Monthly Archives: December 2009

Merry Christmas!

This is my second snowy, wintery, white Christmas as part of my 100 weeks journey. I had planned to be in the glorious heat of an Australian summer this year, but as they are prone to do, plans changed at the last minute, and instead, after Christmas Island I headed for Europe and a week […]

Hot and cold water.

My last day in Iceland started in the dark again at the lovely little hostel in Vik. I headed down to the shore for a quick look around as it started to get light, and then headed onward, pausing to take a quick photo of the lookout point where I had watched the Northern Lights, […]

Goal 69 lights up the sky (dimly!)

After my iceberg trip I stopped at the tiny little town of Vik, about halfway back to Reykjavik, and almost at the southern-most point of Iceland. At the youth hostel there I was the only guest for the night – it is very quiet here in the winter. After checking in I asked the German […]

Goal 68 – Iceberg adventure.

Car hire in Iceland seems outrageously expensive, and for a while I was trying to co-ordinate a trip with a couple of other fellow couchsurfers, sharing car and fuel costs, but one person changed their mind, and another never made it to Iceland at all, as her flight was cancelled. So it was back to […]

Reykjavik nights.

I have done a bit more exploring in the short daylight hours, and Magnus took me to Perlan, a very unusual building high on a hill, with a great outlook over the city. Later in the afternoon we drove out of the city to the lighthouse at the end of the rocky headland. It still […]

Icelandic introduction.

I flew into Reykjavik and took the bus into the city. Already things seemed to be living up to the Icelandic reputation of being expensive – or maybe I have just been in Asia too long, where everything is so cheap. In Kuala Lumpur the hour-long coach journey from airport to city centre costs around […]

Next goal – halfway there – aided slightly by food-poisoning!!

I have been trying to watch what I eat most of the time over the past few months, and although have not stood on any weighing scales recently, am pretty sure that I have lost a bit of weight, and must be close to my terget of 70 kilogrammes (11st, or 154lb). I have also […]

Goal 67 – Crab spawning spectacle.

Yesterday evening Braydon collected me to drive down to South Point, where at the Chinese Temple there was a celebration of the birthday of the Chinese god Kang Tian Tai Di, and everyone was invited. The whole affair was very cheerful, and there was a huge spread of food put on. The was a seer […]

Christmas Island diving.

I had to move house earlier this week, as my couchsurfing host Braydon had his landlord moving into the room I was using. However Claire, Braydon’s work colleague, helself a brand new couchsurfing host, offered me her spare room, so on Tuesday afternoon, after a snorkel down at the cove, I moved house. I have […]

Island weekends.

During the daytime over my first week on Christmas Island I have had to pretty-much entertain myself, as most of the other people I know here have to work, of course. But as Friday afternoon approached I got to see a different side to island life, and an idea of how full the weekend would […]

Moving the goalposts.

Since I first made my list of 100 goals as ALife4Sale was coming to an end last year, I have only made one change, and that was done before the 100 weeks period commenced. One of my goals was to ride on the now closed thrill ride “Fly By Wire” in New Zealand. I wrote […]

The Old Man and The Sea!

Christmas Island is a fascinating place to explore. I went out for a cycle ride the other morning, which became a steep hill-climb through the forest when the gravel road came to an end. The ground is alive with red crabs crawling about among the leaves on the forest floor. The male crabs have done […]

Island life.

I have been on Christmas Island for a few days now, but haven’t really had much chance to get out and about. I have had some minor financial challenges, and had to make some quick decisions to avert further, bigger problems over the coming few weeks. For the past 6 or 7 months I have […]