Hello again, world. I'm writing this from an internet kiosk in Sydney Airport at 7:20pm. I was writing a blog post all about what I've been up to for the past eight days in Sydney but didn't have time to finish, so I'm just posting this to let you know that I hope to publish it when I arrive in Honolulu later this morning, roughly 9 hours before I post this. I'm told that this is because I'm crossing the International Date Line, but that sounds suspiciously like some crafty product placement for a dodgy service connecting you to lonely singles in a call centre in Delhi, so I'm just assuming that it's magic.

Well, I made it to the mountains. On Sunday I caught a train from Wellington up to National Park to go skiing at Whakapapa skifield on Mt. Ruapehu, which in summer was the setting for Mordor in the Lord of the Rings films. The train journey was pretty incredible. The train is designed to give you maximum views, and goes over various gorge viaducts, coastal routes and so on, so I basically got a whirlwind visual tour of the southern half of North Island. Ironically, there were very few photo opportunities because of reflections in the train windows, but I've got a few lined up.

Whakapapa skifield was very different to any of the European Alpine resorts I've been to. As the wording "skifield" suggests, the runs are very wide and expansive, with a lot of variation across the skiable area. The route maps are essentially a collection of suggested routes to take down, with a lot more groomed area in between.

I stayed in a lodge called Iwikau, which belongs to Aorangi Ski Club and is situated just off to the side of one of the main slopes, with ski-in-ski-out access. There weren't many people staying while I was there, no doubt in part to the somewhat hairy weather at the time, but the atmosphere was very friendly and relaxed. Everybody helps out with some of the lodge duties, and got some great home cooked meals while I was there.

The conditions were on and off, but permitted me to have a good ski every day. The main problem was winds which get pretty intense up there and make them close the lifts, but when they were open, apart from patchy visibility, it was great. When the slope conditions weren't in our favour, we chilled out at the lodge and even dug a snow cave one afternoon. On the last day the clouds lifted completely, revealing some stunning surroundings, but with that came southerly winds which closed all but the lowest slopes.

On to Sydney next…

Well, I've been down under in New Zealand with my cousin-once-removed, Jonathan, now for three days. People don't do everything upside down but the green men on traffic signals do walk backwards. Wellington is a cool little city, tightly tucked between the hills that we recognise from Middle Earth and the harbour.

I caught up with some colleagues and friends of my Dad's for lunch, one of whom is trying to get her son to do a gap year. I learned from them that the whole carbon-demonisation of New Zealand lamb in the UK is all a bit of a green-icity stunt which the Kiwi agricultural associations are clamouring to debunk - apparently the carbon footprint of raising lambs in the UK (with greenhoused or imported feed, and heated barns during the winter months) is actually more carbon-heavy than sending naturally raised New Zealand lamb across by ship. (Was anyone else from the UK under the impression that is was by air? I feel deceived!)

I guess New Zealand's mission for my visit must be to mobilise me against misinformation because as part of the Wellington Film Festival I also just saw a documentary about Michael Moore which was an interesting insight into how to conclude that when it comes to the media, trust no-one!

We've also had a chance to look around some of the area's beautiful coastline scenery and Wellington's bird sanctuary where we heard the call of a bird which sounds a bit like a kiwi but isn't (seriously though, it's a great place). Also been to the Wellington Irish Society to a gig with Jonathan's band, the Klezmer Rebs, who play folk/world music predominantly from eastern Europe which was without a doubt the harmonic inspiration to Alexey Pajitnov when he was writing Tetris, and a whole load of foot-stomping, fiddle-jamming, unabated fun.

What I really want to tell you about, though, is Schoc. It's a little chocolaterie and espresso bar in central Wellington which sells chocolate produced locally, and whose speciality is flavouring chocolate with all sorts of avant-garde foods, from chilli to kiwi fruit to lavendar to basil to Earl Grey tea, and they not only all work astonishingly well but are absolutely stunning. I know this because behind their counter they have a samples rack with each of their thirty-or-so varieties broken up into sunflower-seed-sized pieces in little drawers, and you can sample as many as you can take. Each sample has so much flavour to it and it's not long before you're at risk of getting put off your tea. I don't think I could envisage returning to Wellington without going back to that shop, and look forward to their world domination in which we are all slaves to their chocolatey goodness.

I am supposed to be skiing right now, but a storm took out the power to my lodge and it doesn't sound like I'd want to be up there right now. It's clearing up over the next couple of days though, so I've managed to find an alternative and extended my stay in New Zealand so I can still hit the slopes soon.

Well, the hard disk on my laptop failed, so photos and Google Earth on here are kind of dead in the water, until I get to Sydney where I hope to get it fixed.

On my last day in South Africa we had a look round Montecasino, which is a retail/entertainment complex apparently themed around the town of Cassino in Italy, or in particular the hill Monte Cassino, which is bizarre as it's indoors. It feels a little like a theme park as all the buildings are themed with outdoor Tuscan architecture and the ceilings are made to look like the day and night skies. This is where the Lion King musical has recently finally made its debut on the african continent.

We got coffee with a guy called Chris at a very classy little cafe overlooking Zoo Lake, which borders with Joburg Zoo, which epitomised what I really like about this city - there is a lot of attention to detail and stylish but not fussy decoration, and they're not afraid to use lots of space. When I have my photos back you'll see what I'm talking about anyway. Afterwards, Chris showed us up the Carlton Centre, the tallest building in Africa (insert more cool pictures here). The view from up there exposes what you don't really realise from below which is that the city is peppered with mineshafts and great big mine tips interspersed among the buildings. You also learn how many people dry their washing on top of tall skyscrapers.

I'm staying in Johannesburg with Rachel Hooper, who was my youth leader back at Onslow Village Congregation and is now the youth deacon at a church here called GodFirst. She lives in a side flat of a house belonging to a family who are also part of the church, who have very kindly given me a room in their house to sleep in. The South African winter at the moment is cloudless and so ranges across the day from pretty cold to perfectly warm, although any wind can quickly turn things chilly.

On Saturday we drove to Pilanesberg Game Reserve with two of Rachel's friends, Bruce and Wendy, and drove around searching for some big game. We got right up close to a number of zebras (cf above), various deer type animals, some baboons and a family of elephants, also spotting hippos, rhino and giraffes - no big cats, unfortunately.

On Sunday I visited both of GodFirst's congregations - the main one in the morning and their City one in the evening. The services are really vibrant and there's a very welcoming atmosphere. The church is not that old and is growing, so when I visited they announced they were adding a second morning service to accommodate more people in their school hall venue and they're looking for a location to build a great big church venue of their own.

In between, we visited a market filled with some incredible african art, crafts and food, and afterwards went to a coffee shop downtown with Bruce and Wendy - but not Rachel, who has been feeling ill - for dinner and some rounds of Speed Uno.

It's weird to finally be on the road after planning and procrastinating planning and getting-excited-about my trip for months. My journey to the airport was disrupted by flooding, but only thanks to a naughty water bottle in my backpack (a very absorbent notebook with just a kit list took most of the damage on behalf of my laptop, university notes, camera etc which were also in the bag). Free wi-fi courtesy of BT Broadband meant that my blog got nearly done but not quite.

After a few flights in the last year with EasyJet and Ryanair and friends, I'd forgotten what BA were like. I just hope Qantas will be the same as it will make a real difference to the fairly extensive flying I'm doing. The catering was really generous, and the in-flight entertainment is now on demand which makes a huge difference to how you spend your time on the plane. The only reason I didn't feel practically spoiled was the ridiculous cubicle-bed-massage parlour things that the premium class passengers get (of course).

Okay, so it's a little late, but here is my blog. I might have been a leeettle too ambitious with what I wanted to do. The hills design is a concept I've been wanting to try out for a while. It's meant to change over the course of the day but at the moment it's still stuck at midday… but hey, better than nothing, eh? This blog is mirrored as a Google Earth tour so check out the Earth tab for a more graphical view of where I've been.