Big thinker

Isambard Kingdom Brunel: now there's a name to remember. And not just because it rolls so splendidly off the tongue, but also of course because this man thought so big during his busy 53 years. Not just thought, but did. Ships, bridges, tunnels, railways, dockyards... His works are all over Britain, still standing, still used, and in Bristol today we got to know the SS Great Britain, the world's first propeller-driven steamship (just think how important that leap of imagination was) and at the time the biggest ship on the planet.

She's back in her home dry dock now, after a long and chequered career transporting gold miners to Australia, guano from South America (I'm guessing the Ballestos Islands off Peru), wheat from the US, coal to the warships of the Great War, storing wheat in the Falklands, and more. Hauled back to the UK in 1970, she's been beautifully restored and sits like Cutty Sark shored up and able to be walked around, this time under a layer of water on glass, the iron hull below carefully kept in a humidity-free environment (odd, to feel drier under the water than above it).

It's really well done, a big ship with lots to see, lots to learn and marvel at - and on this SUNNY bank holiday Sunday, was being thoroughly enjoyed by heaps of people and family groups, which was lovely to see. Bristol's waterfront was buzzing, with boats and a train, and the M museum was pleasingly full of parents teaching their curious littlies bits of Bristol's pretty lively history. Good day. And sunny, too. Did I mention that?

On, on

They have hairless dogs in Peru, did you know? About the size of a Dobermann, but totally bald.

Today we had the city tour, of cathedrals and plazas and streets and suburbs and the coast, and an enormous and enormously long and very delicious lunch then more suburbs and painted houses and old-fashioned fishing boats and relaxed families. Then more eating and then packing up again and back to the airport for the next flight to Easter Island, leaving at midnight and arriving at 5am local time - don't ask me how long the flight is. I'm hoping to get my head down and not notice.

Then it's walking and climbing and looking at moai, carved stone heads - and probably more eating, at a guess. This, if you haven't got the message by now, is not a holiday. (But I am having fun.)

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.

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:

Fish and Chopin

Met up with an old friend today and a new one: a fellow Inca Trail climber from three years ago (the one who channelled his inner mountain goat and stayed in front all the way, despite being rather more stricken in years than all of the rest of us) and his wife here from England for the rugby. So what do you do on a free day in Auckland?

You go to Waiheke, of course - even if the weather wasn't the golden day we were promised, it was still worth taking the ferry over, mooching around Oneroa, eating lunch on a deck looking over the bay, polishing off a bottle of Kennedy Point, and then popping up the hill for what was, cheerfully, our third helping of an island institution. Lloyd and Joan Whittaker have been putting on their ninety-minute show for I don't know how long, introducing and demonstrating their wonderful collection of musical instruments from a dulcimer to Paderewski's concert grand, with in between harmonicas, accordians, pianolas, glockenspiels, organs and more. They play everything from Old Macdonald to Chopin, by way of Lloyd Webber, and at the end the audience is welcome to have a go. It was a great success with our visitors, and entirely a delight, even third time around.

Back in the city, it must have been about our fifth or sixth time to Kelly Tarlton's underwater world and Antarctic experience, with two sorts of penguins happily sitting on eggs in their snowy underground enclosure, and more varieties of sharks gliding over our heads than we could shake a stick at. There's always something new to enjoy, and lots of old stuff to enjoy again, and more things to learn. Did you know an adult octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of an old English penny?

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.

Slash and burn

I hesitate to use the word 'feast', still struggling as I am with the aftermath of all that fine dining aboard Avalon's Panorama a fortnight ago (plus some remarkably good food on Qantas's business class) - but it's promising to be another of those weeks again, after a long spell of what would have been famine if I didn't, fortunately, have other sources of income (thanks, OH and WGHS).

Yesterday the latest Let's Travel magazine published a story I wrote about Thursday Island, which is in the Torres Strait to the north of Cape York, itself the northernmost point of the Australian mainland. It's a sleepy sort of place these days, though it's had some lively history, mostly in the pearl-fishing days - which is to say, mother-of-pearl fishing, since it was the shells they were after, for buttons mainly (an industry that died instantly with the invention of plastic buttons in the 1960s). Though it looks pretty - palms, turquoise sea, bright flowers - everybody apart from tourists seems to live indoors with the aircon on because it's so very hot; it's the kind of place where people go quietly peculiar, or pickled (the clock behind the bar at the Top Pub has no hands).

Then there was meant to be a Tasmania story in the DomPost today, but it hasn't appeared so clearly the editor saw something shinier when he was putting the issue together. I'm beginning to think that's how editors work: not governed by space and advertising at all, but simple whim. They're flighty creatures with the attention span of a gnat - how else to explain the one who bought a story (for once, thank goodness, coughing up payment on acceptance instead of publication) and then sat on it for two years, claiming she just couldn't fit it in? 

Eventually I asked if I could send it elsewhere, and at least she let me, so now it's coming out in the Listener this week - except they like their stories 900 words and their editor grizzled that it was only 800. And then she cut it to 690! So though I'm looking forward to seeing my work in the Listener again (first time for ages) I'm going to be opening the magazine with trepidation, to see how my poor little story about the Amazon jungle has survived: was it a scalpel she used, or a machete?

Update: Scalpel. Phew!

Suite as

It's been another of those weeks: stories out in a couple of publications about Queensland and Washington state; stories sold about the West Coast, Amazon and Victoria; working on Western Australia; as well as beginning to focus on next week's crazy flit to Germany for a 5-day cruise along the Rhine, and discussing the itinerary for June/July in the UK.

That's why Germany is a there-and-back, since I'll be in Europe again so soon: though it does seem rather a waste of free flights, with so much richness and variety right there. But the five days will be fun, on the maiden cruise of a fancy suite-only ship, calling in at Gutenberg, Rudesheim and Cologne (Glockengasse Nummer 4711!) and ending up in Amsterdam.

I've only been to Germany once before, to Hamburg, and once to Amsterdam too. That was the last stop on the Big Trip from NZ to Britain: 16 countries in 6 months, flying on 16 different airlines on 26 flights. I kept a diary (in a notebook! Longhand! How untechnological) and the last entry finishes like this -

>> We didn't lose anything, we didn't have anything stolen, and we never misplaced our bags. We saw a lot of places, did a lot of things, spent a lot of money and had a lot of fun. Now we're arriving back at the same time as many other British holidaymakers, and I can imagine being asked where we spent our holiday. We'll reel off the list of exotic names, and end up with Amsterdam. "Amsterdam!" the tourist from Rhyll will say. "The wife and I went there. Did you see Anne Frank's house?" "No," we'll have to say. "Shame, you really missed something there. You should have seen the bookcase..."

Because it was closed. Maybe this time!

Travelling with Pollyanna

I've been reading a pile of submissions to a travel writing competition that I'm judging for a writers' group and, as an English teacher trained in the mid-'70s, I have to say that all those "Of course, they didn't teach grammar in those days" comments we've been getting ever since were misdirected. Most of these hopefuls are ladies in their 60s and 70s, at school when the syllabus was much more prescriptive and yet - the dangling participles! The missing main verbs! Mixed tenses! Random Capital Letters! Swarms, of commas, and exclamation marks!!!

It's great that they're trying, I know, and all of them have something to say that's worth reading, but it's a hard row for my inner pedant to hoe, and I now have great sympathy for the travel editor of the NZ Herald, who says he gets 300 unsolicited submissions a week. Most of them would be like these ones, I'm guessing: either What I Did on My Holidays or Listen to this Funny/Scary/Horrifying Anecdote from my trip twenty years ago. Diverting enough, but not really travel stories.

And so many of them have wasted material: an attempted mugging on the Trans-Siberian dismissed in a couple of sentences, while there are paragraphs about tinned fish and hard-boiled eggs; getting trapped in a gondola on Mt Etna in a high wind ditto, with all the attention given to finding their hotel. What were they thinking?

It seems obvious to me that to draw and keep the reader's attention, you choose the most exciting/funny/scary moment of a trip and build the story around that. From a travel writing perspective, the more a trip goes wrong, absolutely the better (as long as you actually survive to tell the tale). So getting lost in Lima, dropping my camera down a scree slope on Skye, having jewellery snatched in Santiago? All gifts.

It's a jungle out there

This may look like suburbia, but nature's red in tooth and claw out there in the back garden. Keeping an ear out anyway for the so-far-still-dry black and white biscuit-thief, I was alerted by Bossy squawking out in the henrun. Hens have a language, you know: loud, big-headed "I've laid an EGG, everybody!"; low-pitched throaty rattle for "Hawk overhead" (never confused with a seagull); impatient cackling for "It's MORNING and we want to GET OUT and have our BREAKFAST!"; excited gurgle "Ooo, ooo, tasty titbit!" and urgent, commanding "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" In the happy absence here in New Zealand of snakes, cougars and crocodiles, that means cats, and when I dashed out at Bossy's warning, so it was: the very pied pilferer I've been trying to catch.

He was instantly off through the bushes, of course, but the hens didn't settle, and when I ventured into the run in my bare feet it was to find yet another strange cat, a very forward young black one who came up to complain vociferously about the other. I like black cats, but I didn't want to encourage him, and since Alice was up on the deck observing the commotion from a safe distance, I fetched her so she could establish her territorial rights. Unfortunately this process involved her climbing up my chest by hooking all her claws into my tshirt, to hiss and growl from my shoulder.

The newcomer got the message though, and slunk away, hopefully not to return (though I may well find at a later date that I'm feeding him too). The ring-necked dove still digesting its morning feed of hens' wheat in the manuka tree above went back to sleep, the tui that had come to see what was going on swooped and dipped away, and I've come back inside with mud between my toes to try and regather my thoughts for a Great Barrier Island story about, fancy that, nature: specifically the Glenfern Sanctuary where a 2km pest-proof fence has been built across a small peninsula to protect the birds from, amongst other predators, cats.

And since I've posted enough pictures of my chickens which are eminently practical but not especially attractive Brown Shavers, here are the delightfully punk guinea fowl from Stonebarn, WA and some unexpectedly exotic chickens spotted outside a very humble cottage (not to say shack) along the Inca Trail in Peru.

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.

Stepping up to the task

It's not raining, and I'm not at school so there was no excuse this morning not to resume my regular walking circuit. The high point - in the literal sense only - is the flight of 132 steps up through the bush from the beach which I once thought would supply my Rocky moment when I was preparing to walk the Inca Trail, but which I now realise will only ever make me breathless with, er, breathlessness. But puffing's good.

While travelling involves an ironic amount of sitting and standing around, there's also far more walking than is usual in one's day-to-day life, and inevitably lots of steps to climb. High points - literal, again - are part of the tourist's duty when exploring new places, city or countryside, and are often the metaphorical high point of a visit too.

When that's the Empire State Building or the London Eye or the Eiffel Tower or the Petronas Towers, that's one thing. But when it's the Kings Canyon Rim Walk (a glorious place, despite its somewhat insalubrious name) or the Inca Trail or the Milford Track or the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh, well, that's quite another, because the only way to get to the top is by putting one foot above the other.

It's always worth it, for the view and the personal satisfaction, and the knowledge that it's an achievement that deserves a bit of a sugary reward afterwards. Doing it the hard way also makes you feel more in touch with the environment, like in Malaysia at the Batu Caves where once a year 100,000 entranced pilgrims climb the 272 steps to honour Vishnu, many of them with weights on hooks pushed through their skin and tongues. It makes carrying merely a camera, even in 35 degree heat, even past bold monkeys, seem like a holiday.

Which it is, of course - but one it's wise to train for.

Our soles

Good grief, it's raining again. We've had such a long and very wet winter, and though there are lots of flowers out, the birds are singing, it's generally warmer and officially spring, winter just can't seem to let go of us. Down south they're having a terrible time with snow and freezing winds, and so many lambs have perished, poor little things. Up here we've got strong winds and rain, rain, rain.

I wouldn't mind so much if my shoes didn't leak. My old faithful winter shoes, the blue ones, the black ones and the brown ones, have all sprung leaks. The cobbler laughed in my face when I took them in for resoling, and I can't replace them because the shops are full of summery sandals. Trying to avoid puddles as I walk, but ending up with wet socks anyway makes me feel as though I'm in a Dickens novel.

Shoes are a them and us sort of thing. Have you noticed national preferences? Like the Chinese preferring to shuffle along in scuffs? Or the universal jandals throughout the Pacific? Or the elastic-sided boots by Blundstone or RM Williams they favour in the Australian Outback?

In Peru it's sandals made from car tyres. The soles are cut to shape and rubber straps riveted on, and they last almost forever. There's no support or precise fitting, of course, which makes it all the more amazing that they're what the porters wear on the Inca Trail, trotting up and down that steep track with its uneven steps, huge loads towering over their heads, while we soft tourists lean back against the mountain to let them pass to go ahead and set up our lunch table, all of us togged up in fancy tramping boots with collapsible aluminium sticks and ergonomically-designed day packs to carry our cameras and snack bars.

And when the sandals finally fall off the owner's feet, they're still not thrown away. They begin a whole new life as, for example, a gate hinge. And we in the west fondly think of recycling as a modern notion.

High in the Andes

Great excitement in the household yesterday when the Firstborn, who's doing a week's internship at the NZ Herald, got a story on the front page. All her own work: idea, undercover research, interviews and writing. And she wouldn't tell me her source - very professional. Even more thrilling, the story was taken up by National Radio, featured on TVNZ and even got into the Sydney Morning Herald. What glory!

It was about how to cheat urine drug tests at work, which are evidently becoming quite mainstream here. When I was in Peru, I was faintly astonished that Chuck from St Louis steadfastly refused even to sip a cup of coca tea because he was worried that it would show up in tests back at work three weeks later. Though the leaves are what cocaine is derived from, in this form the effects are very mild, we were told.

The rest of us were drinking it several times daily, to combat the effects of altitude sickness. You'd never drink it for its taste, which was like green tea but more bitter though fortunately weaker. It was kind of a mission for me though, because it was part of the reason I was in Peru in the first place, having studied South America in Geography in the sixth form and been fascinated to learn about the Andean Indians and their physical adaptations to living at high altitude (short stature, larger lungs, more blood to transport what oxygen they could get) and also their dependence on coca leaves. The tea is so mainstream that you can buy it in teabag form, but we drank it like in the photo - our hotels had baskets of dried leaves on the breakfast buffet.

I didn't notice much effect from drinking it, though when I chewed the leaves, which you're meant to do with a lump of wood ash to help convert the chemicals, it certainly made my lips numb. I didn't get any sort of high. Our driver chewed the leaves constantly, to keep from getting sleepy on the long, long, long Panamerican Highway, and on the winding roads up through the Andes. All the Indian people did: it's such an old custom that statues and portraits of them have one bulging cheek.

Our highest point was the pass between Arequipa and Chivay, at 4800 metres. We certainly felt the effects of that: nausea, blinding headache, gasping for air but never quite able to take enough in. Our guide, Joana, watched us like a hawk and wouldn't let us nod off even though we were sleepy, because then we'd breathe more shallowly and feel even worse.

We stopped at the pass which was scattered with cairns of stones: apparently not just a Been Here thing, but a way to get a wish. Bending over made the headache worse, so I just put one pebble on top of someone else's cairn. Afterwards Joana told me I'd just reinforced that person's wish - but by then we were lower down and I'd got what I'd wanted anyway: no more headache.

That trip around Peru, it was a struggle at times, but it was absolutely brilliant.

Winter fledgling

The Baby moved out today, gone flatting with four strange (though hopefully not actually strange at all) boys over in the city, and we've all moved on a stage. It's already odd, knowing she's not here - although in practice, when she was, she was always in her room anyway so it's not as if things have changed markedly, except that there's still icecream in the freezer. But knowing that she's gone, even if it turns out to be only temporary, makes the house feel different.

It's a very Western thing, I think. In so many of the places I've been, especially Peru and Ecuador, childhood is a much more independent time. These children above, for example, we came across just wandering along the road out in the country, all by themselves. They're well dressed, and it was school holiday time, so there was nothing odd about it - they were just out, looking after themselves while Mama was busy. They probably counted themselves lucky, able to play unsupervised (near, I remember, a spectacularly steep ravine), unlike this little girl, who had to help her mother with the shopping.

They'd been to market, come home on the back of a truck, and hired this donkey to get the shopping home around the rim of a volcanic crater lake. Then, I imagine, someone - possibly the little girl - would have to return the donkey and go home back again.

Children who grow up playing unsupervised on the roof of their house must see life very differently from our pampered, protected offspring with their computers and MP3 players and impatience at being asked to empty the dishwasher - and their mothers, too, with none of our leisure for fretting over what is nothing more than the natural course of events.

Nuts to that

Drat. I read yesterday that while it's a good thing for New Zealanders to eat Brazil nuts regularly, as an excellent source of selenium which is naturally scarce here, there is such a thing as selenium poisoning, and the limit should be one nut a day. One nut! I thought I was being exceptionally restrained just having three - it is a nut, after all, and who ever could eat just one nut and then stop? (Except for a coconut, of course.)

Brazil nuts don't just grow in Brazil - the trees are all through Amazonia, which means also Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, the Guianas and Venezuela. The reason why they're so expensive is that the trees are huge, really high, slow-growing, and don't fruit till they're mature, so there's no such thing as a Brazil nut tree plantation - no-one's ever been foresighted and selfless enough to plant one.

So the only way to gather the nuts is to trek through the jungle at the right time of year and pick them up when they've fallen - taking great care not to be underneath when they fall, because they weigh several kilos and could split your skull, easy as. Because that's the other thing, the nuts we get crabby trying to crack at Christmas, straining our wrists to break those hard shells (inevitably breaking the nut itself, which sticks to the bits of shell so tenaciously that you end up gnawing the meat off) - that segment shape is exactly that. They grow like oranges, fitted together inside a hard outer shell a bit like a coconut - which is just as hard to get into.

You kind of wonder why it's all so difficult - except I suppose the aim isn't for the nut to be eaten, but dispersed to grow elsewhere; in its slow-motion way in no particular hurry for the shells to break down so the seed can germinate. Nature makes me tired sometimes, just thinking about stuff like this.

But oh! The joy and delight of eating a fresh Brazil nut, that hasn't gone through that whole prolonged business of collection, processing and distribution, getting harder and staler at every stage. When I stayed at Refugio Amazonas in Peru, about three hours by motorboat up the Tambopata River from Puerto Maldonado, they had a little machine for cracking the nuts, and the taste was a revelation: creamy, moist, soft, delicate... so delicious there was no way I could stop at just one. So now there's another mystery: how do Amazonian Indians not succumb to selenium poisoning?

(One of the symptoms is hair loss. Clearly Roderigo the Capybara here hasn't succumbed.)

Mixing it up

It looks as though the culture in Mauritius is going to be really interesting and colourful (thanks, Lonely Planet). Turquoise sea and jungly volcanic peaks I've seen before often enough, but the mixture of Indian, Chinese, French and Creole is unusual and promising. I'm expecting bright colours, lively music, zingy food.

The only time I've come across Creole culture before was in Peru, with people of Spanish descent (in Mauritius they're African) in Nazca, where we'd gone to see the amazing lines in the desert.

It was a long day that began with an early start in a big jetboat out to the Ballestas Islands where they used to collect the metres-thick guano from the millions of birds that nest there. Pre-artificial fertiliser, this stuff was like gold dust, and ships taking it to Europe were often attacked by pirates. In those days they would have had less delicate noses than we do now - because boy! that sure is a powerful stink.

Great bird life, though - pelicans, boobies, penguins - plus sealions, and dolphins cruising round the brightly-painted fishing boats when they were swilling out their holding tanks. And the islands were pretty spectacular too: great arches and cliffs of black and orange rock streaked with white, and deep blue ocean surging into the pebbly beaches.

Then we headed south along the Pan-American Highway and Peru's arid zone (the brown bit, as opposed to the blue strip down the middle - the Andes - and the green on the other side - the Amazon). We stopped at a classic, literal oasis in amongst the sand dunes where a pretty little town, Huacachina, was built around a palm-fringed lake.

We got into a sand-dune buggy with wide tyres and roll-bars, and hooned up onto the dunes for some silly fun, roller-coastering around and stopping to do a bit of sand-boarding. That was simple, childlike fun going down, but it was heavy, grown-up work toiling back up to the top.

And then we drove to Nazca, where the sky was constantly busy with little planes flightseeing over the mysterious lines in the desert. We took our turn and were amazed despite the horrendous airsickness caused by all the aerobatics involved in making sure everyone had a good look.

Finally we had dinner out at a touristy restaurant with a huge cactus growing in the middle of the dining room under an open roof with the Southern Cross showing. After the obligatory El Condor Pasa and Guantanamera (no trip to Peru is possible without hearing both these tunes at least once a day) some Creole people treated us to their music and dance: lots of hips and arms, swirling skirts, energy and sensuality, and lively music involving box drums and a donkey jaw with rattly teeth. It was great.

Enough, already

Look, I'm sorry to keep banging on about this, but it's been bloody cold here. Frosts, people! In Auckland! It's not what I signed up for, frankly. 'Winterless north' is what I heard.

Cold and me go way back. I grew up in Christchurch, where we know a thing or two about chilly mornings. And raw afternoons. And frozen nights. Then I lived in England - yes, there was central heating, but I spent a lot of time outdoors; and one winter it got down to -15 C. And I've slept in a tent at over 3000 metres in the Andes; and in a swag in the Outback in winter 600km from the sea.

I've been so comfortable with the cold that on fabulous hoar-frosty days in England I've wandered around outside photographing the sparkling rime-coat that made even cow parsley beautiful, until my toes went solid.

(Sepia effect courtesy of nasty, valley-bottom mist, by the way.)

But now that I live in a wooden house with token insulation in the roof, none in the walls and nothing but wind whistling under the floorboards, I've had it with cold. My Aitutaki story came out this week, and it was so long ago that I was there, I read it as though it was someone else's, and could only think "How I'd love some of that hot sun and warm sea right now."

So what a good thing that two weeks today I'll be in Mauritius.