Some Reflections and Conclusions (Fish Fillets, No Wall At All)

Eight months and several words later this vast undertaking has come to an end. It is goodbye to mine and Hannah’s parents, Hannah’s grandparents, Alex Walker, Dan Pooley and my faithful subscriber Nathan Groves.

I would just like to share the results of part of the WordPress service, which provides information on what Google searches brought people to visit your blog. Here are some of my favourites:

greasy slippery surface netball courts

vw beetle swamp cooler for sale

toffee brown marlon banks

what does glastonbury 1630 clothing look

“look-atable”

“fish fillets” “no wall at all”

I have tried to make sense of these, even googling the terms myself but have made little headway.

I have literally only just realised I can write my blogs in ‘Visual’ mode, which allows me to write in a full-screen mode instead of the tiny window usually available, easily add pictures like the one above, do things like align bits in the centre of the page, do pointless things and change the colour of the text.

See you soon.

Brownout

Seems Like End Times Are Here

“The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.” – Leon Blum

And so, after our bus crash we were collected by my uncle David who took us to the Bible Institute in Betijoque where he is the director and where they live. It is a large site of maybe 10 acres reclaimed from the wild Jungle. There are a number of buildings where staff live and a large building used for teaching and housing students/more staff. It is in an apartment in the large building where my uncle and aunt David and Chris live. We chatted until about 3am before going to bed in the apartment we’d been given to ourselves! In the morning we got up at 10:30am (10:00am Colombian time) I braced myself for a cold shower but ended up dancing underneath its scalding water – as it was late morning the sun had been heating the water for hours. The day was spent slowly recognizing pains from the crash which were slowly making themselves apparent. Hannah’s most obvious were a bruised shoulder preventing her lifting her arm, bruised legs, aching ribs and, bizarrely, a persistent cough… Mine were a headache, bruised knees and a bruised shoulder. Chris served popcorn for supper!

The next day was Father’s Day. Mine was conveniently present. Church was focused on fathers (mainly the heavenly one) and all the children were called to the front to receive presents to take to them. I was even called up and given one to give to mine! All the others got a pair of shorts but even though they’d not been expecting my Dad they’d kindly rushed together a pack of oranges and wrapped it up! Brilliant. Hannah’s arm was still aching that afternoon as she’d been shaking too many hands at church. We asked David to put it in a sling for her to give it a rest. We then pinned a ‘Happy Father’s Day’ sign to it and sent a photo of her to Hannah’s Dad.

In the evening two boys living downstairs appeared to play guitar and violin (they did actually play, not just ‘appear’ to) as Dad played the piano, Chris a kind of banjo and Hannah sang. I sat in the corner overwhelmed.

David and Chris were excited to take us to a mountain a couple of hours away. They phoned a friend to check the sky was clear and we set off. Before long it was clouding over, we got to the top around lunchtime and could see approximately 10m in all directions as we stood, freezing cold in the middle of a raincloud. At the top there was a little chapel–shrine thing which contained the statue of Mary as predicted but unexpectedly accompanying her what appeared to be Charlie Chaplin in a suit and bowler hat. I thought it must have been the dizzying altitude playing tricks (we were 4,200 metres up) but it turned out to be a local doctor from the 1920s who they now idolise. Wonderfully there was also a restaurant-bar-shop-lounge at the top with a big open fire in the middle of the room which Chris spent all her time in front of. David got us some lovely thick hot chocolada. The drive back was equally as atmospheric as the drive up, passing through patches of cloud and patches where the mountains showed through their misty coverings. We stopped for the mountain people’s famous potato soup which was very buttery and coriandery. It came with wheat flour arepas which were very different – like thick tortillas. We gazed over a tribal chicken pen on the edge of a mountain meadow as Chris warmed her cheeks on the arepas. A bit further down the mountain we stopped at the house of some friends of theirs who lived in a sparsely furnished little concrete house in the clouds and were served a thin semolina with an almond flavour.

The next day we got up reasonably early to make the most of the last day of our brief stay with David and Chris. A kind lady from the church had invited us to her restaurant/cafe where she sold pastilitos (square samosas) which her husband made. They came with either meat, cheese or cheese and potato and were delicious. We were invited into the kitchen to watch them being made which was fun.

We continued on to a nearby village called Isnotu which claims to be the capital of all things holy… Lots of colourful shops were found here selling brightly coloured nik-naks of poor quality. Isnotu is where a church has been built to promote the case of the Charlie Chaplin doctor. The villagers all want him to be canonised by the Catholics and be recognised as a new saint. There was a large stained glass window in the church depicting the usual ethereal and distant figures but kneeling next to them a man wearing a black suit & tie and what looked like a bowler hat. He also had a rather fetching moustache. Brilliant. But sad. There were hundreds of plaques at a shrine outside paid for by the poor people who ‘experienced a healing by the doctor’s spirit’.

Back in Betijoque Dad got out of the car early to wander back taking photos of the colourful high street and its many doors, scaring the locals. David and Chris then gave us a tour of the institute site where Dad and I spent most of the time slowing everyone down as we took photos of bugs. We were then invited in for cafe con leche with one of teachers.

Dad had had the brilliant idea of waiting until sunset to visit a lake we had been going to visit earlier in the day. We set off at 5pm and had a beautiful drive through flat open fields of grass or cows or both. There were large elm-like trees isolated in the fields and but for the banana plantations, we could have been in merry old England. We spent about 45 minutes at the lake before the sun set completely. There was a concrete pier snaking 30 metres or so into the water which made a great platform from which to photograph the flaming sky. Helpfully, someone had moored a rowing boat a fair way out into the lake leaving us the perfect foreground for our pictures. The sky was home to some impressive cloud formations and exploded into bright pinks and deep purples and vibrant oranges in the clouds which curled around the horizon. It was well worth the trip. Feeling inspired, David stopped at a burger shack/kitchen by the side of the road in Betijoque. We were about to sample some of the most supreme hamburgers we probably ever will. We watched as the artist skilfully constructed them:

BREAD
TOMATO SAUCE
MAYONNAISE
POTATO BITS
BACON
FRIED EGG
CHEESE
HAM
STEAK PIECES
LETTUCE
TOMATO
BREAD

Somehow the completed masterpieces were toasted ON BOTH SIDES without falling apart. They were wrapped in paper and cut in half to give us a chance to tackle them. They were consumed there and then sitting on garden furniture by the side of the road.

Wednesday 23rd was our day to leave. It was a 45 minute drive to the airport and we left at 11am. Our flight was at 1240 so we thought we had plenty of time. As we were exiting Betijoque we came to a traffic jam. Chris turned the car around and tried a different road. This too was blocked. Thinking this was a little odd, David got out to investigate and found that there was a protest underway and the road was blocked! We would have to take the much longer route, closer to an hour and 15 minutes and we had been sitting in traffic for 15. David asked Chris to move over as he took the wheel for an hour of James Bond driving. Every questionable opportunity to overtake was taken, potholes didn’t exist and we flew to Valera. At first I was concerned about missing the flight but I quickly became desperate for the toilet and could think of nothing else as we bounced along. David magically got us there in under an hour like the action man he is. The plane ended up being half an hour late. When we reached Caracas at 2pm we had until 4.50pm to play Scrabble before our connecting flight left for Puerto Ordaz. It didn’t actually end up leaving until after 7pm. Apparently this is normal for Venezuela, too many flights are booked for the number of planes!! Anyway, we made it to Puerto Ordaz by 8pm and were collected by Luis & Joanne and two of their three children Jordan (13) and Benji (7). The other twin (Joshua (13)) was at home. The man checking we had taken the correct baggage spitefully took my boarding pass. As I am collecting all the ones we’ve been given I snatched it back but he snatched it back once more and I didn’t have the guts to go for it again.

Great to see the Jaspes again. They took us back to the house they are currently moving out of (to Betijoque). It is within a secure compound with a manned gate for the block. The house itself has a remote controlled gate and an electric fence. Apparently Puerto Ordaz is the kidnap capital of Venezuela! Hannah and I were sharing a partitioned room with Dad. It has air conditioning which is such a relief from hungry zancudos. Outside the house there are two enormous satellite dishes about 10 metres high. Apparently they aren’t for contacting aliens but he didn’t tell me what they were for…

After breakfast the following day we piled into the car, the kids in the boot and we set off for a large dam about an hour away. After watching an informative video documentary (in Spanish) from the 8Os, with an incredible soundtrack, we were told that we would not be able to visit the dam that day as no bus drivers had turned up to work. The guys behind the desk were very apologetic and gave us the DVD we’d just seen and a book about the place full of nice pictures.

A huge lunch of spaghetti bolognaise later and we set out again for a nearby park which by far made up for the disappointing dam. We wandered through the park in the sweltering sunshine, crossing streams and rivers on concrete stepping stone pathways. We had brought lots of little dog biscuits with which to feed the many fish filling the waterways but were told to save it for the ‘big ones’. It was a lovely park with nice trees and the like. Just as we thought we’d seen all it had to offer, we turned a corner and as we crossed a bridge the ground dropped to a river 50ft below us. Just opposite the bridge was a huge, noisy waterfall beginning level with us. Next to this was a long horizontally continuous waterfall at the same height, followed by a further series of smaller, disconnected falls, all looking very dramatic and beautiful. We continued wandering and found a stall selling fruit flavoured ice, like a Slush Puppy, which was extremely welcome. We then found the big fish we had been promised and gave them their food. It would have been very easy to go fishing there as 50cm beasts greedily flopped over each other at the water’s edge. All around the park there were mango trees ripe with fruit. They looked delicious and yet all the fruit seemed to be left to fall and rot. They obviously don’t know how exotic mangoes are. A little further on Benji spotted a small bright green iguana in the bright green grass next to a lake. A wonderful chase ensued with Luis, Joshua and Jordan chasing the lizard and me running after them to get a photo. It ran on the water of the lake briefly before sprinting across the path and into a pile of logs, from which Luis managed to extract it. We took turns holding and photographing it and it behaved very well. We put it on Hannah’s hat and she wandered the park as it sat in the depression of her hat looking forward as inquisitively as a lizard can look. I definitely think she needs to get a lizard to keep on her hat permanently.

That evening we ate at the mall nearby. The others had Chinese or hamburgesas, Hannah and I shared an enormous sandwich which put Subway to shame. The meat and greens bulged from its sides as we tried to squeeze it into our mouths and sauce dripped thickly onto the table. It was fun to watch Hannah’s attempts.

Friday the 25th was a lazy day of uploading photos onto Facebook until the evening when some friends came over and we all played volleyball in the back yard. Six or seven games were played, it was a lot of fun and good to get some exercise. We were even doing some things correctly by the end. Ham and cheese sandwiches were followed by cups of tea on the roof and a clapping game which my Dad instigated.

After a breakfast of bacon and eggs we set off to visit a couple of castles an hour or so away. They were mainly reconstructed using new stone and didn’t look old but there were a lot of old cannons dotted about. The castles both overlooked a wide river, presumably so they could spot marauders back in the day. It was a very hot day to be wandering around brick buildings up steep paths and once we had left the castles we bought 6 litres of coke and drank it in disposable espresso cups. On the way home we picked up a couple of spit roasted chickens which Dad treated us to. They were delicious, I was eating chicken like it came from KFC, I couldn’t stop. In the afternoon Luis showed us the print shop and some of the Bibles they have which have been translated into tribal languages. One of the New Testaments he showed us had taken 30 years to create via a lengthy process involving learning the language, writing a verse of a passage, getting a tribe member to read it back to you and explain what it says, writing it down again, reading it in English to a consultant and have them check all the key points are still covered appropriately. Something like that.

Luis took Dad and I to the mall for a look around before Dad got his haircut by a very efficient, stern looking hairdresser. More hair was taken off than he is used to but it didn’t look bad. We had toasted cheese and ham sandwiches for tea and played an intense game of Dutch Blitz. The Jaspes take DB very seriously and play like maniacs. There is little chance of beating them.

On Sunday we did not go to church as Dad had to be taken to the airport. We didn’t go with him because we were watching the shameful England/Germany match at the English secretary from Cumbria Tanya’s house. Dad and Luis could only stay until half time before departing for the airport.

The only thing done of note on Monday was a visit to half-price cinema where we watched and enjoyed Robin Hood. We were sharing (in pairs) enormous boxes of popcorn and gallons of coke. A little shopping resulted in the purchase of four postcards.

On Tuesday we woke up at 10:30am and so missed breakfast! We had mash for lunch and then phoned homes in the afternoon using the free missionary-home phone. For dinner in the evening we had delicious arepas filled with muy deliciousa black beans.

The final day of June was spent half reading books and the other half at their friend Juan’s orange farm. Once we arrived we hung off Luis’ car as he drove through the fields to reach Juan’s house. Juan is a lovely guy, very friendly, a shame we can’t talk to him properly. He gave us nice cool fresh orange juice to drink followed by black coffee. Luis and I searched for scorpions and snakes but found only tiny frogs and parrots. Later Juan showed us a hive of killer bees, but we couldn’t get very close… We all went down to the river and paddled/swam. I found a coconut wedged between some rocks and hacked it open. This is a tricky process involving the shaving/slicing off of the 2 inch thick tough fibrous outer layer using a machete to eventually reveal a hard sphere about a quarter of the size of the original fruit. A hole was carved in the top of the sphere and Hannah and I drank the surprisingly good coconut water. I could see myself surviving quite happily deserted on an island with palm trees. I hacked the coconut into two shining white halves with one expert whack of the machete. The creamy flesh was quite delicious, much nicer than a Bounty or supermarket coconut.

The next activity involved hooking mangoes on his trees using a hook ended long pole and pulling them down for a catcher to catch. Juan’s mangoes are massive. They are MANgoes. About 25cm long. Of course, being on an orange farm, we then picked bagfuls of oranges. Surrounded by so many oranges, I only saw one that was orange. Green does not mean unripe in South America. Juan showed us a snake he had killed that morning. It was only about 30cm long but looked vaguely like the extremely dangerous coral snake. Just as we were getting into the car to go home we spotted Juan’s blue and gold macaw, a beautiful creature with unbelievably boldly coloured feathers.

In the evening we had a game of hide and seek in the house with the lights off. Hannah and Joshua were the only ones who took any time to find. Hannah was hiding inside the bottom of the china cabinet where no one (except me but I was keeping quiet) had thought to look. A few games of that were followed by Spoons and Dutch Blitz.

The next day Hannah decided our passports had gone too long without causing us any trouble so she put them in the washing machine. When they came out one of the only stamps almost completely washed away were the Venezuelan entry ones. I’ll let you know if we can’t leave.

A couple of days later was the 60th birthday of Anne, one of the missionaries. We sang Happy Birthday in Spanish and English and ate a shiny cake. It was also the day of Andy Murray’s semi-final defeat at Wimbledon. I had found out that morning that we could watch it here and did so eagerly. Very strange to see such a British institution still going on so far away, all the pink bodied spectators in their attractive sun hats. The call to lunch ended my viewing, just as Nadal was securing the lead which would win him the match.

Not long after lunch we set off for a nearby river with a beach which is a weekly retreat for the family and their friends. This time it was to celebrate Anne’s birthday too. A thin strip of sand edged with shapely, shade-providing palm trees ran along the river’s edge. It was more like a lake as there was a large dam out of sight down river. At one point whilst we were there the sluice gates must have been opened as the water level began to drop rapidly.

We swam in the water, ate cake, took photos, ate watermelon. It was a very hot and still day although thunder could be heard in the distance and rain seen far behind the opposite bank. After we had been enjoying ourselves for a couple of hours it was clear the storm was heading our way. Eventually the still air was replaced by a howling wind which beat the palms, blew chairs over and whipped the water into  rolling white caps. We watched a dark cloud, tall and long, roll across the horizon and on towards us. Everyone evacuated before the intense rainfall began. We could see the lake disappearing beneath a white haze as we drove home.

After my favourite dinner of arepas and black beans Luis spontaneously decided we should go to Wendy’s and get ‘Frosties’ (a mix between a McFlurry and a milkshake). The air-con was painfully high inside and we ended up seeking shelter outside. Wendy’s and McD’s are both ridiculously expensive – £7.50+ for a normal meal deal!!!!

Back home we played a new card game called ‘Phase 10′. We started at 8.30 and finished at 11.30pm, it is an epic undertaking.

Mall investigation ensued on the weekend with a pause for coffees topped with mounds of cream and kirsch-soaked cherries.

In the afternoon on the Sunday we visited a monkeyless monkey park and ate fruit off the floor. We saw an iguana about 1.5 metres long and got close enough to it (without it bolting) that I was able to use the camera’s macro function! Good to see one after missing the one my dad saw back in Betijoque.

Luis bought some ‘monkey grapes’ and then took us to a large dam nearby. An impressive structure with lovelily landscaped grounds.

The final stop of the afternoon was the ‘Christmas Park’ complete with a 40ft Christmas tree structure, giant dilapidated candy canes, a 10ft wooden ‘troll’ and a full size windmill. It was all so Christmassy. Good fun to look around and we were treated to some tasty cake!

Marmalade sandwiches for tea. Yes!!

On our final Monday we again visited Juan Carlos’ orange farm. This time a large group of friends from his church were there and a BBQ lunch of fish and chorizo was served. Everyone went for a swim in the river running through his property and Luis, Joshua, Jordan, Jonathan (a friend staying at the Jaspe’s) and I explored up river. It had rained all morning and the current was incredibly strong. We had to use all our strength not to get washed back downstream into the hidden rocks. Lots of fun. There were vines hanging from the trees which when shaken knocked/scared large iguanas into diving headfirst into the river – a sight I would recommend you seeing.

And so, and so, this is the penultimate day (the day before the day before we fly out of Venezuela). We will pack our bags for the 50th and final time tomorrow and we will say goodbye to the lovely Jaspes as we say goodbye to the/this World Travel chapter of our lives. As we prepare ourselves for ending this part of our adventure we feel odd. It doesn’t feel like we have been gone very long at all and yet if we think back over what we’ve done, where we’ve been … safari in Africa, surfing in the Philippines, driving around New Zealand… it seems like we’ve been a lifetime away from England. Each place seems as a different trip – did we really climb Table Mountain on the same trip we ate arepas in Colombia?! What a brilliant time we’ve had, what amazing people we’ve met and what endless hospitality we’ve learned from. And oh, what a brilliant finale as this evening we head out for a meal at Pizza Hut.

On Thursday (8th) Luis will take us to the airport, we will fly to Caracas at 8:40am and wait there until 5:30pm. Assuming our washed passports get us through, our plane will take us via Madrid to London Heathrow by 10:05am on the 9th, where the gorgeous Crosses will be eagerly awaiting our appearance, clutching gifts of Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles in their trembling hands.

That is about all there is to it. I have no more to say. I feel nervous and naked and strange.

Looking back, my biggest disappointment of the trip is that Hannah never took the time to find an opportunity to use her Shewee.

Brownout.

So Heavily Goes the Chariot

I have just had my third dark coffee of the morning and it is only 10am. I AM RARING TO GO. The caps lock was initially unintentional.

And so, we returned from our jungle adventure. Steve collected us from Bogota airport and took us to another cousin Phil’s house where we ate Oreos. They have a dog called Little which looks and feels like noodles.

When we got home to Louise & Diegos I was immediately called to the back room for a game of football with the boys. I spent the rest of the evening chopping up the catfish we’d brought back with us.

The following day was Louise’s birthday. Birthdays in the Arboleda household mean a breakfast of number pancakes! Everyone is given pancakes in the shape of the number of their age. Somehow I was in charge of creating them. I did a 4, 6, 8, 10, 24, 26 and 41. The 41 was the only one I broke. I have learned so much these 8 months. A birthday feast was had at Phil & Maria’s for lunch. It involved rice, chorizo, pork steak, kidney beans, avocado, crackling, plantain, salsa and moro juice to drink. Filling!

Phil & Maria took us to their English school down the road. They introduced us to some ‘Level 2′ students and asked us to ask them some questions to help them practice their English. An awkward time but no doubt good for them. One particularly painful moment occurred when I asked a nervous looking girl if she knew the meaning of ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. As she broke out into a cold sweat Dad started singing from The Sound of Music for some reason which made matters worse.

We were next taken to visit a friend of theirs Juan who runs a model building business. They build little model Colombian house fronts and do a very good job of it. We went into the compact factory where four people sat at cramped desks surrounded by tiny roof tiles, thimble flowerpots and shrew-sized windows and doors. Bursting boxes towered precariously around the edges of the yellow room. We met Juan in the back room and Phil asked him to explain his story…

He had grown up in a Catholic home, his father sending them to church when he wasn’t drunk. He had grown to become a famous millionaire selling sought-after models of the Virgin Mary and enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. When his brothers came to know and accept God’s love and sacrifice for them and stopped going to all the drunken parties which they had gone to with Juan for years he thought the most awful thing possible had happened to them; they had lost their real lives to an empty faith. He refused to allow them to open a Bible in front of him. But one day a verse was read to him about the importance of not making any images of God. This impacted him greatly although only to the extent that he decided to end his business. He didn’t tell his clients the reason.

A while later a guerrilla force sent him a letter asking for a large amount of money in exchange for his family’s safety. He paid the money and left Colombia to work in France. At this point he was making model houses and travelled France selling them at fairs, etc. He was used to them selling like hot cakes and making him a lot of money. There was no reason why this would not be the case in France but it was not. In the three years (?) he ended up selling only 5% of his stock. When he realised he was running away from his problems and decided to return to Colombia he found it worked out cheaper to throw away the surplus stock than ship it home. He ended up selling it to a trader for a very poor price. At the time of his departure the French airlines were on strike and yet planes were leaving empty. He got to an abandoned airport and somehow managed to get a seat on a plane. He sat alone in the centre of a plane made for 380 people feeling very aware it was just him and God. He watched ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ about Louis XIV for France who although cruel set up many lasting things in government, etc. At the end of the film is a quote, “he is remembered as the greatest ruler this nation has ever had”. As Juan watched the film he felt it was all about the Kingdom of Heaven. When the quote came he realised how much greater and more worthy the title of king is Jesus who became the suffering servant that all might understand and live. God revealed himself to Juan and he spent the remaining flight in tears, hiding under his blanket from the stewards. Arriving home and thirsty for truth, he read the entire Bible in a week (!) and started attending his brother’s churches. He didn’t feel it necessary to end his destructive lifestyle. The churches he was attending had a couple of hours of worship before the message and he found the singing and dancing uncomfortable. To him he felt the people were being manipulated into acting in an undignified way. He would come to the service a couple of hours late in order to just catch the 15 minutes of teaching he hungered for. One Sunday as he arrived he found he had missed the talk and the closing song was beginning. People were called to raise their hands as a sign of submission to their creator and saviour. He felt a conflict stir within him. If Jesus truly was the only just ruler, had created him and yet had died in his place, that he might live, why would he not worship him? Was it really manipulation or a natural response to a living God? As he stood there he felt a conviction that it was his lifestyle of excessive drink which was conflicting with his relationship with God. As he knew he loved God much more than drink he decided it was idiotic to let a mere perversion of life get in the way of the real thing. He made the decision to stop and worshipped God for the first time, giving his life to Him. He went home knowing God was dwelling within him, the most joyous he’d ever been. He now spends all his time telling others of the truth he has been shown. His factory exists to take in disadvantaged people who cannot get jobs elsewhere and help them to understand the Love and Grace of God.

The following day Phil took Hannah, Dad and I to Fusa along with his son Daniel. Fusa is a town a couple of hours away from Bogota in a bus made of tweed and leather and is where the old Bible Institute is located. Large transparent stickers of Jesus and Mary filled the back window. Hannah forgot to take her motion sickness pills and wanted to expurgate or defecate or both simultaneously. After a quick whip around the local market’s kaleidoscopically colourful array of fruits and vegetables and exotic flowers we set off walking. The institute was on the outskirts of Fusa, about 30 minutes down a very steep hill I was hoping we wouldn’t have to climb back up. Phil had helped build the institute when he was about 15 but sadly it has been empty and falling apart for the last 15 years. There were dorms and flats and teaching buildings. In the 90s there was a lot of trouble from guerrillas and the risk of kidnap was high. The missionary families all moved out and have never gone back. Everything is overgrown and has literally gone to the dogs – four of them. An elderly lady looks after the estate and has a small house which we visited. An old friend of the Brown family, we spent a few hours with her as she showed us her collection of photos. As she was speaking in Spanish we didn’t have a great idea about what was going on. At 5pm we left her and caught a bus to some other friends of Phil. After an hour they told us the bus terminal would close at 7pm but we still had one more guy to visit. After seeing him it was 18:50pm! We rushed out into the dark road and flagged down the first bus which approached. It happened to be going to Bogota!!

Church on Sunday began at the kind time of 11am. Communion was served – the first time I’ve experienced Jesus’ blood ice cold! In the afternoon, after a lunch of coffee-caramel and cheese sandwiches we skyped Daniel and Claire and saw her pregnant belly for the first time, very exciting! Diego returned from the jungle and the completed bathroom. The turtles were safely and secretly in his socks. When we returned to Louise and Diegos’ the turtles were handed to overjoyed children. I wonder whether they will survive the intense pressures of the honeymoon period as they are pushed around the lino tiles like toy cars.

Monday began with a bike ride through Bogota. On the cycle path to a large park it seemed half of Bogota’s 6.7 million population were out. All sorts of bikes of every size and shape and from every stage in life were weaving amongst our untidy crocodile. Once at the vast green park we joined all the other people enjoying the bank holiday and cycled past numberless stalls selling heavenly scented foods extremely cheaply. Outside the park we stopped for a big slab of boccadilo (cheese and fruit paste) each. Six year old Daniel, the youngest with us, found the way back difficult for his little legs. We had to stop halfway for juice whilst he recovered. We then (unexpectedly) joined a motorway through Bogota which had been closed off to cars for the day. It felt like we were in the Tour de France and I’m pretty sure I won.

On Wednesday we joined one of Phil’s Bible study groups and practiced our Spanish… Hannah got given four bracelets by different people that morning…! The rest of the day was spent attempting to find souvenirs in Bogota. We found something for our housemates but for obvious reasons cannot tell you what we got. For everyone else we have bought lots of Colombian ingredients to put into a Colombian feast back in Southampton, should you be interested in joining us. One thing we ate that day but will not be attempting to make was a deep fried potato stuffed with rice, meat, cheese and a hard boiled egg.

In the evening we watched a film about a zombie dog.

Our last day in Colombia began with a breakfast of freshly made corn muffins. We then went on an expedition to Monseratte, a Catholic cathedral atop a mountain overlooking Bogota. On the way we saw a man pulling a llama around, selling its body on the street. A cable car brought us to the cathedral and we spent the morning wandering around taking pictures of it and its stunning setting. Pretty much the entirety of Bogota could be seen disappearing into a terracotta monotony below us. We climbed the cathedral’s large sandstone steps riddled with fossilized ripples from which it was possible to tell the stone had originated in a shallow marine environment… The cathedral inside was like any cathedral although the outside was a brilliant white which made for lovely shots against the deep blue sky (when a cloud wasn’t passing on top of us and enveloping us in its moistness). There was a hideous statue of Jesus in the cathedral surrounded by plaques placed by people claiming to have been healed by it.

Back at Phil and Maria’s we finally ate the catfish we’d brought back from the jungle and frozen. The evening was spent packing and eating tasty things prepared by Louise. Steve came by late and dropped off the 5kg of coffee he wanted us to take to Venezuela for my uncle David! We ended up going to bed at 2am ready for waking up at 4:30am. Steve and Diego took us to the airport (just Hannah and I, Dad had flown the night before as he was flying direct). We got to check-in an hour before our flight but found a 45 minute queue meaning we ended up running through the airport for another plane… Air travel being so commonplace for us now, I only took water when asked. Not even Coke.

Our plan was to fly to a Colombian border town Cucuta, get a taxi across the border to San Cristobel, Venezuela and then a bus up to Valera where David would pick us up. Diego had asked his friend Tim Anderson in Cucuta to meet and help us change our money and find an appropriate taxi, etc. He met us in the airport holding a sign with our names on which I have always wanted to happen and took us to his bright yellow jeep. He was planning to take us to his wife for breakfast but after phoning a friend’s friend’s friend he found us a good deal with a private car to get us to San Cristobel and they wanted to leave immediately. He kindly bought us some juice and lemon flavoured crisps and sent us on our way. The lovely driver took us to the exit and entry points of the border and stood with us as we were stamped then took us the hour to San Cristobel along steeply edged mountain roads. In SC he even made sure we got on the appropriate bus to Valera!

All the curtains in the bus were drawn and as we stepped out of the staggeringly bright midmorning light the effect was how I expect it would be to step into the entrance of a rabbit warren, though I’ve never had the opportunity. As I squeezed through the open door and waited for my eyes to adjust, a nun loomed at me in the darkness. Safely past her, we settled for the 8 hour journey with our newly purchased banana crackers. The curtains were to remain closed for the entirety of the journey, under strict discipline from a woman I can only assume was the bus matron. The result was that we could not see out and had no idea what sort of terrain we might be driving through, mountain or otherwise.

We were woken a few hours later (about 3:30pm) by a loud banging and what felt like a very bumpy section of road. I hit my face on the seat in front and then the bus tipped violently over onto its side, landing me on top of Hannah. It was maybe 3 seconds from bump to halt and there was little time to think or recognise what was happening until it had happened. The most pressing thought passing through my brain was a curiosity as to whether we were rolling off a mountain and a desire to open the curtain. Once landed, as the window was now black, we could not tell if we were wedged amongst some temporary trees overhanging a cliff, teetering Jurassic Park style. The wailing, panicking passengers didn’t seem to be worried about that though and all rushed (as much as one can rush in a bus where the wall is the floor) to the front to exit through the absent windscreen. The strange sense of normality which seems to come over when something unexpected and dangerous suddenly happens came over us. As we walked the length of the bus through a cloud of acrid smoke and throat-scratching particles, over the windows, ducking under discordant seats , we calmly gathered our scattered things even remembering to locate the remaining banana crackers before we made our escape. I later discovered to great disappointment that I had left behind a free bookmark I’d picked up in South Africa. It was the only real casualty. One guy had been cut by a falling pane of glass but just needed a plaster or two. We had lots of bruises and my left eye had a neon zig-zag flashing across it for a few minutes but that was the extent of it. The bus had landed in a ditch on its side and pitched forward so that there was a slight gradient downhill to the front of the bus. The windscreenless hole opened above a ditch a metre deep and between that and the bus a barbed wire fence which had moments earlier stood proud and erect. It now meant that escape was a tricky operation involving others outside being posts for those escaping to lean on to prevent them getting caught on the wire and left hanging upside down in the ditch. The rain was falling threateningly to add some drama. I paused in the field to capture a quick panoramic before climbing over into the fuel-soaked road.

It became obvious that we had been party to a head on collision with a large flat bed truck, the front right half of which was now part of the front left half. The driver’s cab appeared untouched so I assume he was unhurt, though I never figured out which of the ensuing rabble he was. The bus was entirely off the road but for the back wheels which hung over a few annoying inches. The truck covered all of one lane and a foot of the other, leaving a gap just slightly thinner than a wide car for the waiting traffic to squeeze through. As we were on a main road about 3 or 4 hours from the main cities in either direction and the road was only two lanes, there was already a lot of traffic. Large vehicles pulled up on the verges and the drivers and passengers all congregated around the wrecks with us to help smaller vehicles through the minefield of debris. After while a traffic officer appeared and took photographs before taking over the traffic flow. The bus driver came and told us that a replacement bus would pick us up when it arrived in an hour or three, the biggest problem being getting through the traffic we’d caused. A couple of guys stayed with us the whole time, one of them sharing his bread with us. People seemed surprised to see two white people waiting by the side of the road and many hung around us attempting excited conversation. It was all quite jolly.

After an hour or two a tow truck made it through the queue and took away the truck, opening up two lanes of traffic. We rejoiced, thinking the end was in sight for our tired legs and the bus would get to us before darkness descended. However, another small tow truck appeared and began attempting to move the bus. It blocked the entire road to do this so apart from thoughtless motorbikes, traffic wasn’t even trickling through. They spent two hours trying chains in various arrangements before they finally got the bus on its feet and on the road. One lane was free and traffic was moved in turns of 5 minutes each direction. It was now dark and the bugs were out. We were sat on the road despairing and needing the loo. Eventually of course the bus did come and we climbed on. It was 8pm, we’d been standing in the road for four and a half hours. We finally arrived at Valera at 1am and were collected by David and my Dad. We had arrived.

Brownout.

The Mouth, Open Wide

A small fan beneath the table is directed at my already cruelly afflicted ankles creating such a breeze that no zancudos can get a foothold to take a bite. At least that is my hope. One of the meaty miscreations is hovering around the laptop screen as I type, no doubt searching for a pitted cave from which to launch its carnivorous attack. In a fit of passion I just moved a large fan directly behind my head. There is no hope for the beasts now.

Our time in Bogota for me began with an early morning game of Monopoly with James (8), my cousin Louise’s son. He won the game by placing the dice favourably when I wasn’t looking. Most of the spare time living with Louise & Diego was spent playing games. As soon as I momentarily looked like I could perhaps not be currently doing anything, James would appear with a hopeful, “Want to play a game?” Games were even found at the DIY store – “Which is your favourite dishwasher/hammer/toilet seat/light fixture…”

Later that day, as we were driving back from a supermercado where I’d found Froot Loops, we joined a highway at 50kmph or so alongside a galloping white horse pulling a cart. Its bulging eyes were level with my window.

The evening was spent at another cousin Steve’s house where he lives with his wife Helena and his daughters Ashley, Amy and Grace. It was Ashley’s birthday. Happy Birthday was sung in Spanish and English and we ate cake con tres leches – a moist cake with meringue topping. Steve was frying up some arepas (corn flour and cheese patties) which were amazing. We only managed to grab a couple before we had to go and collect my long lost father from the airport. Great to see him after 7 months, he was excited to join in the adventure. He arrived with another cousin Phil and his wife Maria, who live in Bogota with their kids Elsy and Daniel. They also have another daughter Heidi but she is currently in England engaged to an old friend of mine.

On Thursday 3rd June Phil took us to see Steve teaching at the Bible school. As it was in Spanish Phil was whispering a translation into our ears. He then took us into central Bogota where Hannah found a navy scarf just like the one she left on a plane in South Africa and has been pining after ever since. We visited the gold museum which was brimming with intricately fashioned South American golden artefacts. One room was pitch black when you entered and as the door was closed behind you strange chants began and then lights turned on sporadically to reveal a circular room of gold. The colours of light changed and throbbed as the chants wavered and grew in intensity. Strange. Arty! We next visited old Bogota with colourful walls and terracotta roofing. Lots of old cathedrals and Dad wanted to enter every one. We saw the government buildings and the President’s palace. These buildings were around a square packed with pigeons. Unsurprisiongly we turned around to find Dad lying on his belly photographing the birds. I think the locals were surprised. The corn selling lady hobbled over thinking she had a sure sale with Dad but he just got annoyed as she scared away the pigeons. We then went down a dead-end street to find lunch and were accosted by men shoving menus in our faces or carrying plastic sharks on fishing rods. Phil picked a restaurant and we took refuge inside it. The menu was discarded as Phil ordered the daily dish – much more food and much cheaper than anything on the menu. Chicken and mushroom soup came first followed by a dish of pork steak, chips, rice, tomato and fried yucca root. There was fresh lemonade and fruit salad on the side, all for a couple of pounds. Phil took us down to the poorer end of Bogota where souveniry type things could be bought but we didn’t find anything except a leather pouch for my penknife which I’ve been searching for the entire 8 months!! We tried a fruit called guama which came in a 30cm long seed pod an inch or two wide. Inside were a dozen large brown seeds wearing white furry coats. These coats were the fruit. It has a refreshing banana-ish flavour and is surprisingly juicy for something so furry. Later we tried palm fruits coated in salt which were yellow and tasted like a fibrous potato and finally a 10cm brown marshmallow 3cm thick which tasted of licorice and was made of cow hoof. Dad did not enjoy that, I think he almost cried. At a cafe a bit later on I was served a bag of water. Phil gave no guidance as I attempted to get it from the bag into the disposable cup I’d been given. I bit a hole in the corner and knocked the cup over with the force of the jet I squeezed out. I decided to suck it from the bag which is probably the expected course of action and I reckon the cup was placed there to make me look a fool.

The next day we planned to visit a Catholic cathedral underground inside a salt mine in La Paz. Phil was driving Steve’s car and forgot that it could not go into 2nd gear. It got stuck and Dad and I had to get out and rock the car back and forth. Shortly after we ran out of petrol. Having only traveled a few hundred metres we got out and took the bus. La Paz is a pretty town of old houses and yellow clock towers. We wandered the winding streets until we reached the working salt minewhich housed the cathedral 180m down. On the way to the main cathedral chamber you pass by the 14 stations of the cross and at each station a large cross and four or so kneeling stations were carved out of the rock. The big hall itself features some enormous pillars about 10m thick and the chamber is used for Sunday services and weddings. We got onto the wrong bus home and were forcibly injected into the confusion of the Bogota bus-metro. The 1.5 hour journey on one bus took 3 hours on 3 buses. We ended up being late for Samuel’s 4th birthday but they waited for us to arrive before singing and blowing out the candles on the Volkswagen Beetle birthday cake he’d requested Louise make him.

It was the next day we were due to go to the Amazonian jungle in Brazil. We were going to visit a tribe where Diego and Louise have missionary friends and had no idea what to expect. After a breakfast of waffles we finished packing our bags and made sure we had everything we’d need for our adventure. We bought loads of sweets for the village children as we’d been told it was a good way to make friends! Martha who normally lives & works with the tribe gave us a load of stuff to take with us and we were off. We got to Bogota airport with 45 minutes until our plane left but it didn’t register with us. Sitting in a chicken restaurant we waited patiently for our food. After 25 minutes it hadn’t come and Diego went to hurry them up. We ended up running to security carrying doggy bags (I was humming the Home Alone airport-scene music to myself). With less than 15 minutes until the flight left the bag scanner predictably broke. Thankfully the guards manually searched our bags instead of waiting for the mechanic! We ran onto the plane as the last passengers. The fried chicken somehow made it through security, along with the plastic cups of iced tea. It was a 2 hour flight over jungle to Leticia, right in the most Southerly part of Colombia. It is a strange part of the country near the equator – a nubbin of land squeezed between Brazil and Peru.

At Leticia’s tiny airport very strange things were coming off the plane onto the conveyor belt – cool boxes, plants, a live rabbit…! Diego’s friend John met us outside and squeezed us into a taxi which took us to a nearby hotel where Dad, Hannah and I waited as Diego and John went to a supermarket. We finally ate the fried chicken sat in a hotel packed with potted jungle vegetation. The walls and ceiling were covered in trailing tendrils of bright green exotic life and madly coloured flowers. Diego returned after an hour or two and we said goodbye to the kind lady who’d given us juice and outrageously sweet shots of black coffee. Taking another taxi across the border into Brazil we reached a small boat dock on the Amazon River where loaded onto a powerboat along with our luggage we arrived in Benjamin 30 minutes later. The five of us then waited as a long canoe was loaded with all our luggage and sank lower and lower into the water. We all climbed in and it got even lower. Hannah says there was 5cm of the side left above water but I think that is a generous estimate… Once in the boat we were too scared to move, even to look behind us incase us and all our stuff rolled into the possibly piranha filled waters! There was a 9hp ex-lawnmower motor in place at the back of the vessel which John used to take us an hour or so downriver through a glorious golden sunset against a jungle canopy skyline to our village destination. As we arrived the Brazilian sun had set and lightning sparked sporadically in the blooming clouds above. The zancudos were swarming in the darkness. With the engine cut the jungle noises reached our ears – the screeches of the crickets, bellowing of the frogs, squeaking of the bats and flapping wings of startled birds. We could dimly see a few boys washing in the river who after establishing who we were ran to tell people to come and help us unload. One man and a few young girls answered the call. In the Ticuna (the tribe we were with) it is the women that do all the heavy lifting (big baskets of food, etc). A dark and slippery 5 minutes following the speedy locals brought us to a large building on 4 metre stilts. Hannah slipped over into the mud at the last moment before we went inside. The houses must be built high above the river as there is a 30 metre difference between low and high tide.

We stood in a dark wooden room as a small girl chattered excitedly in Spanish. I got out my torch to have some idea of our surroundings just as an unexpected light was turned on – powered by solar panels! The house we were in was made entirely from hardwood. It was very neat and featured a kitchen complete with cupboards, sink & tap and a gas powered oven with hobs. Not at all what we were expecting! The house belonged to John and Danny and their 5 year old Sarita. They were missionaries learning the culture of the Ticuna and shared their house with Estella and Martha (who was at that moment in Bogota). We gave Sara a couple of balloons we’d brought and she immediately ran to a tap, filled one of them with water and began to laugh at her own hilarity. John then showed us our room – a double bed complete with a mosquito net – and en-suite with shower!! We were expecting to all be sharing a room and sleeping in hammocks. I was secretly disappointed, Hannah was not. The toilet/taps/shower were fed by a water tank on stilts outside the balcony which ran along the back of the building outside the bedrooms. The water tank was filled by rainwater and was the only source of clean water. If it didn’t rain for a few days the pressure would be too low for showers and taps. If it didn’t rain for longer then long trips in canoes to the towns upriver would have to be made for large and expensive bottles of water. When the solar panels empty a generator is available but is more costly and would not normally be used. Two litres of petrol sold in wooden huts on the riverbank in recycled Coke bottles lasts two hours. We ate the remaining box of fried chicken for dinner along with some fried plantain Danny whipped up. John and Danny are a great couple. Although they spoke no English, John was capable of communicating practically anything through his Jim Carrey-rivaling facial expressions, impressive array of sound effects and magic circle-quality hand flourishes. Life with him was an endless game of charades. Estella had a bubbly personality, she didn’t posess extensive acting qualities but was equally desperate to communicate with us. She would talk ceaselessly and excitedly, laughing away to herself and urge us to understand her stream of Spanish. One word in fifty we maybe would. Such a shame we didn’t know more!

A cockerel blast awoke us 3 mintues before the 7am alarm which was set to get us up in time for the 3 hour church service the following morning. Hannah hadn’t had much sleep and felt ill. She missed a breakfast of cheese, bread and eggs and stayed in bed when we went to the church. We arrived an hour late, halfway through the two hour worship session. There was a lot of singing and clapping and high-pitched ‘Hallelujah’s. A young guy with a blank expression was sitting to one side of the stage playing a red bass guitar attached to an amp on the stage. When the pastor came up we were called forward to introduce ourselves and Diego translated as most of the tribe understand a little Spanish.

After church I helped John harvest some fruits from a tree behind the house. He used a 5m bit of 2×2 to knock the hard orange-sized balls from the tree. They have a tough shiny yellow skin which opens to reveal a wet, sticky, translucent jelly-like flesh with the unmistakable taste of very fruity Brie. With a bit of perseverance and assuming you can stop thinking about French cheese, they are actually quite pleasant. After we’d collected a bagful we wandered through the village looking for someone with some fish to sell. On the way we passed a family drying an enormous fillet close to a metre long on a tall wooden rack. They had a wild monkey which they brought out for us to hold and have sit on our shoulders. When Dad’s turn came, he grabbed it from my shoulder and gave it a fright so that it struggled to get away and instead of letting it Dad grabbed for it again and got a little scratch (luckily nothing more). If you see him with white foam dripping from the corners of his mouth, keep well clear.

John then spotted someone standing under an open thatched gazebo-type structure stirring a huge pan a couple of metres in diameter filled with bits of once-poisonous yucca root. The pan was sitting on a circular wall of mud 3 feet high and open at one point into which wood was tossed to fuel the fire inside. He used a paddle to stir the coco-pop sized yellow balls. Employed in the previous stage of the process, his wife was next to him squeezing the poison from yucca which had been dug up, peeled and soaked for a few days. She used a press with a large, thick wooden lever a few metres long and pieces of wood and rock as the pressing weight. As we were watching these two work five small children appeared proudly gripping puppies only a few days old. The helpless beasts hadn’t even opened their eyes yet and were being carried around dangling by just one leg or by the neck in the loving crook of a bony elbow. The children looked very pleased with themselves as they struggled to keep hold of their squirming, squeaking packages and pose for photos. The man stirring the yucca bits said (in Ticuna) that he was going to go and collect some more roots (the ready to eat kind) if we were interested in joining him. We were.

We climbed into a nearby canoe and he paddled us across a small tributary of the Amazon. He maneuvered us up a small inlet, dodging logs and vegetation and even Diego looked like he thought we were going to turn over. After a bit of a struggle it was clear the boat was too heavy with all of us in to go further so we had to take off our shoes and socks and wade the last 10 metres trying not to think about flesh-eating swamp insects laying larvae eggs between our toes. On dry land we had a 15 minute walk through the jungle with our yucca guide hacking at the bushes to scare off snakes. John was pointing out interesting things like the tiny poisonous caterpillar I hadn’t noticed next to my face and some huge flowers growing on a palm tree (they were about 4 metres tall!!) We collected some Brazilian nuts which are large cannonball type things that once you get through the incredibly hard shell contain a dozen or so Brazil nuts as we know them. When we reached the man’s ‘garden’ of yucca plants he set to work chopping the 2m high spindly, woody plants down to 50cm from the ground before tugging at the remaining plant to pull up the edible root. We all had a go pulling some up until we had filled the basket we’d brought. We then set back the way we’d come, taking turns to carry the basket via a reed strap which went over the head and across the chest. We were expecting to pay for some of the roots but he kindly gave them all to us for free! We were eating yucca fried or boiled for the rest of the week. On the way home we passed a hut where someone had caught a terrapin and a turtle (both under 8cm). Diego bought the terrapin and planned to take it back to Bogota in his sock…

After a Sunday lunch of Amazonian fish wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in a fire which had flesh like chicken and was muy deliciosa, we discussed our plans to build an en-suite in Martha’s room, ready for her return. This involved buying lots of wood from Peru, bringing it back on a canoe and then using it to build a wall inside her bedroom and a high bed with space for a desk underneath. Cement would also be bought for the bathroom floor and all the porcelain (toilet, sink, etc). It was to be a grand undertaking.

Somehow that afternoon Dad and I were roped into playing football on the village pitch of mud. Not only was the pitch entirely mud, it also sloped downhill. I was on a team with Diego and John but Dad was on his own with locals. I think they’d assumed we would be good… It wasn’t even purely for fun – everyone had to put in 1000 pesos and the winning team took the lot – the pressure was on. Each game was blessedly short – 3 mins a side. There were 4 teams which rotated so that we all played 7 or 8 games. Unfortunately Dad scored two own goals and his teammates replaced him after 4 games. During his first game, the heavens opened big time and he was soaked to the skin. I laughed heartily but it was still raining when I went out for my next game. The rain turned the muddy pitch into a stage for a ridiculous slapstick comedy about something close to football. People were sliding in every direction, our feet were underwater in most places. Eventually it ended as the sun began to set. In the constant humidity my trainers didn’t dry out until they were back in Bogota for a couple of days. When we got back to the house Hannah had been throwing up and was still in bed feeling ill.

The following morning she felt much better which was a relief. John and Diego were planning to go that morning to buy all the building supplies but the canoe was lacking a motor and they had to wait. After a lunch of tomatoey mince, smoked fish pre-boned by Hannah, beetroot & onion salad, rice, fried yucca root and tamarind juice we found out there would be no canoe until the next day. Hannah’s afternoon began by taking our extensive first aid kit under her arm to another hut to help a boy who had hurt himself badly. He had climbed a tall, thin palm tree without a rope between his feet to help him climb and had gotten tired at the top. With no strength left he slid all the way down, causing painful burns on the insides of his thighs and arms. Hannah had gone to dress his wound. Estella was telling us that the tribal belief is that becsause the boy got so scared, his soul left him at the top of the tree. A ritual would now have to be performed near the site to call his soul back. There is a huge culture of fear amongst the Tikuna. They believe that nothing happens to a person by accident – it is always because someone who doesn’t like them for some reason has cast a curse. They desperately need to understand the Love which drives out all fear.

Hannah, Dad, Sara and I then went for a wander around the village. Hannah had her pockets stuffed with brightly coloured sweets which she handed to any children we saw. Small faces began to appear in doorways and the supply quickly diminished. Four or so kids joined us on our exploration, eager to stand next to the sweet pocket. It was as we were turning back from watching people wash clothes by slapping them on a platform sitting on the Amazon that another of my life ambitions was fulfilled; we found a Mimosa pudica (or one of its close relatives) – the plant which closes its comb-like leaves when you touch them. A great achievement. After an eternity of ravenous dogs the night brought sleep.

The plan the next morning was for Diego and John to set off upriver for supplies at 7am and be back for us to begin work at lunchtime. They didn’t end up leaving until 9am and long after our lunch of tuna, rice and fried yucca we were still waiting. We set to work doing what we could, using a manual drill and my trusty penknife. The process for creating holes for pipes (the largest was 10cm in diameter) was to drill holes around a sketched circle as close together as possible. The wood-saw function on my penknife was employed to cut through the perforations until the circle of wood fell through. The remaining protruding bits had to filed away using the nail file or chiseled using a chisel. In a similar way we also cut holes in the ceiling for the wall supports to slot into. It was hot work. It rained intensly the entire afternoon, typically an hour on then half an hour off. Hannah and I retired to play Scrabble under the mosquito net for a bit of respite from their relentless assault.

It wasn’t until the sun was setting that Diego and John finally returned! I exclaim with a mark like that of excitement but the next 30 minutes developed into some of the worst of my life, which I later melodramatically declared gave me some brief insight as to what it must have meant to be in the trenches. I was already in a huff after being bitten several times in the back whilst reading and had retreated to our bed. A villager announced the canoe’s arrival and I slumped out of the room into the half-light of evening. As my shoes were still wet from football I had to wear my flip-flops. Please recall the abundant rain I spoke of earlier. It was a five minute walk to the river where the canoe was being unloaded and there were four stages to the journey. The first was pleasantly sloping grass and presented no trouble for a dry flip-flop. The second was the ‘football pitch’ which as I mentioned was a mud pool on Sunday when we’d played. After 5 hours of rain it very closely resembled the unforgiving excuse for ground found in the corner of an English field in Midwinter, near a gate frequented by beefy bovines. Think this – http://www.chaversfarm.com/images/Pics08/aug08-%20018.JPG – but without the smiling. One step on this terrain and the flip-flop was sucked under and a slippery obstacle to be discarded from that point onwards. Stage three was a short distance along a thin winding path through dense bush. Fine when there is still light and you are not carrying six planks of wood 5 metres long, trying to avoid hitting trees or stepping on snakes with your naked feet. The final stage was the river edge; a gentle slope of mud amongst reeds with wet muddy logs across waterways upon which to balance. This was prime mosquito territory – they had every right to attack a person ignorant enough to enter it at twilight. The sweat produced carrying inhuman weights and the wet ground washed away any repellent which had been pointlessly applied and there was no holding them back. As unwieldy planks and toilet cisterns were loaded onto bruised shoulders there was nothing to be done as the malodorous, droning soprano filled ears and heads and souls, taunting as much as tasting. Of course, truthfully, there were eight stages to the journey. Once the river had been reached you were only halfway. The treacherous journey must be repeated, only this time with a cumbersome load. I staggered the route three times, sliding up to my ankles in fetid jungle mud as I stuggled to keep the planks horizontal. The wood was a hardwood and insensibly heavy. My shoulders bled (slightly), my knees convulsed and my head swam. The entire experience was quite distressing. Out of the three trips I made, two and a half of them had the added complication of thick darkness. The third time I arrived at the house, my muscles spasming, my limbs screaming, I could not face going back a fourth time. It was too much to comprehend. Not wanting to wimp out to too great an extent, I dragged the wood which had been piled outside the house to a safer spot within the fence boundary. Here the zancudos were in clouds as dense as at the riverbank but I was now in an unconscious, automatic daze, focused on achieving whatever I could to avoid a return to the canoe. That job done, I slithered into the house, peeled the sweat-soaked clothes off my shivering body, showered and sheltered, without moving, once again beneath the security of the mosquito net.

I had a disturbed nights sleep and feared I had allowed the Hannah bug to attack my body but in the morning awoke refreshed. After a breakfast of arepas and eggs we set to work on Martha’s bathroom. Hannah, Dad and I were working upstairs on the walls and Diego and John were downstairs digging-in support posts to reinforce the floor which would soon be covered in concrete. Diego was cutting bits of 5×5 to length and we inserted them into the holes in the ceiling we’d made the day before. Dad nailed them to the floor and we nailed the ones by the existing wall which would support the bed into the wall from the other side…(!) Hannah and I then nailed the planks onto the supports to build the bathroom wall. Four hours and many blisters later, the wall was finished. At various points throughout the operation, small faces had appeared at the open back door, hoping for sweets. They became braver and ventured into the house to quietly watch us work and eye up the sweets on the table until John came up and shooed them away.

There is a rumour amongst the Ticuna that gringos only come into the jungle to cut their throats in the night. Apparently seeing us work will do something to help dispel the myth. I never saw fear on their faces, faint amusement maybe but not fear.

We managed to get the wall completed, the pipes in place (though not connected to the existing plumbing) and the bed frame up. Diego ended up extending his stay a few days to help John get the job finished.

On our last day Hannah visited the injured boy again and found him smiling and eating and healed wounds. When she returned we were ready to go but Dad was nowhere to be seen. I packed his bag for him and we left for the waiting canoe. He sheepishly caught up with us on the way – he’d been wandering the village taking last photographs. Now there was not all of Martha’s equipaje, the canoe sat a little higher in the water, which was a comfort. On the way we visited a village called Philadelphia and got caught in a rainstorm, sheltering under the awning of a small shop filled to the brim with colourful bits of food and essential items, where we drank some Dr Pepper-tasting Brazilian coke. The shop owner started showing us various fish he had, including a catfish over a metre long with enormous whiskers. Diego bought this and put it in the coolbox for us to take to Bogota. After 45 minutes of sheltering, the need to feel like we were near the airport overwhelmed us and we made a dash for the canoe, tarpaulins over our heads. The rain stopped ten minutes later.

After a momentary detour at the request of Dad to the opposite riverbank (which was Peru) we arrived in Benjamin and caught the fast boat to Leticia. On the way John spotted one of the pink dolphins the Amazon is famous for but we all missed it. We ate lunch at a Letician restaurant and watched on the TV the kick-off celebrations of the world cup in South Africa. Hoping to get a jungle souvenir, we went to the traditional craft shop next door but found it closed. Diego took us in a taxi to the airport as John disappeared on a taxi motorbike. His disappearance was explained 30 minutes later when he arrived at the airport bearing gifts of pink dolphins carved in the local bloodwood. He had bought them for us because we’d been unable to buy souvenirs ourselves! The flight was straightforward and we were collected by Steve upon arrival in a nice and cool mosquito-free Bogota.

And so… It is Tuesday, we will be home a week on Friday. Will I finish my extensive ponderings in time? I think not. I think …not.

Brownout.

The Coming of the Paper People

It was on Sunday the 23rd of May that life as we knew it changed forever. As the metal tube in which we sat accelerated across the darkening nebula-impregnated abyss between Auckland and Santiago, the delicate weave that we once knew as time and space was rent in twain.

We had spent the morning at Lisa’s church, where her dad is the pastor and had enjoyed a hot chocolate at the church cafe. Maude had then treated us to a tasty lunch of salmon plus accessories and we were taken to the airport to leave NZ. The plane arose at 17:10 and we got ready to say goodbye to Sunday.

BUT WAIT.

NO!

Sunday was preparing to hang around like a weird guy with glasses late the next day after a party. After 11 or so hours of films, Tetris and ‘How It’s Made’, we arrived in Chile at around 11:30am on the very Sunday we had left – around the time we were moving into the church cafe for that hot chocolate. After claiming our baggage and clearing customs I curled up on the cold arrivals lounge floor into a warm tight bundle and cried, rotating slowly in pensive circles as Hannah stared darkly into the cavernous hollow opening as maths and physics unraveled before us like a badly knitted festive jumper.

A greying and crusty man brought us back to reality by using his Spanish words to chastise us for our foolish choice of footwear – flip-flops – in a place so cold as Chilly. He was right but we are insolent gringos. We advanced onto a waiting bus and were taken directly to the international bus terminal where we queued up outside window 69 and ‘chatted’ with a bubbly Ecuadorian called Anje employing her ten words of Ingles and our five words of Espanyol. She helpful tripled our vocabulary by adding the phrase, “Quanta questa este el pasahay a Bogota?” Which I hope means, “How much is a ticket to Bogota”. I assume it does because she seemed too nice for cruel lies and we made it to Bogota. The ticket was 260,000 Chilean Pesos. Thankfully the exchange rate isn’t 1:1. In any case no cash machines could be persuaded to give me the final 60,000 pesos but fortunately we had the US$100 we’d taken out in NZ ‘just in case’. 60,000 pesos = $108. The kind, bald ticket man (who now I think of it (and realise it has been secretly bugging my subconscious up until this moment) looked remarkably like this: http://lazytownpoint.com/slide/char/milford/Mayor.jpg) let us off the last $8.

The bus would not be leaving until the 25th so we found a cheap hotel to spend a couple of nights. When a smiling man followed us into the place to pretend he had shown it to us and then asked for a tip, I’m afraid to say we turned him down. The room was 10,000/night (11 pounds?) for a double with a shared bathroom. A lovely little room reminiscent of the Philippines with room for a solitary chair and a tiny table. When we turned on the unexpected TV ready to laugh at bad Spanish television but it turned out to be cable!

That evening we had a quick look around to get our first taste of South America. Santiago is a big city on a plain surrounded by bigger mountains. There was a haze in the sky but through it the enormous snow-covered behemoths could be seen in every direction that wasn’t consumed by skyscraper. The air was crisp and felt clean, the streets looked shiny and everyone seemed to have somewhere they were going. It felt quite multi-cultural and (joy-of-joys) apart from some nervous glances to our offensively clad feet, no one was staring at us! Our exploration ended at a supermarket where we bought a baguette (very Chilean), some cheese and some chorizo before returning to the hotel and the cabled TV. We fell asleep early, finally ridding ourselves of the persistent Sunday and awoke at 2am for a game of SkipBo before attempting some more sleep. In the morning proper I was able to watch 3 or 4 films before the ever-lazy Hannah finally roused herself and we went out for the day without a map.

We wandered for a couple of hours in one direction, me ever-certain that there was a tourist information site around the next corner. We paused at an underground museum full of ancient Chinese art and dress. There was also an exhibition on the terracotta army but for some reason we neglected to inquire about ticket prices, thus fleeing at a fear of the unknown. We eventually stumbled across a tourist information hidden inside some kind of castle structure clambering up the only hill for miles around. We acquired a shining map. The castle was composed of a maze of interconnected, worn stone staircases and brick arches, all higgledy piggledy and crumbling away. Of course I wanted to climb one of the various routes to the top and Hannah had to follow. The view of Santiago crawling over its plain and the distant encircling mountains made it well worth the effort of encouraging Hannah to climb. Right at the top of the castle, up the last winding staircase, lying in the highest turret we found not sleeping beauty (who I would have kissed in a heartbeat) but a lazing dog (which caused me to hesitate a little longer before placing a gentle kiss). These dogs can be found everywhere. Especially places where the sun is shining and humans might like to be passing – particularly important looking ones like guards outside of palaces.

After eating a couple of spring rolls from a man with a cardboard box outside a subway we picked up a huge fruity baked good to share for lunch. We then hunted down an internet cafe where we sent an email to my cousin Phil asking what were should do on arrival in Bogota. On the way back to our hotel we bought 32 rolls, 30 slices of cheese and more chorizo – the food we would be surviving on for the next 6 days on a bus, in order to prevent worrying about money changing etc as we travelled through 4 different countries.

On the morning of the 25th we packed up once again and enjoyed the last bit of hot water, or water for that matter, in our final wash. After throwing our equipaje at the bus-packer, Hannah lazily found a chair as I went to forage at the supermercado for sweets and breakfast. I chose a kilogram of cherry yogurt in a bag. We downed the yogurt and sat back feeling bloated and full of cream. We met bubbly Ecuador Anje who would be travelling on the same bus as us and as we all leaked onto the bus we were slapped in the face by an intense wall of wild cherry. With this delightful perfume on top of the kilogram of yogurt in our stomachs, we were riding high the cherry train that day. The bus was spacious and comfortable with reclining seats. At the back was a surprisingly clean toilet which was very welcome. We departed at 1200hrs.

Before too long the first of many badly dubbed films came on the tiny TV. Tiny TV, immense sound system. The volume was set high and requested higher. There were no complaints from anyone else so, being British, we quietly acquiesced. Around 1900hrs the bus pulled over in a dark carpark on the edge of an unknown town and we were ordered out into the night. We were all ushered into a restaurant and sat at tables. Rolls were deposited and we were concerned we were about to be forced to pay for a meal with money we didn’t have. A bilingual American called Merissa helpfully turned out to be on the bus and at our table. Anje communicated to us through her that the meal was included as a promotion for buying the bus ticket. Whoop! We gratefully accepted the two battered fish fillets and spiced rice. Unfortunately this would be the only free feed. Back on the bus we set off for a night of broken sleep and strange shapes moving past dark windows.

I was awake as the sun finally rose around 0630hrs to reveal an alien landscape of naked mountains of mud rising 1000ft high to the East and dropping to the churning coast in the West. About 30 minutes later when Mr Bus Driver must have decided that people needed to start enjoying the day, songs which sounded like they were performed by runners up in Spain’s entry to the 1984 Eurovision Song Contest began to blare through the speakers above every seat at ear-splitting levels. Again, no complaints or even looks of shock or surprise as people were awoken. Perhaps this was part of the service we all paid for? The mountains of smooth expressionless mud continued for most of the day but not long after dawn the ocean was abandoned. We began winding up steep roads edged by deep ravines hiding strips of green life far below. Around 1430hrs we stopped in Arica, the last town before the Peruvian border. When the bus spewed us out at a desert restaurant everyone ate and had what we could of a wash in the temperamental chlorine-scented water. More stray dogs and cats.

Chile’s exit border was a smooth 30 minute operation. The penetrating of Peru was a little more perplexing. All the equipaje had to be unloaded and our hand luggage scanned. My knees were knocking together as I felt the illegal meat, cheese and bananas burning through the bag into my back. The whole process was quite a pavlova, taking upwards of an hour and a half. Our contraband escaped detection. Unfortunately someone else’s didn’t and we had a further two hour wait whilst they were sorted out. We were sitting on the concrete outside the bus with Anje, Merissa and a Chilean girl taking sips of the Chilean girl’s strange herb tea – a cup of woody bits with a straw thin enough to only allow water through (supposedly). After eating Peruvian rice pudding from a little cafeteria we eventually completed the border crossing at 2000hrs Peru-time (an hour behind Chile).

Each time I woke up in the night we seemed to be on thin roads passing between close canyon walls or through rocky tunnels. Although I was sleeping better than the first night I awoke around 0400hrs to find the moon large and yellow over the sea as I looked down from the cliff edge we were grinding along. When I woke in the morning light I found the ocean inches from my nose, fringed by a strip of golden sand. Mr Bus Driver’s favourite Spanish tunes were not far away…

Peru consisted mostly of endless flat desert – at least for the daylight hours. There were a few mountain passes which were more dramatic but still a monotone monotony. The plan was to change to a connecting bus in Lima. We stopped for an hour before reaching Lima, I think purely to make the transition to the other bus a little more tense. We joined Anje and Merissa for their lunch (although only to watch, as we’d already eaten our sandwiches). The restaurant they chose served us all nuts and terracotta thimbles of sweet Peruvian wine! Anje then panicked that the food was taking too long to come and forced us to make a break for it! Hannah thought we were going to be arrested. We arrived in Lima after 1630hrs, our connecting bus leaving at 1700hrs. Our bags were weighed in and I used the opportunity to wash in a basin and change my clothes – even my underwear – crisp! There were a few rowdy girls who were unfortunately continuing on to Colombia with us. One of them was a lady-boy who liked to expose his chest to prove his femininity, another was a loud Colombian who loved to shriek “Ai-ai-ai-aiaiaiiii” in as loud a scream as she could muster at any hour of the day or night, regardless of the other 40 passengers’ silence. She would frequently screech for “Volumen!!” whenever music came on, especially if its intensity was already causing neural fluid to drip from our ears. What a joy it was to discover we would not be saying goodbye to them so soon. Many of the people joining the bus in Lima were English/American and equally as shocked by the crazy Colombians.

Unfortunately we did not get on the same bus or even the same class of bus, it was much more uncomfortable and had a foul toilet. One benefit was a much worse sound system.

A disrupted night, more Spanish films and we awoke to find ourselves in another desert. With so much stopping that day (Friday 28th) we did not seem to get very far at all. One toilet break lasted two hours. The border crossing into Ecuador was much simpler than the entry into Peru. Thankfully no bag searching and no risk to our meat and cheese. It wasn’t so easy for one English guy Rob from Aylesbury (who turned out to be good friends with a girl I was also good friends with who had been on my course at Southampton uni!), he had already been in Ecuador the allotted 90 days earlier in his South American trip. He was understandably worried. Sadly for him it was noticed at immigration and he was told to return to Peru to obtain another visa. His flight was leaving from Quito, Ecuador in two days so he obviously didn’t want to do that. The officer agreed to turn a blind eye as Rob climbed back onto the bus to risk the next couple of days as an illegal immigrant fearful of the frequent paper checks done at random along Ecuadorian roads. A kind bilingual Colombian lady was helping him out and told him to keep $20 in his passport… Within 10 minutes we reached the first check and I could see the whites of Rob’s eyes quivering. Luckily soldier boy did not check visas, only ID. In fear the entire journey he was eventually discovered when police came onboard. The kind lady helped him out and the $20 did the trick. He made it to Quito with no further trouble, it’ll be interesting to find out what happened next…

We had a treat that evening as we watched a film with English subtitles. Anje and Merissa alighted that evening in a town beginning with G. That night was probably the worst of them all, we seemed to spend most of it parked outside dimly lit petrol stations as the driver banged around in the engine. Now people had gotten off the bus there was space for 2 seats each and the chance to lie down. Unfortunately a guy who we were fairly sure worked for the bus company told Hannah she could not have two seats and lay on them with his feet across the aisle on a third seat next to another English girl. The girl wasn’t too pleased and so a disgruntled Hannah went and sat next to her on top of the man’s feet until he grudgingly removed his filthy appendages. Quito was reached at 0730hrs and half the remaining bus jumped off. The morning continued with a video of an awful salsa night in honour of some kind of salsa queen. It drilled into the brain like a deadly dancing worm. One night was left on our 128 hour journey and we had just driven across the equator.

Ecuador was refreshingly green after the barren deserts of Chile and Peru. Hills rolled past the windows luxuriantly. Isolated snow covered peaks broke through blankets of cloud hanging over fields of healthy crops worked by tired farmers. A few hours after leaving Quito we stopped for another now infamous toilet break. We sat on the ground waiting, just wanting to get going but then the drivers pulled out tool kits and climbed into the engine. We took our food off the bus, too hungry to wait but discovered in the light of day that our trusty rolls had gone mouldy who knew how long ago. We begrudgingly went to the ATM for money to buy food. I pressed the button for the least amount possible as we were leaving Ecuador that day. ’10′ turned out for some reason to be US$10! Weird but great – should have got more out! We bought a loaf of bread, cookies and crisps and now had money for the internet cafe next door. We checked for emails from Phil explaining what we were to do on arrival in Bogota and had received one but gained little understanding from reading it. We merely hoped we would arrive close to the 8pm arrival time we had been predicted and had told Phil and that someone would collect us and whisk us away to a hot bath. Two and a half hours after stopping we finally moved on.

Another couple of hours later we crossed the Colombian border – the easiest so far with no forms to complete and no equipaje checks. Still somehow managed to take two hours until the entire bus was through. Wow! What a stunning place Colombia is! We thought Ecuador was green…! For hours we drove along the sides of high green hills velvety from top to bottom, above deep gorges discreetly revealing angry rivers rushing over massive smooth rocks. What looked like fields and pastures were edged by hedges and walls at impossible angles and gradients, the odd waterfall appeared or splendidly placed hut. One oddity: an isolated bar at the side of the road had a long bamboo screen across the back of the building between it and the magnificent valley beyond – the side towards the road had no wall at all. Play to your strengths, people!

Stopping for dinner around 2030hrs our fellow passengers were once again showing concern at our apparent lack of consumption. They clearly never noticed us doing so on the bus. Hannah assured one worried man that we did have money – if she hadn’t I reckon we would have been treated to a free chicken dinner.

Although we had two seats each to lie across that night, the road was violently flipping every-which-way and causing us to concertina against the wall and the arm rest alternately for hours on end. Around 0130hrs the bus was halted at a road block – I think someone had set fire to a car further along the road and we were to wait until it was safely moved. This gave us a chance to snatch 3 ½ hours of sleep in a stilled bus before we were allowed to proceed at 0500hrs. Most people were deposited early in the morning at the first major Colombian city we’d come to (Cali) including the crazy ladies. We were down to siete (7) and were on schedule to arrive in Bogota by the evening.

The journey through southern Colombia included repetitious stops at army checkpoints where bags were searched and passports inspected. All good-humoured, apparently it was election day and a bad day to travel. A few hours before our journey ended we had our final restaurant stop. The remaining passengers were so worried about us still refusing to buy food that some of them urged us to join them. Others offered to lend us money that we could return to them in Bogota. They called a committee meeting and elected the kind bilingual lady as their spokeswoman who beseeched us to take money from her and eat something. It was very touching really, we felt cared for.

We finally docked in Bogota bus terminal at 1700hrs after around 125 hours on the bus. As Hannah guarded the bags I went in search of an ATM and an internet source. After being temporarily thrown by the use of the ‘$’ sign remembering Ecuador and searching the extensive terminal for a compliant ATM, I discovered that the Colombians are too lazy to create their own currency symbol so borrow the dollar even though they use Pesos. The email from Phil told us to phone on arrival the number he’d given us and then get a taxi. Colombians are clever and at the little snack kiosks in the terminal you can cheaply hire minutes on a cellphone attached to a dainty chain. Brilliant. I spoke to Phil’s daughter Elsie (although I didn’t realise it was her) who was surprised that we were a few hours early. Apparently my cousin (Phil’s brother) Steve was planning to collect us at 2000hrs. She asked me to phone back in 15 minutes so we drank the Colombiana I’d bought to get change for the phone. Think Irn-Bru. In 15 minutes I couldn’t get the phone number to work and on my way to find a dependable phone bumped into Diego (my cousin Louise, Phil’s sister’s husband(!)) who I had not expected to see. A delight and a joy. He manfully gathered our bags and led us out to Steve’s waiting Lada. We were taken to the apartment Louise and Diego had moved into only two days earlier and shown to the nicest bedroom of the house with an en-suite, which they have kindly sacrificed for the two weeks of our stay.

We are currently part of a household composed of Louise, Diego, Laura (10), James (8), Daniel (6), Samuel (4) and Jonathon (4 months). Upon arrival Daniel jumped into my arms like he’d always known me and Samuel attempted with all his might to crush my hand. They are endless fun and endless renewable energy. Someone should really attempt to harness it for the good of all mankind. Safer and more fun than nuclear power and the waste can be used to grow flowers.

Brownout.

The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom

Part II

The last (and I mean LAST) week and a bit began as we packed up our things from Joan’s house and set off in the car once again for our final exploratory NZ roadtrip. We were heading South to visit Queenstown and then up the West Coast to hopefully see the glaciers and some wild coastline. At the end of the week we were planning to meet Ants and Sandy who were taking a holiday to the coast to meet us. The first day, when we had a 6 hour drive, the weather was ideal – blue sky, crystal clear visibility – perfect for all the jaw-dropping views. After a few hours and a few hundred kms we reached Lake Tekapo where we pulled over for scones and jam. Nearby was a tiny chapel resting alone upon the tip of a small peninsula into the lake. A tiny one-room thing with pews for about 50 people. It had an incredible view through the large window behind the pulpit. As we were there a woman was getting a little organist on a little organ to play through some songs it seemed for a wedding.

A little further on we came to another lake an eerie milky blue colour fringed by fir trees. The stunning snow coated Mt Cook (NZ’s tallest) dominated the horizon, reflected just as magnificently in the water below it. We were beginning to understand even more why people love the South Island so much! At a dam a little further on we saw whirlpools…I wanted to throw something in, or even jump in, just to see what would happen but Hannah was a spoil-sport. The entire drive was tear-inducing; endless blue sky, mountains in all directions, the taller ones capped with snow, long straight roads through a savannah landscape broken up by the occasional enormous mirror of a lake. As we entered a mountain pass to reach Queenstown, we followed a blue river running in a deep gorge below us. Awesome raw power.

We were staying in a great little bach belonging to Andy & Pauline’s parents on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, a very large chair-shaped lake next to Queenstown. We were in a small town called Frankton on the way into Queenstown. The bach was at lake level with great views over it. Just behind the house were the Remarkables, a mountain range that lived up to its name. They towered over the whole town and it was fascinating to watch how something so huge and immovable can be so dynamic. There was a small wood burner in the lounge and we got it going before settling down with lamb patties & chips and a glass of wine for tea.

In the morning we found yet another stunning day – not a cloud in sight! We spent the morning in nearby Arrowtown, famous now for its Autumn leaves and a hundred years ago for a gold rush. On the way we stopped at Lake Hayes, apparently the most photographed lake in NZ, just to join in the fun. In Arrowtown we had a coffee at a cafe where everyone was French and we saw some real life gold nuggets…in a jewelers. We did have a go at gold panning in the river using our breakfast bowls. Hannah was addicted. The water was freezing and she kept telling me enough was enough and we had to go back to the car but I’d turn back to see her swirling another bowlful. She had Gold Fever. If it was Narnia, she’d be dead.

In the afternoon we drove the car up the road on the side of the Remarkables – it leads to a ski lodge in use in the winter. It was only 14km but pretty steep, bumpy and dusty – it used 100km of petrol! The views were dramatic and death felt close by as we took blind corners with no barrier before a deadly drop. At the top when we couldn’t drive further I wanted to walk to the top but Hannah wanted to go home. She let me go for a walk alone and I walked/jogged until I couldn’t breathe. I found a stream and could see the top in the distance but felt I’d achieved enough. It was cold up there and took a slab of ice back to the car to prove how high I’d gone.

Our final day at that lovely bach the weather man told us it would rain torrentially for the next 4 days with 120km/hr winds. We spent the morning on the half hour walk into Queenstown which turned out to be 1.5hrs. A lovely walk alongside the lake, again amongst Autumnal joy. Interesting to note the contrast between original bachs on now-prime real estate, built with cardboard and chewing tobacco and the new mansions of glass and steel being built where the classics once stood. Also spotted some fairytale red-with-white-spots mushrooms on the way. We whipped around Qtown after eating our sandwiches, there wasn’t much to see and we were fearful of the promised downpour. A pretty town but all very new and built for tourists in the ski season. Maybe I’ll return in 150 years to see some character. The sky darkened and then cleared on the way home, no rain or wind.

The rain was upon us in the morning as we drove North and West to the West coast. However this merely made the scenery take on a more dramatic appearance – alongside the road recharged waterfalls cascaded off dark mountaintops beneath threatening clouds. Lake Hawea yielded some of the best views we’ve yet seen – the sun was forcing its way through a thick blanket of white cloud and shimmering on the lake surface. A finger of cloud encircled the dark moody hills on the opposite shore and newly refreshed waterfalls gushed down through the native bush clothing the harsh peaks, appearing as silver ropes being lowered maybe by some beastly Maori giant. It was definitely the first major LOTR moment. All along the road to the West coast we were following rivers and waterfalls. Occasionally we’d spot a DOC sign pointing out a 2 or 5 minute track to a viewpoint. We would park up and wander to the waterfall or lake or gorge. And so we meandered along. Eventually we reached the coast where dramatic beaches abound. We stopped at a cliff promontory for lunch. Our view was of wild water crashing onto deserted beaches, painful tooths of rock, erupting black from the swirling, foaming water which violently broke upon them regardless and angry for the impediment. The sun had broken through the clouds and encouraged our old enemies the sandflies to make a reappearance in our lives. As we munched on our lunch, they munched on theirs. We did not linger longer than necessary. As we passed along beaches back at sea level, everything was even wilder – sand strewn with driftwood – huge bits, some still tree size. At one point where the road followed a beach, sculptures had been erected between sand and road of driftwood and flat stones inscribed with marker pen. Visitors had constructed these constructions over such a long period in such close proximity that the result was one continuous installation from forest in the South to forest in the North. The stones were covered with mementos, ‘We love NZ’ signed by the artists, or political comments, ‘Down with sandflies!’ or simply helpful life instructions like ‘be good’ or ‘Peace, love, Joy’. We wandered amongst the things until the spray from the roaring waves had saturated our outer layers. The forest at the Northern end of the beach-clearing was comprised of tall trees with thin trunks and small dark canopies. They were evenly spaced in ranks right up to the edge of a cliff 8ft high at the beach’s edge. They had the appearance of an gnarled and ancient army which had marched the length of NZ only to reach this remote and wild part of the world where they now lingered, unsure whether to turn back or to advance headlong into the surging ocean.

In the afternoon we finally made it to the much anticipated Fox Glacier. We drove down it’s U-shaped valley, remarking on the extensive scree and lovely waterfalls before reaching a carpark before the glacier. There were some threateningly official looking red signs in sight and a man in an orange jacket. We walked up to see that the path to the glacier was no longer in existence. I was mortified – all this way and just a glimpse of a glacier. To top it off, there were no translucent mints in sight. It was the glacier itself which had destroyed the path and I felt a little idiotic for expecting and demanding viewing rights from something so huge and dynamic. The orange jacket informed us that Franz Joseph glacier was not far away and was accessible, so we set off, Hannah relieved I hadn’t started crying.

Franz Joseph is reached via a walk through native bush and then a walk up its own U-shaped valley. Very dramatic scenery – the glacier growing as we advanced. Amazing power before us. Two men died getting too close to Fox glacier last year. A river gushed forth from a cave reaching deep into the glacier’s icy bowels. The noise from the roaring water was incredible. So pleased to have seen one of the blue-tinged beasts close up.

That night we were expecting to get to the bach we would be sharing with Ants and Sandy. We found a message on our phone telling us we wouldn’t be able to stay there until the next day. A night in the car would be necessary. We weren’t thrilled by the idea but apart from sandflies it was fine. We found a little campsite by a lake, ate pasta for tea and got into bed when the sun went down at 6pm. We were expecting extreme cold and had all the blankets ready but it was actually a strangely warm night… In the morning we were greeted by a fantail at the lake’s edge. They are peculiar birds which dance passionately at your feet or fly at head level, thrusting their backside feathers in your face.

Although we didn’t know the exact location of the bach we’d be staying in, we didn’t knew it was in a place called Hari Hari (30km away). When we got to the ‘town’ Ants phoned and told us where to find them – 20km off the main road towards the coast! Remote. Ants had had to drive 10km from the bach just to get reception to phone us. The first 10km wound through fields on a sealed road before it became a river of gravel, pits and dust. We reached a shed with windows – our bach. An amazing place with a wonky porch, boarded up windows, rotten steps, mouldy carpet, polystyrene insulation, cobweb and bird poo covered walls/furniture, outside bathroom, hot water cylinder heated by the open fire, hanging bulbs powered by solar panels, fridge powered by gas and by wedging a stick against the gas button. Apparently the way all the bachs once were. Great to see Ants & Sandy, we were all looking forward to a relaxing, quiet weekend. Sandy had planned all kinds of tasty meals – thankfully because there were no shops for 100km.

That afternoon, Ants and I took a couple of bikes from the shed down to find the sea. A 2hr or so return trip through thick bush along a narrow track – avoiding deep puddles at first and then crashing through them. We reached a round hill jutting into the sky called the ‘Doughboy’ which we had to climb. There were fences nailed across the path and danger signs informing us the path was unstable and so closed. We felt like they were encouraging us to continue. The view from the top: mountains, ocean, rivers and marshes – again LOTR. The next stage of our ride was along the beach – almost broke my neck a couple of times reaching soft patches. Carrying our bikes over boulders we found our way to some secret baches on a secluded beach with no road to access them by, only an hour walking track through the bush. Ants fell in love and wanted to buy them all there and then. The evening was spent teaching Ants Dutch Blitz and chatting into the night.

The following day was perfect weather – no wind, blue sky, 20 degrees – still no sign of the predicted 4 Days of Doom. All four of us walked the route in the opposite direction Ants & I had biked. This time we could see snow covered mountains which had been concealed by cloud the day before. Moving more slowly through the bush we noticed mushrooms every colour of the rainbow. It was like Mary Poppins. A part of the walk on the beach was covered by high tide which meant we had to launch ourselves into dense flax vegetation and forge our own path like the intrepid explorers we always knew we were. After the exercise we spent the afternoon reading in the sun. I found a book on edible plants and went looking for dinner. I found a berry I was convinced was edible but it tasted like death so I spat it out.

We packed up early on the Sunday in order that we could meander home. I was on Empty and it was 90km to Hokitika – Hari Hari’s petrol station was closed… Driving nervously, the light came on with 25km left to go…we made it, clewarly, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now. Fuelling ourselves with coffee and fish & chips in Hokitika, we continued on to Christchurch. Another awesome drive though miserable weather – one section called ‘Arthurs Pass’ through the Alps was particularly dramatic. We stopped in a mountain village of the same name and visited a little chapel Di had told us about. It had a large window behind the pulpit with a view of the nearby mountainside, a cascading waterfall filling the frame. Outside, we had a look at the fall and the insanely clear pool it fell into.

That evening Andy & Pauline offered us some floor space to sleep on as we were once again homeless. The next day was spent cleaning the car thoroughly inside and out, ready for sale. Someone has contacted us wanting to buy it but will not be in Christchurch until the end of May so Adam is kindly taking care of it for us.

As our days in Christchurch were sadly coming to an end, the Watt hub took us out for a farewell meal at the local Chinese restaurant. So great. Sandy gave us both t-shirts – Hannah’s with the faces of all the people we’ve met squeezed into the shape of NZ and mine a printout of some colouring-in I had done which had taken me 8 hours one day…

After the meal most of us went out to have a drink at a bar in the city centre. A pile of cigars were poured onto the table and we puffed away. They were from India and had a slightly unpleasant scent about them… Such a lovely time with all the guys. A game of table football was started and the losers were challenged to sing a song at the karaoke bar opposite. Josh and Belly lost and accepted the punishment. The song they were given was ‘Hit me baby, one more time’ by the delightful Britney Spears. Not a brilliant performance but there was passion. Predictably, the British were forced to do a number – I didn’t know the song so our performance was even worse. We stopped at a supermarket for too much ice cream before heading back home where we didn’t go to bed but watched Role Models instead.

Wednesday was spent playing Scrabble with Ally and Joan before another Wed night cook-off where we made mock whitebait patties using grated potato and started a pan fire. It was awesome. After consuming large quantities of potatoes, we returned to Adam’s where we were sleeping for our last few days in Addington and where a pudding party was happening so we could get a chance to say goodbye to everyone we hadn’t the night before. Lots of amazing people there and great to have a chance to say goodbye.

Thursday was our final day in Addington. We spent the morning packing our bags and then went to the cafe where we were treated to a lunch of field mushrooms and french toast by Belly. Just as he was leaving, Sandy and Harmony appeared to play Skip Bo (a new card game). Not to say they made the appearance of playing Skip Bo, they appeared in the cafe in order to play it. After a few games of that and more coffee, I was feeling a little spaced out as Alanna, Lisa, Steph and Josh appeared. We had been sitting on a sofa for over three hours and people were making jokes about us ‘holding court’ for visitors.

Back at the Watts’ for the final time, we gave Hanna and Liv some sweets to make them love us more before we left. Everyone was watching a film about a boy and a dog which they had to tear themselves away from to say goodbye to us around 5:15. Hugs were exchanged and Josh took us to Adam’s to collect our bags. More hugs were exchanged anmd we were off.

Domestic departures at Christchurch airport is very snazzy. There is no human interaction to get a boarding pass. Could have typed in anyone’s name to get their ticket. Our only problem was how to get Lisa & Tom’s folding chairs back to them – we had initially been intending to drive back. It would cost $15 to print an extra baggage tag so we decided to put the chairs through as my hold baggage and attempt to pass my main luggage and hand luggage (combined about 15kg) as 7kg hand luggage. We got away with it and I was very proud to have 3 months stuff as hand luggage. Maude and Lisa met us in Auckland in the rain.

Ruby their kitten has doubled in size. They call it life.

Friday was spent firstly borrowing a car to collect our tickets from an STA branch (a relief) and then writing this blog pretty much the entire day. Fish and chips for tea – joy!

Saturday (TODAY!!!!) was spent with Lisa and Maude who drove us around Auckland to see all the pretty sites. Lovely wooden buildings by lovely sandy beaches and Mt Eden with a huge deep crater from which you could see the entirety of the sprawling city and its 47+ ‘extinct’ volcanoes. A most enjoyable last day topped off with roast chicken in the evening.

Tomorrow we will go to the MacDonalds’ church in the morning and out for a bite to eat before being deposited at the airport for our 16:40 flight to Santiago. We will then spend who knows how many hours on a plane before arriving in Chile around Sunday lunchtime, 4 and a half hours before we left. Please do not ask for clarification, I fear the portal into the parallel dimension will collapse if prodded too inquisitively.

Please note that I am up to date and am for once under no sadistic legalistic obligation to type something which I have written in my journal and feel I must electronicise. I can write anything about anything or I could stop and feel no shame of devilish procrastination.

I could list the ingredients found in the can of coke nearby.

But we all know it is just brown and sugar.

This is an uplifting feeling.

But who knows when I will next have access to a free computer – this experience is temporary. The next week will hopefully be spent on a bus from Santiago, Chile to Bogata, Columbia. I say ‘hopefully’ not because I gain joy from sticky cramped unbelievably long journeys on Spanish buses but because we haven’t booked anything and I hope we actually find a bus that will take us.

Funny to think what a different world we will be in just tomorrow lunchtime. Especially when it is midnight and tomorrow lunchtime is a lot longer than a day away…!!

Brownout.

Pushing Through the Untrodden Forest

Part I

Here I am and we are in Auckland for the last time for a long time. It will be many years before we again taste ‘Goody Goody Gum Drops’ ice-cream or search under silver ferns for a weta. We have collected our tickets to Santiago and will be leaving in two days. What a very strange feeling. As you will soon have the opportunity to discover, New Zealand (specifically Christchurch) has become quite an extravaganza within us. Curious to think of all the people we’ve met beavering away now and forever, just as they were when we were beavering with them – except soon the place where they beaver will be on the other side of the world. My mother informed me this morning/last night (depending on your worldly perspective) that we return to home pastures in 50 days. I haven’t taken the time to check her facts and calculations but she is my mother and it is my duty to trust her.

In the last post I think we had just spent a night at Sumner, a beach on the outskirts of Christchurch and we were on our way to Spreydon Baptist to see what might become of our extra two months in NZ. As I think I mentioned before, we had heard some guys from Spreydon speak at Soul Survivor last year about living in intentional community and had been planning to pop into the church – now we had extra time we went to see whether we might be able to hang around for a while…

Arriving at the 11am service, we found a seat as Sigur Ros played quietly in the background, I was pleased to note. There were two seats empty alongside us which were soon filled by a good-looking couple. After the service they revealed their secret identities to be Richard and Sandra Hellewell. They invited us to follow them home for Sunday lunch, which we happily did. After stopping for groceries they invited us to stay the night, which we happily agreed to and then informed us that they lived ‘just up the hill’, so up the hill we drove. Up and up and up the hill, until we reached a little plateau which we followed a short distance before continuing uphill. When there was little more mountain to mount we turned to the left and descended briefly. We were in an area of Chch called Cashmere atop a hill which would be called a mountain in England. This hill overlooked the entirety of Christchurch, sprawling across a plain at the feet of the Southern Alps which stretched across the horizon and fell into the distant grey ocean. The Hellewells have an amazing, recently built house on the edge of the hill, one side of which is mostly glass opening onto a balcony complete with hot-tub from which the view can be enjoyed. What amazing places we are getting to see through the kindness of strangers. You can always depend on it. After lunch, Richard and Sandra left us alone with a key as they went out for the afternoon and expected us not to steal anything. Of course we did. Their kindness did not stop there – we’d told them that our friend Hannah Ford from the UK was visiting for a week – they offered us two rooms in their house for the week should Hannah not have accommodation. We couldn’t wait to show her where she’d be living.

At Spreydon’s evening service, Sandra introduced us to Ants Watt (one of the guys from Soul Survivor). We’d sent an email to Spreydon which had been forwarded to him so he was vaguely expecting to meet us. As he was in a rush to see someone we arranged to meet him at his community’s coffee shop the next day. The proper bed followed by hot showers the next day were greatly appreciated.

The following day we collected Hannah Ford from the airport, driving past her once not recognising her with her new blonde hair. Incidentally did you know that it is ‘blond’ for a man with golden locks and ‘blonde’ for a woman. French. Great to see her, a familiar face after so long. We went to see Ants at the cafe with Ford as she is living in an intentional community in London and hoping to start up a cafe so interested to hear more. Ants asked us warily what we were doing there and what we were hoping for, fearing we were crazy Pom stalkers. We explained we were interested in what had been said about intentional community at Soul Survivor and were eager to learn from being involved in one in some way. He seemed to relax a little, told us some people it would be good for us to meet, things we might be able to do – Easter Camp which was coming up for example. He invited us to go over for dinner the following Wednesday and we took off into the day.

The Hannahs and I went into Chch to take a look around, had a wander through the prize-winning botanic gardens packed with glorious European trees, planted hundreds of years ago to make us feel at home. We tasted some tasty fudge and drank dark coffees in Cathedral Square where a group of Maoris (indigenous people of NZ) were performing the Kapa haka – a traditional Maori dance. Lamb kebabs for tea.

The next day Brown expertly cut my hair before we drove over the hill on which the Hellewells live to Lyttleton harbour. A stunning drive with views of the edge of Banks Peninsula, a small nubbin of land to Chch’s South-east – an area of beautiful hills, valleys and bays dotted with pretty little towns. Ford was desperate for a boat ride so we took one across the water to Diamond Harbour. Not much there except a lovely little hotel/restaurant with a pretty garden. The sun was beating down so we sat amongst the agapanthuses and drank L&P (“World famous in NZ”) – tastes like lemon sherbert. The Hannahs shared a big slice of lemon meringue pie. I think ordinarily people take the ferry in the opposite direction so we caught the next one back and wandered around Lyttleton. We looked around galleries and then entered a dairy for an icecream. A fresh faced young man greeted us with a face like a lion. Ford noticed the lack of flavour identification at the counter and inquired whether he knew them all. He threw back his leonine mane with a deep laugh as he revealed, a gleam in his eye, “but of course I know. This is my domain” and with a flourish of his hand he unleashed his frozen-goods knowledge upon us. The double-flavour single-scoops were the biggest we’d yet seen. The next time we went to Lyttleton, this shop and it’s young salesman no longer existed. As if it had all been part of a beautiful dream. Brown allowed Ford to cut her hair when we got home. Brave Ford, funny to watch. For dinner we had NZ fish and chips – red cod! The popular NZ way is crumbed not battered so we got one of each to share. Interestingly it is unthinkable to have a fish cooked when you are not watching. Injected with truth serum I would admit that the crumbed cod tasted better – like a giant fish finger – but it felt wholly wrong. When he was packing up the chips we asked for vinegar and he paused, slyly looked from side to side, reached under the counter and pulled out a large bottle of the dark fluid. He gave a few quick shakes over the packet and exposed us as British.

The next morning brought rain which we watched glide down from the hill across the centre of town and into the distance. We decided to visit the art gallery. There was an exhibition on William Sutton’s watercolour paintings of his travels in Italy. Incredible. Well worth the free ticket. Stunningly detailed pencil drawings with simply (simple) brilliant paint on top. At the ‘Arts Centre’ (an old stone building, something to do with the college?) we had big bowls of chilli soup which warmed us up on the chilly day. We bought some fudge. The lovely old fudge ladies were surprised that us “young people on gap years” wanted to taste the hidden ginger fudge – apparently shouldn’t be to our taste. In the evening we went to Addington – the area where the community in which the Watts live is based. We were there for dinner. Ants is Married to Sandy, they have two kids (Hanna 7 and Olivia 5) and live with Bruce, Harmony, Josh and Ty. Next door are Mike, Matt (Belly), Matt (Barus) and Jared. This group comprised one ‘hub’ of the community. Others were situated in the area (similar distances to the Flowers Estate, Southamptonians). For dinner about 15 people sat around a table in the garden. A few more were there than live in the two houses as Bruce was going to Australia for a month. Kiwi Pavlovas were presented for pudding as Bruce’s treat. We were made to feel very welcome and had lot and lots of fun.

Wednesday nights are small-groups nights and we somehow got roped into playing indoor netball. Conveniently the Hannahs were wearing inappropriate footwear so only I was forced onto the court. As a boy, this was my first opportunity to play netball and I knew no rules except that it was basically a lame version of basketball. We entered the custom-built building where endless rotations of games were played. Our group had put their names down the week before and would be playing a team decided at random. Grumpy umpires and coloured vests were provided and we hit the courts. I had little idea what I was doing and spent my 15 minutes chasing the small girl I was ‘marking. We lost 15-29. It was surprisingly enjoyable.

Thursday with the Hannahs was spent at New Brighton beach, complete with pier but lacking a burnt-down one. We ate pies and gormet sausage rolls under the library by the seas and drank large banana or raspberry milkshakes. We then spent the afternoon cooking the most definitely amazing chilli ever concocted with dark cocoa powder and beef skirt. For pudding we had meringues with raspberries. Ford created a dark chocolate and fresh ginger sauce that, combined with the raspberries was quite the flavour implosion. The Hellewells ate with polite concern.

A road trip on Friday took us an hour and a half North to Hamner Springs where there is a popular spa harbouring several naturally heated pools at a variety of temperatures. Before we entered we had a picnic on the green and climbed nearby Conical Hill. There was a great LOTR view from the top of rolling forested hills and grassy plains. We met some older ladies at the summit who were wearing delightful hats and seemed to put on BBC accents when they heard where we were from. We spotted them in the spa a little later on and took turns on look-out duty to escape from them slapstick-style. At the spa there were 4 pools at 38-39 degrees, a series of connected rock pools at 35, a chlorinated pool at 27 and three small unfiltered pools at 41 degrees. All except the chlorinated pool were spring water but only the hottest was full of bits and stank of sulphur. We spent a couple of hours moving from hot to warm, warm to hot to unbearable. Ford has a fear of wrinkled feet. If you ever get a chance to show her one, it is well worth it. We ate the famous NZ ‘lolly cake’ at a bakery and did not enjoy the experience. Back in Chch that evening we had a curry at the Raj Mahal which was DELICIOUS!! Second best curry I’ve ever had and only a tenner each!

The next day we treated ourselves to another road trip and drove deep into Banks Peninsula to Akaroa, another harbour town. It is a wonderful drive full of rivers and bridges and green and hills and forests and plains. Pie and chips for $4.50 on the way at Little River. Akaroa is a funny place which thinks it is French due to it being the spot where the first French settlers landed all those years ago. It attempts to affirm its identity by selling berets and hosting sporting events and calling them ‘Le Race’. This event (a cycle ride from Chch to Akaroa) was conducting its prize ceremony as we arrived. As about 2000 competitors and families were seated on the village green the loudspeaker announced the arrival of the final contestant – a man of considerable age who raised his fist to the cheers of the seated throng as he passed, followed closely by an ambulance. Finally the organisers could begin dismantling the lines of orange cones. We had a stingy ice-cream from a grumpy, creased teenage boy. Back in Chch we went to a posh-looking pizza place called The Bicycle Thief, mainly because Hannah liked the name. Good music and pear & gorgonzola pizza. One of the nights we did use the hot tub at the Hellewells and spotted the Southern Cross from our bubbling seats.

On Sunday morning we deposited Ford at the airport before church, sending our love with her to England, sad to see her go after a fun week with the Fraudster. We had Sunday lunch at another Addington hub where Ants told us he would look into finding somewhere for us to live. We stayed another couple of nights with the Hellewells before going to stay in the caravan in the Watts’ garden. Ants and Sandy had invited us to stay and made us feel very welcome. We began having our dinners at the Watts’ from that moment on. As the Easter holidays began the caravan owners needed it back and we were offered an empty house in a street nearby. We stayed there for a week or so with a guy called Jolian. Our days were filled at this time by painting a shipping container in the warehouse behind the coffee shop with Adam Rossiter (part of another Addington hub). The container had been insulated, fitted out with a descending bed and a kitchen. We arrived just as it needed grinding, priming and painting and the bathroom fitted. That is what we spent the next week or so working on. Mike and Ty were also painting. Hannah helped Adam with the shower and chiseling the bathroom door. She has learned many sweet new skills. A perk of all this was as much coffee as we could drink and half price food. Great because they make amazing coffee and ridiculous food. I recommend the field mushrooms and the porridge. Great fun working on the container – Josh lives in it now and rightly says it is the best room in the house.

One Sunday was spent dismantling the garage in the Watts’ garden using sledge hammers and crowbars to make way for the lorry which brought the container to the garden. Ants was working hard to get the garden looking good before Bruce returned from Australia – he and Ty rotovated the garden and scattered grass seed.

On Wednesday the 31st March we visited Hagley Park nearby Addington with Ants – full of kingly oak trees. We discussed living with others and problems and delights it creates. Netball was played for the third and last time. The previous week we had been winning the entire 30 minutes (first time the group had done it) until we got complacent and found ourselves giving a few points to the opposition until the score was 24-24. Ty had been consistently scoring baskets each time he was passed the ball and managed to once again but there was some kind of foul. Still 24-24. He was passed it again in the dying moments, leaned back and tossed it in as we the spectators screamed silently from our angst-strangled throats…the buzzer went and there was a moment of confusion before we found out it had gone while the ball was still in the air. We ended with a draw, still a happy result. Because of this we were incredibly eager to win the last night. Unfortunately we lost 10-38. Ouch.

Easter Camp Two Thousand Ten run by churches in Chch began the next day. We had met one of the camp organisers Arnika previously and she was our boss for the next few days. EC was situated about 30mins outside of Chch at Spencer Park. We arrived early afternoon and parked at the end of what would soon be a sea of blocked-in cars and headed for ‘regos’ where we would spend the next 8 hours registering the 4000 youths and leaders attending the camp. We were fed with crisps, coke and fish. Somehow we had wangled a cabin and found out we were sharing it with a couple of the speakers – one of them a comedian (Dave Wiggins, www.davewiggins.co.nz check him out!). They were both cracking jokes about the British all evening – our rooms separated by a wall which ended a couple of feet before the ceiling. When Hannah’s alarm went off unexpectedly and woke everyone up by screaming “It is seven thirty! Wake up!” they complained of the British being selfish and controlling. Dave Wiggins ran through his current material on ‘Googling God’ which is great. We got talking and found out some of the only people he knows in the UK are Andy and Lindsey Morgan – part of our home group!

Our role at EC was as ‘Activity Volunteers’. Each morning after the meeting in the big top we all met up and were told our roles for the day. One day we were put in charge of ‘slippery soccer’, mostly because of our nationality. This involved laying a huge sheet of polythene (partly downhill), throwing many buckets of water on and then a couple of litres of pink dishwashing liquid. Participants were found, a ball tossed in and hilarity and pain ensued. The teams grew large and little attention was paid to any rules (which we didn’t know anyway). Another duty was to make gunge with flour, water and paint for a crazy game. Gunge was to be carried on competitors heads from one end of a field to the other, where it was emptied into a barrel resting on a pallet of bricks sitting on lines of logs. Once this was filled sufficiently it was to be moved to the other end of the field by rolling it on the logs. Hannah ended up getting caught between the winners and the revenge-fueled losers carrying a bucket of gunge. She even got it in between her teeth. One of our least favourite jobs was ‘pash patrol’. We stayed for pack-down on the Tuesday, there were a lot of marquees to dismantle and countless bins to collect.

For the rest of that week we stayed at Andy and Pauline’s house (part of the Spencer St hub) house-sitting whilst they were on holiday on the West Coast. They have double-glazing, a real treat in NZ where central heating is unheard of. An EC reunion at the Addington Coffee Co-op at the end of the week involved sweets and crisps and hog roast. Very good times.

We had met the wonderful Di Sargent at Spreydon briefly once and she had heard our time at the Dumbleton’s was up. She phoned us and told us we were welcome at her house should we ever need it. We took her up on it and stayed for a week. We’d have loved to stay longer as she is probably the most brilliant person ever but another place in Addington (where we were spending all our time) became available. When we arrived at Di’s there was a large bed and folded towels topped with two creme eggs. This made us instant friends. Twas great living with Di, she is a lot of fun. She would leave us notes saying helpful things like ‘Welcome to Wednesday’ ordering us to something outrageous or brilliant. When we had told her about our plans to Skype our housemates Steve and Mel in the evening, we returned to find sweets, drinks and party poppers by the computer and various fancy dress items hidden under a towel on the floor ready for our ‘Skype Party’. Hannah chose wonderwoman pants, a hat with wobbling ears and a nose & glasses combo. I chose a blond wig and a red feather boa. Great to talk to Badger and Mel, they are bold and brassy.

During our stay with Di we helped out at another camp, this one for ‘intellectually disabled young people’. We had been asked at the last minute and so only able to stay one of the nights and had to leave on the penultimate day. Our days were spent playing tag, what’s the time Mr Wolf, etc. outside, board games/dvds indoors, eating breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. There were also exciting activities like raft building and sailing (in 1 foot of water!), rock climbing, orienteering and rope swinging. The idea was to give the guys an opportunity to push their boundaries and experience something new, even if this was just one foot on the climbing wall or even just putting on the climbing harness. We fell in love with the guys in the short time we were with them, there was an unbelievable amount of joy there. The Tuesday evening we left to go to the cinema with Belly and Mike, where we watched Kick-ass. Wednesday we stayed in the dorm with the campers – lots of snoring and sleep talking but felt adventurous! On Thursday we said goodbye to everyone. All the Addington hubs were meeting up for a meal at a local Chinese restaurant – about 50 people there. This is where we met Joan Davidson for the first time and she offered us her house for three weeks when she went on holiday.

Harmony who lives with the Watts has two kids who stay every other weekend. The Friday was Keira’s birthday and we had a little party in the morning.

Other things we’ve/I’ve done over the last 2 months:

- Dug a shallow grave at the side of the cafe for a grease trap – filled 5 small wheelie bins.
- Worked in the cafe (clearing tables, running food, making smoothies, rolling cutlery) – Hannah did this more often.
- Bruce returned and was immediately whipped away by the Watt girls, his biggest fans, mostly hoping to find presents.
- Bruce and I went on Liv’s class trip to the botanical gardens (which began, of course with morning tea). I was put in charge of photography. The teacher told me to make sure I took plenty of pictures, the pressure was on. Each of the ‘parent helpers’ was then assigned a small group of kids to take around the gardens collecting leaves, measuring tree trunks, bug hunting, oak spotting, etc. a LOT of fun. I had three excited and energetic 6 year old boys. The day continued with lunch, playtime on the park and activities arranged by the ‘environment education officer’ which included me wearing flowers on my head.
- We had a number of coffees and dinners with Maurice and Nola Gardiner, a great couple who took good care of us and we will miss a lot – they are good friends with my old boss back home, a funny day when we found that out!
- Joined in with making a breakfast for kids & parents at the primary school Hanna & Liv go to – bacon and pancakes!
- Took a trip with Bruce and Belly to a small coffee shop in a little isolated Autumnal valley and walked along an old railway track. We then went over to Magazine Bay near Lyttleton, Belly showing us secret places we would never have found. We searched out ice cream in Lyttleton, now the old ice cream shop had evaporated.
- Had picnics with the Watts and Harmony and Ty, often rubbing polystyrene on wet glass to attract the attention of little birds
- Went to court where lawyers don’t turn up or ever meet the defendant and still get paid the same amount.
- Enjoyed endless fried chicken at KFC for Josh’s birthday
- Went to the dawn service in Cathedral Square for ANZAC day (like Remembrance Day) mostly so Hanna could get the Brownie badge. With porridge at Geoff’s afterwards.
- Been amazed by the Chch evening clouds – long dangerous looking things often.
- Constructed fences and ‘laced’ gates with Maurice on his friend’s farm. Also watched him shave the bottom of a sheep to rid it of the hundreds of maggots eating its flesh.
- Took a trip with Ants, Harmony, Nation, Keira, Josh, Lis and James to Le Bons Bay, a remote bay on the furthest point of Banks Peninsula where we stayed at a bach, went for walks, collected fresh mussels (after fighting off rabid seals and surviving mega-waves), sharpened sticks to use as spears for catching eels at night.
- Cleaned out the warehouse whilst drinking hot chocolate and pausing to eat porridge.
- Visiting Chch’s rival cafes (like C1) with Hannah Dunlop (as if there weren’t enough already).
- Began attending the new Wednesday night groups, I chose the cooking group which was a lot of fun – last week we nearly burned down the cafe.
- Morning tea with Di at Joans, where we feasted on scones and meringues and listened to enforced Bob Dylan.
- Explored magical secondhand bookshops on Manchester Street.
- Attended devotions at the Watts’ every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8am!
- Borrowed surfboards to use at Sumner.
- Ate toast at the Viney’s with Adam and Caleb.
- Attended a day’s workshop at Spreydon led by Dave Andrews entitled ‘Life Together’.
- Visited C1 again, this time with Alanna, Sam, Adam, etc. drank a very poor hot chocolate with a tasty Kiwi chocolate fish.
- Ate German pizza at a little secret pizza place with Hannah Dunlop and her housemate Jonny.
- Played in the big cave at Sumner beach with Hanna and Liv as Ants and Sandy chilled on the beach.
- Watched DVDs and drank coffee with Mike.

That is a very brief overview of two brilliant months we have spent with a large group of brilliant people who have taken us in and treated us like family. We will truly miss them all and like I said, how strange to think of all those people we know carrying on on the other side of the globe as we leave…

Brownout

The Sound and the Fury

Hello. I am aware that the things I am telling you happened a long time ago. You may not be. I could just not say this and leave you believing it all happened yesterday but it is not the truth and the truth will set you free. Feel free to believe this did all just happen if you wish but if you want an edge of reality, the date range of the following is Wednesday 3rd March to Sunday 14th March. One day my blog may catch up with my journal. One day my journal may catch up with my life. I endeavour to achieve real-time blogging in more than the abstract and the conclusion.

Picking up where I left off, we left Liz and Rob’s (Tom’s parents) with a new tyre and a new steering column and set a course for the most visited tourist attraction in New Zealand – Rotorua – most visited due to it’s volcanic activeness – bubbling lakes, steaming vents, sulphurous smells and the like. We paid to see nothing, having visited the most active volcano in NZ (White Island) and feeling smug about seeing all the volcanic tricks close up. We would only be there for an afternoon – the smell of overcooked eggs was close to unbearable at times. Lake Rotorua is large and in the part by the town, white. Like a huge saucer of milk for some kind of Japanese-city-destroying radioactive cat freak. Along the shore were bubbling mud pools and steam vents too small to earn the honour of a fence and viewing fee but which we photographed eagerly. We saw black swans and were choked in clouds of icing sugar from an exuberantly dusted apple turnover. We collected Robert the German hitchhiker on the way to our next destination, the lakeside city of Taupo. Just outside of Taupo we took a detour to visit the Huka Falls which the Lonely Planet promised were free. How do the French say it? Incrediablé. A meaty gorge 15ft wide and deep, full of brilliant-blue water churning as insanely as a flea-tormented dog in an emotionally unstable washing machine. It is said that 200,000 litres of water dribble over the stumpy waterfall every minute – or at least that’s what I remember. Robert was impressed. Driving over a hill into Taupo we were greeted with a view of Lake Taupo with a backdrop of the Tongariro mountains – Mordor!! We ditched Robert and found out about a free campsite nearby. The Book of Wonder provided another weeks’ worth of meal ideas and we set off for the nearby Pak ‘N’ Save to buy buy buy. The first of the meals was beef stroganoff. We know how to camp.

The following day we decided it would be a good idea to hire bikes and get out and about. Turns out we both had a different image of what a day biking might look like. Hannah thought ‘Ah, how lovely, we shalt hire dainty bicycles with tinkling bells and woven baskets for freshly baked goodies and wildflowers we collect along the way as we bicycle in a genteel fashion along the quaint Kiwi boulevards’ Adam thought ‘Sweet, we can get our filthy hands on a couple of mean off-road beasts with phat treads for wicked dirt trails through the wild alpine forests. I bet I can go faster down the steep and root-ridden narrow tracks of death. We is gonna get wasted, innit’. Unfortunately for Hannah, she did not mention the vision she had been aspiring to until they were both deep in the forest scraping down an impossibly steep gradient with the brakes squealing as they tried to pretend they were not centimeters away from a 50ft plunge of pain. As Hannah dreamt of baguettes and bicycle clips, Adam secretly enjoyed himself ((though he felt bad that Hannah’s dreams had not been realised) and also a little scared). Back in town Adam kindly bought Hannah a milkshake in KFC to make it up to her.

Beef and camembert calzone for tea, again cooked on a camping stove, with smores for pudding. You are so impressed. In the morning I fell onto my bum into the river running through the campsite attempting to collect water in a saucepan. We then ate banana porridge. YES! That day was IRONMAN day – people from all over the world come to Taupo to swim 4.8 km, cycle 180 km and then run 42 km. People lined the streets clapping proudly – those too weak or too lazy used plastic ‘clappers’. There was electromagneticism in the wind. Such handsome bikes… It was a full-day event. We popped into warehouse and bought Hannah a torch and a ‘mega pack’ of baby wipes, which was actually reasonably mediocre. The day was spent meandering from crowded roadside Ironman enthusiasts to the shops of Taupo relishing the opportunity presented by the Ironman-spectator engorged pavements. After finding and using a BOGOF coffee voucher we found ourselves at the finish line just as the MC was psyching up the plastic-clapper-clad crowds for the arrival for the 2010 IRONMAN champion by tossing free hats and inflatable bananas into the throng. I would have had one if the guy in front of me hadn’t been. As the champ rounded the bend onto the final straight and the MC screamed like a frenzied baboon, everybody dutifully joined in, went wild, threw their exaggerated bananas into the electrified air and earned their free hats. The victor was Cameron Brown and he was triumphant for the 9th successive Ironman – a new world record. Clearly a relative of mine. Red Thai curry for dinner.

Went to Taupo Baptist in the morning and were warmly welcomed by Wendy who turned out to know the lady whose house I am currently typing from – Joan Davidson from Spreydon Baptist in Christchurch. Wendy went to Spreydon 14 years ago and gave us some contacts/people to look out for and put us in touch with the office as we told her we were hoping to go there for a month or two to help out in any way if they’d have us. Hannah spent the afternoon stewing apples. We sent an email to Spreydon the next day warning of our imminent visit. Outside the internet café we met a pair of wrinkled and compact travelers who had been on the road for 9 years and told us of every free and secret campsite from Taupo to Wellington (where we would be catching the ferry to the South Island). That evening we stopped at one in a small ‘town’ Hunterville which we would never have noticed without the direction of the wrinklies. It was a beautiful little spot full of some of my favourite trees – beeches, acers, walnuts, limes, sweet chestnuts – like an old arboretum planted to make us feel at home, lovely. Our route from Taupo had taken us past Mordor along the ‘desert road’, a barren expanse surrounding an old snow-capped volcano. Bean burgers with cheese, crème fraiche, tomatoes, sweet chilli sauce and a fried egg for dinner. Apple crumble for pudding. Just before bed I saw my first possum.

The following day we arrived in Wellington. First impressions were of confusion, crowdedness and wires. We exited the centre and set about looking for a place to park up for the night, dubious and fretful. We drove around a beautiful peninsula and stopped at the Chocolate Fish Café for a coffee/icecream. The place was full school chairs and tables and we were given no chocolate fish. Further around the coast we found a beachside parking space nearby some public toilets. When more campervans turned up we felt secure. Hannah went to talk to the occupants of one van who turned out to be a lone French girl Aureile (pronounced, “Oh, really?”) who was also heading south. Sentences, paragraphs and contact details were exchanged and she promised to use us as a base in the UK. As evening slid over us a crowd began to gather on the beach. Before long we guessed they were Christians – they wore bright clothes, were all ages, chatty, happy, one had a trendy beard and a book under his arm and hugs were dealt whenever someone new arrived. Turned out to be a baptism in the sea! We were encouraged and went to sleep contented. Hannah arose early for a jog and a swim in the sea as the sun was rising. Superb. We spent the day exploring Wellie beginning with a trip to the Te Papa museum – basically the Natural History Museum. After peanut butter and plum jam sandwiches outside the art gallery we wandered the town exploring bookshops and trailing people with good looking icecreams. It was Writers and Readers Week and we had heard about a poetry recital at a theatre that evening (free, of course). We bought chocolate-dipped icecreams at the theatre and sat in velvet-covered VIP seats near the stage. Over an hour or two 5 famousish poets read 4 or 5 poems each. We pretended to understand and enjoyed the experience. Steak for dinner as we chatted to Frenchy.

We awoke at 6am, made sandwiches and took off for the ferry. As we sat in one of the lines of cars waiting to board I was convinced we would end up in France. On the 3 hour ferry ride we watched the landscape of the North Island drift away as we approached the Marlborough Sounds of the South Island – an area of fjords and islands – a maze through which the ferry must navigate. The steep hills on either side of the ferry were home to isolated farmhouses only accessible by boat or mountain goat. The hermits living there cut off from society, many without electricity still, entirely alone but for the thousands of ferry passengers passing each day only a km or so away but utterly unreachable. Arriving in Picton, we disembarked. We would be staying with Rob Cleland’s sister (Tom’s Aunt) on her farm that night but had 5 hours to kill by eating painfully delicious Dutch pastries packed with cherries and joy. The time that didn’t fill was spent in the library, where I managed to read an entire (short but brilliant) Louis De Bernieres book ‘Red Dog’. A windy windy road along fjords led us to the farm and house of Sharon and Chris, set upon a hill with a glorious fjordland view which they had moved into only three days before. They very kindly gave us a bed in the guest house – with it’s own lounge and bathroom! We have stayed in some seriously great B&Bs!! Great people, whom we assured we did not defecate on roadsides.

In the morning we took our first tentative steps South. A similar landscape to that of the Stellanbosch winelands of South Africa, absolutely magnificent. We stopped at ‘Vinery Village’ and enjoyed tastings of incredible black sambucca, icecream sauces, chutneys, vinegars, cheese and (from a stern Nordic saleswoman) two slithers of fudge from our two flavour choices. I felt invigorated and alive. There was also a quilting shop (not an unusual sight in NZ) where Hannah bought some delightful fabric scraps. Another German hitchhiker named Chris later and we found ourselves driving alongside some dramatic coastline, hoping for a glance at a whale. A pretty and pretty long drive with tunnels through cliffs which brought us to Kaikoura (roughly halfway to Christchurch). If you are in NZ, Kaikoura is the place to go whale watching. It cost $150 each and so we didn’t. The weather was looking a little unstable and there was a chill in the air – we decided we would have a cooked lunch and maybe sandwiches for tea, incase it rained later on. In a car park we set a pan of pasta boiling. Kaikoura was supposed to be in the shadow of a chain of majestic and imposing mountains but we saw no evidence of them – a blanket of grey cloud dominated the sky – we could be in a town floating on the sea for all we could tell. The clouds were getting darker and as I sat on the car’s backseat leaning out to stir the pasta we heard a rumble that could have been a lorry but sounded like thunder. Then I felt a splash that felt too big to be a raindrop but too cold to be from the pan of boiling water. Before long it was clear something significant was about to happen – lightning flashes, thunderclaps, raindrops like water balloons. At first the rain was sparse and we willed either the storm to pass or the pasta to boil. Our will was not the Lord’s. When marble-sized hailstones began to plummet, we closed the doors and left the pasta to itself. The flame guttered and spat in the wind and the pan took a beating but physics was on our side and the flame stayed alight. I took a beating each time I opened the door to check whether the pasta was cooked, much to the amusement of the guy in the driver’s seat of the car which had pulled up next to us to avoid driving in the storm. He happily pointed out our plight to his amused wife. A gay time was had by all. Once done, the pan and stove were hauled into the car and dished up. The windows steamed up in seconds. It was intense under there – I was convinced the already cracked windscreen would cave in under the pounding it was taking and bury Hannah in the front seat. A window was wiped and we gazed out at a new world – previously warm and summery, now white, arctic and sparse. I was eager to look around – Hannah predictably less so. We put on our macs and stepped out into the freezing rain, our fingers instantly rendered useless. Joining the rest of the startled population of Kaikoura in a café, we attempted to warm up around thankfully large coffees. That is until the water started to pour through the ceiling and everyone was kicked out before the building collapsed. We had read in a leaflet that there was an Irish pub nearby where campervans could park for free. It turned out to be true. We sat in their car park reading and designing quilt patterns pretending we were warm before going inside for a delicious and deserved dinner of warm breads and dips.

We arose early in the morning to make the most of a gloriously clear and fresh day. The previously non-existent mountains were suddenly very existent. Colossal. Spectacular – possibly the best sight so far. The previous day’s storm had kindly perfected them with a dusting of snow. Unbelievable that something so immense could be concealed by water vapour to the extent that you wouldn’t believe it was there. From now on, water vapour beats rock. We visited the peninsula where there was a seal colony inhabited by one sleeping seal. We climbed a hill to begin the walk of the peninsula and were rewarded with a gut-wrenching view of the mountains (the Southern Alps) stretching across NZ and dropping suddenly into the sea with just about enough space for a road along the shore. It was so great I even did a sketch. I was desperate to tuck into a Toblerone.

Back on the road we stopped briefly at a café where everything looked delicious and nothing was bought. The remaining 3 hours to Christchurch turned out to be 2 hours, which was nice. We had arrived. Little did we know then (though we hoped) we would still be there two months later. Once again we were anxious about where we would find to sleep that night and popped into the i-site on Cathedral Square in the city centre but were told with a secretive glance that they ‘didn’t hold that information’ so once again we felt like we were being naughty by sleeping in our car! After a coffee we set off for the coast to find somewhere to park, looking out for campervans and toilets. Before long we found a spot in a place called ‘Sumner’ alongside a windswept beach. A council lady turned up in the carpark and we thought we would be thrown in jail or executed. God, however, was just preparing to implode our expectations once again and the kind lady asked us to fill out a survey about Freedom Camping for which she would give us a $10 petrol voucher! She informed us there were no by-laws about freedom camping and it was perfectly legal. The council was looking to understand the minds of campers and figure out a way to make visitors and residents (who are rightfully concerned by the few campers who use the verges as toilets) both happy. It was a chance for us to suggest things such as a map of public toilets/cheap overnight parking/more helpful i-sites! We slept comfortably reassured that night.

The next day was blisteringly hot and Sunday. We intended to visit Spreydon Baptist, the church we had heard about from Anthony Watt, a speaker at Soul Survivor last Summer. He spoke about living as a redemptive community of faith, learning to love God and each other and we were eager to have a chance to see how they were outworking it as it is something we are keen to explore back in Southampton.

What happens next is a brilliant beginning to a new chapter in our trip – although I feel like I should let anyone who has made it reading this far have a break and maybe continue in my next installment as I fear this is already a much too long one. Hang on, word count… Yep, pretty long …but not the longest…

We are missing everyone and looking forward to seeing your glowing entities in a couple of months!

Brownout.

The Fortress by the Sea

I write from yet another stunning location – a newly built house atop a mountainous hill, towering over a vast plain spread with the sprawl of New Zealand’s Christchurch. The horizon is dominated by the snow-capped Southern Alps, stumbling into the sea to the NE. You will have to come and see for yourselves. The wall between me and this view is almost entirely glass, making it I suppose a window. There is a balcony outside (complete with hot tub) where a frail butterfly is struggling desperately to crawl back to some unknown warm embrace against the morning’s strong easterly wind.

We ended up here (instead of in our station wagon) after going to church yesterday – the house belongs to the couple who sat next to us, who invited us back for dinner and then to spend the week living here! Yet again God has provided above and beyond what we could hope for or imagine.

So as I gaze over the distant Alps like some kind of Grecian god, I will endeavour to pick up the New Zealand story where I left off. It was Tuesday 23rd February. We had returned to Maude & Bruce’s (Lisa’s parents) after our exploration of the Far North. Maude fed us roast chicken with crispy, rosemary covered roast potato cubes. The men sat around chatting and the ladies watched tripe on the television. Tom & Lisa then suggested we join them for a weekend at their bach* on the Coromandel. Sounded good to us!

After re-packing the car and depositing anything unneccessary in the MacDonald garage. We set off in the direction of the Coromandel, unsure where we would be spending the night. It was a beautiful drive and began with an impromptu visit to Auckland botanical gardens – free entry! We made a lunch with what food we had left and took it in… A lovely place. We munched beside a lake under the shade of a softly weeping willow. Back at the entrance we were inexplicably drawn to the cafe where, predictably, we drank dark coffee. We continued our journey along the Pacific Coast Highway past vast deathly white mud flats covered with clear blue water and had our breath forcibly removed by views of sea and mountain which Hannah insisted on photographing endlessly.

We arrived at Thames, a large town in the Coromandel named so because a guy who saw it a long time ago thought it’s river looked like …the Thames. Looked like a river to me. It was here we discovered that our gas stove cannister could be filled at all petrol stations for about $6! Highlight of the trip so far. We were given some unhelpful help in an i-site before deciding we would sleep in a real campsite you had to pay for, nearby some popular walking routes. After buying mince and kidney beans, this is where we went.

The campsite was situated at the end of a 15km unsealed gravel road. We shared the campsite with a tired French lady called Sophie. We cooked chilli and invited her to join us. She agreed but would bring her own food (I think scared of what we might make) once she had seen and tasted our chilli, of course the empty bowl was returned for seconds. She kindly offered us some of her spiruline (green mould) which is apparently good for you. She was very generous and urged us to take as much as we wanted. We spent the evening pleasantly chatting away – Sophie was leisurely cycling NZ. Epic. She was very talkative and as the darkness surrounded us and clouds of mosquitoes descended, we feebly attempted to draw conversations to a conclusion. Eventually she permitted us leave and we escaped into the car from the creatures of the night.

Early in the morning we had our porridge which was inspected and approved by Sophie. We donned suitable footwear and made our way to the beginning of the track for the day’s walk, our bag packed with sandwiches, water and waterproofs (the sky was looking ominous). Map in hand, we took off. Minutes later I ran back to lock the car. It all began very pleasantly with a well maintained pathway leading us gently through NZ’s famous silver ferns. Before long, however, the path began to climb and become a little more rugged. It was an old packhorse track from the 1920s and the track users had lazily hewn solid rock into a rough pattern; a “staircase” if you could stretch your imagination far enough. This wasn’t something the Incas would have been proud of. We slipped and crawled up steep rock gullies through oppressive jungle vegetation for an hour or two, crossing thirsty rivers over stepping stones or chainmail swinging bridges. We reached a point where we could take an extra track to see ‘The Pinnacles’ – a reportedly good viewpoint. Another uphill struggle, although much more open and much more pleasant – views of forested hills and valleys stretching away, clouds encircling jutting volcanic structures (these clouds were also coating us in a fine drizzle). The pinnacles hut was an hour along this track and we were just stepping onto a wooden walkway leading to it’s entrance when the stomach of a cloud nearby was mauled by a mountain peak causing a torrent of rain to crash over us. We ran the last 20 steps and escaped a soaking. The hut was impressive – room for 80 people to stay when doing a more lengthy walk – a large kitchen (the only things left behind for lonely trekkers were two Gladwrapped** stale biscuits) and a large covered area for BBQs and merriment. We ate our peanut butter and plum jam sandwiches and waited for the rain to ease before setting off again. It was definitely downhill from here, mentally more than physically. Hannah had not been feeling great and we decided to head back rather than go the extra hour to the pinnacles themselves. The hour back to the original trail passed without drama – except for the fact that the rain began again and got even heavier. The path slipped into it’s ‘stream’ state and we eventually became one with the water, accepting it finally after fruitless attempts to avoid it. Back on the original track, we decided that rather than go the 2 hour walk we had done to reach that point earlier (remembering the rock ‘staircase’ and imagining it would be pretty treacherous now) we would take our chances and walk the unknown 3 hour route… A miserable few hours as the rain poured thickly and unceasingly. We were saturated. The path was barely distinguishable from the valley of death. Log steps once useful had decades ago become washed-out obstacles with half metre drops to pools of wet mud beneath. Where there were no steps, the path was now either a V-shaped stream bed or a collection of angular ankle-twisting boulders. Hannah was really not having a good time. Thoughts of hot chocolate and the angry letters we would write the the DOC*** who had recommended and ‘maintained’ the ‘walk’ kept us going through the slips and falls. The final hour was a little less like walking through an upside-down swimming pool of pain but the path became illegally steep. At least it was a path. I am remembering the aches of the stretchy bits between my toes…ouch. We eventually made it back to the car and after bagging our clothes, took off as fast as we were able to Tom’s Aunt’s bach (holiday home), stopping for a hot chocolate on the way.

The bach was lovely – a small two bedroomed place set just off a beautiful beach with honey-coloured, tree topped sandstone cliffs to the North and kilometres of white sand stretching away to the South. Out to sea the blue water was dotted with small forested islands.

No TV so after unpacking, the evening was spent eating chocolate and puzzling over a puzzle. Great to sleep in a bed again! Tom and Lisa arrived from Auckland around 3pm the next day and unpacked all the tasty groceries they had bought. Tom declared that we would all go for a swim and so we did. We swam a fair distance to a cave/blowhole along the coast. It was stunning – oak trees grew on the surface, hanging over the opening which was about 8m across. They filtered a perfect green light down to the water. I wanted to stay and gaze but was treading water and cold out of the sun so we swam back to the beach. It was pretty exhausting as I can’t really swim. We (well, Tom) fired up the BBQ for delicious bloody steak and chinese honey sausages. The second puzzle was started before Lisa eventually managed to convice Tom to play cards with us. He rose from his stupor and taught us ’500′. Kind of like poker. Well, cards and remembering are involved.

After a breakfast of french toast**** and golden syrup (not Tate & Lyles’) we drove to Cathedral Cove – the beach where the new Prince Caspian film begins. It was a beautiful day and the carpark was packed – we parked on the side of a road hanging over a cliff edge. With a 45 minute walk down to the beach, I was amazed to see how many people were making the trip. When we arrived, we saw why – easily the most perfect beach we have been to on our travels. Not too crowded either, which is normally complained about. The sand was white, the cliffs were yellow and soft, the water was clearer than the clearest crystal, there were impressive arches and stacks towering over the beach, everyone was having a great time. Beachy things were done before returning to the car. We stopped at a nearby shop for icecreams and toffee which we ate on a parasoled picnic bench. Hot Water Beach was the next stop – a beach where at low tide you can dig a hole with your shovel and it will fill with hot water – your own jacuzzi! Unfortunately we got there at high tide. All Tom’s fault. Back at the bach we had soup, sausages and slowly BBQ’d sweetcorn for dinner before wandering through the moonlight to a local lookout with Tom. Again the rest of the evening was spent playing 500.

In the morning, about 7am, Hannah and I were woken by an air-raid siren. I was going to go back to sleep, thinking it would only sound a few times at most, but it kept going… Hannah and I joked when ‘Tsunami’ immediately entered our minds as all coastal areas in NZ are plastered with warning signs and escape routes. Tom and Lisa hadn’t woken up so we were going to go back to bed when we heard someone run up the stairs on the side of the house, knock on the front door, run back down and around the back of the house and bang on the french windows at the end of our room. Then we became more curious. We went outside and heard a neighbour shouting to another “I’ve been listening on the radio, there was an earthquake in Chile, the tidal wave will hit NZ at 7:30am with a 3m swell!” Now Tom and Lisa were awake. After listening to the radio in Tom’s car it was still unclear what was supposed to be happening. We went and had a look at the sea and it was still there so we went back inside and had some more eggy bread for breakfast. Tom then suggested we go for a swim. Lisa wasn’t too keen on that idea but we went anyway … the hills were literally on the beach, so we (perhaps foolishly?) reasoned it would be ok! The tide was out a lot further than it should have been as it was supposed to be high tide, but not further out than Tom had ever seen. Whilst we were in the water, larger choppy waves began rolling in – still quite small, but fast. As we returned to the sand, we saw that the tide had moved about 10 metres up the beach from where it was when we arrived a few minutes earlier. This is pretty much the way it continued for the next 12 hours, advancing to high tide and then retreating to low tide, every 30 minutes or so. It was incredible to think that the sea on our beach was reacting to an event 10000km or so away. Just think what terror all those butterfly wings must create after all… We returned to the beach every now and then to check the sea was still there and it always was. Much of the rest of the day was spent sleeping and reading. Most of the locals took the event in their stride – a few people left but most just carried on as normal. There was a lot of excited chatter at the small passenger ferry terminal – it wasn’t running due to the freakish tide – first time ever or something… The seagulls were especially confused as the rocks they perched on were routinely engulfed. The radio blared the order to “Stay away from ALL beaches”!

Tom and Lisa left that night and we will not see Tom again this trip as he will be working in Switzerland. They have been such a blessing to us and really looked after us. Great guys!

We survived another night without being washed away, cleaned the house and drove to Whakatane to visit Tom’s parents and get the car a new WOF*****. The papers were full of reports of ‘stupid Kiwis’ who had heard about the tsunami warning and rushed down to the beach to have a look…

Great to see Rob and Liz again. We were fed a delicious casserole for tea and given a lovely big warm bed to sleep in again. I had agreed help Rob on the farm in the morning but didn’t really know what he wanted me to do. I put on a boiler suit and gumboots before stomping out to find him. He asked me to walk a small herd of cows back to their field as he went off to get something from the house. It started off well, the cows were very obedient – however I did not know where their field was and how far I was supposed to walk them… I had seen them in the first field on the left before and they did hesitate at the closed gate so I went to open it – but they had already moved on. I went into the field hoping to overtake them and head them back to the opened gate but I spooked them and they took off. We danced in this fashion for a few minutes, me surging ahead, leaping or diving over or under cruelly barbed fences as the cows warily stumbled along the path, stopping every few metres desperately wanting to understand exactly what act I needed them to perform that I might stop tormenting them. Eventually I managed to get ahead of them, slipped deftly back onto the path and stood my ground, exultant, ready to send them back. At this point I noticed Rob speeding up the track on the quad bike waving his arms – apparently the herd was supposed to be walked another few hundred metres right to the end of the track. I meekly stepped aside. The beasts had known what they were doing all along.

Later that day we took in the local galleries and cafes as our car languished at the mechanics. We found one of those small cash and carrys – filled with huge bins of cornflakes and rice and sugar and flour and popping corn and all manner of things and we were happy. Corned beef for dinner. Forget everything you think you know about corned beef and prepare for revolution. Rob + Liz had their church homegroup in the evening and we were invited to join them and tell them all the exciting things going on in Southampton and England in general, contrary to the popular view of Britain’s dying faith.

In the morning we set off South to continue our expedition. It was sad to say goodbye to Rob + Liz in the morning, they have been like parents away from parents! Ahead were lakes, mountains, waterfalls and egg-smells galore.

Christchurch (where we have been for a month) is, I’m afraid to say, still a long way from appearing in the blog. Perhaps bulletpoints are the way to go…

Brownout.

*Holiday home
**Cling Film
***Department Of Conservation
****Eggy Bread
*****Warrant Of Fitness (MOT)

A Crack In The Edge Of The World

Well, here I am, sitting in a handsome white-panelled house surrounded by wooden decking, set in a stunningly colourful well-established garden on the dairy farm belonging to our friend Tom’s parents. A beech tree outside the window is shimmering in the afternoon sun; the dappled light filters through like a dream come to wrest me from The World and make believe I am returned to the ancient forests of my home land. What I’m trying to say is, I once read a book about beech woodland. There’s a lot more going on there than you’d realise. I feel at home beneath them. They are the antithesis of tropical. As I look into the twisting mottled branches, not one thing equatorial affronts me – not even a kumquat. The comfort I find in this ex-pat after 4 long and varied months is immense. It is partly because of this beech tree and partly little to do with us that Hannah and I have decided to stay in NZ an extra 2 months! Regrettably this does mean we will cut short our time in South America but we feel this is the way to go. We will spend more time here getting to know the country and some great people and less time rushing however many thousands of miles through confusingly multi-coloured and multi-multied South America. Perhaps we will have the opportunity to return one day and give the places we missed our time. We also think we may be able to save some money this way!

Who knows what I wrote about in my last blog? Not me because I’m not online. I know I was in NZ when I typed it and I know I had to write about the entire Thailand trip. Therefore I think little has been mentioned of NZ except something about beech trees. I’ll start at the beginning and if I overlap, please compare with the last entry and inform me of any misunirregularities. I will certainly do nothing about them.

I always look forward to the airport parts of our trip, especially in the busier, hectic, manic, sensory-overload countries (Philippines, Thailand) where you exit from a world of heat, colour and intensity into an air-conditioned, sterilised monotony. In Bangkok we had spent our last remaining Baht on crisps and biscuits which we then greedily feasted on in the airport in front of an expensive jewelery shop like a couple of bitter anarchistic tramps.

With no sleep on the plane (don’t sigh in compassion – I wanted no sleep – I was watching films!) we arrived in Auckland at about 13:30. We made our way towards customs with trepidation, having heard horror stories of savage search dogs and mean bespectacled ladies with long reaching fingers. We lost our nerve and spent 20 minutes rifling through our bags to construct a pile of sin. It included curry paste, teabags, biscuits, trainers, a wooden bowl and some ‘succulent red meat’ spice mix. We held our breath and advanced, forcing our treasures upon them as we watched with grieving eyes. Everything was handed back with a friendly smile. No dogs tore off any of our limbs or even dribbled on our jandaled* toes. We did see one beagle discover a pair of oversized carrots on one unlucky immigrant. The shame.

Our friends Tom and Lisa were going to look after us for a couple of days and we finally made it to Tom, waiting in arrivals, an hour after our plane had landed. We all went to pick up Lisa from work and set off straight away for Tom’s parents’ farm for a weekend stay. That is the very same farm of the very same parents of Tom where I am now typing. Only now there is a distinct lack of Tom and Lisa. Do not worry, we didn’t knock them out in an airing cupboard and steal their clothes that we might spend the next three months masquerading as authentic Kiwis under the love and care of their loving and caring family… All will become clear after at least 8000 more words. Struggle on. Tom’s parents live (as I have said) on a dairy farm just outside (as I have not said) the small coastal town of Whakatane (better you don’t know how to pronounce that). It is 3 hours South of Auckland and to get there you must drive through The Shire. Honestly. Tom’s parents are called Liz and Rob. They are brilliant. Such love and thoughtfulness. They are involved in an exciting church though we have never been around on a Sunday to witness it.

When we were shown to our room in their spacious house of joy, we were disbelieving of where we would be spending our first night since Thailand. The bed was large, ridiculously comfortable and liberally coated in cushions and blankets. The bed was attended to by several pieces of antique furniture and book-filled bookshelves. We had views over Liz’s wedding-venue garden and felt like we should be charged top rates. We were treated to NZ fish & chips for dinner with stewed plums and creamy vanilla icecream for pudding. The joy of my stomach nearly sent it into orbit.

The morning began with some kind of illegally luxurious muesli, stewed rhubarb and yoghurt. Tom & Lisa took us on a tour of Whakatane – up a Pa (historical Maori hill site) with a view over the town which is bisected by a river and borders the South Pacific Ocean. We descended to Ohope beach and wandered to the top of a headland gazing over the perfect beach and the new surfers practicing in the gentle break below. From here Tom pointed out the island, small on the horizon, which we would be visiting the following day. At Ohope dairy** we ordered delicious icecreams. Confronted with a huge flavour variety, the kind lady told us we could have two flavours in one scoop. Obviously we did this – turns out their one scoop is the size of any other double scoop! It was fantastic! I have been dreaming of going back and getting four flavours in a double scoop… My dreams are huge. After a lunch of discarded chips at a quaint little cafe (everyone else had paninis) where we met Tom’s sister Hannah, we returned to the farm.

Rob has a herd of nearly 300 Friesian dairy cows which require milking twice a day. We were back in time to watch him work and have a go ourselves. The cows were penned up outside the milking shed, queuing single file. Inside was a rotating milking station not unlike a fairground carousel – except brightly painted demon horses and smiling children are replaced with aching udders and unnervingly raised ropey black tails. A shot of tasty nuggets were dispensed into a central trough, encouraging the next patient cow to enter. As the new arrival rotates into Rob’s reach, he applies the nipple-sucking machine to the four pink nipples. The hungry little vacuums set to work consuming the milky goods within. By this point the next heavy udder is ready for locking into the matrix. As the udders register empty, the suckers drop off and once a full rotation has been made by an individual, some mysterious power would cause it to reverse off the platform and return to the open fields. It is apparently very rare for anyone to remain in place for another ride round. The raised tails were not only a harmless jest on the cows’ part, at one point I had to dive out of the way of an eruption of green sludge which unfortunately Rob was unable to do – but he has an apron, he can take it. After that we went outside and rode around the fields on the quad bike – always wanted to have a go on one. Hannah particularly enjoyed it, not being able to drive and all. I think she felt powerful.

Dinner that night was roast NZ lamb. Yes.

Early the next morning we arose to be ready for our trip to White Island – 50km off-shore and NZ most active volcano! At the harbour we climbed aboard a rather plush yacht. Remarking on the difference to the Filipino ferry experiences, we sat on comfortably padded seats in the carpeted cabin.

As the boat departed, we all expected an enjoyable journey to the island. Hannah was outside on the front of the deck taking a photo when we left the harbour. The front of the boat rose a couple of metres before crashing into the gutter of the wave. Hannah stumbled back inside and sat down, excited and a little worried (she gets travel sick). The next two hours continued in the same manner. It was absolutely awful. Hannah moved outside to the back where it was more stable and tolerable. She then threw up. Sick bags were supplied. As the first hour passed, at least half the people on board were disgorging, young and old. One elderly lady didn’t have the strength to to move outside and so proceeded to purge in the cabin. Interestingly, her detritus was pink. The smell was becoming a little overwhelming and I had to move outside where I knew the worst sufferers were hanging out but at least the foul air was being left at sea as we sped over the devilish waves. One large guy with a wiry ginger beard enlightened me to what must have been the inspiration of the phrase ‘blowing chunks’. When we had boarded, we had been curious as to the large number of crew members. Now we were truly thankful. They ran back and forth collecting loaded sick bags, dispensing fresh ones and tossing the filled ones into the luckless ocean. The last hour was the worst. It felt like torture. Somehow I didn’t vomit, although I had let out a few nervous burps. At one point we saw a flying fish which was a beautiful distraction – who would believe the story of that creature the first time it was told?! Eventually, to everyone’s great relief, the island grew large
on the horizon – the most welcome and comforting slab of hugely volatile and life-threatening land we had ever seen.

It was an awe-full place. Filled with awe. Or rather I was filled with awe by it for it. It was also full of ore. Sulphur, which was mined in the early 20th Century. The mining stopped after people kept dying due to the many dangers present in the crater of an active volcano… Only the gumboots*** were found of one unlucky guy. As I have said, looking from the boat, the island was impressive. It is the tip of a volcano, the majority of which is underwater. Its crater takes up most of the island, surrounded by steep crater walls. At the point where the boat had stopped, the wall had collapsed, revealing the heaving, spitting, breathing crater of NZ’s most active volcano.

A small boat ferried us across to a wooden jetty where we grouped in tens with a guide. Hard hats were donned and gas masks were hanging ominously around our necks. The crater was mostly flat, with mounds of rubble remaining from an explosion in 2000 forming small hills. Streams of warm water bubbled past, a cloudy light grey. Everywhere were deposits of sulphur in lurid yellow and highlighter-pen orange. We were warned not to step on to the small ash-coloured mounds dotted about – beneath a thin, fragile crust were mud pools bubbling away at close to 100 degrees C. There were no fences anywhere and we could get as close as we wanted to the skin-searing-steam-spewing fumeroles. Everything was very much where the volcano had decided it should be, except us… Around the island we were assaulted by a miasmic cocktail of venting gases whose noxious smells caught in the back of your throat. The way to get around these acrid fumes was partly to begrudgingly use the gas masks but, more importantly, a large box of lollies**** was handed around from which everyone took a handful. Sucking on these either helped produce throat-soothing saliva or reminded us of our Grandparents and helped us escape to a ‘happy place’. I am not sure which. We visited a particularly boisterous and deafening steam vent which everybody took turns taking photos of each other in front of. We then reached a crater lake which was huge, steamy and lime green. The odours it emitted forced us to employ our sweaty gas masks. As we stood precariously on a gravelly cliff edge looking down into the other-worldly water body, we were informed that the pH of the water was somewhere around negative 0.2. i.e. scarily acidic. Negative acid! No one went for a swim. They wouldn’t have been allowed anyway, probably. Next we were passed by some crazy hot bubbling mud holes, which spat a glob of molten mud onto the path every now and then. Once a tourist had gotten too close and lost their hard hat – it was retrieved the following day shrunken and devoid of colour. The trip around the crater ended at the old mining factory. Which had been destroyed by various eruptions and general unlove. The metal tanks, cogs and wheels of machinery were utterly corroded, orange and flaking whereas the collapsed wooden roof beams and rubber tyres scattered about were close to perfectly preserved. Intriguing! We returned to the boat where we were handed a lunch involving, among other things, half a banana and a Crunchie. Hannah, Lisa and Tom went for a quick swim off the side of the boat before we set off back to the mainland. The return journey was somewhat less tumultuous – Lisa and I slept the entire way!

We said our goodbyes to Rob & Liz and made the return journey to Auckland, picking up some meat pies on the way. In Auckland we met Lisa’s parents Maude and Bruce as well as her sister Krysta & fiancée Sam, and her brother Dan. It was at their house we would be staying until we had bought a van/car to travel around in. They are all great people and once again we were welcomed into a family. The youngest member of the household is 10 week old kitten Ruby who has a lot of energy which she expends by leaping onto moving fingers and toes, claws extended or by leaping up a trouser leg/skirt to reach the worktop where there might be some tasty chicken… We spent much of the evening searching the internet for a vehicle.

The next day was a Monday and Lisa had work. Tom didn’t and took us to a stunning black volcanic sand beach with wild waves and rugged scenery, about 45 mins out of Auckland, Bethels Beach. It was a magical place made all the more dramatic by the wet & windy weather – it would have been possible to spend a day exploring. After getting some pies from one of Tom’s favourite bakeries, we went back to the house to wait for Lisa and continue our car hunt. That night we were treated to a traditional NZ BBQ – steak & sausages and chips from the local chippy. Maude made a delicious kumara***** salad.

Both Tom & Lisa were working on Tuesday so Hannah and I took a bus into town, which was refreshingly straight forward! Our sightseeing began with a trip up the Skytower – the Southern hemisphere’s tallest building. The lift up had a window in the floor so you could watch as the ground dropped away from you as you ascended. This was one of my favourite bits. The top gave 360 degree views of Auckland which was pretty impressive. We tried to spot as many as we could of the 47 or something volcanoes the city is built upon. During the construction of the Skytower 525,000 meat pies and 1,250,000 cups of tea were consumed. It was only built to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake which I thought a little careless considering Auckland experiences thousands of quakes a year. Apparently 8.0 is ‘extremely rare’ – like that makes it ok! Surely the quake in Chile has worried them?

After the heights, we returned to the depths and saw a blackboard in a coffee shop claiming they had Auckland’s best coffee. We needed to test that so went in and had one. It was delicious – best coffee since the Philippine’s Mall of Asia Starbucks. It came with a tiny morsel of their brownie, which was insanely good and changed my life. In three months I hope to return and buy a whole piece. We wandered about the town, tried and failed (we think) to find the viaduct (we only found a car park) before heading down the main shopping street. There are a lot of Asian/Oriental immigrants into NZ and it seemed that 60% of the shop fronts were in Chinese or Korean. It felt a little like we were in a cleaner, more spacious Bangkok…kind of. Searching for something cheap to eat, we ended up in a grotty ‘food court’ selling noodles or noodles or tatty microwaved pies at extortionate prices, which we went for. After checking out a promising looking ‘backpackers car market’ we returned to the bus stop, picking up a sim card for the phone Maude had lent us on the way.

Soup and garlic bread for dinner. Marshmallow eggs for pudding. Kiwis are crazy for marshmallow. I wonder where that came from. Looking on the web again that night for cars, I sent out texts in response to every half decent looking ad. Eventually someone phoned and said they would bring over the car for us to check out – clearly desperate! Tom and I took it for a test drive, it seemed pretty good, the price was good so we agreed to get it – sorted! It is a Subaru Legacy stationwagon.

The following day we had to get the money out to pay for the car. The paperwork was sorted out at the post office and we waited for the call to go collect the car. Unfortunately the guy turned out to be an hour away so poor Tom had to use up his evening transporting us. Lisa had the brilliant idea of taking the car to a self service wash & vacuum station. These are brilliant places where money is time. $4 could buy you 8 minutes with the regular hoover or 2 minutes with Tom’s preferred ‘Wild Cherry’ scented hoover. Delicious. The next stage was the washing, where a hose and a brush were used to spray various concoctions over the car in the order prescribed by a diagram on the wall in as much or little time as your money allowed. I felt a lot like we were in the Crystal Maze and it felt good.

In the morning we packed our things into the car and said goodbye to everyone. We bought a few necessities like an inflatable mattress and bug spray from a nearby shopping centre and took off for the North! We were heading for a free Department of Conservation campsite but misunderestimated the distance. We also took a detour to the Bay of Islands which was said to be amazing and was once NZ’s capital as the treaty between the British and the Maori was signed there. We had arrived late afternoon and so decided to stay the night nearby so that we could explore some more the following day. We found a carpark we could sleep in for $12 but I was determined to sleep for free… We drove out of the town a little until we found ourselves on a dirt road heading through a some forested hills. Once we were deeply enveloped we decided it was probably a good place to sleep. We stopped, cooked a sausage omelette on the stove and inflated the mattress. It was the worst night sleep we have probably ever experienced. It was hot. Too hot for even only our sleeping bag liners. It was hot. We had to open a window a crack just so that we could breathe. With the air came mosquitoes. We had already killed ten on climbing into the car for bed. Bitten all over, we had no choice but to listen to the threatening buzz around our ears hour after hour. To turn on a light to kill one would have alerted many others outside to our presence. It was a night that seemed it would never give in to dawn. It didn’t help we had gone to bed at 9pm. In addition to all this, the entire night we worried we might be moved on by a passing authority. At one point in the deep night a police car pulled up, shone a light in my face and drove off. This didn’t help me to relax. Anyway, dawn came and we escaped. We spent a morning wandering around the pretty town but were miserable, dwelling on the prospect of 3 months of nights like that – impossible. We prayed about it and Hannah told me the free DOC campsites were dotted over the whole of NZ which I hadn’t realised. We planned a route, using these as stop overs and felt much more relaxed! Hannah persuaded me we should buy what has turned out to be a great little cookbook of gourmet camping recipes and we set off for the campsite in the North.

After a long while and some steep winding roads we found it. We stopped in a field under a tree as a couple washed their car in a ford nearby and a strong wind tried to blow us away. Hannah cut up some boxes we had picked up and made window screens for night time. After a study of the cookbook we drove to Kaitaia 20km away where we did a weekly food shop. Meals included eggs fried in portabello mushrooms and eaten inside toasted English muffins, brushetta and a spicy sausage and bean thing. Porridge for breakfasts and peanut butter & plum jam sandwiches for lunches. We found a shaded spot back at the campsite and setup the camping chairs and the stove for dinner.

It was a great little campsite – a field dotted with trees providing shade surrounded by a shallow stream. There was a basic drop-hole toilet atop a small hill which was fine early in the day but was full of flies by the afternoon, flying in and out and bombarding bare bottoms. Saturday was the next day and we spent it sitting in the camping chairs all day reading books, writing in our journal and planning our Northern adventure. While the sun was still strong we had a swim and a wash in the stream – refreshing! We danced with the sun as it rolled across the sky, moving the car in response to the sun’s challenges on our fresh produce. We managed to keep the milk cool until our evening cup of tea! In the evening we coated ourselves in repellent and lit mosquito coils. We would get the car ready for sleeping in before the bugs got too active so that we could dive for cover as soon as it became necessary. We have had to work out the perfect mattress inflation. Too much and it feels as if you are constantly rolling off to the side and you are too close to the ceiling, too little and every movement sends reverberations through the bed – like a crazy waterbed from the ?80′s.

We awoke early the next day and started our 120 km journey to Cape Reianga, NZ’s most Northerly accessible point. Along the way there were a few things to see. The first stop was ‘Kauri Kingdom’, a place where ancient kauri wood is milled into furniture and knick-knacks and sold. Kauris are huge trees native to NZ. Due to their great crafting properties they have been mostly wiped out across the islands although they are now protected and are making a comeback. Due to this protection, there is big business in digging ancient trees from fields of peat, where once there was kauri forest. These trees are often carbon dated to as much as 40,000 years old. Pretty amazing! In the centre of the show room was an immense kauri trunk which had been excavated and placed there with the shop built around it. A staircase had been carved in the middle through which the next level of the shop could be reached. There was also an amazing couch formed from a barely carved hunk of twisted kauri – only $5500 …or was it $55000?

We continued North, stopping to photograph pretty bits. Eventually we reached the last 20 km of the road which were supposed to be unsealed. In fact only about 8 km were unsealed and it wasn’t too bad. Pretty normal for NZ. We reached Cape Reianga, parked and made cheese & tomato sandwiches in the boot. We took them over to a view over the headland and they were tasty. It was then a 1km walk to the lighthouse at the end of it all. There was a sign telling us we were something like 13,500 km from London and 6,000 km from the South Pole. From here you can see the line where the South Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. Huge waves break along a diagonal line in the middle of the sea, very dramatic. The sea was a stunning blue and as waves broke on the shore below us, the white water – in the right light – looked like it had been dyed a brilliant cyan.

Heading South again, we stopped off at the giant sand dunes which were incredible!! As we were driving towards them along a dirt road, past fields and tall trees, suddenly we noticed the horizon of gold high up ahead. They only got more impressive as we advanced. It was as if we were exiting a pine forest directly into the heart of the Saharan desert. The dunes towered a good 100m+ high and were dotted with sand-boarders determined to climb the unforgiving terrain one more time to get their money’s worth for the $15/hr sand board hire. Aching legs and a face full of sand. I did not envy them. We walked up some smaller dunes until we were surrounded and could pretend we were Laurence of Arabia – the boarders atop the highest dunes being the scouts of an advancing hostile horde…

We spent a second night peacefully asleep in a comfortable temperature. Monday took us to 90 Mile Beach. This beach actually stretches 90 km up the ‘Far North’s’ West coast. If you have a suitable car or are stupid, you can drive along the beach like a road although the Lonely Planet warns of quick sand and tidal risks… A beautiful empty beach – big enough for all! After a morning of sunbathing and swimming we returned to the campsite via a vineyard where we had a couple of delicious free tastings after enduring the wine talk from a kind man and feeling awkward as we tried to leave, clearly having just come for the tasting…

The alarm woke us at 6am the following day as we were driving back to Auckland via the kauri forest on the west coast. It was a cloudy day and started to rain – not the best day for a forest walk we thought! We reached the first point of interest in the forest and hopped out for a look. The Father of the Forest (spelled something like Tuni Mahuta in Maori) is a huge kauri, 50m high and thought to be 2000 years old. With it’s immense stature and thick trunk, it was an impressive thing to see – something so ancient and alive and intimidating. We drove on to the next kauri sites, which involved a walk into the forest of an hour or so. The first was the ‘Four Sisters’, four tall trees growing long and straight close together, fused at the base. A walkway had been constructed around them with a bench at one end. The rain was light and gave a perfect atmosphere – everything was so peaceful and it was other-worldly to sit there looking up the smooth trunks of these four impressive trees. We sat there eating our muesli bars chilling out. The next tree was another walk on and was the widest kauri in existence. It was indeed very wide. A girl who appeared after us said she thought it might be an Ent and was expecting it to talk at any moment… What it boils down to is this: kauris are not on my favourite tree list. They are chunky and bare with straggly branches stretching out from their fat crowns like desperate and helpless hatchlings. Their foliage is hard and uninviting and their bark like the hide of a dragon. Give me a beech tree any day.

We continued on our way to Auckland where that night we would be back in the comfort of Maude & Bruce’s home once more.

Basically, we are having a great time here and have met some fantastic people. This extensive report covers little more than a week I think. Sleeping in the back of a car, we do not come across the internet much and so there is a lot to say when we get the chance! We miss everyone back home and those we’ve met along the way and look forward to hearing from you all the time. I hope the Winter is releasing you from it’s grip in the UK, we had the last day of Summer a couple of days ago here!

We love you all!

Brownout.

*Jandal = Japanese sandal a.k.a. ‘Thongs’ or ‘Flip-flops’
**Cornershop
***Wellington Boots
****Sweets (I have not yet discovered what actual lollies are called)
*****Similar to sweet potato