Things to do, places to go...

Turns out when you add a 21st birthday party at home on to an upcoming 6-week trip to the other hemisphere, straight after a flit round an entire continent, things get a bit frantic, domestically, work-wise and sleep-wise. The middle-aged brain struggles to keep all those mental balls in the air, which include a story about Iguassu, steroid boosters for the ancient cats, fitting timers to the heated towel rails (what? you don't do that before you go away?) and making a series of jelly Easter eggs for the non-cake birthday cake.

It's a long time to be away, and though I'm now reassured that the cats will (most likely) still be here when I get back, the dog's another story, sigh. It's autumn here now, AKA Indian summer, especially over Easter when the weather was glorious, kind of making up for our very crap summer - but when I get back it will be winter, the trees will be bare and the guttering leaking.

But I must resist this tendency to worry and conduct endless arguments with myself over what shoes to pack, because once I'm on the plane it will all drop away and I'll be caught up in the moment: flit to Sydney with Air NZ then swap to Etihad (always sounds like an anagram to me, but apparently it's Arabic for 'united' - though the OH reckons it's really 'reckless') business to Abu Dhabi, on to Paris, down to Marseille, onto a river cruiser on the Rhone for a week, then England for family stuff, Poland for a war story, Eastern Europe for a coach trip, and then back home. Lots of trains in the mix there, some theatre, Badminton Horse Trials, and lots of friends.

Starting with one from the Great Australian Cattle Drive in 2006, who's now working in Dubai and will be meeting me for breakfast in Abu Dhabi. (That's the most exotic half-sentence I've ever written.) Tahira is good fun - we got a lot of amusement out of the loofah she brought with her into the Outback, and the fancy seat-saver the equestrian outfitters equipped her with in London (though we were all envious of it in the end (on our ends?))

From all sides now

Today was all about the waterfalls, which we've now seen from the air, from the water, from the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. The helicopter view would have been terrific, had I not been sitting at the back in the middle with a column in front of me, a large man with an iPad on one side and a keen photographer on the other - if you do it, it's sauve qui peut: race for the front seat. Because these falls are so spectacular, you mustn't miss any of them. (Thank goodness for live view on my camera - it got a better view than I was able to.)

We drove back to the Argentinian side to walk right along the edge of the falls on a metal walkway with huge catfish lurking below and delicate butterflies floating above, and it was amazing to see so much water pouring and roaring over the drop. But it's not just spectacular: it's pretty too, with fresh green grasses growing on rocks in the river, flowering plants on the islands, and the butterflies. It helped, too, that after two days of cloud and rain, today was brilliantly sunny, with rainbows everywhere. (When it's a full moon, you can go out at night to see the falls under moonlight with moonbows.)

And then it was time to pack up again without really enjoying our lovely hotel with its inviting pool and wandering coati and pretty rooms and all, sigh. So tonight I'm in another fancy hotel, in Lima, and it's 1am here, which means 3am in Brazil, and I still have my homework to do, sorting out my afternoon activities for tomorrow. "Think about it overnight," suggested Johanna, without apparent irony.

Dam fine

More cute coatis on the way to breakfast this morning. I'm soldiering on through epic jet lag and off-the-scale blood iron thanks to a paleolithic intake of red meat: possibly a connection? Who knows. Anyway, after yesterday's 'Whoa, nature showing off, here' moments with the waterfalls, today was about how man can whip up the odd marvel too, given some time and co-operation. So we were taken to the Itaipu Dam, 65 storeys high, 18km long, 20 turbines using 10 times the volume of the Falls... er, an hour? a day? The statistics became a blur, after a movie, a bus tour, the commentary - what is more impressive, is that it's a bi-national project by Brazil and Paraguay, the river forming their border. The construction, the maintenance, the power, they're all split 50:50 in a shining example of international co-operation.

Then lunchtime brought another revelation: my first churrascaria, a barbecue restaurant where you fill your plate with a selection of fresh salads and vegetables (or chips) and then a succession of waiters arrive at your table with what could be a heart attack on a stick, but is so delicious, who cares? We were offered from long skewers every type of barbecued meat imaginable, and some not (like chicken hearts) - filet mignon, rump steak, pork tenderloin, lamb, plus onions, cheese balls, sausages... all hot and crusty outside and meltingly tender inside. Delicious! And afterwards the completely unnecessary dessert selection recalled the very best in children's parties, with every permutation of sugar and cream possible. And it was only lunchtime!

At the bird park my zip toggle was gently examined by a toucan with his huge orange beak; a rhea came rushing excitably up to the fence and immediately fell asleep leaning against it; blue and yellow macaws swooped low overhead; we were frowned at by a harpy eagle and, happily, ignored by a large hairy tarantula; we went crazy trying to focus on super fast-forward hummingbirds and were draped with an anaconda; and my camera got into a snit and let me down, sniff.

Wet and wild in Brazil

"You will get 100% wet." That was Anderson, here at the Hotel das Cataratas in Brazil at Iguazu Falls, when we were preparing for our boat trip not just along the river but, disquietingly, "under the falls". These would be the falls where 1.4 million litres of water thunder over the escarpment every second. Images of boats full of water, disappearing under the surface, never to be seen again...

After more fuss and waiting about than you could imagine (apparently, it's a Brazilian thing; it's strangely un-mollifying to consider that it would be worse in India) we got settled into our inflatable and set off upstream over churning, moiling water and some actual rapids, for a view of part of this astonishingly long series of waterfalls. Then it was time to tuck our cameras away as we entered The Devil's Throat, a canyon obscured by swirling clouds of spray, where the boat flirted with some heavy-duty falls, skipping around the edge, close enough for us to feel the wind and be blinded by the spray - and then nosed up into the cascading water, which drenched us completely without - some skill here, happily - filling the boat.

It was fun, if silly, and the water was pleasantly warm; and then afterwards we zipped along fast enough to blow-dry our hair; though we were stuck with the historical sensation of wet pants for the rest of the afternoon. I was completely diverted, though, by a large family of coatis, busily looking for food up and down tree-trunks, on top of rubbish bins and inside people's bags left carelessly on the ground. Very sweet and cute, and the symbol of Iguazu Falls my brochure tells me, saying they "may occasionally be seen". Only everywhere we went.

That was never 11 days we had just then

Why yes, that was rather a long gap between posts. Mainly it was because of marketing: selling stories linked to events and dates, and though the ones I've been fully occupied writing about are marking the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic a whole month from now, and Anzac Day even further away on April 25, there's been a bit of a rush to do it because I've got some travelling coming up. On Sunday I'm being whisked off to Buenos Aires on LAN's lovely business class, and thence to Iguazu Falls, Lima (again) and then, most excitingly, Easter Island. I once reviewed a book that was set there - rather unimaginatively titled 'Easter Island' - by Jennifer Vanderbes, who had clearly done a great deal of research into ancient angiosperms that she didn't want to waste, so by the end of the book I was quite the expert (temporarily) on fossilised pollen. Never heard the term 'palynology' before? Now you have.

Then after I've been home for less than a fortnight, I'm away again, for an incredible 6 weeks this time, to Europe: partly private but mostly work, and it's going to be very busy. Fun and interesting, but busy, and tiring. It doesn't help that there are three very old animals in this house, who miss me when I'm gone, and who so far have always been here when I've got back from a trip but, one day...

So anyway, the Titanic. I keep bumping into it, so to speak - of course, in Ireland last year, when we went to Cobh which was the ship's last port of call before setting off across the Atlantic, and where there was a really good exhibition in the old railway station there. Then there was an astonishingly, not to say anally, comprehensive travelling exhibition that I came across while I was in Copenhagen, that absorbed me for the best part of two hours while rampaging Hamburg football fans laid waste to the city outside (well, almost). We'll be going to a new one at Greenwich Maritime Museum while we're in London; there are, I discovered, others in Southampton, Liverpool and Cherbourg, all Titanic sister cities that I've been to; and several in Halifax, Nova Scotia where I haven't been, but have been increasingly hankering to go to over the last few years. Lots of the recovered bodies were buried there, including one J. Dawson, who was actually James, a boiler-room hand, but that doesn't stop a steady stream of fans of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack going there to leave red roses on the gravestone:

Sit. Vac. - Rattenfänger

It's very hard to concentrate on writing about having coffee with a countess in an English stately home upstairs from a library of 6000 leather-bound books, Napoleon's desk and chair from St Helena and an array of framed family photos on the grand piano that include the Queen and Diana - very hard, I say, to concentrate on all that while there are rats rampaging around in the ceiling insulation above my head.

Although, given that Highclere Castle was neglected for years so that the upper storey of 50 bedrooms is pretty much uninhabitable because of the leaky roof, I'm sure rats are not unknown to Lord and Lady Carnarvon. Perhaps we could have bonded over that. Too late now.

Here I am, back home half a world away, with rats in my roof - probably the very ones I've been inadvertently feeding down in my sieve of a henhouse. This very cold winter they must have moved from their damp tunnels in the dirt up into our roof to snuggle cosily under the pink fibreglass duvet there. The Man has been through with his nasty baits, and in a week or so all should be quiet - although that won't describe my state of mind, envisaging decaying corpses scattered all over the ceiling. Poisoned rats don't go outside to die, apparently - and unfortunately. Urban legend.

I have no photos of the rats in my roof, but it's only a short leap from them to bats in the belfry, and thence to the wonderful sight of vast clouds of fruitbats flying out over the northern Queensland town of Cairns to feast on mangoes: their nightly outing from where they roost in trees on the other side. It was a staggering sight, but I haven't got any photos of them either; though there is this one of the stainless steel fish in the swimming pool on the Esplanade where I was sitting when I saw them. It's where everyone swims because there are crocodiles and stinging jellyfish in the sea. Oh and sharks - nobody mentions them because they're pussycats compared to the danger presented by the others. Rats, bats, crocs, stingers and sharks: is that enough animals for you today?

Not my fault

I would like to make it clear that I take no responsibility whatsoever for the terrible floods in Brazil. I have never been to Brazil. The nearest I ever got was eating a fresh Brazil nut in the Amazon jungle in Peru; but the young people flaunting their perfect bodies in front of us last Sunday at Palm Beach were, I thought, Brazilian (on the basis that I couldn't understand what they were saying so obviously it couldn't have been Spanish) - does that count?

Seriously, tragic stories from Brazil. And seriously bad ones still from Australia, as mop-ups uncover bodies in Queensland, flooding spreads in NSW and Victoria is badly affected. Also, Tasmania, where I'm going in just over a week (calamity, worryingly, now preceding me as well as following on my heels): two teenagers airlifted to safety after being swept along Cascade Gorge, which was on my itinerary, and where I have been previously. It's a huge, er, gorge between rocky cliffs, very spectacular, especially when viewed from the ski lift arrangement that spans it, on which you're suspended below a cable and move very slowly across the surging waters.

Near Heathcote, in Victoria, we went up to look at Lake Eppalock, to see the phenomenon of the spillway not just wet but actually foaming with water: the first time it had been put to use since it was built in the 1990s. Our host was still taken with the novelty of it all, that the lake was 107% full so soon after a time when "We thought we were going to lose the lake". It'll be a lot more impressive right now, I bet.

And back in Queensland, in Charleville, our guide there was still astonished by the floods they'd had just 4 weeks earlier, when Bradley's Gully overflowed and swept through the town from behind while everyone was watching the stopbanks on the Warrego River out front: half a metre of muddy water right through the town, including the bottom floor of the historic Corones Hotel, scene of high society in the first half of last century but the elegance now faded, and many treasured items spoiled by floodwater. Poor Jane, the tourism lady, found herself playing lady's maid, hand-washing gowns over and over, flushing the fine dirt out of seams and hems.

Australia's fine red dust is probably the most-cursed dirt on the planet: up in Broome, the pearl-masters deliberately chose to wear white linen suits to show how rich they were, able to afford not just lots of sets of clothes, but also the laundry maids to wash out the pindan dust every day, in water that had to be filtered over and over before it could be used.