping trip

Well strictly speaking you do, but I wouldn't do it without some preparations. As the Russian Army has discovered recently in Ukraine, simply driving into the unknown with plenty of optimism but without the correct equipment and approach can end in tears. 

There's a planning process that needs to be performed! Routes mapped out, activities researched, campers improved, kit bought and so on. There are 2 ways to do this:

1. Join facebook forums, read all the #vanlife posts on instagram, read books about the Kimberley, the NT, find all the obscure travelling websites, chat to a park ranger from the Coorong to find out the best campsites, have a friend who is a travel writer (Hi Cath!) and do a 5 hour Facetime call with maps, photos, info on the best gorges in WA and all manner other manner of priceless info that only comes from being on the ground.

Or  

2. Be married to Michelle. She's very, very good at this planning and has thought about every detail down to the details of the details. Which campsites require a portable toilet, researching and buying the best firepit. Working out the campsites where you can use the firepit. What's the best recovery gear? what's the best price for the best recovery gear? What 12v connectors might be useful? Here's the best 12v fan for a camper plus all the stuff you need to hang it outside on the annex. Amazingly useful stuff that needs to be known well before you hook up the trailer and drive off.

After all that, you now can prepare to Simply Drive around Australia. Here's how we are doing it:

Travelling clockwise, we are heading to SA to begin and from there west to WA. North along the west coast, up to Cape Range near Exmouth, in to Karajini then up to the Kimberley. From there we go to Darwin, Kakadu and work our way south to the Alice, Kings Canyon and Uluru, finally back to Melbourne, ideally in time for the kids to get to school in time for Term 3. 

What will we do, I hear you ask? Mostly drive around by the look of things, but there will be plenty of beaches, lagoons, estuaries, gorges, caves, forests, reefs, sharks, fish, squid, boat rides, flies and red dust in between.   

So there we go, the adventure awaits. Click like and subscribe! #instathingsidontunderstand! and check back in regularly and we will keep you updated with our trip. 

The Lost Post on Iceland

Lost. With the click of a button, my latest post vanished fading into nothingness like a spilt pina colada into the digital sands of the e world. It was mostly rubbish anyway. Lacking structure and clarity, a few sparse witticisms drowning in a sea of travelogue dithering. Really it was largely me carrying on about all things Iceland, which are my new favourite subjects, being specifically:

• geology;
• economics; and 
• gastronomy

Allow me to precis myself very succinctly: The geology of  Iceland is very interesting and makes for many beautiful waterfalls and snow capped glacial peaks. The food is very good and the people are proud, helpful and friendly.

I guess I can do better than that, here goes in bullet point form:

• Iceland is at 66 degrees north latitude, also the name of a popular and expensive clothing brand
• The mild climate is a result of the gulf stream currents and air flows which keep the country generally free of ice and snow even during the deep long winter, whereas Greenland, which extends much further south is not blessed with the winds and currents is a large ice covered rock.
• The island is shaped by the parting of the North American and European plates that drift apart at 2cms a year. This may not sound like a lot but it is. Trust me. 
• There are heaps of volcanoes, with my favourites being the 2 rather boisterous ones in the Westman Islands that created the island of Surtsey and replaced a nice meadow on the main island with a 700 foot high mountain in 1970 check it out here 
• There's another volcano which has a glacier, known to the Icelanders as Mýrdalsjökull and tourists as "the M one", on top of it and occasionally erupts, much to the surprise of the locals who apparently awake to find a raging torrent of ice, water and lava where their wool shed used to be. We went snowmobilling on it, because we live dangerously!

Shell living dangerously on the glacier. The glacier was perhaps less dangerous than the snow mobiling which gets exciting when the driver hits the power whilst lurching over bumps on the snow.

• The Northern Lights are amazing. We lay in the snow for hours to get these photos!

• Icelanders are very nice, highly educated people that are pretty much all amateur geologists, capable of accurately explaining plate tectonics while serving you food or explaining igneous rock formation processes whilst checking the dents and scratches on the hire car. And they all speak about 19 languages
• The only fossil fuels they use are pretty much fuel for cars, which is on the way out as they attempt to hydrogenise their cars. The rest of their power comes from geothermal and hydro sources, which is cheap, basically inexhaustible and has the added bonus of meaning there is virtually no air pollution at all. On a clear day you can see more than 100kms!
• The effluent from one of the geothermal power stations (hot water) is used to create the nation's number 1 tourist attraction: the Blue Lagoon. The mineral mud is famed for its curative abilities. If one was able to have a hot bath on the moon then I'd imagine this is what it would be like.

 

• The food was tremendous. We ate sushi, sashimi, monk fish, flounder, dried fish jerky, rot cured shark that tasted like eating a shot glass with pure alcohol in it, horse, minke whale, goose, lamb, duck, langoustines with fois gras and truffles, a ham sandwich, croissants, waffles, some chocolates, yoghurt and these strange lollys called opals which were a bit gross but addictive.
• Reykjavik is a nice city and is dead easy to walk around. This is plus since when the wind picks up a normal human can stand to be outside for approximately 23 seconds before freezing to death and being blown away.
• I imagine that Iceland is nicer now with the effective bankruptcy of their country at the hands of 3 banks. Before October 2008, the Pound to the Kroner was about 1 to 120. To put this into context a bottle of beer was usually about 900 kroner, which works out to the princely sum of £7.50 for a beer, or for those back home, $15 which I think is a lot. In the end we were getting 1 to 200 which was pretty good and put most things on a par with UK prices. By the sound of things the whole Icesave banking debacle has stoked some national pride and brought on a groundswell of political activity in a generally subservient population. Apparently it has also had the benefit of curtailing a rather arrogant streak in the locals, but we didnt see any of it and found everyone friendly and accommodating to a fault. 

That was more or less it, although I think it was less interesting on the first pass with the possible exception of the bit about the Westman Islands which I thought I'd written in a lively and entertaining manner. Getting back to the matter at hand, Iceland was a truly amazing country. The scenery, the people, the emptiness and the chance to eat basically any animal unfortunate enough to come within range of an Icelander make this one of the most enjoyable trips on a very long and illustrious list.

Iceland

Vegas Exposed!

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except for where my travel blog is concerned. So it happened that one night around October or November we were out to dinner with Haydn and Zaidee, who were leaving the UK to travel home shortly. The topic of Christmas and New Years came up, with us lamenting the fact we didn't really have anything planned this year. “Come with us to Vegas” they said and that was pretty much that. The seed was planted and the idea germinated into a planned holiday a week later as we booked the flights. Vegas was on and we were pretty excited about it!

26^th December 2009

Vegas is the Strip. From the airport driving into town it rises out of the desert like some computer generated fantasy land superimposed over the barren valley. A 3 mile long, 8 lane “boulevard”, it is ground zero for the adult playground of Las Vegas. Flanked either side by gargantuan casino and hotel complexes it is a sensory shock and awe campaign designed to dull the senses and shake the dollars out of the pockets of unsuspecting tourists. It is amazing, being especially unbelievable at night, with the ridiculous shapes of the pyramid of Luxor, New York, New York with its Chrysler and Empire State Buildings and a 2/3 scale model of the Eiffel tower managing somehow to not seem out of place.

We flew from Heathrow to Minneapolis at about 1:55pm, delayed for ages because some dickhead tried to blow up a Delta flight on Christmas day from Amsterdam to Detroit, meaning the airlines were searching every single passenger and bag going onto the aircraft. As we made our way west, the entire North American landscape was frozen and covered entirely with a blanket of snow. It was pretty. Minneapolis was under about 2 feet of snow and something like -10 degrees when we got there. I can't understand how people live in places like that, possibly it is simply to service the airport, which was huge.

Getting off the plane at 11:30pm we were confronted with our first chance of gambling, with slot machines right there in the middle of the airport. Welcome to Vegas, baby!

27^th December 2009

The sun was very nice and the strip really is something else. There is this sensory cacophony of lights, giant TV screens, blaring music and adverts and these unbelievably massive casino buildings. They are so big they don't seem real, with Ceasers Palace causing my brain the most trouble. Eventually I think I just mentally edited it out until I got used to the size of it. It was a bit like when you are a little kid and you meet an especially tall person for the first time.

We didn't do much on our first day, just got a bite to eat and did a spot of shopping taking in the Vegas vibe which is best described as odd. People tend to wander around a bit aimlessly during the day, which makes the crowd as interesting as the pirate ship casino. Vegas is very egalitarian to judge by the all sorts getting around. Fat guys walk around in shorts wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts (12 degrees Celsius!), alongside flashy and well dressed, who give way to old people wearing sneakers. I guess this is Middle America on display.

Jo and James were arriving at 10pm so we had a few beers in The Venetian and The Palazzo casinos, got Maccas for dinner and saw some of the best old person dancing I've ever seen all to a band made up of old blokes with clearly fake hair.

28^th December 2009

The main feature of eating is Vegas is the Buffet. Everywhere does a buffet, dining somewhere is judged by the size, availability and even sometimes the food quality of the Buffet. We had our first attempt at it, deciding to try out the Wynn for breakfast, which is widely reputed to be the best on the strip. When we finally made it there are around 12:30 the line was unbelievably long. We gave up in frustration and ate at the other salient feature of Vegas food, fast food in the food court.

The main feature of shopping in Vegas is the outlet mall. There's the Fashion Show Mall, the Miracle Mile Mall, the Las Vegas Outlet Mall and a million other variations on the mall theme. The shops are actually pretty good, the staff, as with practically all retail staff in the US were excellent, helpful and attentive and everything is SO CHEAP!!!!! We followed up our brunch some shopping, this time finding a really cool leather jacket for Shell from Lucky and I got some new and badly needed undies.

Haydn and Zaidee had arrived in town about 4pm so Shell and I headed up to the fading flower of the Las Vegas Hilton. This place was not the bees knees. Nor was it the bees feet, hands, head eyes or anything else. It was a bit tired and lacked many of the amenities customary to the better casinos such as staff on the check in desk. What it did have was many strange wind like noises in the room which turned out to be the elevators that it turned out could be heard in every room in the hotel.

Brock's Guide to getting free drinks in Vegas

1. Find a casino
2. Track down the cocktail waitress that is serving the area around the 1 cent slots, and swiftly take a machine she is about to serve
3. Put a dollar in the machine and play 1 line with a 1 cent bet
4. When the girl comes around, and it is always a girl, place your order which can be one of the following: a domestic beer, an imported beer, a mixed drink such as a Gin and Tonic, an extravagant cocktail, a shot, anything else you could think of
5. Continue to play the 1 line for a 1 cent bet until the drink arrives.
6. If you want another drink, tip her. If you don't, don't!
   

Haydn and Zaidee had just arrived from Costa Rica, so we caught up while waiting for check in. We'd decided to have another go at the Buffets, with the Paris buffet being widely regarded as the best value for money. Again we had wildly underestimated the waiting time involved for a buffet with the line this time being about 200 metres long outside the restaurant. We drank instead, getting a few freebies from the 1 cent slots, and went out for dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, a French themed but clearly American run and priced casino restaurant. The cheap steaks, $23 each, disappointed James, Jo and Haydn, being a poor cut of meat beaten flat into submission and covered in a uninspiring bearnaise sauce. The expenso steak, a $39 Rib Eye enjoyed by Myself, was brilliant! We ate, gambled, got some more free drinks and had a good time.

29^th December 2009

Learning to gamble in Vegas is a bit like learning to drive in Bangkok. It may be possible, but there will be more casualties than success stories. It is more of a place for experts at the top of their game. At least in Vegas it is only money that is at risk. But if you can find the right teacher then anything is possible, and so it proved with our team versus the Golden Nugget.

We tried for $1.49 breakfast at the really shit looking Best Western motel down from our hotel but we got there about 5 minutes after they switched to the lunch menu so we left and thought let's head to Downtown, which a bit paradoxically, is actually uptown from the strip. "To the Palms!" declared Michelle to the taxi driver with all the authority of a Melways author. Unfortunately for us the Palms is neither downtown nor at the Strip, being in its own little satellite casino complex west of the strip. We realised we were heading the wrong way as we got over the Interstate and confirmed with the driver that the Palms was not downtown and we in fact wanted to head to the Plaza. It was pretty funny and "To the Palms!" eased into our lexicon, describing the enthusiastic embrace of incorrect information.

Time for the lessons. Popping into the Golden Nugget we finally hit the tables, starting with roulette. We cashed in $20 for chips, everyone picked a number and lo and behold the 29 popped up with Zaidee's $1 chip sitting on it. We won! $35 in the pocket and we thought lets have another go, so everyone picked another number. I got on 12 because I thought that was Chase's birthday and we came up trumps again! Another $35 in the sky rocket and, knowing when enough was enough, cashed out and set about losing our winnings. With no $5 blackjack tables to tempt us, we ended up asking a few craps dealers that were standing around not doing much how to play. With our dealer more or less playing for us, we learnt the basics – roll the dice. 7 is good to begin with and then bad after that. 2, 3 and 11 are bad to begin with and harmless later on. The others are harmless to begin with but make the money. With expert instruction from the dealer - “ok, now give me $5. Put $6 there. Give me another $10” we won a few times, then we lost a few times probably losing half of our newly found roulette winnings, due in no small part to Shell's inability to throw the dice on the table. The pit boss to Michelle - “This table cost us $40,000 and you keep throwing the dice on the shitty floor”.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man. Haydn stepped up to the dice and rolled us to victory and beyond. By the time he lost the throw we had turned our $40 into $329 which was a pretty good, with our half share of the winnings putting my lifetime gambling balance firmly into the black. With our ill gotten gains we headed to the outlet mall and spent up big on sunglasses, watches and high end audio equipment.

Now we had a big night planned with dinner at the Seafood and Sushi Buffet, and tickets to see the Black Eyed Peas at Mandalay Bay. We finished off our shopping extravaganza at about 5 and thought “we'll just get a quick cab”, however the other 400 people that had the same idea at the same time were preventing us from getting on with the night so we ended up running for the bus, which we made and got home in time for a quick shower, which would have been really nice had there been any hot water.

The buffet was as expected, except there was no line which gave us a bit of a shock. There was tons of sushi and sashimi, many cooked delights and some very strange little crème brulee things for desert. There were these giant crab claws that looked good but didn't actually taste that nice and even some non seafood and sushi buffet standards like roast turkey and teriyaki chicken. We ate till we were full and then ate a little more and then had some desert, after which it was time to hit the Black Eyed Peas.

They were awesome. I was surprised just how many of their songs I knew almost by heart, which was pretty much all of them. The stage had a cool light and laser show and there was a sort of catwalk stage which allowed those of us in general admin on the floor to almost get dripped on by the singers sweat. It also afforded a very good view of Fergie's legs, which are pretty sweet. So it would have been a very good gig even if they had of just sang their songs and danced around, but they didn't. Nope, the best bit was when Will-I-Am walked out onto the catwalk bit alone as a mixing deck appeared from the stage. He asked “Do y'all mind if I turn this into a club for a bit” and proceeded to whip the crowd into a frenzy while his DJ deck raised up into the sky. It was pretty cool, iced with some Chilli Peppers and Sweet Child O'mine.

After the gig we had a look around Mandalay Bay and then headed over to Luxor to have a drink. Now Luxor is exceptional, even for Vegas. It is a giant pyramid maybe 35 storeys high lined with black glass, topped with a super powerful spotlight shining from the apex. Most unbelievably, they have managed to make it look like council flats on the inside, all grey concrete. After our beers we were all a bit sleepy so we went outside to grab a cab back to the hotel, where a limo had just dropped some people. The driver came over to us and said “Hey look, you guys don't want 2 taxis, just come with me. I'll take you for $50”. We cunningly negotiated asking for $40, to which he countered with $45. Fine we said, $40 with a $5 tip and it was agreed – and we had our limo ride down the strip! Pretty funny. Unfortunately there was no sun roof for us to hang out of the top of but it was still a perfect way to top off a big day.

30^th December 2009

Outside of pursuits founded on very adult vices, Vegas' location in the middle of a vast desert means there is some amazing scenery very close to hand. Today was all about the car. We had planned to pick up a car, head off to Hoover Dam, drive over and check out Red Rock Canyon and then perhaps take it some sort of magic show that involved tigers. I went down and sorted out the car at 8:15 and we met up with everyone at 9 and drove straight down the strip. We stopped for some photos at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign then got on the freeway heading for the Hoover Dam. I managed to get off the freeway straight away and we had to do the mother of all u turns but we finally got heading the right direction. We stopped off for Maccas breakfast in some far flung Vegas suburb – Shell had a McBiscuit which was a strange scone thing and I had a McGriddle which was a rather disgusting pancake contraption. Sufficiently greased up we headed back onto the freeway and were making great time until we hit the 6 mile traffic jam that apparently constantly surrounds the Hoover Dam. We sat in that for an hour or so until we finally got to see the dam. Unfortunately we didn't see Megatron but we did see a gigantic concrete structure which is pretty impressive.



Surprisingly it isn't vertical; it almost looks like you could skateboard down it albeit very quickly with a pretty sudden stop at the end. We oohed and ahhed it the dam for a while and then got back in the car and drove back to Vegas. We stopped off at In and Out burger for lunch – Double by Double Animal Style – with the half of the Vegas tourists that weren't in the casinos and then decided we better sort out some tickets if we wanted to see a show in the evening.

We had some basic requirements for seeing a Vegas show:

1. It had to be tonight

2. It was relatively cheap

3. It would contain some kind of magic and or illusions

4. It would have some tigers

So we rocked up at the half price ticket booth and lo and behold “The Magic and Tigers of Rick Thomas” was simply screaming at us. We bought our VIP tickets (there weren't any normal ones left) which entitled us to hang around after the show, meet Mr Thomas and pat the tigers, and had it sorted, as well as some half price tickets to dinner at the Planet Hollywood casino. Buzzing with excitement we headed off to get some more desert scenery at Red Rock Canyon, which is a canyon with some very red rocks. Luckily for us it was America so there really wasn't any need to get out of the car to see it, we just drove around the scenic drive. Pressed for time we headed back to the Strip in a rather roundabout fashion, taking in a grand tour of Las Vegas freeways.

So it was time for “The Magic and Tigers of Rick Thomas” at the Sahara. There were dancing girls. There was magic, sort of. There were tigers, briefly. There was way too much of Rick Thomas. It was also total rubbish. His magic consisted of hiding things up some very large sleeves while they 'disappeared' and then magically 'reappeared' which was actually him taking it out of his sleeve. The tigers, which looked really cool, ran across the stage. Apart from one time where a tiger kind of stood up next to him, that was it. Just running from left to right over the stage along a wire. Complete crap, but it was exactly what we were after, although I had did have trouble staying awake. We did not take up the offer of meeting with either Rick Thomas or the tigers. Back down the strip for our dinner which left me with another interesting experience, this time food poisoning.

31^st December 2009

It was Grand Canyon scenic flight day and I woke up feeling sick, thinking 'I really need to spew'. After wandering around for a bit, I managed to get that out of the way and we all rendezvoused at Jo and James's room to sort out a venue for bringing in the new years. After much research including a couple of field trips, we decided on the Rum Jungle bar at Mandalay Bay that was $150 entry with all drinks included, which was about the best deal going for the night. We purchased the tickets and I thought some food will make me feel better, so we had a quick bite at the coffee shop . It did not make me feel any better and was back within less than an hour.

The scenic flight left from Boulder City airport which is down near Hoover Dam so we got picked up at about 1pm for our 3pm flight. I wasn't feeling super but at least I didn't feel like being sick again. At the airport I thought perhaps some sports drink will help me recover so I bought some powerade and sipped on that.

The flight was great. The Grand Canyon is amazing, just this monstrous crack in the earth. We approached from the west over Lake Mead, which is the lake formed behind Hoover Dam, and did a kind of hourglass pattern over the western edge of the Canyon. There's not much point in trying to describe something that your brain can't really comprehend when it sees it, suffice to say it is quite grand. Surprisingly there was quite a bit of snow on the edge of the cliffs and on the higher ground out to the east. My state did not improve during the flight.

As I got off the plane, the cold air hit me and unset the fine balance that had allowed me to remain kind of ok on the plane. I ran away from the plane and set off the biggest vomit in the history of vomits, with many loud man sized “ARRRRRGGGH” bursts there was blue Powerade all over the tarmac. It was gross, however all the other passengers seemed to think it was quite funny.

The bus got us back to to the hotel about 5:30pm, doors at the club were around 8 or so leaving me 2 hours to have a bath and get some sleep/rest/recovery. Had I not paid $150 for the ticket I wouldn't have moved an inch all night however I dragged myself out of bed and we cabbed it down to the other end of the Strip. New Years is a pretty big deal in Vegas. They get something like 300,000 extra people head into town just for the couple of days, close off the strip to all traffic, turn off all the escalators(!) and have all of these dumb rules like no sitting and no glass.

So we hit Rum Jungle at Mandalay Bay like a Mack truck. Everyone was full of ideas about how I should approach things and we settled on a shot of rum for starters and if that sat ok then just crack on. It turned out to be sage advice. My stomach was calmed and we proceeded to work our way through the $150 worth of booze. It was a funny night, improved no end be our pretty embarrassing attempts to copy the black girls dancing which is something else indeed. Haydn came out with the best effort, making a bit of a spectacle of himself as he got down low to the beats. Crowd watching proved especially entertaining as there were all sorts in the club doing all sorts of things. Fat old guys clearly there with some “hired help” who were dirty dancing at 9pm, a couple of white trash bogans in trackie dacks who were cutting it up on the dance floor which unfortunately James did not manage to get on film and some very boisterous african american women with booty who were shaking it for all it was worth. All in all it was very entertaining.

We hit the strip for the fireworks which were good, but we all got distracted by a camera and took many photos of varying quality. As we headed back to the club the girls got waylaid by some flashing lights and turned up about 30mins later all giggling and very excited, which more or less typified the night. We managed to jump the very long taxi queue by getting a limo back up to the hotel and that was it. Well almost, Haydn needed to have a quick spew as we got out of the cab and also tried to souvenir a picture from the wall of the hotel which was fixed a little more effectively than he guessed and ended up ripping the frame apart and smashing the glass. Pretty funny stuff and no one got hurt or in trouble!

1^st January 2010

And finally it was time to go home. Finally, after a week managed to sit down for breakfast with Jo and James. After brekkie we all decided we should gamble what was left of our US dollars so we hit the Roulette table and won again! Maybe it was only $2 but we finished as winners. 17 hours of flying later and we were home in London having greatly enjoyed our time in Vegas. While it wasn't easy – i.e: getting food, getting around, getting a drink at a reasonable price – it was well worth the effort. New Years finally lived up to its billing as the biggest night of the year and we took the house to the cleaners on the tables so we were very happy.