Twenty days after I arrived, I left New Zealand this morning, counting my lucky stars I was not flying out of Christchurch.
As my plane took off the New Zealand government was considering declaring a state of national emergency, and people sat around quietly at Auckland airport watching the TV news. Here in Sydney airport, where I’m writing this during a four-hour stopover before my flight to Bangkok, a search and rescue team from Taiwan have stopped off to pick up MacDonalds for their men. It’s all so sad. Luckily no-one I know directly has been caught in the quake, though Jim and Vicky felt it in Queenstown and friends of theirs have lost houses — but no lives. The southern hemisphere really has had more than its fair share of tragedies recently.
Anyway, my trip since Queenstown.
I’ve only just been able to sit down to write this on account of the fact that I was suffering near exhaustion after my sailing course. The skipper, Glen, pushed us all incredibly hard — I think in just one day I did the same amount of navigation and boat handling as I did the entire week of my dayskipper course in the Whitsundays — but I also clashed rather spectacularly with a rather unpleasant character onboard.
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| The sailing itself was pretty good...here we have 25knots of wind |
A 40ft boat is no place for anyone to start throwing their weight around and making life difficult for people, but this didn’t stop said unpleasant character (who shall remain nameless but let’s call him Dickhead or DH for short) slowly crushing the life out of me. I’ll give you just a taster of his spite:
DH: “Abi, could I ask what level you are educated to?”
Me: “Erm, excuse me?”
DH: “Well, I would just like to know what standard of education you have because I normally find that people who have a chip on their shoulder like you are intellectually inferior to me.”
He was also spectacularly rude to the skipper, Glen. Anyway, despite it all I passed and am proudly carrying with me a logbook complete with coastal skipper practical qualification. (And Neil that was despite nearly putting the jib on upside down, despite your warning, and steaming at 7knots towards shallow mud, the wrong side of the channel markers, before Glen asked me what exactly I had planned for his boat.)
It was also a good personal learning curve — sometimes at work I’ve had feedback that I can be over-critical, so it was…erm….good to know what it felt like. I am today exactly halfway through my travels and I often wonder how I will feel on my return to the office and what I will have learnt. I’ll get back to you on that one…
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| The scenery was breathtaking |
So the Bay of Islands is, like the rest of New Zealand, absolutely stunning. I can’t share with diving friends whether or not the Poor Knights live up to their legendary reputation as I ditched that plan in order to go sailing one more time with Glen, who insisted on taking me out again to make up for my rotten week. Forgive my lack of description on the rest of the place but the whole thing was rather a battering experience and I can’t yet remember the good points. One was definitely catching sight of dolphins on several occasions, the best being when they jumped in and out of the water alongside the boat during a spectacularly moonlit night sail. We also saw some blue penguins, so I’ve had crossed off a few more species on my “would like to see in the wild” list. Oh, and I also saw my car.
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| Nice red BMW Z3 in Paihia, no hairdresser remarks please |
Another highlight would be going sailing with Jerome from Mauritius, who I met in the fish-and-chip shop in Russell on Friday night. The trouble was, I discovered when I turned up on Sunday afternoon, Merriman (the boat he's rented) is an old, wooden, double-ended sloop cutter with a gaff rig, on which every single rope was the same thickness and colour. Luckily there was not a lot of wind.
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| Sailing with quirky Jerome, who I met in the fish and chip shop. For some reason my mum thought that was odd... |
A definite highlight would be enjoying copious G&Ts with Jim and Vicky’s aunt Annette and her partner Roy at the Bay of Islands Swordfish Club in Russell, looking at photos of the 230kg blue marlin she caught in January. The same marlin that I had eaten, smoked, at a BBQ in Queenstown just the week before.
And last but not least, my friend Rebekah. I met Rebekah while diving at Christmas and after my mentally draining week my lovely new friend charged up from Auckland to join me for the weekend in Paihia, determined to lift my spirits. Now, I choose my friends carefully for their love of the outdoors and exercise, so I knew when she arrived after a three-hour drive she’d love nothing better than to don her walking shoes and join me in a four-hour hike. She got me back this morning by waking me at 5:40am to drag me on a one-hour power walk around One Tree Hill (a dormant volcano, which doubles as Cornwall Park complete with cows and sheep) behind her home. As we set off in the rain and the dark, I realised I should have thought more carefully about that third glass of Pinot Gris (yes Jim, you converted me) last night.
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| Rebekah in the mangrove swamps — she had trouble getting me out as I was fascinated by all the scurrying crabs making popping noises when they pulled out of the mud |
The walk was worth it though, as I’m doing a lot of sitting down today. Three hours from Auckland to Sydney, four-hour stopover then a nine-hour flight to Bangkok. Despite leaving NZ at lunchtime, I’ll arrive in Thailand just before midnight the same day as I left — rather confusing all these time zones.
I have two days in Bangkok, then fly down to Ko Samui to go diving for a few days. I plan to try to lie on a beach and read, do a Thai cookery course and then fly to Phnom Penh on 7 March to stay with another Rebecca and meet up with Sabrina, my travel buddy for Cambodia and Laos. Last but not least it’s back to India and hopefully (THANK YOU SABRINA AND RAHUL) skiing for the weekend in Kashmir. Life is tough.
But all that depends on successfully obtaining visas, which I had sort of overlooked before now. India is particularly concerning as the instructions on it's London embassy website is to send off your passport with a couple of photographs. Oops! Fingers crossed!
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| Look! I did smile once during the sailing course... |
