Oh yeah, Mr. KJ - Let's hope no aliens will land their UFOs in the US of A before the Bush gang has been evicted from Earth. As most of you might have heard by now, the current fiscal year specialty occupation visa cap has already been reached thanks to the current government's inaptitude and unwillingness to extend the larger limits in effect for the past three years. Long story short, I will likely add another full travel rotation around this planet, as I am now in a position to expand my plans for several months. Here's the rough guide:

02/27-03/02 Melbourne, Australia Run-up to the Formula 1 week.
03/03-03/14 Austria Snowboarding sans girls but plus plenty of Apres-Ski.
03/15-03/21 Madrid, Spain Spring time in my fav place.
03/22-03/27 Oslo, Norway And more fun in the snow - Hafjell, Lillehammer.
03/29-04/01 Tasmania Don't hide, I will find you damn Tazzie Devils!!!
04/02-04/07 Melbourne, Australia More Washbear time.
04/08-05/03 Perth, Australia Diving, flying, boarding, beaching.
05/04-05/11 Darwin, Australia Northern Territories and Kakadu.
05/12-05/16 Sydney, Australia Gotta do it again before leaving Oz.
05/17-06/03 South Africa And I mean that part of the continent - Jo'burg, Cape Town, Durban, Lesotho, Mocambique, Swasiland, Victoria Falls.
06/04-06/30 Central Africa Kenya (Nairobi, Mt. Kilimanjaro, safaris, Mombasa), Tanzania (Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam), Mauritius, Seychelles, Uganda (see those mountain gorillas!)
07/01-07/04 Berlin, Germany And again making mama happy.
07/05-07/12 Iceland Check out that gene pool!
07/13-07/20 Friedland, Germany More mama (and two birthdays).

Note that the following dates are made up for now as yet another new round-the-world ticket:
07/21-07/28 Israel Land route to Sinai.
07/29-08/07 Egypt Pyramids, Nile, and Red Sea diving.
08/08-08/15 Dubai, Emirates Sparkle with the seven stars.
08/16-08/23 Nepal Close-up inspection of 8k stuff.
08/24-08/31 Southern India Testing Bollywood.
09/01-09/05 Sri Lanka Or Ceylon. Or whatever. Or tea.
09/06-09/13 Maldives Diving and islands, here we go again.
09/14-09/28 Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam Chasing Red Khmer.
09/29-[open] Caribbean Visa stand-by. Under palm trees, of course.

Kia Orana, dearest Junior Frog - finally back in Internet worlds (Melbourne's fabulous St. Kilda beach area at this time) but I just have to give my report on the Cooks. Life is not measured by how many times you breathe but by how many times it takes your breath away. Or so goes the saying once you have reached the Aitutaki atoll, an impossibly beautiful and large lagoon with 15 fringing reef motus, about 200 kilometers north of Rarotonga (which, I should add, isn't the shabbiest place on earth, either). Being there is one thing but I had to get there in style first - riding shotgun in the cockpit of an Air Rarotonga Saab 340 and making good use of ample video and picture ops. Attended one of the fabled Island Nights at the Blue Nun - those Maoris can dance up a storm! (And all those hot chicks must lack the L5 the way the shake their booty.) Went on a lagoon tour on the Titi-ai-tonga, a 70-feet Polynesian vaka, to get my passport processed on One Foot Island, before wading for half an our through the shallow lagoon waters to my private little piece of heaven- nothing but about 50 meters of sand in the middle of the Pacific. Back on Rarotonga I actually passed the test for the local drivers license - what a souvenier! Cruised around on scooters for several days before catching my flight to Auckland and then on to Melbourne. Absolutely awesome here at this time of the year - it's Formula 1 Grand Prix week... truckloads of stunning pitlane babes all over town posing for pictures with beer-drinking dudes (yes, including myself). Lounging on St. Kilda beach today and parading along the picturesque streets - they must have 100s of cafes and restaurants here. Tonight it's Aussie Rules Football time at the Telstra Dome!

Hello again from Kiwi country, dear frog! Finished my Kiwi Experience circuit on the southern island and now en route to Rarotonga and Aitutaki of the Cook Islands. The Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers weren't that impressive after having seen the Perito Moreno in Patagonia last November but I still managed a long and picturesque hike almost all the way up to Roberts Point. Wanaka was quite the beautiful place, albeit clearly more geared towards winter frolicking than summer sports. Queenstown, on the other hand, is just wonderfully nestled between the high mountains of the Southern Alps and 100% tourism. There are bungy jump and river jet operators left and right, heaps of restaurants, bars and nightclubs that are all busy every day and night of the week, and everything else tourists might ask for. Mind you, though, that NZ is far from an affordable place to vacation these days - pricing for all activities ranges between 130 and 280 Kiwi dollars a pop, hardly encouraging me to do something every day. I did go for an all-day trip out to milford sound, though, and what a spectacular experience this turned out to be... can you say "The Perfect Storm"?!? I didn't get to see most of the amazing scenery other than on postcards but how about getting stuck in the outer reaches of the sound in gale-force 180 km/h winds with rainfalls turning all sheer rock walls left and right into countless waterfalls? We couldn't get back into the harbor for several hours due to high waves and visibility blocked by huge drifting waterfall mist! Nature's power at its best, this being the second wettest spot on earth (after a central area in the Amazon rain forest), we even had snow coming down on us at the Homer tunnel entrance. Imagine - over 8,000 millimeters of rain per year (that's over 315 inches for you metrically challenged), rain on over 300 days of every year! Back in Queenstown, we saw snow-capped mountain tops of The Remarkables range and read about the floods on the northern NZ island... what a summer! Time for me to get back onto some Pacific islands... so here I go to the Cooks.

Hey Mr. KJ - Kia Ora, Aotearoa (Hello and Welcome from the Land of the Long White Cloud - a.k.a. New Zealand) - whoa, those three days in Sydney blew right past me! I just love that place, even though most of my time on this first stop-over was spent doing administrative leg work, struggling with all sorts of airline bookings. More on that later, if you care; for now it's Hobbit land for me!!! Flew into Christchurch (no, this name doesn't sit well with me) and went on a day trip to Akaroa today, the only kind-of-French settlement in New Zealand. Very beautiful, very quiet, not as chic as it should be for claiming to be francais. One more day around here, then going via Arthur's Pass across the Southern Alps for a night at Lake Mahinapua, on to Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, and then via Haast and Wanaka to Queenstown, self-declared adventure capital of the world.

Bula, KJ! One last flash-like stop-over in Nadi on my way to 3 super-busy days in Sydney. Just returned today from Taveuni - just on the opposite side of this island, on a little peninsula extending from Vanua Levu, I have spent a few wonderful days in typical tropical paradise fashion. There, in Vanaira Bay, I took the plunge with the Dolphin Bay Divers Retreat to witness one of nature's hidden spectacles: The breath-taking Rainbow Reef and its spectacular Great White Wall dive. Oh, by the way, there were sharks and sea snakes and all other sorts of impressive creatures - but that reef sure is something else. A small tunnel takes you down to the beginning of this seemingly snow-covered sheer wall, which begins to drop into the abyss at about 25 meters of depth, then you drift along the wall's upper edge until rising through another tunnel that is one joyful aquarium full of every kind of colorful fish minding their business between poisonous anemones and countless other soft corals. All in all, I ended up with 16 new dives in my log book during these past few weeks here! Of course, all the other fun stuff came along with these, too - awesome pictures of sunrises and sunsets, and I cannot remember just how many photos I have taken so far of coconut palm trees hanging over snow-white beaches lapped by azure-colored warm waters. I sure will be back here one day - but for now I can look forward to my little jet-excourse from New Zealand to Rarotonga and Aitutaki of the Cook Islands two weeks from now. If you ever wanted to know where they take all these pictures - find the Aitutaki atoll in your favorite atlas. Gotta run, as usual, but I am signing off for now well-tanned and happy!

[Mr. Junior adding an auto entry] He did it again!!! Ba-na-nas!!! My boss thought that yet another few additions to the itinerary were appropriate, so let me share them with you:

02/03-02/07 Taveuni, Fiji As said earlier, a little more white beaches, palm trees and even more diving!
02/08-02/11 Sydney, Australia Gotta love this.
02/12-02/20 New Zealand It's a deal! Christchurch to Auckland by car - Frodo, here I come to Middle-Earth!
02/19-02/26 Cook Islands Yup, had to do another dateline jump - can't leave the south-pac without visiting the number-one atolls.
02/27-03/04 Melbourne, Australia Parking for a few days before...
03/05-03/13 Austria Snowboarding and fun - St. Anton?
03/14-03/21 Spain Back to Madrid!
03/22-03/29 Norway More snowboarding and fun at Hafjell in Lillehammer.
03/30-05/03 Perth, Australia Sailing, diving and wind surfing.
05/03-[open] Africa Lions, giraffes, all that stuff.

Last hello from Samoa, Junior! After a long day in Apia, the slightly Americanized main town on Upolu, I took off on my Green Turtle adventure around both islands. Went past stunning damage areas by cyclone Heta three weeks ago; entire forests shredded to green mulch with only the palm trees rising again after the storm is over (did you know they actually bend all the way to the floor, if necessary?). A few waterfalls, some freshwater pools in the rain forest, more and more awesome white beaches - never can seem to get enough of those it seems. Spent a night in a wonderful beach fale, one of these traditional open houses here on Samoa, and went on two dives the next day out of Senalei Reef Resort, the ritziest place around. Over to Savaii island by scary huge and old ferry to spend the next night in one of Lusia's Lagoon Chalets - awesome over-the-water high fale. Interestingly, I had a great all-evening discussion with the husband of the owner, who kept on selling me his biggest pride - Miss Samoa 2003, currently on duty in Auckland. Very funny! Did the famous rainforest canopy walkway, a fairly safe suspension bridge high up into a banyan tree, and went to shoot coconuts out of the greatest blowholes in the South Pacific, where huge waves crash unrestrained by a barrier reef into hardened lava. Big scare... no more ferries today ("mechanical trouble"), I would have to miss my flights!!! Fortunately, I remembered a few greenbacks in my wallet for just these emergencies (there *is* something good about the U.S.!), and after a little greasing I mysteriously received boarding pass 1-A for the last Polynesian island hopper back to Apia. Here I am, enjoying the service at Aggie Grey's one more evening, before flying back to Fiji and on to Taveuni this night at 3:50am... and another date switch!

Malo e Leilei from the Kingdom of Tonga, Junior! I just arrived on Samoa last night, after quite the turbulent flight from Tongatapu to Apia, but I did want to drop a few notes on my stay on the Ha'apai islands. Visisted the royal palace gardens in Nuku'alofa before taking a Royal Tongan Airlines DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter plane for the hop over to Pangai on Lifuka island. More and more blue hues than one can possibly imagine, isolated archipelagos with snow-white beaches, coconut palm-tree forests, and the most amazing coral reefs shining through the water surface. Spent an afternoon on the rugged eastern coast to watch hermit crabs and jelly fish, took a bike up north to cross via the causeway to Foa, an even more secluded gem of an island with the smallest (12 fale) of all luxury resorts in the entire kingdom, to visit Herbert and his Happy Ha'apai Divers shop. Got stuck in Pangai because Royal Tongan had cancelled all flights to the islands for a while due to mechanical problems on one of their two aircraft - even more time to relax and to watch sunsets. Visited the famous Aggie Grey's hotel in Apia this morning, paradise home for wounded American soldiers of the Pacific Circus during WW-II, and booked all my stuff through Green Turtle eco tours for the next few days here on Upolu and Savaii.

Bula! Yowza KJ... Resurfacing today for half a day on Fiji's mainland, Viti Levu. Fiji time rocks! Went to Tai Island (aka Beachcomber) for a few days to live it up and go diving - awesome! Checked out Gotham City and its amazing bat fish, circled Charlie's Reef, explored Sherwood Forest and Yadua, where we also went ashore to analyze seasnake trails and learn how to pick and crack coconuts, with a final highlight at The Supermarket with all its sharks (white and black-tip reef sharks, gray sharks, bronze whalers, etc.) and Pleasure Point, a stunner of a group of smaller reefs. On by Yasawa Flyer to Tavewa Island for the postcard shots of white beaches with dangling palm trees and over to Nanuya Lailai for a few days in Brooke Shields' Blue Lagoon. Life has been rough! Today I treated myself to something special - a floatplane ride back over all these islands and reefs aboard a Turtle Airways De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver. Your jaws will drop once you can see the pictures with the views from the plane! Jetting to Tonga tomorrow, with another fun plane ride to a remote island group coming up there.

Bula Kermit! Just a few *minor* (hahaha!!!) additions to my short-term schedule with some serious dateline hopping (check out the date overlaps or gaps):

01/14-01/21 Mamanuca and Yasawa island groups, Fiji White beaches, palm trees and diving.
01/22-01/27 Tonga White beaches, palm trees, diving. You get the idea.
01/26-01/30 Samoa Let me think... Aah, yes - white beaches, palm trees, even more diving.
02/01-02/02 Coral Coast, Fiji Hmmm... oh yeah, white beaches, palm trees, maybe no diving.
02/03-02/07 Taveuni, Fiji Yeah, let's round this thing off with a little more white beaches, palm trees and even more diving!
02/08-02/11 Sydney, Australia Gotta love this.
02/12-02/19 New Zealand Well, the planning, as they say.
02/20-02/26 Melbourne-Tasmania-Adelaide, Australia Or so goes the route.
02/27-[open] Perth, Australia Details later. I've heard those rumors about inserting a second, counter-rotating RTW ticket via Caribbean, Europe, and the Emirates...