The Beginning

Background

As this is my first ever blog, I better give you a brief bit of info to put the whole thing in context. My name is Mark, I'm 26 years old, I have lived in Auckland most of my life, and until 2 months ago I was a lawyer.

However, the dream has always been to get out and explore the world, so that is the agenda for this year, and the reason for creating this blog. It is Wednesday 10 March today, and on Saturday I fly out for South America. 3 months in South America will take me through to Europe for 5 months, followed by a couple of cheeky months in Asia, before arriving back in NZ on Dec 24 2010. Well that is the current game plan anyway.

Basic info out of the way, my plan for this blog is to keep anyone with an interest informed, amused, and share some of the snaps I have taken along the way.

I'll start with the month I have just had, on Great Barrier Island.

Great Barrier Island

My favourite place I have been in my short life so far is undoubtedly Great Barrier Island. I am amazingly lucky that we have the place that we do on the island in our family where it has been for the last 35 years or so. No matter how many times I get over there, it blows me away each time, and the last month has been no exception.

There were plenty of visitors over the month, various family and friends, but one deserves a special mention - Mr James Watkins.

James Watkins - Self Portrait

James and I knew each other at school, played rugby together, and hung out no more than casual friends would. Since school, more than 8 years ago, we would have run into each other less than a handful of times. But by sheer chance, I got a text from James a month before I was going over to Great Barrier asking me if I was at the Barrier, as he was visiting on a boat. I replied 'no' that I wasn't there, but said join me in a months time, as I would be there for the whole month. Cue one month later, James arrives on the ferry from Auckland, and stays for the whole month, following which he decided to stay on longer, and is currently still there, living in Tryphena. James is an awesome photographer (see his un-cropped hand held self portrait above which he took during a casual stroll down the beach), has taught me a lot, and we had many laughs together on the barrier. At final count we took over 9,000 photos together over the month, so check out his website http://www.jameswatkinsphotography.com/ where the images we took should appear sometime over the coming months once the edit process has occurred.

Along with 9000+ photos, other statistics of note from the barrier trip include-

- 53 fish caught

- 8 different methods of eating the fish (raw, marinated, pan fried fillets, pan fried steaks, smoked, baked, grilled and cooked in the fire pit)

- 3 swims per day (on average)

- 18 visitors

- 270 beers drunk (including a box of double brown specially helicoptered in from the main land)

- 7 Kaka sightings

- 1 amazing time

But I will leave a lot of the talking to some of the pics above and below that I snapped over the last month.

Great Barrier has the ability to change your mindset completely. No matter what state you arrive in, you will leave relaxed and inspired. So relaxed was I when I left that when I checked in for my flight, the lady asked if I had any shoes on me. I thought about it and answered 'no', as I hadn't worn any shoes for the whole month, and lost the pair of jandles that I bought to the island. She said I would have to find a pair to be able to arrive in Auckland to be able to walk along the tarmac to the terminal. Lucky Great Barrier came to the party, as there was a drop in centre next to the airport, where you could leave or pick up clothes/shoes/hats/underwear or whatever for anyone to use. I managed to find a pair of size 5 girls shoes that were the closest things to fitting me, put them over my toes, jumped on the plane and arrived back in Auckland yesterday.

Catch you all soon, from South America.