Little and Large

In a new move for me, I've written a guest post on another blog: Blogger At Large, which is a proper travel blog full of information and latest news, as well as being very chirpy and enthusiastic. It is, as they used to say in the 60s, a now and happening sort of place, unlike the more leisurely and reflective blog that this one is. The post is about Highclere Castle - yet again. I may be laid-back here, but even I can't ignore the opportunity to jump on such a big bandwagon as the Downton Abbey phenomenon. Why not pop over and read it, and have a look around there while you're at it?

I've done a couple of trips with Megan, who writes Blogger At Large, both at her very kind invitation and both brilliantly good fun. The first was via Tahiti to New York, my first trip to that exciting city, and the second to Disneyland for a mind-blowingly extravagant famil to mark the opening of what was then the new Finding Nemo ride in the old submarine pond.

I'd been to Tahiti years before, but on this trip we went to Fakarava - always fun to say - in the Tuamoto Islands. It's a huge coral atoll, the rectangular lagoon about 65km long, the land surrounding it so narrow that you can see from side to side. On one sparkling day we went on a boat like a flying fish to the far end of the lagoon, skimming along the turquoise water for an hour or so until we fetched up at a tiny motu, or island, with nothing on it bar a handful of palm trees, a bush or two, and tiny white shells scattered over the pink sand. The water was warm and clear, and we had a swim while Coco our guide laid out our picnic on a white cloth and made a fire from palm fronds to barbecue our steak. It was a feast, and the setting was idyllic: just us, the seabirds, the lapping of the waves on the sand, and nothing/nobody else for miles and miles and miles. The world has never felt bigger, and my place in it never smaller.

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.

Coco loco

I can see the signs as well as anybody: two coconut references in the last post, and then I just read a warning about coconuts in my Mauritius guidebook. So coconuts it is today, then.

The warning was not to lie underneath one. Well, duh! I've been cautious about falling coconuts ever since I saw one in Tahiti drop out of a tree into a shallow pond at the base with the most spectacular splash. It was like a scene from The Dambusters. Noise, white water, small tsunami: the thought of my delicate noggin being underneath something like that has left me terminally cautious about the potential irony of the Tree of Life actually being an Instrument of Death.

That's what they call it all through the tropic zones, you know, because they use every bit of it. I have, myself, sat on a coconut palm stump on Atiu in the Cook Islands, drinking from a small polished coconut shell cup bush beer brewed from fermented orange juice and hops - a tradition since the early missionaries took a dim view of the original tipple of choice, kava. (Bush beer is so much nicer than that muddy, mouth-numbing disgusting drink anyway.) Custom is, to have it with a coconut milk chaser.

I've also drunk fizzy fresh green coconut milk there ("Tastes just like Sprite!" said Birdman George, who shinned up the tree to pick one for me - and so it was, sort of). The he cut a spoon from the outside with one slash of his machete and I used it to scoop out the soft, delicately-flavoured meat from inside ("Baby food," said George). Then he cut some fronds and plaited them into plates to serve our fruity lunch on at the beach, where freshly-grated coconut and a squeeze of lime juice made pawpaw and starfruit into something memorable.

I've been given a polished bit of shell with holes in it to keep my sarong secure, and a woven-frond hat to keep the sun off. I've eaten fish cooked in coconut milk in the Loyalty Islands near New Caledonia; as well as coconut crab which looked hideous, but tasted divine, thanks to its exclusively coconut diet.

I've sheltered in Thailand under a cococut palm leaf-roofed hut, on a coconut palm leaf mat and watched a trained monkey romp up a coconut palm tree to twist a nut free, and seen the meat boiled up in a vast wok to extract the oil - and then tasted the glorious caramel-y residue that's left afterwards. I've made a pig of myself on Aitutaki with rukau - tender green taro shoots baked in coconut cream. In fact, I've eaten a whole swag of foods cooked in or with coconut, and loved them all, ruinous though they are to the waistline.

And none of this is to mention how coconut trees are used in building, for roofing, for drums, for clothing (including the infamous coconut shell bra, all sizes) ... It's a marvellous plant. Just don't sit underneath one.

Not the only way to go

Air travel in the news: child flight controllers at JFK, a recidivist drink-driver piloting Air NZ aeroplanes. The staff in New York suspended, the pilot here in Auckland staunchly defended by the airline - "He's a model for the programme!" they say. "He's done so well!" Yeah, right, that really fills me with confidence, a recovering alcoholic with a history of deceit in charge of hundreds of people 30,000 feet in the air. Cabin staff, by the way, are out of a job after one offence. Hmm, I wonder why there's a double standard?

I'm feeling a little jaundiced about Air NZ after my recent flight to the Cooks. I paid for that flight personally (well, with airpoints - but still, it was a working trip) and the cheapskates wouldn't bump me up to business, even though they had spare seats, even though I'm giving them publicity in the story factfile, even though it's only a 4-hour flight, even though they do have competition on that route.

Compare that with Cathay Pacific, who's welcomed me into their sybaritic business class on more than a handful of 12-hour flights, wafting me to my destination in super-comfortable seats, on lie-flat beds, with a big personal TV, excellent meals that just keep coming and attentive but not sycophantic service. Or Air Tahiti Nui's delightful business class - just saying the words, I can smell the tiare flowers now - a wonderful little airline, repeatedly voted the World's Best Small Airline, a fabulous way to fly straight to New York (to ahem, JFK) bypassing that whole prison-camp LAX unpleasantness. Or LAN, roomy and comfortable, gracious and efficient all the way across the Pacific to South America. Or Thai's royal welcome that makes you feel you're there already. All fabulous, all generous with their business class, all fondly remembered.

But Air NZ? Nah, go down the back and eat the nasty brown smear we call shepherd's pie, we can't afford to spring for real food for you, we've got boozy pilots to support.

UPDATED: Ok, feeling a little embarrassed now at having spat the dummy there. On the whole, I'm glad Air NZ is supporting its pilots now - so much healthier a way to run a corporation than falsely blaming dead employees when something goes wrong (cough *Erebus* cough). And when I've been away for a while, it's always like coming home to see the koru on the tail and get on board and be surrounded by that distinctive cheerful, open, practical and unfussy Kiwiness (which appeals to non-Kiwis too, judging by the repeated Best Airline awards). And the entertainment system is The Best: that four-hour flight to the Cooks? Not long enough to watch everything I wanted. And being able to watch from the moment I get on board? Priceless.

Bon anniversaire!

C'est aujourd'hui mon anniversaire and I was called in to school for a day of relieving French. Dommage! Particularly as it was such a lovely day but there you go: c'est la vie.

French in NZ schools is as much palm trees as the Eiffel Tower: New Caledonia and Tahiti are the closest French-speaking countries, and lots of students go there on school trips. Lucky them. I was at university before I got to go to New Caledonia and see real people - even little kids! - speaking French as though it was normal.

There are some lovely bits to la Nouvelle-Caledonie, but my money (and you need plenty of that) is on Tahiti for the best French South Pacific experience. Tahiti et Ses Isles, as they say there, and it's the Isles that you want: Tahiti itself is, around the edges anyway, rather messy and unappealing, although the middle is spectacular, with lots of tall green pointy bits.

But it's the outer islands of French Polynesia that I like best, and Fakarava, as well as being mildly titillating to say, is a good 'un: huge lagoon in the Tuamoto Archipeligo surrounded by a white foaming reef, an island with classic beachside resorts and lots of little motu, or islets, like this one.

It's like a cartoon desert island: tiny, round and empty apart from the tracks of seabirds. The sand really is pink - crushed shell and coral - as well as fine and soft. We got there by buzzing along the lagoon in a flying fish boat, the breeze warm in our faces, past pearl farms where Tahiti's signature green-black pearls are seeded into oysters in little stilted huts over the water. Ah, the water! Such a quandary for the travel writer, tropical lagoons: how to avoid the dread word 'azure'? Turquoise, Nile green, aquamarine, cobalt? They all sound like cliches, because they are, because cliches by definition hit the nail right on the head. So to speak.

I sat under a palm tree eating coconut tuna salad, crusty French bread and soft Camembert, with wine and afterwards papaya, tree-ripened bananas and starfruit, and didn't think about the matter at all. But later, on a trip to fabulous Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, I tried a different tack -

>>> ...I have colour on my mind this morning. I am going on a lagoon cruise and there will be shimmering water in too many shades of blue and green for my vocabulary to cope with, so I have brought reference. I pull the paint charts from my suitcase and stow them in my day bag: the scorned word ‘azure’ will not pass my lips today.

The Titi ai Tonga is a traditional-looking boat with carved double prows and a thatched roof, crewed by three young men with a lively line of patter and musical talents too. Captain/Cook steers the boat with his knees and sings as his big fingers pluck the strings of his tiny ukulele; when we reach our lunch-stop he deftly slices up the albacore tuna and bananas, sizzling them on the barbecue as we snorkel gently over the coral.

After lunch we cruise on to One Foot Island, named for its shape, where many happy people have stood in pairs on the white sand: it's one of the Cook Islands’ favourite sites for weddings, one for each of the young coconut palms planted on the beach. I watch the other passengers peel off in twos, hand in hand, then I stump off on my own to the other side of the island where I look out at a classic tropical island scene and decide that the colour of the water is Mint Tulip deepening into Riptide with a band of Curious Blue under an Oxymoron sky. It’s beautiful, but there’s only a couple of white terns to share it with plus a rooster on island time lustily crowing somewhere in the bush behind me...


[Pub. Destinations Spring 2008]