...yielding place to new

So, Christmas over for another year, recipe exactly as before - with the difference that this was probably the last of the old order, which has lasted 23 years but now changeth, since next year will most likely not include either of the daughters, one of whom is heading to Melbourne to dip her toe into the OE (overseas experience) while the other will be working on a newspaper in Hong Kong and hoping to go on from there to London. So while Christmas morning was fun, it was a bit melancholy too.

Melbourne is at least within spitting distance, comparatively: it's not unusual for people (or, Aucklanders) to pop across the Ditch for a weekend's shopping and a show. It's become the place for young people to head off to, for its nightlife and general happening vibe in amongst its little lanes and old buildings; and its shops and culture too. They don't go for the weather, though: it ranges from snow to 40 degrees, and there's not always as much of a gap between those extremes as a person might reasonably expect. There's also a lively underworld of Mafia crime, which is a bit disturbing, with mobsters getting whacked periodically. But as long as your nickname's not Fingers or The Munster, it's a good place to spend time in, giving Sydney a run for its money these days as Oz's hippest destination. I think it's got more depth than Botany Bay, if you see what I mean.

Hong Kong is more foreign of course, and hence more exciting; though it's still China's most accessible face. I've passed through there several times but don't know it well. Staying in the Peninsula Hotel, met at the airbridge and escorted all the way to the 6-room suite, doesn't exactly get you upfront with the city; but even being less insulated on other visits, I haven't got under the skin of the place. It's so big, and busy, and despite its huge ex-pat population I can't imagine ever feeling at home there or having more than the slightest idea of all the things that are going on, seething under the surface. Despite its being called 'Asia for beginners', I doubt that even the International Herald Tribune knows it all.

Lounging with a lizard

On balance, the macro lens was a bad idea, but once I was in position, spread-eagled on the deck eye to eye with this little gecko, there was no way I was springing to my feet to pop inside for the standard. (That's a little game you might like to try when you're gathered with your family/friends tomorrow, by the way. See who can rise to their feet from sitting on the floor, without using hands or kneeling. Apparently, those who can will live longer than those who can't. And before you protest, the study group was aged 50-80. You're welcome! Merry Christmas!)

I was going to write about the Turkish baths in Budapest that we didn't actually bathe in (no time - oh, did you guess? So you're getting to know the downsides of being a travel writer then. It's not all business class and five star hotels and gift bottles of red wine, is it? Though it is that too...) because it's so hot and damp and humid here that that's what it feels like. But the lizard on the deck was a sign, because I only this morning received a bunch of answers to questions I'd posed a MAF scientist about suitcase stowaways.

He's a herp man, so it's just frogs, toads and lizards that he deals with. Any horrifying stories about menacing foreign spiders easing their hairy way out of suitcases I'll have to search for separately - but that's ok, the herps are good enough. Most of the accidentally-imported creatures are like my Rarotongan hitchhiker, the house gecko, with frogs and toads next, well down the scale. The most commonly imported amphibian is the reviled cane toad, usually tucked inside a shoe that someone's left outside - something you might like to remember. Just a week before I was in the office of Ultimate Hikes in Queenstown in 2009, prior to walking the Milford Track with them, one had hopped out of the boot of an Australian tourist - and that was after she had presented it to the MAF guys at the airport for inspection, tch. Not something I think I'll mention to my friendly herp man.

Here's a photo of one of hundreds of tiny baby frogs that I carefully stepped over on a walk around Queensland's Lindeman Island, that I later learned were actually infant cane toads, which I should have been stomping into oblivion. Oops.

Luck

I sat in my car for almost 2 hours today, parked beside the Ferry Building on Quay Street as an impressively regular stream of Airport Express buses pulled in, not one of them containing the Baby. She was due back from a night in Wellington, but Cyclone Evan had breathed on the sea there and sent an afternoon fog to block out the bright sunshine, and her flight, though delayed, was the lucky last out of the city for the day - and possibly even tomorrow too. People milling around at the airport, all their travel plans in disarray, will be sick of the sight of the huge Gollum hanging above them, all the Hobbit visual jokes having worn rather thin, I'm guessing.

While I waited I watched everyone arriving and departing with backpacks and shopping bags, as many heading off on the ferry to Waiheke Island as to the airport. I would have envied them, except that we'll be going that way in a month or so, not this time to good old Palm Beach, scene of broken wrist and sea-snatched glasses, but to Onetangi, which is quite a different beach. It's long and open, and quite often there is surf, which sheltered Palm Beach rarely has, apart from the rogue wave that dumped me from behind and made off with my glasses.

I lost my glasses once at Onetangi, too, frolicking in the water with dear departed Fudge, our non-swimming Labrador, who was in a panic so I had to hang onto her with both arms to keep her safe when a wave broke over us, meanwhile losing my specs. I had no hope of ever (blurrily) seeing them again, but the honorary Third Daughter who was staying with us was admirably thorough in her search and, astonishingly, found them within half an hour, none the worse. Good for her. If she happens to come over this summer, I'll happily buy her lunch at lovely Casita Miro, just up the hill, in memory of a good turn done.

A glass act

Blistering day today, perfect weather for the 25th - but what remains of Cyclone Evan is limping its way towards us, just in time to put a dampener on plans for outdoor Christmas dinners and beach barbecues of the sort that we Kiwis do so love to astonish our northern hemisphere friends with stories of, but actually hardly ever get to experience, since it usually turns out to be a dampish, greyish sort of day. And will be again this year, we're promised. Never mind.

The usual unfathomable year-end urge to tidy and sort has been upon me today, and I've cleared the drifts of papers that have piled up on my desk - receipts, boarding cards, itineraries, press kits, business cards, plus little bottles of aeroplane moisturisers, CDs of images, gift calendars and fancy soaps (who uses bars of soap these days?) and a wee bag of forgotten Portuguese biscuits that were hackingly dry and horrible by now, and a bar of camel milk chocolate from Dubai that was surprisingly nice. It was a rather boring waste of glorious weather, but worthy; a newer and more enjoyable seasonal tradition, however, is to fill with scented Christmas lilies the Waterford vase that I won this year in the Cathay Pacific Travel Awards for a story about - how fitting - Waterford the city.

The original glass-blowing factory, established there in 1783, was closed in 2009, but they reopened a smaller one for tourists to visit after lots of protests. Of course, as usual, we didn't have time to do that tour - but we did have a peep into a different craft glass workshop where a blower was at work. It's a fascinating process, even making something much simpler than my lovely (and extraordinarily heavy: 2.5kg) vase - so it took all my attention and it's only looking at the photo now that I see perhaps I've inadvertently papped an unofficial visit by Prince Charles.

Still here!

This is a service for my northern hemisphere readers, a post from the future for their reassurance: 21 December has already dawned here in New Zealand, warm and bright and calm and ordinary. On my constitutional this morning a pair of tui rustled over my head, a kingfisher squawked at me, a sheep baaed somewhere, a friendly cat ran out to greet me and then thought better of it, and a huge dog walked past focused totally on the grumblings in his stomach that even I could hear.

The pohutukawa's in full bloom, people's gardens (including mine) are neat and bright with colour, the sky, in between heat showers, is blue and honestly, everything's right with the world. It's the last day of work for most, everything feels relaxed and laid-back (I'm not speaking here of the malls) and ahead lie Christmas, holidays, summer, the beach and boats.

I bet they're feeling silly now, all those people sucked into believing that daft Mayan claptrap about today being the en

A face only an orthopterist could love...

It's a bit startling to come into the living room and find something like this - or actually, exactly this - lying on the carpet struggling with the fluff. It's a weta, but not a giant fortunately. They can reach 10cm/4in in body length, plus spiky legs and antennae, and weigh more than a sparrow, the heaviest insect in the world. This one was a tree weta, half that size, and a bit woozy from the automatic flyspray, so it wasn't too scary to take it outside, though I did keep my fingers away from those fearsome mandibles. I'm guessing it decamped out of the Christmas tree, which is a very dense one this year. Of course now I wonder what else is lurking inside it, but I'm not going to look, just in case I find something.

Where to go with this, travel-wise? Insects I have met... there were cave wetas when I went to Waitomo and ziplined underground through the dark in an unfetching blue boilersuit and freezing works white gumboots. There was the vast net of spiderwebs connecting the tall thistles in a gully that I rode my horse through while wearing just a bikini in South Australia - obviously, I didn't see them till too late, and my skin is crawling still. There was also the tarantula there that the girl going into my room ahead of me spotted, and reduced to a big red and black smear on the bedspread before I had the chance to fix in my memory forever all its horrible hairy detail. Then there was the invisible swarm of whining mosquitoes in New Caledonia that emerged, voracious, from crevices in our long-unused room and spent the entire night feasting on our blood until, fatigued and frustrated, we were driven to sleep on the floor in someone else's kitchen before I went to work the next morning with 47 bites on my face alone. The man ahead of me on the 4-day Bay of Fires walk in Tasmania had a shiny black leech attach itself to his sock. But really, considering some of the places I've slept and walked through, my insect and spider encounters have been very few, thank goodness.

Rather than leave you with the nightmarish images above, I'll finish with the order that I've happily seen most of: butterflies. In an aviary in Kuala Lumpur, where I spent a happy but extremely sweaty hour chasing them from flower to flower. Up the Amazon in Peru, where I blithely blundered through the jungle surrounding the lodge peering through my viewfinder at the glorious iridescent colours and completely forgetting about my sandalled feet in grass that hid snakes. Much more tamely at Changi Airport in Singapore, where people, dislocated both mentally and physically, can reconnect with a bit of nature in the butterfly room. And with delight in Brazil at Iguassu Falls, where a yellow puddle edged with a flock of even yellower butterflies was in its small way as glorious a watery sight as the thundering falls themselves.

All together now: Blow, blow, blow the wind...

They're battening down the hatches in Fiji ready for Cyclone Evan, which is heading there now after wrecking Samoa. I haven't been there for ages - although I was recently asked if I'd be interested in a visit - and the last time was to go on my first ever cruise, with Captain Cook Cruises from Viti Levu up through the Yasawa Islands, which are currently in the path of the cyclone. It was a small ship, comfortable and friendly and though not super-luxurious in the way that my second cruise with Silversea was, it must have seemed so to the people we visited. The Reef Escape certainly looked exotic, moored in various bays off the beach, glistening white and seeming very big against the villages of plain thatched bures underneath the palm trees.

Visiting the villages was the nicest thing about this cruise: we went to church one golden evening and listened to the shrill harmonies while watching chickens roosting in the frangipani trees outside the open windows; and at another were shown with great pride around the school by the children. The classrooms were so bare and basic, but the writing on the blackboard was beautifully neat cursive and the exercise books were full of careful work all conscientiously marked. Some of our group had known to bring gifts, and presented the teacher with a pack of ballpoint pens. "Oh!" she gasped, clearly thrilled. "We never see pens!"

The children had all gathered outside the school to welcome us with a little concert, and loudly sang what must have seemed to them such foreign songs - 'Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross' would have been sheer gibberish (as it is to me, and I've been to Banbury); and even 'The Wheels on the Bus' was totally out of their experience, as there were no vehicles at all on these small islands. I was escorted around by little Lusi, who was 5 and had only just started school, and she was so pleased to be a big girl at last. She'll be one of the seniors there now: I hope she and all the others will be safe.

I wish all little schoolchildren could be safe.