rafael pyton

… the drowning Andy. But first you must find him!

…does this make you think of?

Yesterday, I got back to base from touring the South of the Southern Island of New Zealand, and… well, my neck is still sore from searching the skies for mountains. The two words most commonly used on this road trip were “OOOOOOH” and “AAAAAAH”. Man, what else can you say when Nature takes off all her clothes, and poses for the centrefold?

Baby, babyblue. Do you get the blues too?

White, whiter than the whites of your eyes, so white it hurts the blacks of your eyes.

Mt. Cook, the tallest peak in NZ. Yes, I have sacrificed many a sheep to the weather Gods. The weather is incredibly unpredictable here; on a bad day you see absolutely nothing. Lucky lucky Andy!

Camera obscura on the way to Fiordland; Mirror Lakes.

The roaring road to Fiordland is ripped by rioting rivers.

Our sturdy vessel for the day; The Milford Wanderer. We have arrived in deepest Fiordland, about to sail out through the Milford Sound, possibly the coolest spot in the universe. Of course, it rains more than 300 days a year here, and as you can tell, the weather Gods had turned their backs on me… or so they thought! Because, after heavy rainfall, the cascading waterfalls come out to play all wild and fat, and suddenly you start to believe in heaven. Besides, as the Milford Wanderer set sail, it stopped raining… lucky lucky Andy!

Heaven? Or the black cliffs of Mordor? Some of the sights are downright scary! Yelp!

Words can not explain, nor can cameras do justice to the sheer size, stunning steepness, and pure ‘awesomeness’ of the walls of the Milford Sound. But statistics can try: the Mitre Peak at 1692 metres is the tallest mountain in the world to rise straight up from the water.

A small waterfall high above, which the wind is shattering into drops, onto lens. Tongue out now.

This snow-level picture is actually taken just before the worst and darkest and bumpiest and narrowest car-tunnel in the world - the claustrophobia-inducing Homer Tunnel - that leads to the other side of the mountain chain, to the Milford Sound.

I love waterfalls. For once, I got my fill. In bazillions.

Did I already tell you I love waterfalls? Because I do. I rilly rilly do.

Here is another futile attempt at clarifying size: check out the other cruise boats ahead of us. They look like tiny toyboats from a dollhouse against these mighty walls of stone, don’t they? And yet the picture is probably not even halfway to the top…

The captain thought it would be fun to stick his ship underneath the waterfall and take a cold shower. Hide the Sony! Then get wet.

One more for the road, sweethearts.

Thanks so much for reading the Pyton Geographic.

I’ll start by giving you a gentle push into kiwi mind, where sheep and mountain bikers are plentiful, and the people are as laidback as almost horizontal, where all roads cry their hearts out for the thump of a fast fourstroke, and the sun is as sharp as a blowtorch, where surf’s up everyday, and everybody surfs.

These pictures are from around Lyttelton, outside Christchurch, where my lil bro and his girlfriend live and breathe the 50-50 of mountain and ocean air. The place is as cosy as a baby’s butt clad in merino wool.

Come to me, you ample buxom of green green hills!

Ok, fun’s over. In my next post, there’ll be no more smiling whales. I got motherflippin’ Mordor on my memory card. Prepare to mount challenge to Attenborough, the National Geographic, and anyone who ever took pictures that eventually become postcards… huggah!

I got here in the end… but it would’ve been easier to take the riverboat to hell. I left on Friday afternoon 12th January - arrived Monday morning the 15th. This journey did not include sleeping. My brain was fried, and the rest of the body felt it was only hanging together by chewing gum.

It all started to go wrong from the very beginning. The dirty game airlines play - called overbooking - manifested itself in sitting in the plane for almost five hours in Helsinki airport before even leaving the ground. British Airways, people. I suggest you avoid them like the plague.
Spending five cramped hours in a germ-infested tube of composites that doesn’t even move is much like being a POW in Vietnam - the only thing missing was the bamboo sticks underneath the fingernails.

This is the first domino brick: After a lot of rioting, calculating overweight, choosing 15 volunteers to leave the aircraft for another, returning them because of some dick in Heathrow decided it was a security risk, etc, etc, British Airways finally decided to remove ALL baggage from the plane to get going…

[Yes Virginia, the bags are still missing.]

As the rest of the domino bricks fell, arriving five hours late in London meant missing the connecting flight to Sydney, and so on, and so on. It was hard to invent nice words. The allmighty Heathrow rumba - which was of worse caliber than when I was a rookie in the army - resulted in an overnight stay at a crappy suburban hotel on BA’s expense.
[Actually, just finding the right bus for the hotel was like being a strong contender on The Amazing Race].
Anyway, returned to Heathrow very early in the morning to sort out the details of a quite imaginative re-routing. Instead of London - Sydney - Christchurch with British Airways, it was now London - Los Angeles - Auckland - Christchurch, a la American Airlines, Quantas, Air New Zealand (domestic flight).

When I return to Finland in some weeks, it will mean that I have gone exactly ONE LAP AROUND THE WORLD!

These days, you don’t want to go via USA unless you really have to. They are freedom nazis, meaning all the forms in the world to fill, fingerprints and eyescans to boot. I was only in transit, dammit! But no-oh, the don’t have transit in the USA, and I queued ’til my ankles bled.
The maggots in uniform could not get it in their heads that I didn’t have any baggage, that it was going another way, straight (supposedly) to New Zealand.

I think the terrorists are winning. At least I’m losing.

By the by, you have to pay for the wine on American Airlines. Five bucks for a tiny bottle. I am not impressed. After five unsweet hours in lousy LAX, Cyndi Lauper on the iPod was the only thing keeping the mood up. California was freezing, too. It felt like it was less than ten outside. It’s never like that in the movies.

If the eleven hour flight from London to LA was shit and babies crying, the twelve hour night flight from LA to Auckland was more of the same. And I had prepared so well, what with the neck pillow, the blinds, and 30g of Opamox. To no avail; I got hardly no sleep. The drugs don’t work. I just don’t have the gift of sleeping.

Apart from NZ customs, Auckland to Christchurch was a piece of pie; one hour of lovely mountain views - a preview of things to come, I guess. Touched down in Christchurch with a bang and bada and a boom, and has not looked back since.

[Except for the baggage, of course.]

Now, the journey can begin. The whining stops, the winning commences. It is true; this place was made in heaven. I’ve seen the tags.

Now wait for the pictures.

Yo! Flying down to New Zealand today, y’all!

Memo to mad scientists: please invent the teleporter soon…

I do plan to blog my way out of NZ too, so stay glued, superglued and gorillaglued. You might read about how I crash into oncoming traffic, or become mates with a cool penguin. Come what may, it must surely be worth hearing about!

Peace forever and see yous later, diamond dogs!

Nokia’s worst nightmare turned to reality yesterday, when Apple finally released the iPhone. As for me, I think I’m releasing buying hormones.

If you know me, and have used a mobile phone by another brand than Nokia, I am very sure I have slagged it off at one point or another, most usually several times, and probably rather harshly. I was the Noksta No. 1, always defending the Finnish export, never intending to get another brand.
Easy it was, too, as the connecting people reigned supreme over second-rate quality and craftsmanship, not to mention giving everyone a lesson in classic design.

Then the King of Finland, Jorma Ollila, left the company, and now some guy called OP Coleslaw is running Nokia. Ok, that is Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo for you, but who cares - and knows? Besides, he has the look of a man permanently chewing on sour coleslaw!
Then, times two, Nokia forgot about sacred Scandinavian design. They went from sleek and timeless to Chris Bangle - bloated and tasteless.

By now, I was planning a departure. Yesterday, I saw the future.

Egosensibly, it even starts with an “i” - which must mean “me“.

[And eventually also "mine".]

How often do you get a car for free? Never, you say? Well, littlest bro JFP [pronounced JeyEffPey - see, it has to rhyme with JFK!] just got almost six meters of American steel and chrome for just that - FREE! While it most certainly is a display of great and unbridled generosity, I’m inclined to believe he must have done something right in an earlier life.

Behold the street-blocking V8 behemoth:

Dudes and dudettes, that is how they made apple pie in Detroit in 1984!

[I wonder if my Porsche fits in the back of it?]

Anyhoo, this oil tanker goes by the name of Chevrolet Caprice Station Wagon, and it is the softest ride south of the water bed. I just want to eat jelly donuts in it every time I see it.

“Rollin’, in my 5.0“… the car may be in need of a little gentle TLC right now, but the quasi-legendary message of Vanilla Ice is undoubtedly the more appropriate cap-off.

Take a very deep bow. Set off thunderous applause. Play a fantastic fanfare on your trumpet. Today, my little brother MICKE turns 30. Three-ouu! So, if you see him cross the street, take his arm. Save the elderly.

Happy birthday, best friend!

Last year, the police in Eskilstuna, Sweden, stopped a 23-year old man driving under the influence. The police also found he was carrying a knife. The man tried to escape by running away. The police caught up to him. There was a bit of a ruckus. The man tried to hit the police.

Later, one sued the other. And here, the particular Swedishness of it all enters the event. Lo: the 23-year old man - the violent drunk! - successfully sued the policeman for calling him a “jävla fitta“…

Candyass Sweden makes me so fucking angry. Uuuh, look, I swore too… so sue me, suckers!