Natural world
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NZ Road Trip: Queenstown To Milford Sound
Heading out of Queenstown towards our next destination we detour first to the small but absorbing Arrowtown, another gold rush town but one with an additional draw. Like Reefton before on this NZ odyssey Arrowtown has all of the classic looks of a gold rush town, so reminiscent of those in California and, we are sure, other locations worldwide, its main street looking like something from the Wild West. But there’s an additional twist here in the shape of the reconstructed and renovated Chinese village where the homes of emigrants from that country came in search of fortune. How odd it must have been to hear rumours – rumours is…
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Queenstown: Both Popular And Beautiful
We leave Franz Josef in the heavy weather which caused us to miss out on the glacier flight, on one of those mornings where any excursion out of the car is a dash to the next piece of shelter in a race against the downpour in order to stay as dry as possible. The early part of our route takes us through the “other” adventure village, Fox Glacier, but this morning’s cloud cover is so thick that we don’t even catch a glimpse of the glacier itself, just an immense white curtain excluding it from view. If there is any benefit on a morning such as this then it is…
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A Day On The Road: From Kaikoura To Glacier Country
With seven hours’ driving time ahead of us to make it to our next destination, we decide that our best option is to make a full day of it and allow for a few stops in small towns along the way, rather like we have done previously on our US road trips. So with the darkness of night still awaiting the sunrise and Kaikoura still asleep we drop the motel key into the night box, pull out of the car park and turn to the right, out on to the highway, the ocean away to our left rolling in heard but not seen. It’s still dark half an hour later…
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NZ Road Trip: South To Kaikoura
We are seriously beginning to think that there isn’t a single drive in this country which is anything less than spectacular. From Motueka on the edge of Abel Tasman we retrace our steps though Nelson city and Marlborough wine country then, turning south past Blenheim we are suddenly confronted by terrain completely different from all previous scenery: large barren hills devoid of greenery, the first treeless tracts of land so far. Bone dry straw coloured landscape. Slowly the green returns, as do the lines of vines, until we rise over the top of the next hill and there stretched out before us is the incredible turquoise ocean which will accompany…
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Waitomo, Taupo & Raw Power
Sometimes you have to do something illogical to make the most of things when travelling, and so it is as we leave Rotorua to head to our next destination, Taupo, via a somewhat staggered route. The most direct route would be less than 100km but a detour west is the only way we can take in something which we want to see, so we dogleg our way across to Waitomo and then back across to our next base. What attracts us to Waitomo is the cave network in the hillside which is home to a particular species of glow worm, the arachnocampa luminosa, and seeing them turns out to be…
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Rotorua: Boiling Mud And Urban Volcanoes
We’ve read several times that as you approach Rotorua, it’s possible to smell the town before you ever see it. Well it’s not strictly true but the pungent odour of sulphur hits us as soon as we open the car door and, as we are to discover, permeates through this most unusual city 24/7. The smell emanates, of course, from the excessive geothermal activity taking place just below ground level – the whole city of Rotorua is built over a caldera formed during a volcanic eruption around 240,000 years ago, and there is certainly no mistaking the level of activity still present today. It’s impossible to miss, in fact. But…
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NZ Road Trip: The Coromandel Peninsula
Time is an illusion, it has often been said. Somehow in the process of returning home from California and then heading out here to New Zealand we have moved forward 21 hours, meaning that we’ve lost, somewhere, almost a full day of our lives. Whilst the 8 hours from California was effectively repaying the 8 we gained on the way out there, we won’t be reimbursed the other 13 until we go home from NZ in mid April. Given that delay, wouldn’t it be good if, like a savings account, it was possible to earn interest on the time invested? You know, be given bonus time in return for investment.…
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Poovar & The Ayurveda Hospital
At last, right in the final knockings of this 8-week Indian odyssey, the stars finally align sufficiently for us to make a journey by train. It’s fifty odd minutes late pulling into Varkala, then trundles its way slowly through tropical scenery and past the bustling city with the commendably long name of Thiruvananthapuram, until we reach our stop at Neyyattinkara. It’s not just the place names which are longer than in England either: the train has many, many more coaches than you will ever see back home, consequently the station platforms are much longer – and so are the journeys. This train, number 16526, began its journey in Bangalore (Bengaluru)…
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On Holiday In Varkala
Red dust blows in flurries between the buses which sit with doors wide open waiting for departure time, street dogs using the shade of the big vehicles to sleep out of the glare of the raging sun. It’s H-O-T hot. So intensely hot. There’s probably a few mad dogs out there somewhere in the midday sun; certainly there’s a couple of English(men), humping backpacks across the “bus stand”, kicking up red dust, sweating as they seek out their next temporary home. Our host arrives, shows us around our apartment, and demonstrates how to switch on the washing machine which, much to his horror, sprays water right across the room from…
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Messing About On The Backwater: 48 Hours On A Houseboat
Shaking off the curse of Montezuma has taken far too long. On our previous visits to India we’ve avoided the worst of the Delhi belly, but not this time. Everywhere we go in the world we always try to eat like the locals, try every local food, do the “authentic” thing, so much so that we felt we’d both got pretty good constitutions and could deal comfortably with the consequences of unusual food. But after a quick to-be-expected bout around Udaipur, things recovered like they normally do, only to then dive backwards with what we think were bad prawns on Christmas Eve. Nearly three weeks later we’re still not firing…
