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Two dodgy car deals and one pair of boots later I was more than ready to leave the museums of Melbourne behind for whatever Waikiki had to offer. Which, when you look past the high rise hotels and tourist traps, was agreeable weather, cheese in a can and a hostel room full of mayhem.
Adventures included hiking barefoot through mud, racing our scooters down the highway (we were assured they didn't go over 30mph), somehow ending up with a brand new convertible for the day, cruising around for isolated beaches, finding turtles and being threatened with tropical diseases.
I spent the next week experiencing an infinitely more spiritual side to Hawaii away from the MacDonalds and designer shops, sleeping in a yurt on a long lost cousin's coffee farm. On a volcanic island. In fact, on a live volcanic island that was spewing lava into the sea in an indescribably aesthetically appealing combination of lethal power and pretty lights. This island offered a whole new range of adventures (besides living without a bathroom or kitchen) involving kayaking, making friends with attention seeking dolphins, all kinds of mango related things, famous break dancers and drinking ominous looking muddy water concocted from plant roots. No one could give me a satisfactory explanation of the effect it had on you but a few coconut shell fulls later I found out.
After being turned into a zombie on an inadvisable mix of sleep deprivation, surfing, Sailor Jerrys and an interesting experience with a car alarm, I somehow made it to California. San Francisco included some welcome home-comforts thanks to family, especially reading bedtime stories, the ultimate indulgence of home cooked meals and a bed that wasn't full of sand. I spent my time here looking for a tiny fluffy zebra in Alcatraz, marvelling at massive trees in Yosemite, learning what a keg stand was the hard way in Orange County and getting up to 134mph in a 1972 Corvette that looked like it had been put together by Stuntman Mike for a sequel to Deathproof.
So after a brief interlude in the UK where I managed to fit in a welcome home, several birthdays, a wedding, come up with some baby names for an unborn mango and just have enough time to think about getting a job, I left for South Africa.
On arrival we entered an enticing world of diamond tiaras, Parisian wedding dresses and strolling around the Ralfe's extensive gardens whilst sipping on whatever we desired. After the wedding celebrations 13 poms tagged along with the bride and groom for an epic journey that was to be known thereafter as the 'Buddymoon'. Effectively playing parents to a mismatched collection of foreigners the week after their wedding would be enough to destroy any marriage but fortunately for all concerned it turned out to be a glorious combination of steak, beer (with screw tops), giraffes doing inappropriate things, being covered in dust, driving way too close to elephants, beer pong, strip pong, braais, panic-inducing panic buttons, flat tyres, Nando's sauce, a floating gazebo and tasty avocados.
I then spent the next week recovering by soaking up some African sun, seeing family, encouraging breakfast cooking competitions, teaching myself Psychoanalysis, discovering bubblegum flavoured things and gambling with Smarties (which, coincidentally, was the most seriously i've ever played poker). So I've eventually returned to the mud island that I call home for a couple of months (with a suitcase full of illegal meat and precious chocolate bars made from kryptonite) where no doubt I will forget what the sun looks like and how to braai....until I return to South Africa in December...
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