Scratching my head about the heads

I've got a couple of stories to write about Easter Island and, you know, even having been there now, the place is still such a mystery. I've just been watching video of an experiment in Hawaii showing how three small teams of people moved a 4.4-tonne replica of a moai by using ropes to rock it 100 metres along a flat path. Like a fridge! But many of the statues on Easter Island are much bigger than that, plus they were moved miles over rough terrain, plus they were placed on platforms about a metre high, plus they had red vocanic stone 'hats' that were put on their heads last of all. So many unanswered questions.

They're not all alike, either. Everyone's seen pictures of the ones like this, with the clean lines and sharp nose and chin that appears to us most striking and attractive, but actually there are lots of different looks, as in the Easter Island First XV in the top photo (so called because they have nothing above the eyes). They're actually ariki, or chieftans, not gods, so their features are based on real people.

Though it's an amazing place to visit, it's also a bit of a downer, because of the environmental destruction - denuded of its forests, pests imported, people exported for slavery to Peru, then a few stragglers returned again bringing disease, foreign capitalist farmers imprisoning the people in their town so actual generations never set foot in the sea... It's an object lesson in what not to do.

And another oddity of the place is that, with all those statues, because of the dedicated work of the imported rats and falcons, I only ever saw one with a bird on its head. Is that a plus?

 

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:

Atiu! Bless you...

Finished with Easter Island, now I'm on to Vietnam, so naturally I was thinking about motorbikes. No-one who's ever been to Vietnam can remember it without thinking of motorbikes - the sheer number of them, the initial terror of taking on an unbroken tide of them while trying to cross the road, the ever-more-incredible loads carried on them. I was wondering when was the last time I actually rode one, after spending seven years of my youth puttering about the streets of Christchurch on a Vespa 90, and another one in England astride a Honda 50 (no matter how well I wrapped up, I lost so much body heat going to work in winter that it truly took me till morning tea time to thaw out).

Anyway, the answer is five years ago on Atiu, in the Cook Islands. Not many people go there, compared with Rarotonga and even Aitutaki, but it's just a 45 minute flight away. It's known as the island of birds, caves and coffee, because that's just about all there is to see there; certainly it's not the place to go for classic white beaches and turquoise lagoons. It does have those, but they're very small and shallow - no windsurfing here. Nobody lives by the beach because the coast is ringed by a wall of fossilised coral, so the only habitable bit is on the volcanic plateau at the centre.

But the birds are brilliant, literally, and the jungle is a vibrant green, the beaches that do exist are white powdery sand, and the narrow ring of lagoon is turquoise. Some of the caves have birds nesting in them that navigate by echo-location, there's an underground pool you can swim in by candle-light - oh, and other caves are full of human bones and skulls. There are also bush beer clubs where you can sit with the locals in a circle on palm tree stumps and drink orange-juice based beer from a communal coconut shell. It's surprisingly good - perhaps the original boutique beer?

The coffee business, run by a German, is interesting to visit, and his wife makes beautiful traditional and modern tivaevae, or appliqued quilts. So there is tourism there, but very laid-back and low-key, just like everything and everyone else on the island; which makes hopping onto a motorbike for a lazy circuit a very pleasant thing to do. Just watch out for the traffic.

2012, wrapped up

The most remarkable thing about this year is that I didn't go to Australia. (I'm still feeling that I've used Oz up - although I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Anyone listening? Kimberley cruise, Kakadu, Maria Island, WA for the wildflower season...?) 

I did pass through, though, a number of times, on my way to more distant destinations; but my first travels this year were domestic, first to old favourite Waiheke Island, just across the harbour but in another zone entirely, ambience-wise. Beautiful, relaxing and laid-back, it never fails to please - even when the weather disappoints.

The weather gave us the runaround for the next trip, too: doing the Crater Lake walk on Ruapehu with the daughters - but after driving down there through thunder, lightning and torrential rain, the day of our ascent to and traverse along that precipitous crater rim was one of glorious sunshine that showed off the turquoise of the lake to great effect, while the cloud that came to swirl around beneath us made us feel like gods, on top of the world in both senses.

My Pavlovian addiction to checking my emails dozens of times a day was reinforced by an invitation popping up there in February to go on a LAN tour of South America. It was a wonderful circuit in a small but jolly group through Santiago to Buenos Aires, to the literally over-the-top spectacle of Iguassu Falls, to Lima where the food was a revelation, and then to Easter Island, which was very special and totally worth foregoing the Travcom/Cathay Pacific Media Awards (in which I was only Runner-Up, so, pft).

In April I began my longest trip yet, flying Etihad to Abu Dhabi, where the Grand Mosque was astonishing, though I could really have done without the sweaty nylon robe I had to wear. Next stop was France, for a glorious, fabulous cruise up the Rhone from Arles to Lyon and finishing at Chalon-sur-Saone. I do so love a river cruise, and Uniworld's River Royale was just perfect, with the best staff ever.


Then it was England for a wedding and old friends, and another cruise that didn't go so well, when I managed to dislocate my shoulder leaping off a boat in the Norfolk Broads. Ouch. But I soldiered on, fortunately joining an Insight coach tour of Eastern Europe for the next 3 weeks where I was very well looked after. It was all about history, war and architecture, subjects which would have bored me rigid in my youth, but which now I find deeply interesting. It helped too that on the way to starting the tour in Budapest, we'd called in at Zagan in Poland to visit the site of Stalag Luft III where my father had been a prisoner, which was a moving experience as well as being fascinating.




Home again after 5 weeks away, I was anchored to the sofa for the next three months, writing, writing, writing with a cat at each side and a dog at my feet. I popped down to Christchurch for a look at my sadly shaken hometown, and was both horrified and inspired by what I saw - the vast empty spaces, blowing with dust, and the cracks in everything; but also the optimistic spirit of the people I met, and their bright plans for the future.

September saw the start of another flurry of travel, beginning with flying with Emirates to Dubai again, where I went up to the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa, and on to Portugal for a scant 5 days mostly in the province of Alentejo where I loved the fortified hilltop villages, the gnarled olive trees, the sheep with bells on and the friendly people; but hated the food-focused itinerary and unprofessional behaviour of one of the small party.




Back home for one night, I was away again next day for a week of glorious relaxation in the Cook Islands, purely a holiday of lying about, sleeping in the sun (not recommended: the sunburn was epic and I still bear the unsightly tan-marks) and doing very little of anything. Stand-out was the day spent cruising on and wallowing in the WMBL (world's most beautiful lagoon) at Aitutaki - just perfect, in every way.

Then, four days later, I was off to North Viet Nam in another group which was lots of fun. We had a brilliant guide, Duke, who took us from Hanoi up into Ha Giang province for a homestay, a day's trekking through the paddy fields and villages, and a long drive into the Dong Van Karst Geopark, which was just brilliant: spectacular peaks, cute kids, colourful villages and a mind-blowing road. The traffic throughout was fascinating - even in Ha Long Bay out on the water amongst those absurdly picturesque islands.



After a fun day out on the train down to Matamata for a look at the obsessive detail of Hobbiton, the year finished back on the sofa with, sadly, just the one cat now at my side. I've had 49 stories accepted for publication, about half of those in the NZ Herald, as well as writing around 30 blog entries for Air France and others for the Yahoo! website. I've been to lunches and dinners and a cooking class, learned how to take the top off a champagne bottle with a sabre, had massages, ridden a camel and a Segway, eaten insects as well as fabulous meals, and been given a huge and beautiful bouquet for my services to Australian tourism, having had over 100 stories published about that immense country. Ironic, or what?

It's been a good year and I've been to some amazing places, met lots of lovely people and written masses of stories (if you're interested in reading some of them, click on the links over there to the right). It's been busy, and tiring sometimes, but I've loved it and am looking forward to more of the, er, different: Alaska, maybe? Africa? Who knows - can't wait to find out. Watch this space!

Aún más peligroso

Crumbs, more disaster in South America: a massive 8.8 earthquake in Chile this time, south of Santiago. At least in Chile they're used to earthquakes, their buildings are designed to cope with them and they have systems in place to deal with the aftermath, unlike Haiti in all respects. Still, 8.8 - that's the real thing: I wouldn't have liked to be in one of the many apartment blocks I saw in Santiago, or these in Valparaiso. It's Santiago's port, a couple of hours' drive away over the hills (and through a 3km tunnel - somewhere else not to be caught in an earthquake) and past the wine country.

It's a funny place - both extremes visible in this photo, the brightly-coloured little painted piled-up boxes of houses, and the super-flash holiday apartments, all stacked on top of each other on the 45 steep hills surrounding the harbour. There are cable cars to the highest houses, lovely Victorian painted ladies with views over the Pacific and across to Mt Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Andes.

Many inhabitants have their minds on lower things, though: it's crawling with sailors in dress whites looking for a little entertainment with the "bad senoritas" down the alleyways. Definitely a party town.

And there's a connection with Aitutaki: outside a small museum there's a moai, a head from Easter Island, aka Rapanui which the guide on our island tour mentioned as having been settled by the same people as the Cooks. Big ocean, small world.

Viking Sun, Day Two - Ignoring Auckland

We sailed last night – all the way from Queens Wharf to Princes Wharf. So we woke up blocking the windows of the long-suffering Hilton guests and wondering what was so special about the ship we'd had to make room for. Everyone on board was busily readying themselves for a day ashore, many of them no doubt heading over to Waiheke Island to do the vineyard tour or mosey around Oneroa, but oddly we felt no such compulsion. (Having an afternoon, evening, night and morning in the city did feel generous, though.)

Instead we breakfasted in a leisurely fashion at Mamsen's - that's Norwegian for Mum's, and it's all modelled closely on the kitchen and food that Viking President Torstein Hagen grew up with. The thing to have here was apparently the waffle, so I did, but wasn't impressed - it was a bit dry, needed butter and lots more than the mingy amount of cream and fruit I was allotted. But the croissant I didn't have was, apparently, a (messy) triumph.

The fruit tea wasn't, though, so I popped ashore - mightily disappointed, I have to say, to see everyone offered a plastic bottle of water as they left the ship - to buy myself a box in town. Then I just nosed around the ship till sailaway at 2pm. We'd been looking forward to this, never having sailed in or out of the Waitemata before, but sod's law dictated that this summer's long hot drought broke today, and the cloud was so low that even the top of Rangitoto was blotted out, and there was no chance of seeing Waiheke.

There was a Halfway Point Party on the pool deck, celebrating Day 65 of the 130, which was rather spoiled for me by an American OWM getting territorial over a couple of chairs that - truly, reader - I reached first. The Cruise Director, Heather someone, was full of the news that Viking has done excellently in the just-announced Cruise Critic Cruisers' Choice Awards, getting first in 11 categories (trouncing Silversea, I have to note with surprise). People seemed smug and content - though there was some disappointment still swirling around that weather meant the cruise had had to miss out Stanley in the Falklands, and Easter Island, adding to the already pretty high number of at-sea days. (I, of course, regular readers 😃 will be aware, have been to both those places, so I had my own reasons to feel smug.)

Though we certainly weren't hungry, our lunch having been very nice, we felt obliged (it's tough, this job) to try out the High Tea in the Wintergarden as Minky G strummed away on her guitar. We eschewed the cake stand of sandwiches and fancies, which looked very good, and just had tea and scones. They too were good but I have to say the allocation of jam and cream was again on the mingy side.

I skimmed past a performance by the Virginia Gentlemen in the Atrium which was completely full, three levels and even the stairs jammed with sitters. These young guys, all very short-back-and-sides, smart suits, clean and wholesome, sing doo-wop which, while not in the same category of intolerably self-important nerve-janglery as jazz, requires a very specific kind of finger-snapping musical appreciation: you need to be American, for a start. Much more to my taste was the pianist later when we had pre-dinner drinks - though, again, they give out automatic PLASTIC STRAWS???! Whatever is Viking thinking? 

Dinner was at the much-vaunted Manfredi's, and my goodness, they spoke the truth. I really wasn't that hungry but the bistecca fiorentina was SO fabulously tasty and tender. All I had to do to cut it was to draw the knife across it and the mere weight of the blade was enough to do the job. A triumph. I ate the whole thing. And then, despite deciding to skip dessert, our lovely waitress was so enthusiastic about the Nutella panna cotta, showing me a photo of it on her phone, that I gave in, and it was indeed delicious.

I cruised through the shops - lovely Nordic stuff in glass, felt, silver, at typically Scandinavian prices - and then we took our seats in the theatre, for Gary Arbuthnot, who despite his name is Irish, and a whizz on the flute and penny whistle. I would happily have sat there and watched his fingers blur over the instruments, but there were clips from movies playing behind him. That was fine when it was a James Bond theme tune - slightly less comfortable when it was Rose and Jack dancing down below deck in Titanic. The movie's listed in the entertainment schedule, too. They like to live dangerously, on Viking Sun.

Learning

Disappointment today: there was too much wind and swell for us to use the tenders to get ashore on the Iles de la Madeleine, north of Prince Edward Island. Such a shame, as I was looking forward to a whole day exploring, including doing a bit of hiking – always a good thing to fit into a cruise, what with all that unlimited food and all.

So, as we dawdled on up towards Gaspé, circling tantalisingly close to the islands with their lighthouses, cliffs and little settlements, it was a chance to enjoy instead a leisurely day at sea…

OK, it's now much later, and under the influence of a (complimentary) sparkling wine in the suite, a kir royale at the self-congratulatory gathering of the Venetian Society – ie repeat Silversea voyagers, the record on this cruise being the couple who have notched up a pretty startling 749 nights at sea with the company – a Prosecco to start with at the Terazza restaurant, a very smooth Valpolicello with dinner and a tasty Cadillac sweet wine afterwards, here goes: [by the way – the backspacing and retyping so far? Epic.]

There was no scenery today. Instead, there were two sessions of Trivial Pursuit, which provided today’s alternative theme: how travel broadens the mind.

Now, being in my other life a teacher, I’m accustomed to spending time with people who don’t know stuff – that’s why both they and I are at school. But here, on a Silversea cruise – not a cheap option – I’m in the company of those who are by definition much more successful, financially, than I am; and also, inevitably, in their autumn years. So it could be depressing to be in a random – yet, in the nature of things, self-selecting – team of people who fancy their chances in a test of general knowledge and yet who seem to know pretty much nothing.

To be fair, who does know that the national animal of Canada is the beaver? But other things, like working out sums (if 30 sweets weigh 20g, then in a kilogram there would be 1500), or knowing that the widest river in the world is the Amazon, or that the Falklands war happened in 1982 (thank you, Jeremy Clarkson, for recently reminding me of that), or that George Orwell wrote 1984 – shouldn’t everyone know that sort of stuff? Apparently not. The main frustration of Trivial Pursuit on board ship is that, in the interests of diplomacy, sometimes you have to let people convinced of wrong answers have their way.

But here’s the thing: it’s wrong to judge them for their ignorance. Instead, you should allow that, simply by their presence on the ship, they have proved that they have been successful in their own fields – in which ignorance, for example, of the name of the Easter Island stone heads [moai] has been no impediment. Consider my mind broadened.

And the reward tonight was a concert of Opera-the-tuneful-bits presented by an excellent team of singers, not the least of its pleasures being that, within about four minutes of shaking the hands of the singers, I was in my room and ready for bed. Score!

Adios

We've had an awful lot of this sort of thing on this trip. Not that I'm complaining: it's been great, and an absolute revelation when we were in Lima, compared with my previous visit, when I had one good meal in three weeks. I'm just sorry I have to go home now to my own cooking - night flight to Auckland looming, yay. Not.

We left Easter Island early this morning and arrived mid-afternoon Santiago time, just about the right timing, South American-wise, for lunch at a winery outside the city. Matetic, it was called, and it also has a beautiful hacienda on the estate, where you can stay in 100+ year-old rooms that are so restful and elegant your heart slows down the moment you step over the threshold. What a lovely weekend that would be: a day poking around in pretty Valparaiso on the coast, maybe, then some wine-tasting before stopping in at La Cosana for dinner at the antique dining table and more of Matatic's red stuff. Or white, of course.

I always feel a fraud doing wine-tastings, having once confused chardonnay with cabernet on the wine list, to my great humiliation, and have been confident in the past only of being able to tell white from red in the glass. But I've learned with horror on this trip that there's such a thing as white cabernet, so now I've lost my nerve completely. But as long as you don't ask me any questions about it, I'll happily knock back a glass, thanks.

Gracias, Mauricio

Whanganui and Valparaiso get connected today, thanks to Mauricio. He's got a bit miffed about the Durie Hill Elevator's claim, faithfully repeated by me in a story written some time ago that's just been re-run, that it's unique in the southern hemisphere. As he rightly points out, with multiple links to online proof, it's actually not: there's another one, the Polanco Lift, in Valparaiso, with a 150m tunnel leading to a couple of lifts, which take people to the top of the hill, 60m above. Being Chilean, he's understandably offended - also though, being Chilean, perhaps he didn't quite appreciate in-joke of the 'World Famous in NZ' title of the feature, but that's ok. 

I did however think he was a bit over-sensitive in claiming that New Zealanders don't properly recognise that there are other countries south of the equator besides the English-speaking ones. As a nationality, I reckon we get around more than most others, and South America is certainly a popular destination for Kiwis. I've been there several times myself, including to Valparaiso.

That was way back in 2008, on my first big and very exciting trip to South America, when the main focus was on walking the Inca Trail. Before joining the (very small) tour group, I had a couple of nights in Santiago and was escorted to Valparaiso, which is about an hour's drive away through wine country and a range of hills you might call mountains if the actual Andes weren't in plain sight.

Valparaiso is old and very pretty, as well as modern and ugly, and classy and very down-at-heel - typical port city, then. The old part, which was far from being fully gentrified, was full of piled-up wooden Victorian villas painted fabulously bright colours, with towers and iron-lace verandas, set along steep cobbled streets intersected by plenty of narrow alleys where the "bad seňoritas" service the seamen. The sailors we saw were togged out in white dress uniforms with brass buttons and even white gloves, and clearly above such shenanigans...

There were stately buildings, tree-lined avenues, dinky fishing boats and stern grey naval ships, sea lions and pelicans on the rocks, and heaps of statues including one of the local horse that holds the world record for highest jump, 2.47m, set there in 1949 by 16 year-old ex-race-horse Huaso, who was then immediately retired. There were less athletic horses hitched to carriages for tourists, and, as ever in Chile, lots of stray dogs - most of them, I'm happy to say, apparently well fed and cared for by people who aren't allowed to keep them in their apartments. There was even an Easter Island moai, my first, which I was excited to see - not knowing then that I would be going there myself just four years later.

In-gene-ious

Here's a first: this week's NZ Herald Travel containing my (cut) Easter Island story on page 5 - and then, on page 10-11, the Firstborn's account of her junket last year to China. Yes, yes, she has stories in the main paper all the time, and frequently on the front page, but that's what she was trained for. It takes a different set of skills to write as entertainingly and informatively as this about a destination, and that's why I'm unfairly claiming some DNA-based credit for her story about channelling her inner shopper in Shanghai.

I have been to the city myself, but only for half a day at the end of our cruise with Silversea up the coast from Hong Kong, so the visit was tinged a little with regret at leaving behind the friendly luxury of the Silver Whisper. It was also shortly before the city hosted the World Expo, and it was full of road diversions, bamboo scaffolding and the smell of wet cement as it raced to get ready. Even so, it was an astonishing place, especially to arrive at along the river one murky morning, under elegant suspension bridges and past all those bizarre skyscrapers on the Pudong side (so many of them now, and so heavy, that apparently the ground is cracking under the weight - which hasn't stopped construction on the Shanghai Tower, to be the second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa).

We just had a quick look around and visited some character buildings, and then caught the Maglev train out to the airport. That's as in 'magnetically levitated' off the rails so there's no friction slowing it down. We waited for the boring 300kmh train to go so that we could catch the fast one, that went 434kmh at its fastest - so fast that by the time I got my camera trained (ha!) on the indicator, it had already started slowing down again. It was super-smooth, quiet, really tilted on the corners, and got us to the airport in just 7 minutes. Shame the flight home couldn't have been equally quick.

'Stay-cation' advised

While I continue scribbling away about Easter Island, trying to condense four days of busy personal experience and about 100 years of scientific study into 1300 informative and entertaining words, you can read a list of what are apparently genuine complaints by UK clients of Thomas Cook Travel; and we can both wonder if there's any point in what travel writers like me do.

1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or gingernuts."

2. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time — this should be banned."

3. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

7. "The beach was too sandy."

8. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."

10. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."

12. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."

13. "There was no egg-slicer in the apartment."

14. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as  they were all Spanish."

15. "The roads were uneven..."

16. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home."

17. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."

18. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers — will we be OK staying there?"

19. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners now live abroad."

20. "We had to queue outside with no air-conditioning."

21. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

22. "I was bitten by a mosquito. No-one said they could bite."

23. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

To be not disappointed

 Although I had two pages in the Sunday Star-Times travel section all to myself yesterday, the triumph was somewhat mitigated by the cover story being about the Southern Lights flight. This is a special organised by Viva Expeditions with Air NZ, to fly from (and back to) Christchurch in a Dreamliner on a 10-hour search for the aurora australis. The plane flies in the dramatically-named stealth mode, all external lights off, internal too, so everyone's eyes can adjust and fully appreciate the aurora.

They found the lights quite quickly, and they were pretty spectacular, according to the photos and video. But - and this is a HUGE but - not according to most passengers' actual eyes. The trouble is, our eyes, and especially older eyes, aren't very good at picking up the colours, so what almost everyone saw were swirls of white - the green and pink only showed up via cameras.

Now I would have found that deeply disappointing, to put it mildly. Seeing the aurora is one of my top wants, but to pay all that money, fly all that way and only see white? Nah, Instagram has spoiled me for that. I want proper colour, end of. And if I have to go to Finland, or Norway, or Alaska for my chance to see it, well, that's just icing on the cake. Or actual ice. Whatever. Even if it turns out my eyes can't do the business, at least I've been somewhere interesting and not just been squashed into a plane for ten hours, flying from A to A.

Travel should not be about disappointment, especially when it involves world-famous spectacles or landmarks. I'm happy to report that right up there with cast-iron guarantees of satisfaction (for the locations, tourist throngs notwithstanding) are the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island's moai, the Eiffel Tower and Tower Bridge. There are lots of others. As further proof, most of those listed I've been to more than once, and been 98% thrilled to see them again. And, for today's connection, two of those - Machu Picchu and Galapagos - I visited the second time courtesy of Viva Expeditions. Thanks, Rachel.

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.)