Hard

Our annual inorganic rubbish collection is under way, when householders put out all sorts of things for the council to pick up that are normally forbidden: old beds, broken appliances, rusty wheelbarrows, indeterminate crap that's too big to fit in the bin. It makes the daily walk round the streets absolutely fascinating, as well as much longer, because of the pauses at each heap of reject stuff, and the internal tussles over whether something is worth appropriating or not.

Time was, such scavenging was a shameful thing, but now it's called recycling and is entirely admirable. Hordes of white vans cruise the streets, the drivers blatantly picking over the piles for things good enough to use, sell as is, or take to the scrap yard for money; so when the rubbish truck eventually comes along, the heaps are usually much reduced. Everybody wins.

Though most stuff is unquestionable rubbish, it's surprising sometimes to see how profligate some people are, chucking out clearly good stuff - but even more astonishing is the pile in the photo. A teddy bear! Even decapitated, what sort of hard-hearted, ruthless type could throw that away? And possibly even worse, but not visible above, there was a wedding photo - black and white, from the fifties, presumably the house-holder's parents. Whoever heard of such a thing?

The scavengers though reminded me of a report I read in the paper when I was in India, about an 8 year-old girl who'd been assaulted, and the police enquiry into it. What struck me was that she was described as 'a rag-picker'. In other words, one of those who spend their days at rubbish tips, combing the mountains of stinking, dirty refuse for anything that can be recycled, to sell. Eight years old. 'A rag-picker'.

I haven't got any photos of the very poor people we saw there - it seemed too predatory. But this lady is recycling with a vengeance: collecting cow dung, patting it out into discs to dry in the sun, for fuel.

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.

Back to basics

The kitchen's being replaced today, so it's been all about unnerving thumps and bangs, tradesmen's radio full blast, anxious old pets prowling around not being able to relax, and having to fill the kettle from the bath tap and boil it in the bedroom. Lunch at 4pm: tea and biscuits, except I've no idea where the biscuits actually are, so it was dry cereal instead. But takeaways for dinner tonight, yay!

Over the weekend I pretty much emptied all the cupboards and drawers and it was kind of quaint to open a drawer and find three knives and forks, a handful of teaspoons and a tin opener. I liked being so basic, free of the tyranny of lemon zester, garlic press, ladle and sieve. If the weather were better, and we were allowed to here in suburbia, I'd really rather like to build myself a fire down in the henrun and cook a simple meal there, of the sort that I've enjoyed on various back-country outings.

Most recently that was in the Northern Territory, where I ate a roasted roo tail. That was really basic, I thought, though Craig who did the cooking made allowances for us wussy city types and after he'd singed off all the hair, he wrapped it in foil before throwing it into the embers. It wasn't bad, actually, quite like very tender lamb shanks, but we were fastidious about picking the meat out from the sinews and fat. Craig ate the lot.

More conventionally palatable was the meal Bob cooked for us the next day. Also Aboriginal, he'd worked as a chef, and whipped us up a very succulent feast, all cooked over the mulga wood campfire while we sat around and drank wine: bush dukkah, barbecued kangaroo fillet and white chocolate and wattle-seed steamed puddings. We don't eat that well here even with a proper kitchen.

Feast or famine

Another story of mine in the Herald on Sunday yesterday, about Kaikoura this time. That's two weeks in a row, with the Mauritius one in the NZ Herald proper tomorrow. After months with nothing, suddenly a clump! It always seems to work this way. It's a mystery.

There was another glitch with the photos this time, too: the photos that were supplied by the professional snapper who came with me on this assignment didn't get credited to him, which is embarrassing for me, disappointing for him, and sloppy work by the HoS. They also chose really predictable whales and mountains images: so I've put a couple of his more interesting ones in here. Credit to Dean Mackenzie!

Coincidentally, there's a story in today's paper about the seal cubs that I mentioned in mine - they follow a stream up into the bush to play under a waterfall, sometimes more than a hundred of them. It's a wonderful sight: so unexpected, so cute and so entertaining, as they clown and play in the water. They're wonderfully unafraid, and come right up to people watching to have a good look (or sniff) at them in return.

That's the problem, of course: so many people have heard about the seals that what was a local secret is now becoming a tourist attraction, and there are fears that some harm might come to the cubs from people being stupid or malicious. I did think twice about including it in the story, and made a point of not actually identifying the location - but the Herald's let the cat out of the bag and named the stream.

I hope it can remain as a charming gift from Nature to people who know how lucky they are to receive it.

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.

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.

Cuatro meses!

Amazing news from Chile about the 33 miners discovered alive 17 days after a cave-in. There will be a lot of prayers being said for them over the next - possibly, incredibly - four months or so while a new tunnel is dug to release them. It's impossible to imagine what that will be like for the men underground, even with outside support. The Beaconsfield duo emerged after their two weeks trapped in a Tasmanian mine looking pretty chirpy, but afterwards they admitted it had been very hard. Four months! I really hope they have a faith to sustain them.

For me, Chile is all about mountains. Mountains and dogs. And lovers. Mountains and dogs and lovers. And crime - but we won't dwell on that episode. I liked Santiago, and I would like to see more of Chile: there's some amazing scenery in that long, long, narrow country. That's what I would be thinking about, if I were trapped underground. For four months.