Giant inflated - head?

When I say that my head's all over the place, I mean that literally (almost). Busily catching up with writing after - what? eight trips away so far this year? - I've been working on stories about England, Ireland, Macau, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Mauritius, and lining up Seattle and more Australian stories to do next. The NZ stories were Waiheke Island and Lake Wakatipu, which is rather perverse of me since most of the action at the moment is right here in Auckland.

That blimp-like affair is the inflatable rugby ball containing a full-on Tourism NZ blitz to convince potential tourists to get themselves out here: it's usually positioned somewhere significant overseas. Right now it's on Queen's Wharf on the waterfront ('Party Central' they insist on calling it) and I had a look at it the other day, though even soon after it opened on a Friday lunchtime the queue was too long for me to bother with. Another day - there are enough of them still. Weeks to go yet till it's all over. Sigh.

I did go in The Cloud (aka The Slug) though, which was much nicer than it had promised to be when first proposed, and had a couple of huge screens showing an imaginative presentation of uniquely Kiwi features, from Weta Workshop to computerised cow eartags, all mixed in with Scenery, that made me a little pink with pride - even though the actual displays were somewhat mystifying. It probably was clever, inventing a way of making plastic chain mail with no joins - but what is it for? There was a lot of interest in the jetpack, but it looked a cumbersome beast and nothing like in the comics. The wood-veneer Vespa was, er, novel.

Most diverting, though not Kiwi at all of course, were the Segways being used outside by staff pretending to be serious, swooping up and down the wharf transporting sections of temporary fencing. Ubercool, as ever.

Ringing bells

The OH knows he’ll be in big trouble if he ever buys me my favourite perfume. For years now I’ve been training myself to associate the scent of Lancome’s Miracle with setting off on a plane trip; so as soon as I’m airside, I swing by the duty-free shop for a squirt from their tester bottle. Already, if I catch a lingering whiff on my watch-strap when I’m back home, I can instantly visualise the airport, the passport and boarding pass in my hand, the planes outside — and feel the excitement. The idea is that when I’m a shrivelled old lady and stuck in a chair, I can sniff the bottle and get instantly high: say, 30,000 feet.

When we travel, we take photos and buy souvenirs, but all too often ignore the other senses, which can be much more effective in summoning vivid memories. Smell seems to be a particularly direct route back to the past, although it’s not always possible to reproduce once back home. This is certainly a good thing in the case of the stinking durian, even if it does evoke tropical markets with all their colour and buzz. But vanilla will take me back to Reunion Island, where it’s grown and processed; 4711 cologne to the elegant shop in Cologne where a perfumed fountain tinkling in the corner scents the air; frangipani to Tahiti; cloves to Indonesia.

Taste always works well, although foods that are still limited to their places of origin by definition won’t work as memory aids: you’re not going to find roasted guinea pig, casseroled fruit bat or coconut crab on any menu here. But something you taste for the first time on holiday is good, so for me Parmesan cheese means Sydney, parsnips are England, quinoa is Peru, chowder means Vancouver.

Though crowing roosters bring back Bali for me, sirens and whistles evoke New York, and cawing crows epitomise Australia, music is the best audio trigger. I first came across the quirky compositions of the Penguin Café Orchestra thanks to the driver of my car in Mauritius; an M2M hit sweetly sung to us by our guide at the end of a tour always reminds me of China; and Kelly Clarkson got me dancing on Reunion Island (possibly also the rum). Hear the music, and I’m there: so in Tasmania I used repeat plays of my latest favourite song to fix the association. Now just the first few notes take me back to the Bay of Fires, the spinifex seeds tumbling over the hard sand, the sun on the rocks, the turquoise sea.

This value-adding holiday tip is brought to you by P. Wade: that’s P as in Pavlov.

Cat burglar

Drama in the night. It seemed sensible to use disturbed sleep patterns to solve the problem of the feline intruder, who's been coming in through the flap to eat the food that's always there for my two old skinny cats. I set the flap for in only and waited. When I heard it rattle sometime in the stilly watches, I leapt out of bed and into the laundry, flicking on the light and shocking the young, fit cat who'd popped in for a snack of expensive, nourishing, old-cat biscuits.

There was a bit of a battle that involved fear on his part and rather a lot of blood and some pain on mine, but I got him bundled into the wire cat basket and took him out into the dark where I got huge satisfaction from turning the hose on him until he was completely drenched and had stopped fighting it, slumped dejectedly on the floor. Then I let him out and he was off like a shot, hopefully home to dive straight into his owner's bed. It's certain that he won't be coming round here again, next time he's feeling peckish.

So, all sorted now? Alas, no. This cat was grey, while the one I saw sneaking out of the catflap the other day was black and white...

Normally, I'm kind to animals, and it's hard when I travel to keep my distance from those I see. Like the cat peacefully basking in the last rays of the sun at the Grand Bassin temple to Shiva in Mauritius, or this dog watching life go by from a doorstep up the hill in Cusco. They look appealing and I'd like to be friendly to them, but have to remember about rabies. Not that the citizens of Santiago in Chile seem bothered by that danger: there are dogs everywhere in that city, and apparently people have their favourite strays, which they feed and pet in the parks and squares. Certainly (and happily), I never saw one as skinny as the cat on the sofa beside me right now.

Home's best

It was a bit confusing today: sorting out photographs (these ones didn't make the cut) to go with a Mauritius story, selling one about the Inca Trail, trying to sell another about Victoria, and getting on with writing about Tasmania, at the same time as thinking about a special blog event that's coming up to promote New Zealand to people who may be thinking that coming here could be an adventure too far.

Our neighbours had the moving van in - what a shame they're not called pantechnicons any more - to load up their stuff that's to be sent to Oz. Imagine: on the side of the truck, the slogan 'We move you to Australia'. It's a business, now, so many people are heading off across the Tasman for a better (read, generally, richer) life. Apparently lots of Christchurch residents have got Oz in their sights, their nerves shot, their houses in ruins, the future of the city - well, not in doubt, it does have one - just too hard to imagine at this stage. It's understandable. But... Australia?

It's a terrific place. I've had great times there, I love the Outback and all its furry wildlife (excluding the tarantulas), the history is exciting Boy's Own Adventure stuff, the food's delicious and the Aussies are thoroughly good sorts. But I wouldn't want to live there. The environment is too harsh, the insects are awful, there are snakes, the accent wears me down after a week and though the country is so rich and the infrastructure so good and the go-getter attitude so inspiring and effective, I like it much better here where everything is gentler. Even if sometimes it's bloody rough.

Premade? Still working on this version.

Well, fancy that. Thanks, Google Alert! It's kind of exciting, to know there's a Sim with my name - and what are the odds that she's a traveller? She's also described as tan (nup), thin (hah!), Pisces (Scorp), brown-haired (who knows?), single and normal - but her eyes are grey and she aspires to Knowledge, so that's near enough. As for living in a 'secret sub-neighbourhood called Exotic Destinations' - well, how about Bay of Fires, Tryphena, Ningaloo, Koblenz and Paris? And that's just the first half of this year. (Sorry: but this blog is called TravelSKITE.)

I'm not so sure about the 'visiting foreign hotels' bit though: that sounds suspiciously like what's depressingly titled 'site inspections' in the trade - something that travel agents get saddled with when they're whisked overseas for what other people assume is an exciting, exotic free holiday. While we travel writers see ourselves as in an entirely different category from agents, I've been caught up in some of these myself on group famils, and also heard true horror stories of having to be shown round 20 hotels in a single day. It's madness: you can't distinguish them from each other after about the first four, so it's a total waste of time. But mainly, how tedious and dispiriting, to be shown some fabulous hotel room all marble, 1000+ count linen, balcony overlooking turquoise bay dotted with islands, and dazzling bathroom, and have to focus on the fact that the bath-tub is too high for elderly clients to climb into.

What they should do is give the agents video memory sticks of what's available, and then let them just enjoy the hotel they're staying in, which they will then remember both vividly and - hopefully - fondly. Like Indigo Pearl on Phuket, with its classy industrial-chic theme; or the Hong Kong Peninsula's 6-room suite with TV over the bath; or the Raj Palace in Jaipur's croquet lawn and super-attentive staff; or the roses and hand-made chocolates in the Plaza Grande in Quito; or the intricate pattern of bougainvillea petals on the bed at Legends in Mauritius; or the fireplace in the bathroom and the Inca walls at Hacienda San Augustin de Callo at Cotopaxi in Ecuador; or the over-water villa at Lagoon Resort on Aitutaki; or the rustic four-poster in the tent at Kangaluna in South Australia; or the 16th century longhouse in Anglesey that smelled of lilies and hay. See? I remember them all perfectly - and I'd recommend any one of them, totally (almost).

Calamity Pam

Sometimes it might be better not to have travelled quite so much. Today's news was pretty uniformly bad, and having connections with the places where it was happening made it seem that much worse.

Even though Brisbane's flood levels didn't reach the high predicted, it was quite bad enough, with 26,000 houses drenched, huge damage everywhere including to the lovely places we walked so recently, and so much debris washing down the river that there are fears the Great Barrier Reef will cop some of it. And of course, the deaths, the featured stories just heartbreaking; and so many more people still missing.

Then down in Greymouth the police announced tonight that they are calling a halt to the recovery attempt and sealing the mine with the 29 men's bodies, what remains of them, still inside. The mine is so volatile even now, two months later, that it's just too dangerous to think about entering: 4 explosions and a fire so far. The families, and everyone else on the Coast, will be downcast, having clung to hope for so long. It's been raining there today, the hills hidden in low cloud, the sea grey, the bush a dull green.

And then, different but disturbing, there's the report of the murder of an Irish woman honeymooning in Mauritius, who disturbed hotel staff thieving in her room when she went into it, and was strangled, while her husband of two weeks sat in the dining room waiting for her return. And that was at Legends hotel in the north, where I stayed last year: where Matthew Flinders' cat came visiting, where my bed was covered in an intricate pattern of bougainvillea blooms, where a friendly attendant came to my door in the evening to shave jasmine-scented soap for my bath. Awful.

I was asked today if I'd like to go to Malaysia, to the east coast islands, for a bit of snorkelling and scoffing of seafood, and beach-side massage. Maybe it would work out better for Malaysia though if I stayed at home.

Centrefold spread

How rude that sounds! Caution: I'm really living up to the blog name today. This is the cover of the NZ Herald's travel section this week, as I'd hoped, and it looks great. I'm really proud. The story is one thing - I'm pleased with it, but writing is what I do - the photos, though, are entirely another: I still feel like an amateur behind the shutter, and it's a thrill when they turn out as I meant them to.

I'm pleased, too, that the editor featured the story on the middle pages, which shows the whole thing off so well. I really hope the Air Mauritius and Naiade and MTPA people are happy. Because I am. Here's a closer look at another photo that was hard to take, because of the contrast, but came out pretty well.

Actually, you can see all the photos on the Herald's website. End of skite.

Not so ordinary

I've just finished off the left-over rice pudding: it was calling to me through the quiet house. I thought I would only tidy up the edges a bit, but that was never going to work, and the dish is now scraped clean. It was a particularly good one, which I'm putting down to the fact that I used real Mauritian vanilla extract instead of the cheap local make of essence.

Whenever I read a recipe that calls for a vanilla pod, my heart sinks a little - but now I know why they're so expensive. The vanilla plant is an orchid, did you know that? It's native to Mexico, where it's pollinated by a local species of bee that's specially adapted to the vanilla flower: that's why attempts to grow it elsewhere continually failed, even after this fact was discovered. But in 1841 a slave named Edmond Albius, who was only 12 years old, worked out a way of pollinating the flowers by hand. And where did this happen? Reunion Island!

We went to a really interesting plantation there called Escale Bleue, where a very jolly man called Aime Leichnig demonstrated (with a commentary including a series of faintly risque jokes) how to do the pollination. It's ironic that Edmond's discovery led to even more work for the slaves, crouched over the vines fiddling with tiny flowers.

Once the grown pods, the size of round beans, are picked, they're dipped in hot water then dried in the sun, turned several times a day and shaded if they're drying too fast - they're constantly being checked. Then Aime wraps them in cloth and puts them into polystyrene chests to mature for 9 months (more jokes), being regularly sniffed, until they're ready to sell 12-18 months after picking. So there you have it: labour intensive.

We saw them in bundles at the markets in both Reunion and Maritius where they're also grown as a crop: 20 euros for a bunch of 100. That's $36 - whereas in the local supermarket here, they're $7.44 for a measly three. Rip-off! There was an enterprising young man with a machine at the beachside market in St-Gilles busily sealing them inside plastic bags for tourists wanting to take them home through customs. Clever.

Good clean fun

The only link today is that I'm still writing Mauritius stories. I was amazed, frankly, to come across a scene like this there: a couple of dozen women thigh-deep in a river, shirts and dresses draped over rocks being scrubbed with actual scrubbing brushes. The grassy river bank behind them was almost covered with clothes and sheets spread out to dry, and their children were all playing together in and out of the water.

They did seem to be enjoying doing this menial chore so sociably, though, and there was a lot of talking and laughing going on, so I suppose it could have even been something that they looked forward to. It was just such a contrast with what we'd seen a short time before in the city, Port Louis, where there were fancy watches and handbags in the shop windows along the waterfront, and a live jazz band playing.

This is where the young people came to pose and parade, and in their modern clothing looked a world away from the women in the river with their skirts tucked up into their knickers. I've never seen so many carefully-spiked hairdos in one place before. The couple above is typically good-looking - the girls below, to be honest, less so (especially when glaring suspiciously at middle-aged frumpy white tourists pointing long lenses at them) but that doesn't mean they don't get their share of admiring glances.

Highs and lows

Rain, rain, rain and endless grey skies - until this afternoon, that is, when the sun finally broke through and, seemingly within minutes, the icecream van was cruising the neighbourhood cranking out 'Home, Home on the Range' and reminding us all that when deer and antelope play, can summer be far behind?

The last van I saw was on Mauritius, when we stopped at a beachside picnic place on the Morne Peninsula where we found many groups of people out enjoying the day, including this party of elderly Indian ladies. They were making simple music with a drum, bell, tambourine and these wooden blocks, and several of them were dancing in the centre of their circle. Typically for Mauritians, when they saw us watching, they invited us in to join the dance - and were amused to find that their 80-plus year-old hips were a lot more mobile than our stiff Western ones.

Apparently, old people get a lot of free treats like that, which is good to hear. We passed a very flash-looking building on our drive, called the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Recreation Centre for Senior Citizens. (I didn't have to look that name up to get it right: I hope you're impressed. 'Father of the nation', it's everywhere, starting at the airport.)

The Morne Peninsula is pretty spectacular, with a sudden rocky outcrop shooting up to 556m where in the nineteenth century runaway slaves hid out on the top of the mountain. At the bottom there's a monument to resistance to slavery, which includes a reference to the story that some of them, unaware that slavery had subsequently been abolished, panicked when they saw soldiers climbing towards them, and leaped to their deaths.

So shoot me

Another little tussle of conscience here. Nice picture, eh? I've submitted it, and others, along with a story about Mauritius and think it may well end up on the cover of the travel section. And that's a bit embarrassing, as I was only able to take this photo because my friend and colleague, a keen and expert photographer, had spotted the shot on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide book, and asked our driver to take us to the spot so she could take her own (hopefully better) version.

She was fussy. The first time we went, there wasn't much sun, it was a bit windy so the water wasn't so blue, and there was a sinister bag floating in the water. We both took heaps of shots, but none really pleased us. So when, on our last day in Mauritius, we were going through Mahebourg again with a bit of time to spare, she was eager to go and have another try. This time the conditions were much better and I got this one, at a different angle from her because I wanted the boat in the foreground. I don't know what hers look like but I'm sure they're sharper and better exposed - still, I like this one.

But, even though we went to this spot specifically because my friend wanted to take her own version of a published photo, I still feel a bit of a copy-cat, and as though it's not truly my own photo.

This one, though, this is an exclusive.

In the midst of life

I've had a conversation today about my mother's ashes, read an article about the heroic war exploits of the father of our former butcher (best pork chipolatas ever!) with a photo of his grave in Malaysia, and contemplated going to see Cemetery Junction: so clearly that's today's link.

This cemetery is in Mauritius, at Mahebourg on the east coast. I like cemeteries. They're so much the same everywhere that the differences stand out better, and it's always interesting to wander through them. At this one there was a number of tombs, one of which was being opened with a fair amount of chatter and hammering as the seal was broken around the big stone in the front. There certainly wasn't any hushed respect or apprehension: it was just a job that needed to be done. Part of life. It reminded me of a man I met in Rarotonga, who was busy building a tomb for himself and his wife, just metres from their home. He was doing a nice job installing halogen spotlights and fancy handles on the door.

What I particularly liked here were the glazed china wreaths on many of the crosses: I hadn't seen them before, and they were pretty. Pansies and roses seemed to be popular.

I also liked the standard wording on the gravestones. 'Ici repose...' Sounds so much more restful than 'Here lies...' doesn't it?

Catching air

Big winds at the moment: 1200 people stranded overnight at Mt Hutt by 200+kmh nor-westers swooping across the mountain; and pretty blustery here too, though without the snow and 300 over-excited ten year-olds (not) sleeping on piled-up coats.

We had it windy in Mauritius, too, especially on the day we went to Ile des Cerfs, which is an island with a pretty, turquoise-water beach that's a 20-minute ferry ride from the mainland. While we waited for the boat to come for us, we watched these kite-surfers who had got bored with waiting for punters to come and hire the gear, and gone for a spin themselves.

Posing is part of the sport, of course, especially when there are long lenses involved, and this guy zipped back and forth right in front of us even though there was a 500m stretch of beach at his disposal. Good for him. We certainly enjoyed the show.

Au revoir a l'Ile Maurice

Today we leave this beautiful hotel, and Mauritius too, to travel to Reunion Island, a 40 minute flight south to a little piece of France in the Indian Ocean.

If Reunion's anything near as lovely as Mauritius, we'll be very happy.

Still in Mauritius

This is Stefan, the head chef at Beau Rivage, showing us his impressively well-designed kitchen: a brightly-lit and busy place in total contrast to the relaxing, peaceful restaurant outside overlooking the pool, candles flickering on the tables.

Stefan has a new approach to food, using essential oils to add a subtle new dimension to the flavour: either what he called harmonic, where seven different mints are blended, for example, or alliance, which might join together basil, geranium and pink pepper. It's about scent as much as flavour, science as much as cooking - but the oyster champagne sabayon we ate right there in the kitchen was simply fabulous.

It did help us to make knowledgeable comments, that we'd visited an ylang ylang distillery that afternoon: a primitive affair of wood fire, boiler, hosepipes and glass bottles, reducing 50kg of flowers to just one litre of oil, which is sent from this simple tin shed to the high-tech perfume factories of Chanel. Apparently, two drops added to your daily shampoo will also help with hair loss: you might like to know that.

The unkindest cut?

Now, while this (very poor) photo shows men cutting the sugar cane by hand, most of the workers we saw this morning on the smaller, non- mechanised, fields were women. All rigged up in boots and hats, machetes flasing in the sun, they were hard at it under the eye of the old man who owned the land, who was leaning on a rake and happy to chat with us while the women sweated.

Mind you, the men who were gathering up the canes into bundles and carrying them on their heads to the trailer had it even harder, I think.

Easy to say

Even though on our long drives around this island we've seen shanty houses and people bent double in the fields weeding crops and carrying loads on their heads, it was a surprise to come across women like this one doing their washing on rocks in the river.

"Cheaper than a machine," said our driver nonchalantly. Guess which sex?

Adorable ananas

Isn't this just the cutest little pineapple you ever saw in your life?

(I do hope that's a New Zealand kiwifruit. I bought a dear wee moonstone dodo from a lovely man at a stall who horrified us by saying that he loved to eat kiwis because they're so healthy. KiwiFRUIT, we established.)

Model behaviour

This morning we went to Historic Marine (where I didn't take this photo) to see how they make the model ships for which Mauritius is famous. In the model ship world.

It was fascinating: men hunched over original plans of the Cutty Sark and Golden Hind (and 120 others), painstakingly cutting the pieces out of balsa and teak, shaving, gluing and varnishing for up to 100 hoursto turn out a beautiful ship, perfect in every detail. There were women there too, fingers flashing as they knitted and knotted the rigging.

They make modern ones too. They haven't done Black Magic, but did make an Alinghi - and then got told off for it. Pah, typical Alinghi!

Sarong: so right

Another hotel, another sarong. Now I'm at Beau Rivage, the Naiade chain's flagship - and very lovely it looks to be too. Elegant furnishings, huge bed, hibiscus flower floating in a bowl, classy art on the wall... Oh yes, I could get used to all this.