I’m looking for a blogger in the 18-30s age group who fancies spending 30 days on the road travelling through NSW Australia in March with other bloggers from around the world. You’ll have an all-expenses paid trip, including flights, accommodation, meals, crazy activities and we might even be able to eke out a little daily stipend.

You’ll be required to write a blog post each day of between 300-500 words and take great photos to go with your stories.

If this sounds like you, email me megan@bloggeratlarge.com with a brief bio about yourself and send me a link to a couple of examples of your writing that I can forward on to the relevant people.

Good luck!

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Our front entrance - Villa 31

There are two Club Med resorts in Mauritius, this tiny dot of an island east of Madagascar. One is this 5-trident (star) and the other is more family focused and 4-trident. (More about that in another blog).

We were picked up by a Club Med rep who drove us about an hour across the island to our resort. It was dark when we landed, but the streets were busy with people cycling along, chatting on corners, sugar cane growing in the fields.

This Albion property has three classes of rooms – Club, Deluxe and Suites, in the main grounds set amongst 27 hectares of gardens and lakes edged by the white sands of the Indian Ocean.

The main resort pool from the bar...

If you don’t already know this, Club Med resorts are all-inclusive, so guests in the entire resort – including us posh villa girls – get to dine at the extensive daily buffet or book in at the a la carte restaurant (Le Phare) for dinner, watch the evening shows (the Michael Jackson tribute and clouds of dry ice with about 25 staff was great fun), get as sporty as you like with tennis, golf (including lessons with the pro), archery, even trapeze. On the water there are catamarans, snorkeling and swimming.

Shhhh - the Zen pool

You can pay extra and go scuba diving. There is also a spa, but treatments are extra. There’s a main pool surrounded by deck chairs in front of the main lobby/bar area and also a quiet adults’ only infinity Zen Pool area with a restaurant and bar where no cell phones or yelling is allowed.

The master bath with outdoor and indoor showers

And the kids clubs. Don’t forget the kids’ activities. I’ve heard it said that some parents hardly see their kids because they love the activities so much they just want to hang out there each day. And the problem is…?

Oh and did I say that free bubbles from 6-8pm tends to be our evening kick-off drink of choice. That’s after we’ve had a few cheeky afternoon mojitos – all part of the all-inclusive deal.

But back to the villas. So here at Albion Villas, you get to be as involved in the crazy fun Club Med scene as much or as little as you like. We chose a modicum of involvement – usually around lunchtime, happy hour and dinner. The reason being? We had our own pool and our own butler, Raj. We also had a pool villa (or summer house, I liked to call it) with a swinging day bed that had a habit of lulling one off on an afternoon siesta.

Breakfast in the summer house

It’s also where Raj served our breakfast each morning – hot pastries, eggs which ever way we liked them and by the end of our days we’d realized we only needed to ask and anything was at our service. Pancakes with maple syrup and bananas, with bacon on the side please, was breakfast on our final morning.

The villas are privately owned (got a cool €1 million?) and managed by Club Med. Owners get 6 weeks a year to spend either here, or at other Club Med properties around the world (there are about 80). They come in 2, 3 and 4 bedrooms. We had 3 rooms for 4 of us. Two of the rooms are masters with four-poster super king beds, a bathtub with garden views, an outdoor shower for coming in from the pool – and of course an indoor shower for any other time. French doors open from both suites onto the pool area and in the middle is the enormous living/dining room with a 2-story ceiling.

Our living room with bedrooms on each side

The 3^rd bedroom has twin beds that can be joined into a king, its own ensuite bathroom with a shower and a loo. There’s also a third mattress so if the kids are coming, they can all bunk in here.

Then there’s the kitchen with an espresso maker than even I could master but which is taken over by Raj from about 6am till 11 and then again from about 4.30pm till 8. Plus a laundry which we utilized after buying powder from the boutique in the main resort.

And here’s another reason to book your 60th birthday shenanigans here – free daily access to the 18-hole Tamarina golf course nearby.

It’s a hike to get here from New Zealand, but the 11-hour direct flight from Melbourne on Air Mauritius makes it not unrealistic.

For more info about the Villas and Club Med resort, click here >>>

Capital city Port Louis

Where is Mauritius?

I had no idea either but Mauritius is a tiny volcanic dot of an island in the Indian Ocean about 850km east of Madagascar. Ok, that probably doesn’t help either. Madagascar is a bigger dot also in the Indian Ocean to the east of Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania. Is that any better? If not and you really care that much, click here for a world map, then we can proceed.

It is surrounded by coral reefs (protecting it from tsunamis) and jagged peaks rise up out of the lush green that makes up the centre of this 2000 sq km island, home to 1.2 million people. It sounds big but the coastline is in fact only 177km around. It’s not hard to get around, but traffic jams are common – unhelped by the bus then truck break downs and a fire taking hold on the side of the road due to a cigarette butt, said our taxi driver as we made our way up the coast one morning. The airport is in the lower south east and in less than an hour we had driven across the island to Albion, in the north west, past fields of sugar cane and plowed ground for potatoes and onions, swerving around cyclists threading their way along the narrow roads with steep ditches on either side to cope with the rainy season.

A little beach at Grand Bay

How do you get to Mauritius?

I’m glad you asked. From New Zealand, you fly to Melbourne or Sydney and take Air Mauritius direct. Bring a big book of sudokus and a couple of trashy novels because the flight is a cool 11.5 hours and the inflight entertainment is rather lacking. A few movies play on rotation, most in French and none that I’d heard of. Fortunately for us, the back of the plane was not very full so I was grateful for the 3 lime green seats to sprawl out on and the complimentary and colour coordinated eye mask and bed socks.

What about money?

They use the Mauritian rupee, but like all travel to exotic places like this, I wait until I arrive to draw out my currency from an ATM either at the airport, in town or from the resort if there is one. But to be honest, from what I’ve seen of the shopping, there’s not a lot outside of the touristy souvenirs that’ll grab you, apart from summer dresses and if you’re a shoe addict you’ll slow down past a few windows.

A typical day in Mauritius

A little history lesson

The local Mauritian people speak French and Creole and English is also widely spoken. Indians have settled here, as well as Africans and with a tug-o-war history between Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch and French until the Brits captured it in 1810 and used it as a military base. The main tourist group (behind South Africans who can fly here in 3 hours) are the French. Although I might be biased as I’m staying at Club Med Albion Villas*, which is a French resort. (More about that in the next post). Mauritius became independent from the UK in 1968.

Mauritius’ main claim to fame as far I am concerned is it was home to the flightless dodo – made extinct when the Dutch polished the last one off in the 17th century. So I now have a little wooden dodo in my possession.

The shops at Grand Bay

Other interesting Mauritian facts

Power points are the 2-prong round ones that are used in Asia. (Wiki says 3-prong UK plugs, but I have not seen that kind of socket. However, disclaimer: I have not visited every property in Mauritius). There is a winter and summer, or rainy and dry season. It’s typically hot and dry from May to November and humid and rainy from November back around to May. They make their fortune out of sugar, tourism and textiles, but as with the rest of the world right now, it’s tough out there and sugar prices have dropped considerably. Much of the future of Mauritius probably lies in tourism.

* means posh

Read my review here of the Club Med Albion Villas >>>

Pic from Dirk Groeger

This post is for those who have a bit of recessionary dosh left over to throw into the air and who can think of nothing more dreamy than skiing on unadulterated, virgin fluff where no teenager has dared to blaze a zig-zag. According to The New Zealand Adventure Guide, you can expect to get 5 to 9 runs in per day and probably with lunch included.

Here’s who to try for the ultimate skiing adventure on South Island slopes:

Harris Mountains Heli-Ski – exclusive access to slopes stretching from Queenstown to Aoraki/Mt Cook, these guys will find the terrain to suit your ability. Start with a scenic flight, then choose 3, 4 or 7-runs plus lunch. www.heliski.co.nz

Heli-Ski Queenstown + Over the Top have joined forces to offer ski tours away from the school holiday throng. Book a 3 or 5-run package including gourmet lunch. www.flynz.co.nz

Methven Heliski offers multi-day trips to 3 mountain ranges and over 250 runs for intermediate to advanced skiers. www.methvenheli.co.nz

Southern Lakes Heliski has been flying keen skiers to the top of the world for 20 years. They have exclusive rights to to some mountains as well as the other ranges available. Gourmet lunch is included. (They also do heli-weddings… now that would be novel!) www.heliworks.co.nz

Wilderness Heliski is the only company offering heli-skiing and heli-boarding in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park and some terrain runs can be 1000m vertical! Lunch and transfers are included.  www.wildernessheli.co.nz

Chess, the great global game

It didn’t matter that I couldn’t speak Bahasa Indonesia to the bunch of guys playing chess outside a little snack shop, and it also didn’t matter that my ‘helpers’ couldn’t speak English, nor that my chess skills were average to say the least.

“Eat him!” shouted the Indonesian man standing beside me giving animated advice as the group of onlookers grew.  That phrase was about the extent of his English, so given that I was a chess novice with no better idea, I did. I shifted my bishop and ate my opponent’s queen. A bold move, but one that brought cheers from the crowd as clearly one of the sharpest players in the game slapped his hand to his forehead and took another drag of his cigarette across the formica table and I felt like the winner even though we’d only just begun.

I was sitting outside a café, if you could call it that, on the Indonesian island of Bintan, about an hour by ferry south of Singapore on the South China Sea. It was more like someone’s little kitchen really with a window from which to serve passersby. A small group of water taxi drivers waiting for their next fare were watching a game when I wandered over in search of a drink.

I asked the lady through the window for a beer and got my camera out to snap the busy scene. Within moments a chess board was opened in front of me and I was arranging plastic players while trying to explain my limited chess skills via hand movements and charades. It was useless, I was surrounded by eager assistants and so the duel began: four advisors and me against the man with the fag.

Bintan is the largest of the Riau Islands and its resorts serve as the weekend escape for families from nearby Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia who come seeking respite on the beaches that encircle the jungle interior. The famed Komodo dragon lives here, but I didn’t see one, which was just as well as it most likely would have eaten me. They can smell their prey up to 2km away, I’m told.

Or a game of chess at Club Med

Club Med, one of about ten hotels dotted along the white sandy beach lapped by water so clear I could see my feet until I was over my head, is tantalisingly dangerous with all the food, all the drinks, all the relaxing time one can handle, all for the one flat price. And for the first couple of days I spun into a gluttonous frenzy until common sense presided and I knew I would be back tomorrow.

But curious as to what life outside the manicured lawns and 24/7 attention was like, I took a taxi to a wee village nearby for a spot of shopping where I snaffled up a pair of woven flax jandals. The humidity was causing havoc to my winter-white blistered feet and these worked wonders. Another driver met us and took the small posse of inquisitive kiwis to the fishing village of Tanjung Uban where I was to meet the locals chewing the fat and find myself playing chess in the noonday sun.

The cool cats of Tanjung Uban

The temperature soared around 35C as I first walked along the rickety wooden pier edged with family homes on stilts. Children played in makeshift sandpits and when I stopped to take photos, their mothers told them to smile and wave at the lady with the camera stuck to her face, or words to that effect.

I walked through an open-air café where a four-year old was throwing a tantrum. His mother didn’t look too bothered as he hurled anger and coke cans around while bemused patrons shouted encouragement. Within minutes he was in tears on his mother’s lap. Ahh kids are the same wherever you go.

Secret boy stuff

Behind the café two ten-year old boys squatted on their haunches fishing for tiny morsels from a line wound around a stick of wood. They were being so secretive I wondered what it was they were catching. Important boy stuff I supposed, and left them to it. Further along, a group of teenage boys were holding a somersault diving competition and called me over. Posing together like a soccer team, I took their pictures then one by one they flipped, flopped and flung themselves into the sea. I wanted to do the same as the heat weighed like a heavy eiderdown on a January afternoon. But decided a nice cool beer would do the trick.

The main street is lined with run-down shops selling shoes, plastic buckets, mops and motorbike repair shops. In fact there are so many motorbikes whizzing around that this would be the most lucrative trade, should I want to start a business here. But deciding on more important matters like where I might get a drink, I found myself at the game of chess in front of the tiny shop almost tucked out of sight and with the help of my panel of advisors (and a little grace from my opponent who would question my sillier moves) I ‘ate’ more pieces and won the match amid much cheering and high-fiving.

Check out the latest packages at Club Med Bintan if you fancy an all-inclusive luxury holiday.

The incredible wonder of nature - Finland

Travel operator and Nordic specialist 50 Degrees North has just released its Aurora Borealis (for that is what this phenomena is really called) brochure with 8 great ways to see the Northern Lights in 2011/12.

Of course, you could book your trip and the weather be so shite and rainy that you don’t actually see them, but the brochure displays a handful of trips tailored to maximise the chances to see the Northern Lights. The trips are mostly short to suit those who are already in the area and want to scoot up north for an experience of a lifetime.

The Aurora trips also include a short excursion to the ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi (Northern Sweden), tours to the Lofoten archipelago and Tromsø in the far north of Norway, Finnish Lapland (to see Santa), Super Jeep trips in Iceland and a trip to Kangerlussuaq in Greenland.

The northern winter 2011/12 is predicted to display some of the most intense occurrences of Aurora Borealis in over a decade, as the 11 year cycle of the sun comes to its peak. The main cause of the Northern Light is the number of dark spots on the surface of the sun, i.e. the more spots the better chance of Auroras. These natural displays of green, white and purple light occur most frequently in the Polar Regions in a 2500 km radius off the geomagnetic pole. The zone with the most intense sightings of Aurora Borealis extends over Lapland in northern Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia. As it happens; this is 50 Degrees North’s specialist area.

When to go?

November to April are generally the best for observing the Northern Lights, and nights closest to full moon should be avoided as this brightens the sky. The Northern Light emits more concentrated colours and longer experiences on the eve of a new moon.  New Moon Northern Winter 2011/12: 27 Sep, 26 Oct, 25 Nov, 24 Dec, 23 Jan, 21 Feb, 22 Mar, 21 Apr

Jump onto www.fiftydegreesnorth.com for more information. To get a free 50 Degrees North – Aurora Borealis brochure e-mail: info@fiftydegreesnorth.com.

Can you make out the teeny people on the water's edge?

In Livingstone Zambia you can go out to Livingstone Island and when the dry season begins and the mighty Victoria Falls (twice the height of Niagara at 110m) dwindle you can jump off the edge of the roaring falls of mist into this jacuzzi called the Devil’s Pool.

It was accidentally discovered by a fisherman who no doubt is still off giving thanks.

Me? I’d rather eat the guide’s shorts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpr4HTVl9dY

It’s insane and vomit-inducingly scary to even watch, let alone try. I chickened out…

But have a look at this group of mad French tourists who had walked (holding onto a rope handily stretched across the rocks about 10 metres from the roaring precipice) with 2 guides, to do just that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpr4HTVl9dY

Machu Picchu hides under the clouds

The Hiram Bingham luxury train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes has also closed and is not expected to be operational until June.

But authorities have been working round the clock to open a new route which should be completed by March combining paved and unpaved roads as well as rail links.

The new route will take longer, between 7.5 – 9 hours from Cusco instead of 4, and will pass through Sacred Valley, Ollantaytambo, Malaga, Santa Teresa and Aguas Calientes.

Travel wholesaler South America Tourism Office (SATO) says that Machu Picchu is currently closed to the public and it is not guaranteed it will be re-opened by April, but they do stress there is plenty more to see in Peru, including more archeological sites that you may not have seen otherwise.

Robert Nesta Marley sure came from humble surrounds. There’s still no running water in the buildings around here, the locals all pile over the reservoir with buckets. The dreadlocked one lies entombed in a mausoleum on his former back yard. There is pretty much nothing else here, but still pilgrims come to contemplate life – his and theirs – and smoke dope.

I was staying at Sans Souci resort in Ocho Rios for my brother’s wedding and no one could be bothered joining me the next day for the 3 hour round trip to Nine Mile, so I negotiated a rate of US$100 with a taxi driver and as Bob serenaded us I watched the manicured lawns of nearby resorts become overgrown shantys.

We drove through Fern Gully, a 5 km incline which once was a rushing river. Rickety huts nestled into the side of the road stocked with handcrafts including large and proud phallic sculptures that tourists stop at to photograph – for a tip of course. Whenever a cruise ship is in town, stalls and shops spring open and its baskets, Rastafarian tea cosies, gigantic conch sells and freshly cooked jerk chicken and pork as far as the eye can see. But today it is just me and my singing driver, Mr Collins, weaving past the locals walking along the road in their Sunday best.

The drive is normally an hour and a half, but with next to no traffic over the rugged countryside, we pulled up at Bob’s guarded gates in an hour and beeped the horn – which apparently is the password for dreadlocked men to put down their joints and spring into action. The Rastafarian “holy herb” is sold by the plastic, shopping-sized bag.

Bob Marley's mausoleum, Nine Mile, Jamaica

A wooden building stuffed with souvenirs in red, green, yellow and black is the main entrance and where you buy your admission ticket to see the buildings through the gate. Posters, beach towels and t-shirts hang on racks and plastic ashtrays and knick knacks crowd a tressle table while Bob croons through the speakers.

I paid $10 for Benjy to show me round. “This is where Bob was born,” he said with a glazed look in his eyes pointing to a building behind a wall. “No we can’t go in there, it’s still the family home.” It turns out Bob’s mother, Ciddy was living there but she has since passed away.

We came across a bar where Mr Collins parked himself in front of a TV playing Bob’s life story. A man hanging over the wall offered us joints for $5. But I could just picture the outcome of sniffer dogs in Miami detecting traces of ganja in my carry-on luggage!

There are two tiny buildings where Bob actually lived. Three others have been built to feed tourists or sell knick-knacks. About 100 metres up a grass track is a tiny two-roomed cottage and the mausoleum.

We took our shoes off as Benjy repeatedly punctuated his spaced-out narration with “respect” and sang songs that Bob wrote about this place. The “Mt. Zion Rock” behind the cottage was his meditation spot and Benjy stretched himself out on the “Rock Pillow” from “Talking Blues” and gave us a rendition.

We stepped inside the silent mausoleum filled with incense where devotees bring photographs and leave notes. A soccer ball on a table is surrounded by pictures and a guitar stands in the corner. Paintings and pictures with famous people hang on the walls and his marble tomb is draped in fabric as the sun danced through lead-light windows depicting elements of several faiths.

In 1977 Bob found he had cancer in his big toe after an injury. Doctors recommended it be removed but he refused citing it was against his Rastafarian beliefs. It spread to his liver, stomach and eventually his brain. He died in May 1981 at the age of 36 leaving a legacy of music that has more than put Jamaica on the map.