We’re still ahead - and always will be, if you ask any Aussie, for whom the Kiwi/sheep thing is essential unsavoury-relationship joke material - but our ratio is dropping shockingly low. Not that long ago it was 22:1, but now we’re closing in on Iceland’s level. They are very proud of their 2:1 there, and never miss a chance to boast about it. (Australia, by contrast, considers their 3:1 ratio perfectly standard.)
To be honest, and going purely by the attitude of my guide Páll, Icelanders will boast about any feature of their country that’s the least bit distinctive. Good for them, I say. They certainly have plenty to be proud of - volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls, doughty horses, ancient language, historical resilience, human rights, Björk and co, standard of living, even hotdogs - and I can’t imagine any visitor coming away unimpressed. But the sheep? They’re woolly and cute, and live free-range, with an annual round-up that’d be something to see; but there aren’t that many of them.
Our formerly vast sheep population is dwindling because dairy is more lucrative (though polluting ☹️) and, shockingly, the price of wool has dropped so low that just getting them shorn leaves farmers in the red. Crazy, when it’s such an eco-friendly product, with so many uses - which are expanding all the time, as producers are driven to be more and more creative. All power to them.
In the meantime, it’s a bit melancholy to think that classic NZ scenes like this - irresistible Insta-material for tourists - are becoming less common.
Actually top of the world-wide list, by the way, though much lower-profile, are the Falkland Islands, with a whopping sheep population of 200:1. The mere fact that I scarcely noticed the sheep while I was there, instead being blown away by all the penguins and albatrosses (and literally by the wind), tells you all you need to know about the dominance there of the wildlife - including over the small population of humans, who cling gamely on, politics and rugged environment notwithstanding. Good thing counting their sexual partners helps them get to sleep at night.
In an ideal world, this title would introduce an entry about viewing Fagradalsfjall, that spectacular volcano in Iceland, which is still erupting, since August. I would love to be there, seeing it in person, as it adds extra drama to Iceland's already spectacular scenery.
But no, it's Mauna Loa on Hawaii's Big Island that has been - despite competition from Tonga and Java - most dominant in recent news. Though it too has so far been more of an attraction than an inconvenience, it's now beginning to threaten the main road that rings the island. That would mean a long and tedious detour all the way around the other side, so no doubt the locals are crossing their fingers right now. Which is, of course, all you can do, with volcanoes.
When we were there, on an Uncruise er, cruise, in 2016, the mountain was actually covered in snow - in December! (Yes, I know Hawaii's north of the equator, but it's still a Pacific island and, well, December is summer in the Pacific...) Otherwise, though, it was an unremarkable hump on the horizon. All the big action was taking place further along at Kilauea, where we went on a lava-viewing outing on a boat that still astonishes me we were allowed to do - that skipper was incredibly laid-back, given all the fire and steam we were so close to.
We do do volcanoes here in Enzed, of course. A series of eruptions created Lake Taupo 300,000 years ago, the Oruanui eruption 70,000 years ago still the biggest the world has known - so it does make us a little nervous, when there are earthquakes there, as there have been recently, even causing a small tsunami along the shore.
It's not as if we needed reminding of that sort of thing. Netflix is about to release a documentary about the Whakaari/White Island eruption disaster which is going to bring that awful event back into the limelight again. Thanks, Leo.
I know it's a privilege, but it also feels quite odd, to be writing a *cough* column about the Organ Pipes just outside Dunedin, which I haven't actually visited, and referencing in it Iceland's Reynisfjara and Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway, both of which I have.
I could also add Bishop and Clerk on Maria Island, Tasmania, and the Gawler Ranges in South Australia. All of them are spectacular and fascinating: weathered hexagonal columns of rock (basalt or dolerite), either upright or horizontal or both, but always fitted together with marvellous precision.
Though of course, they're not at all - fitted together, that is. They're actually formed by a mass of molten lava cooling at precisely the right speed and in the perfect conditions for the rock to crack into that particular pattern. It's still a marvel, though, that something as raw and violent and unpredictable as an eruption can result in something so satisfyingly neat and geometrical.
I'm a sucker for them every time. They can be found all over the world, and I would love to see more of them, one day. Probably, though, I should start with Dunedin.
Although I had two pages in the Sunday Star-Times travel section all to myself yesterday, the triumph was somewhat mitigated by the cover story being about the Southern Lights flight. This is a special organised by Viva Expeditions with Air NZ, to fly from (and back to) Christchurch in a Dreamliner on a 10-hour search for the aurora australis. The plane flies in the dramatically-named stealth mode, all external lights off, internal too, so everyone's eyes can adjust and fully appreciate the aurora.
They found the lights quite quickly, and they were pretty spectacular, according to the photos and video. But - and this is a HUGE but - not according to most passengers' actual eyes. The trouble is, our eyes, and especially older eyes, aren't very good at picking up the colours, so what almost everyone saw were swirls of white - the green and pink only showed up via cameras.
Now I would have found that deeply disappointing, to put it mildly. Seeing the aurora is one of my top wants, but to pay all that money, fly all that way and only see white? Nah, Instagram has spoiled me for that. I want proper colour, end of. And if I have to go to Finland, or Norway, or Alaska for my chance to see it, well, that's just icing on the cake. Or actual ice. Whatever. Even if it turns out my eyes can't do the business, at least I've been somewhere interesting and not just been squashed into a plane for ten hours, flying from A to A.
Travel should not be about disappointment, especially when it involves world-famous spectacles or landmarks. I'm happy to report that right up there with cast-iron guarantees of satisfaction (for the locations, tourist throngs notwithstanding) are the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island's moai, the Eiffel Tower and Tower Bridge. There are lots of others. As further proof, most of those listed I've been to more than once, and been 98% thrilled to see them again. And, for today's connection, two of those - Machu Picchu and Galapagos - I visited the second time courtesy of Viva Expeditions. Thanks, Rachel.
17,000 puts our three (plus aftershocks) into perspective, for sure. And - hopefully - we're not likely to have a proper eruption like this on the mainland in the near future; though it has happened here, of course, within even my memory. They don't seem much bothered, in Iceland, about this potential event - it's 25km from Reykjavik and apparently there aren't many people living near there. The worst prognosis is that lava might flow over a road.
It is, though, in an area where all tourists (including me) go - the Great Rift Valley, where the two tectonic plates that Iceland sits on, the American and the Eurasian, visibly butt up against each other, and there's some spectacular scenery around there. Most notable is the Blue Lake, which is thermally heated, and so a magnet for people wanting to skite about swimming in it (naturally, I didn't go there, yawn, we've got plenty of that sort of thing here).
There's also the Silfra Fissure in Þingvellir* National Park, where people go diving and snorkelling because of the brilliant clarity of the water and, naturally, the skite factor. I didn't do that either - but I did enjoy walking around the area, appreciating the rocks and the rivers, the flowers and the birds, and the pretty little church. It was lovely.
Speaking of Great Rift Valleys, that reminds me there's another in Kenya. I went there, too. It was warmer. And very optimistic.
* That's Þ as in Th, ie thorn for you fellow linguistics veterans.
Seeing as how it is my birthday today, as a token gesture towards the (increasingly tiresome and irrelevant) custom of celebrating the occasion, I have drunk what is likely to be my last ever Blue Moon beer. It was given me as a 6-pack, brought back from the US by the Baby on her last-but-one trip, and eked out since then in a very miserly manner. Regular 😀 readers will recall, since I have harped on about it a number of times, that I first tasted this beer six years ago while on a post-IPW famil in Wisconsin, at lunch in Popeye's Restaurant on the shores of Lake Geneva. It was properly served with a slice of orange, and I became an instant fan, and have sought it out ever since.
Sidenote: we had a little down-time for browsing round the town and, while trying on a top (which I bought and still like), I heard a woman in the next changing room say excitedly, three times, "You're gonna grieve yourself to death!" Still trying to imagine the scenario for that. Also, in April, the lake was still partly frozen and clinking musically with small icebergs - inside which it's apparently possible to find freshly-frozen fish, we were told.
Anyway, I've found Blue Moon in some odd places since, including on tap in the Lord Nelson pub beside the Thames where I saw a couple of cliché red-coated Chelsea Pensioners walking past. The most unexpected place, though, was in the bottle shop around the block from where I used to live in Auckland - what a joy that was! But a few years later, the imports ceased, and that was that. sigh.
That glass, by the way, I bought in Reykjavik in celebration of the Einstök beer I enjoyed there - that memory, though, always tinged with regret over the four bottles of my airport-bought six-pack that I left, forgotten and unopened, under my seat in the van I did my guided tour in. An unplanned tip for Páll, which I'm sure he enjoyed - but I would have appreciated it more...
The cat has lost his ruff again. I'm beginning to lose count, but I reckon that was his sixth since I started making him wear them less than a year ago. I don't know how he does it - on purpose or accidentally, using a tool or his paw - but it's getting a bit wearisome. Now I'll have to go and sew him another one. I actually just bought another length of fabric a few days ago for precisely this eventuality. Did he know, and want a change from the frankly insulting bird pattern of the most recent one - or is it just sneaky coincidence in operation again?
The purpose of the ruff is to make him more noticeable to the birds that I'm ashamed and frustrated to know he still hunts, being ex-feral. I first came across cats wearing ruffs in Reykjavik, and was more amused than anything to see what I assumed was Icelanders' preference for decorated cats - kind of fitted in with all the brightly-coloured buildings in the city. Later, I learned the true reason, and was converted.
Regular 😀 readers will be well aware, since I keep harping on about it, that I should at this very moment be in fabulous Iceland again, about to sail away to new-to-me Greenland, courtesy of also new-to-me luxury small-ship cruise line Seabourn. But instead, here I am stuck at home, being nagged for food by incontinent sparrows and doves outside my window, with nothing to look forward to. I suppose I should be grateful to Barney for giving me something to do...
In classic TravelSkite fashion, I have missed another milestone. This time it's the half-million views total, according to Blogger's counter (which I view with some scepticism, as well as with the sure and certain knowledge that a hefty chunk of those views are my own).
I have no excuse. I've just been ticking along quietly here, not doing anything much, merely existing in New Zealand's weirdly almost-normal bubble with everything pretty much like the old days, apart from closed borders and no tourists. FYI we've currently got 18 active cases, all returnees from overseas, all in isolation, and no-one in hospital. Our death toll is, thankfully, still only 22, and Covid-19 reports of the hellish dramas happening overseas are relegated now to the second section of the evening news, after more important local (non-)events.
I should try harder to be actually thankful - but currently I'm just sad that I'm sitting here at home and not at this moment seated on a plane heading for Iceland. Next week I should have been setting off on a cruise with Seabourn (Silversea's great rival, and new to me) from Reykjavik via north Iceland to Greenland and then the Shetland Islands, Scotland and England, finishing in Southampton. It would have been so good. Small ship, high-end, with all the treats that that means; but mainly yay, Iceland again! And Greenland!
I watched The Story of Fire Saga the other night, which was predictably silly, but with some good music. It was mainly a quiet joy for me to recognise the Reykjavik locations, the classic woollen jerseys, the Einstök beer glasses, and see the new-to-me scenery around Hüsavik, which I would have visited on the cruise. I would have been so happy to be there again - it's such a special, interesting, spectacular and homely place to visit. I bet the locals are even actually keen to have some visitors now (instead of being overwhelmed by two million of them annually, to a country with a 300,000 population). Sigh.
I've just written an editorial about how nobody's interested in hearing about your holiday unless it was a disaster. It's true, isn't it? How was your holiday? Lovely. And that's the end of the conversation. None of those supplementary questions I used to coach my kids to ask of their friends' parents when they were playing in their houses, in order to look intelligent/ingratiate themselves. The only people who have the slightest interest in your trip are those who have just been, or are about to go, to the same place, so it's all entirely selfish - especially the first group, who just want to be able to reassure themselves that they had the better time. Disasters, though. I've had a few - too many, in fact, to fit into 300 words. It was quite fun to recall them. Stand by.
Dislocating my shoulder by jumping off a moving boat in the Norfolk Broads. Falling off a staircase on Waiheke, knocking myself out and breaking my wrist. Tripping and falling down a flight of stone steps at the Red Fort in Delhi, hitting my head (again - explains a lot). Falling into the Tongariro River thirty seconds after setting off on a white-water rafting expedition. Falling over twice on a glacier in Iceland and whacking the same knee each time. Missing the train in Alice Springs and, out of money, having to subsist on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter for three days till the next one. Getting mugged in Santiago, by having my antique gold chain snatched from my neck from behind by invisible ratbags. Having a man expose himself to me on the street at night in Brisbane as I waited for a bus. Watching my camera cartwheel down a rocky hillside on the Isle of Skye. Dropping a speeding Segway wheel into a pothole in Queenstown and falling off. Being dumped by a wave on Waiheke on two separate occasions and losing my glasses in the surf. Having my husband whisked away by airport authorities and waiting alone for him for a fraught hour and a half in Moscow. Having to wade thigh-deep through freezing water along the flooded Milford Track. Being followed down a tunnel to an underground market in Delhi by a one-legged, long-haired beggar who was just a creepy silhouette against the light. Having the expedition ship I was on shudder to a halt as it ran aground on a rock. Breaking an arm off my glasses by sleeping on them on a plane and having to wear them like lorgnettes for half a holiday in France. Riding a horse in a bikini (me, not the horse) in South Australia through a shoulder-high thicket of spider webs. Flushing my hire car keys down a public loo in Brisbane, leaving me stranded at night with no money or phone.
There are doubtless more, that I've blotted out of my memory. Still, that's a good enough list to enable shameless name-dropping. Which is what it's all about, really, when you're back from travelling, isn't it? And probably why nobody else (see above) is interested. So what a good thing it is that I'm a travel writer, and get to describe all my trips in great detail, and even get paid [a pittance] for it. Funny, though, isn't it, how there's a call for travel stories in newspapers and magazines, but in person no-one's bothered? Or maybe it's just me...
Yesterday I watched 'Woman at War' - a movie made in Iceland, about Halla who is a lone eco-warrior, fighting Rio Tinto. She's resourceful, brave, careful and determined, and a perfect inspirational Waiheke heroine, fighting Big Aluminium and never giving up.
But I, of course, watched it for the locations. As soon as I saw the trailer, I wanted to see the movie and get a taste again of the five days I spent in Iceland. getting on for a year ago now. And I wasn't disappointed: there was Reykjavik's iconic Hallgrimskirkja, the concrete church on the hill that dominates the skyline. There were the colourful corrugated-iron houses and the narrow hilly streets that I happily trailed around for hours.
There was a scene at þingvellir (Thingvellir, to you non-linguists unfamiliar with thorn) on the path beneath the cliff, with the flag flying. I walked along there. All tourists do.
But most of the exterior action took place in the lava fields: vast expanses of mossy rocks surrounding the volcanoes, and how bleak they did look. I was there in summer, when the sun actually shone occasionally (for the first time for six weeks) and the moss was green-gold under a sometimes blue sky, the grass was lush, and everywhere were sheets of purple lupins. This movie though was filmed in autumn or maybe spring, when the sky was grey, the days short, the light muted, and there were no colours. It looked sternly inhospitable country. Still striking, though, with steaming rivers and distant mountains, glaciers, and a big, big sky.
It was so pleasing to see it all again, to hear that incomprehensible language being spoken, recognise a few words, see those tall, well-built people, and remember so clearly the triumph of actually getting to go there.
And the movie was funny, quirky, serious, sweet, clever and unusual. I recommend it.
So that's 2018 over and done with. Yet another one that most people are glad to see the back of, for many good reasons, even though at least we lost fewer big names than recently - and, thank goodness, David Attenborough is still with us. Travel-wise, the year started brilliantly for me - but that did have its downside:
Glamorous scenery in Antarctica by Pamela Wade
Gentoo
The best day of 2018 for me was January 1. That did, inevitably, mean it was downhill for the rest of the year – but it was worth it to have had that one perfect, exciting, glorious, beautiful day. I was on a Silversea cruise to Antarctica and this was our last full day before heading back towards Ushuaia.
We began by cruising into Neko Harbour on the Antarctic Peninsula for a hike through knee-deep snow up to a view across to a crevasse-fissured glacier that calved with a low rumble as we watched it fall in slo-mo into the turquoise sea. Gentoo penguins provided comic relief in their rookery – waddling, squabbling and stealing pebbles from each other's nests. The Silver Explorer glided as we ate lunch on the deck, interrupted by an encounter with a pod of orcas hunting, a long-awaited first for me.
We arrived at magnificently spectacular Cuverville Island for another hike to the summit or, my choice, chilling out in the sunshine on the stony beach watching penguins clowning on dazzling icebergs: blue, white, striped, smooth, textured and sculpted, some draped with crab-eater seals. Later, the afternoon's lectures were interrupted by the captain's announcement about a pod of humpback whales bubble-net feeding, and we watched, fascinated, as he circled around them, the crew escorting us through their quarters for a lower, closer view.
That night butler Ivy served us dinner as we watched March of the Penguins in our suite, periodically pausing it to step outside on to our veranda to admire the icebergs, glaciers, mountains and deep blue sea, in the golden light of a slowly-setting sun. We drank Champagne. Nothing else would do.
- Sunday Star-Times 23/12/18
That's not to say there wasn't more good stuff to come, just not quite as uniquely, specially, fabulously spectacular. The sea seemed to be a common theme. I got to Iceland! Yay. And that was deeply satisfying, as well as fascinating. I also, having been to Antarctica, got up into the Arctic Circle, to North Cape on a Silversea Norway cruise. And that was lovely too, though it wasn't smooth sailing, either literally or figuratively (purely weather-related, not Silversea's fault).
Antarctica, the Arctic, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and the UK - that's not bad going, but I would have liked more. I had to turn down Denver, and Burma/Singapore/Indonesia; and didn't pursue as many other exotic destinations as I have previously, for boring domestic reasons. I did, on the other hand, see plenty of New Zealand: sea to mountains, islands and interiors, by boat, train, bus, bike, helicopter, horse, kayak, zipline and on foot.
One of the things we Kiwis do like to boast about (in our signature, laid-back, yeah-nah way) is that our country is marvellously diverse, scenically (actually also population-wise too these days: we have over 200 ethnic groups represented here). We've got pretty much every sort of scenery you can name, except for the Outback, and it's all packed in close, conveniently accessible. So I saw a steaming volcano, turquoise sea, snowy mountains, deep gorges, sandy beaches, green farmland, forest and cities. I saw lots of birds both winged and flightless, some dolphins, a couple of deer and, naturally, sheep (but not as many as people think. Especially the Aussies, who loudly assume we Kiwis enjoy unhealthy ovine relationships).
So that's pretty good going, really. I shouldn't complain about having missed out on some things. There's always next year...
