Hi there KJ - It is freeeeezing everywhere in Scandinavia! Enjoyed my two days in Helsinki very much; kind of another blast from the past... things look and feel quite Baltic (duh!) and Soviet-Union-ish, so to speak. Oslo is another beauty, but far more westernized than the Finnish stuff. I'll probably not be a frequent traveller to this spot - almost as expensive as Japan, absolutely over-the-top ridiculous! Small Whopper menu is about USD 12, the tall Starbucks latte goes for about USD 8, and we won't even talk about beer and such... Arrived in Lillehammer yesterday and for all the 1994 Olympics hype it is actually a rather disappointing little town. Continued on to Hafjell and its fantastic ski areas - woohoo! I really am beginning to get the hang of it; nothing but black stuff is off limits these days. Awesome weather today; can hardly walk after snowboarding all day and hanging with the Eurovision Winter Games crowd. Well, I won't have to walk too much during the next few days, anyway - 3 hours by bus to Oslo, then about 27 hours (and two short skipped nights) via London and Singapore and Melbourne to Hobart... a measly eastbound jet lag, who cares!

Hola Señor Frog... greetings from an upbeat and recovering Madrid. It was quite emotionally draining to visit the many oceans of flowers and candles in and around Atocha station and throughout the city but it seems that the place is coping quite well. People are living their usual spring-time lives in bars, cafes and terrazas as good as they can. What a great advantage that I don't have to visit any tourist sites anymore - simply diving into the city life is an amazing medicine. Easter weekend might be best in Paris but Madrid and its parks and avenues are my hands-down favorite for spring-time feelings. I've been walking probably more than 10 miles every day; there are just so many new things to discover here, as always. I'll be back in June for another week, so leaving for Helsinki tomorrow is that much easier. Ooops, yeah, casual note on the side - yet another addition to my little relaxed itinerary here: I felt like three nights in Finnland before heading to Oslo, so here we go. It's that easy, if you haven't noticed yet.

Hola Junior... well, what can I say... I am flying to Madrid tomorrow and it will be good to see my friends after all that has happened there last week. Fortunately, all of them are doing well but some do have people they know that were injured in the attacks. I will spare you another rant of mine on this shit - I really couldn't care less if it was ETA or Al-who or whatever. All that counts is that some idiots exploit open democratic societies for their issues and that they deserve nothing but some of our own aggravated violence to death in return. No compassion with their issues, no mercy with their families and children, just nuke'em. And if I hear one more Christian asking for crosses in schools I will carry a cross myself and hit them with it. And if I hear one more Muslim asking to carry their head covers in school I will personally undress them and strangle the shit out of them with their desert scarves. Buddhists seem to be cool so far - they shut up and retreat into their Zen temples and leave me alone. And ETA? Or IRA? Or RAF? No laws, no mercy - that's how they play the game, so let's play it as well and kill them whenever we see one of them - boom, boom, game over. *** Oh well, by the way, I just spent one otherwise fantastic week of snowboarding in Italy. Austria was just no fun and not very accommodating so we ended up crossing the Alps yet again to refresh the good old memories of Livigno. Tons of awesome snow and I am actually beginning to get pretty good at this snowboarding thing!

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!