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NZ Road Trip: To Windswept Wellington
The excitement of a road trip is always enhanced when an evocative route name is involved, so you can picture our joy when we discovered that our journey away from Taupo would take us along the Volcanic Loop Highway and on to the Desert Road, you can’t get much more evocative than that. For forty minutes or so we hug the shores of the lake before we pull away to pass through the volcano belt which provides great views of the largest of them, Tongariro, with its almost perfect peak. From there it’s through the heather-clad rocky desert before we regain pastures and hills as the coast comes ever closer.…
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From Province To Capital: Phnom Penh
Preamble: We thought long and hard about this post. It contains some horrific detail but also contains some light hearted humour. Can we really put those two things in the same post? We reached a decision. Please read on, we will warn you before you reach the more brutal words… It was on our first night in Battambang, just as we were drifting off to sleep, when we first heard it, and we both laughed out loud. Something outside, some strange, semi-mechanical disembodied voice seemed to shout “f*ck it” five times, in a kind of rhythmic chant. Surely we don’t have a neighbour who has taught his parrot to swear in English?…
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A Taste Of Delhi, And On To The Buddha Train
“Please wear this for your identification”, he says, handing us a white baseball cap with the Indian Railway Company logo emblazoned on it. “And carry this too”. A bright yellow pouch bag. Classy. Now, we’ve always smirked at people on cruises being shepherded around sites with their colour coded labels or whatever – now here we are setting off on this adventure with uncharacteristic white headgear and an even more uncharacteristic yellow bag, all for the purposes of being in that very type of herd which we thought we’d never be part of. Well, there’s a first time for everything. But before all this, we arrive in India’s capital city…
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Mexico City: CDMX #1
It’s fascinating how the sounds of a city can be a part of defining its character, it can be a charm or a challenge, a boon or a burden. Earlier this year we were in Cairo, where the constant ear battering of traffic noise and raised voices soon becomes tiresome. Mexico City, in contrast, though just as loud and just as constant, has a soundtrack which is for the most part one of carnival and music. Chatter and laughter fills the streets, music drifts upward from every corner. It’s the sound of fiesta rather than frustration, joy rather than jams, an immediately exciting and enticing environment where the wall of…
