The resources entry is being sorted offline, so I will put that up soon
BUT...... I thought it would be a good end to this career break blog to post good news.
When I was at the India camp, I went online to the jobs pages of the University of Bristol (www.bris.ac.uk/boris) and applied for a new job, online, from a dial-up connection, and with the threat that the electricity would go off anytime without warning.
I completed the application form without a CV to hand (all from memory, having been away of work for 4 months), pressed send, and yes, the electricity died about 30 seconds after the page disappeared! I just hoped that the form had reached the right person in the Personnel Department, and then went out to sit around the open fire and talk about our next day's teaching!, and kinda forgot about the application for the rest of the time in the camp.
On one of my first days back in the UK I went onto my email, and found I had an interview invitation! The days before the interview were nerve-racking, I had to prepare a presentation, and my work skills were certainly rusty! I could hardly sleep and did so much preparation for this interview. I was determined not to fail this one, as I have done so many times previously.
On the day, the interview, I felt, did not go well. I confided to C later on that I thought I had failed this one too. I kinda pushed this to the back of the shelf and yet really hoped that I would get it.
The next day, I missed a call at 0858 from the Uni. I immediately rang back and AT advised that I had indeed got the job!!!!!
I am now the Postgraduate Programmes and Industrial Liaison Officer in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol.
The sense of achievement of getting this, and knowing that taking the CB had led me to this point, was overwhelming and it felt so good to have such an end to my career break.
It was not the aim of the CB to get a job immediately when I got back(!) but having matured and experienced so much when overseas, having removed myself from stressful environments at home, having dealt with a lot of health issues even when away, and got myself into a more positive frame of mind and outlook, moving beyond pettiness and other issues in my previous life, I obviously convey a much more positive and confident persona, in that if I can take on a period of change and adventures away from my comfort zones, then I can tackle anything and see it as a challenge.
I feel the CB has been the best thing I have done for a very very long time.
Initially it was a means of removing myself from both places of work, for many undisclosable reasons, but it turned into a period of personal and emotional development.
I met so many wonderful people along the way;
I know there is a wider world out there that is so accessible and my wanderlust has only just started!
I did so many things that I would not have done, or been able to do, in the UK;
I did so many things that challenged my attitude towards my disabilities (chronic pain, swelling feet, TCS flare-ups);
I faced and out-stared acute homesickness and although this put a dampner on some days, I knew that I would get through it.
I realised the value of what I have at home (family, friends) and how much they mean to me.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog.
Bye
Monday, 26 May 2008
Friday, 9 May 2008
Resources for this trip
On this Career Break trip I have used many companies, hostels, hotels, transport arrangements, online resources, etc. So to help you with planning such a trip, here are some resources that I have found useful:
TO BE UPDATED
TO BE UPDATED
Monday 31st March - going home day
Yes I was up at 0100 as we had an airport pickup at 0200!! These couple of days I am suffering from jet lag and sleep deprivation :). Yvonne and I were dropped at the International AP departures, but we were too early to go through to check-in so we tried to rest and snooze - very difficult on metal chairs, with people all around and bags to guard. The whole AP is being redeveloped and there is building work everywhere - inside and out, airside and landside.
Once we got into the terminal we joined the Q for security and then the vagaries of Indian bureaucracy and intransigence came to the fore - the whole line was shut down and we were forced into another 2x as long a Q and had to wait to get through passport control and security. My feet were pounding with pain and heat intolerance, but once on the other side, we only had about 1/4 hour to wait for boarding. Once I was on board I put my watch to GMT and our travel time was reduced from 9hr25 to 8hr15 which was great. I was not impressed with the service of the BA cabin crew tho - give me Qantas every time.
As we headed west and got into Europe, I got more excited about getting home, and crossing the Channel and seeing the green of England for the first time, I was nearly crying to get there. I danced a little gig of excitement where I stood at the back of the plane. We came into LHR along the A4/M4 and the plane was floated in. The soft light of an English spring filtered in through the windows and yes, I was home.
I heaved my heavy rucksack onto my back for the last time out of a plane and walked down the empty aisle through to First class - if only I had the money to travel like that! I got wheelchair assist through to Arrivals - give me Australian hospitality every time, as my welcome home by the BA staff was not exactly very "welcoming". Due to the chaos with the opening of T5 (altho we came into T4), our bags were delayed and I was itching to get out of the baggage reclaim, but had to wait even longer to see J,J&M.
As I walked out of the Arrivals door I could see J&M standing at the end of the line, with J in his buggy and they were waving and arms outstretched and huge smiles. I moved as fast as I could (with painful feet) and dragged my 26kg bag behind me, and suddenly I was there - I was home with the people I love and missed so much. Little J was sleepy but absolutely gorgeous to behold and hold. I couldn't get and give enough hugs, but there is time enough for all that. Outside the air smelled sweet, not polluted, out of a clear sky, and the sun peeking through the clouds.
I'm home.
Once we got into the terminal we joined the Q for security and then the vagaries of Indian bureaucracy and intransigence came to the fore - the whole line was shut down and we were forced into another 2x as long a Q and had to wait to get through passport control and security. My feet were pounding with pain and heat intolerance, but once on the other side, we only had about 1/4 hour to wait for boarding. Once I was on board I put my watch to GMT and our travel time was reduced from 9hr25 to 8hr15 which was great. I was not impressed with the service of the BA cabin crew tho - give me Qantas every time.
As we headed west and got into Europe, I got more excited about getting home, and crossing the Channel and seeing the green of England for the first time, I was nearly crying to get there. I danced a little gig of excitement where I stood at the back of the plane. We came into LHR along the A4/M4 and the plane was floated in. The soft light of an English spring filtered in through the windows and yes, I was home.
I heaved my heavy rucksack onto my back for the last time out of a plane and walked down the empty aisle through to First class - if only I had the money to travel like that! I got wheelchair assist through to Arrivals - give me Australian hospitality every time, as my welcome home by the BA staff was not exactly very "welcoming". Due to the chaos with the opening of T5 (altho we came into T4), our bags were delayed and I was itching to get out of the baggage reclaim, but had to wait even longer to see J,J&M.
As I walked out of the Arrivals door I could see J&M standing at the end of the line, with J in his buggy and they were waving and arms outstretched and huge smiles. I moved as fast as I could (with painful feet) and dragged my 26kg bag behind me, and suddenly I was there - I was home with the people I love and missed so much. Little J was sleepy but absolutely gorgeous to behold and hold. I couldn't get and give enough hugs, but there is time enough for all that. Outside the air smelled sweet, not polluted, out of a clear sky, and the sun peeking through the clouds.
I'm home.
Monday 24th - Monday 31st March
Our last week in the camp! Where has the time gone?
Monday school was fun, which was weird as I helped Michael with the maths class and we didn't do much English. I felt I was failing at teaching them anything, but this was to change by the end of the week. In the evening we were treated to a load of electric fireworks - the transformer on a powerline shorted out, just outside the camp perimeter, and as the roofs are made of straw, the manager was a bit concerned about the sparks. However everything was OK and the only thing that happened was that we lost all electricity for the evening. We could sit round the fire though, in total darkness and enjoy the starry night sky before the moon came up!
Tuesday we had no hot water whatsoever!!, just the cold water coming out of the standpipe in our "bathrooms" (that is a posh word for a room, 4 ft wide, 8 ft long, concrete on the floor and a straw thatch, shared with lizards, a mouse, a grasshopper and spiders of various sizes and speeds). However the "cold" water was very refreshing as the heat in the mornings is really high already and the cold water feels good on the skin.
At school, I failed in my lesson giving - the kids didn't understand what I was trying to tell them and their interest wandered. This set the tone for the rest of the day - I felt a real failure, even when I plan a lesson it all goes wrong, what can I get right these days?!?
In the afternoon I just HAD to get away from the camp and my hut so I walked around the bare dusty area behind the compound and listened to music from home on the MP3, which reminded me of C and all the adventures we had had before I left. The devastating homesickness I felt in NZ returned and I went back into my hut and shut the door on the world. Yvonne came in to see me and we talked for some time, which really helped to put a bit of perspective on my so-called failure. She implied that we are still all feeling our way, getting things right or not, and so I should not blame myself for "failure". Even us just being on the project is a good thing, and a lot more rewarding than just lying on a beach or similarly non-productive holidays. I also voiced my missing people at home - J, J, M, C, and how I wish to see them all again after so long away.
Wednesday: forgot to say for yesterday, I had a visitation from "the mouse"!!. He literally fell out of the straw thatch onto my mosquito net and when I pinged the netting, he bounced off onto the floor, scuttled away into the bathroom and I haven't seen him since. He must have climbed the walls again tho, as I could hear him munching away again in the thatch!! A wonderful pic opportunity today was to see the sun rising over the desert - a red/orange orb rising very quickly through the stand of trees, changing to a deep yellow and then blinding colour and in a matter of minutes the sky changed from deep blue to reddish pink, orange and then yellow. It was quite brassy by the time I stopped taking pics, and that indicated the heat of the day to come - overwhelmingly hot, even the wind coming in through the barred and netted windows of the school was hot.
At school I did opposite words, and this was a hit. I playacted things like in, on, under, up, down, hot/cold, wet/dry, and illustrated them through items and actions. We went out to the school water tap and played with the water and sprayed little Usha with water, which she loved. Right at the end we made paper planes and had fun throwing them around the concrete block of a classroom
Thursday: the kids rewarded me today by quoting back at me the names of parts of the body and the opposite words. At last a success in my teaching - perhaps the playacting helped them remember stuff. The trouble was I had a HUMUNGOUS headache today and so ironically was not in the mood for playing with them! When we got back for lunch, I missed the meal as I just had to sleep for the afternoon. The heat was overpowering and despite loving the sun, even in the evening I could not sit out in it.
Friday: last teaching day. Up with the mouse today, which sounded like SuperMouse, and had to deal with a hot desert wind blowing very strongly. We gave presents to the kids today - pens, pencils, rubbers, cloths from the wet/dry lessons and they all loved them. A couple of the girls were crying as we left the classroom, and I hope that we made a different to their lives even for a short time.
Party time in the evening. Some of the white girls in the camp borrowed saris and dressed up in them. Michael wore his light blue scarf that he picked up in Jaisalmer and Chris borrowed a red piece of cloth to wrap round his head. Unfortunately I was feeling extremely off colour still and had to sit out the dancing, and only drank water all night.
Saturday: the threatening illness came out today. I don't know what it was but I overslept till 9.30, therefore missing breakfast, and when I did move it felt like my whole body was full of lead, and I was utterly exhausted. I spent all day on my bed, totally exhausted, mostly sleeping, no power in any limbs at all, and feeling like I was sickening for flu. The heat was again overpowering, but I couldn't go out in it anyway. I eventually got up at 4.30ish and just had to pack my bags. As I did so, I did a little bit (about 10 mins) and then had to sit down again for 20 mins to get any strength back. So frustrating and right at the end of the project - grrr. I did manage some dinner, and we ate it out in the dusty courtyard as the heat was huge even late at night. Our group was back down to 8 people (as the rest of the camp had gone on tiger safari) and so we had quite a nostalgic night, recalling our highs and low, successes and failures, lessons learned, funny things that the kids had said in classes, shopping in Jaipur, the Taj Mahal, the Amber Fort.
Sunday: we had to be up by 0330 as we were on the road by 0400. There was no electric power, as they also didn't put on the generator, so I had a cold face wash from the standpipe again. We were driven to Dausa and got the train to Delhi from there. It came steaming into the station and huge clouds of black smoke poured out of its stack - pollution!! As the train came in, Manoj realised we were nowhere near our carriage and so we had to hare down the platform, pulling our really heavy cases and rucksacks behind us, and literally shove everything and everyone onto the train through an open metal doorway, and bundle in. We only just got on as the train moved off and we said our last goodbyes to Manoj and to southern Rajasthan.
The journey to Delhi took us 7 hours, as it stopped for about 1/2 hour for a breakdown ahead of us on the track. Viv and Graziella slept in the bunks above the main seats, and poor Michael was suffering from Delhi belly (again right at the end of his trip which really spoiled the last days for him). I had to brave the Indian loos - literally a hole in the floor of the toilet room, and I could see the tracks moving underneath the train as it barrelled along! On the outskirts of Delhi we went through terrible shanty towns, enormous piles of rubbish and squalor, worse than we have ever seen anywhere. When we got to Delhi main station, we had to bundle off again as we only had 2 minutes to get off, and the platform was terribly slippery and shiny. We played cat and mouse with the traffic to get back to the Hotel Perfect, but I managed to get some great pics of street scenes, people, vehicles and buildings.
For our final night we had dinner on a rooftop restaurant - a variety of dishes and tastes. It was very humid in town but all of us enjoyed the meal and we were all very quiet, thinking of the achievements we had had in our time in the camp, and I was thinking how weird it was to be at the end of all my travelling days (so far). Where did the time go - 4.5 months seems to have gone in a flash, and yet I have all those pics and all those flashes of memories to keep me going for a long time yet.
Monday school was fun, which was weird as I helped Michael with the maths class and we didn't do much English. I felt I was failing at teaching them anything, but this was to change by the end of the week. In the evening we were treated to a load of electric fireworks - the transformer on a powerline shorted out, just outside the camp perimeter, and as the roofs are made of straw, the manager was a bit concerned about the sparks. However everything was OK and the only thing that happened was that we lost all electricity for the evening. We could sit round the fire though, in total darkness and enjoy the starry night sky before the moon came up!
Tuesday we had no hot water whatsoever!!, just the cold water coming out of the standpipe in our "bathrooms" (that is a posh word for a room, 4 ft wide, 8 ft long, concrete on the floor and a straw thatch, shared with lizards, a mouse, a grasshopper and spiders of various sizes and speeds). However the "cold" water was very refreshing as the heat in the mornings is really high already and the cold water feels good on the skin.
At school, I failed in my lesson giving - the kids didn't understand what I was trying to tell them and their interest wandered. This set the tone for the rest of the day - I felt a real failure, even when I plan a lesson it all goes wrong, what can I get right these days?!?
In the afternoon I just HAD to get away from the camp and my hut so I walked around the bare dusty area behind the compound and listened to music from home on the MP3, which reminded me of C and all the adventures we had had before I left. The devastating homesickness I felt in NZ returned and I went back into my hut and shut the door on the world. Yvonne came in to see me and we talked for some time, which really helped to put a bit of perspective on my so-called failure. She implied that we are still all feeling our way, getting things right or not, and so I should not blame myself for "failure". Even us just being on the project is a good thing, and a lot more rewarding than just lying on a beach or similarly non-productive holidays. I also voiced my missing people at home - J, J, M, C, and how I wish to see them all again after so long away.
Wednesday: forgot to say for yesterday, I had a visitation from "the mouse"!!. He literally fell out of the straw thatch onto my mosquito net and when I pinged the netting, he bounced off onto the floor, scuttled away into the bathroom and I haven't seen him since. He must have climbed the walls again tho, as I could hear him munching away again in the thatch!! A wonderful pic opportunity today was to see the sun rising over the desert - a red/orange orb rising very quickly through the stand of trees, changing to a deep yellow and then blinding colour and in a matter of minutes the sky changed from deep blue to reddish pink, orange and then yellow. It was quite brassy by the time I stopped taking pics, and that indicated the heat of the day to come - overwhelmingly hot, even the wind coming in through the barred and netted windows of the school was hot.
At school I did opposite words, and this was a hit. I playacted things like in, on, under, up, down, hot/cold, wet/dry, and illustrated them through items and actions. We went out to the school water tap and played with the water and sprayed little Usha with water, which she loved. Right at the end we made paper planes and had fun throwing them around the concrete block of a classroom
Thursday: the kids rewarded me today by quoting back at me the names of parts of the body and the opposite words. At last a success in my teaching - perhaps the playacting helped them remember stuff. The trouble was I had a HUMUNGOUS headache today and so ironically was not in the mood for playing with them! When we got back for lunch, I missed the meal as I just had to sleep for the afternoon. The heat was overpowering and despite loving the sun, even in the evening I could not sit out in it.
Friday: last teaching day. Up with the mouse today, which sounded like SuperMouse, and had to deal with a hot desert wind blowing very strongly. We gave presents to the kids today - pens, pencils, rubbers, cloths from the wet/dry lessons and they all loved them. A couple of the girls were crying as we left the classroom, and I hope that we made a different to their lives even for a short time.
Party time in the evening. Some of the white girls in the camp borrowed saris and dressed up in them. Michael wore his light blue scarf that he picked up in Jaisalmer and Chris borrowed a red piece of cloth to wrap round his head. Unfortunately I was feeling extremely off colour still and had to sit out the dancing, and only drank water all night.
Saturday: the threatening illness came out today. I don't know what it was but I overslept till 9.30, therefore missing breakfast, and when I did move it felt like my whole body was full of lead, and I was utterly exhausted. I spent all day on my bed, totally exhausted, mostly sleeping, no power in any limbs at all, and feeling like I was sickening for flu. The heat was again overpowering, but I couldn't go out in it anyway. I eventually got up at 4.30ish and just had to pack my bags. As I did so, I did a little bit (about 10 mins) and then had to sit down again for 20 mins to get any strength back. So frustrating and right at the end of the project - grrr. I did manage some dinner, and we ate it out in the dusty courtyard as the heat was huge even late at night. Our group was back down to 8 people (as the rest of the camp had gone on tiger safari) and so we had quite a nostalgic night, recalling our highs and low, successes and failures, lessons learned, funny things that the kids had said in classes, shopping in Jaipur, the Taj Mahal, the Amber Fort.
Sunday: we had to be up by 0330 as we were on the road by 0400. There was no electric power, as they also didn't put on the generator, so I had a cold face wash from the standpipe again. We were driven to Dausa and got the train to Delhi from there. It came steaming into the station and huge clouds of black smoke poured out of its stack - pollution!! As the train came in, Manoj realised we were nowhere near our carriage and so we had to hare down the platform, pulling our really heavy cases and rucksacks behind us, and literally shove everything and everyone onto the train through an open metal doorway, and bundle in. We only just got on as the train moved off and we said our last goodbyes to Manoj and to southern Rajasthan.
The journey to Delhi took us 7 hours, as it stopped for about 1/2 hour for a breakdown ahead of us on the track. Viv and Graziella slept in the bunks above the main seats, and poor Michael was suffering from Delhi belly (again right at the end of his trip which really spoiled the last days for him). I had to brave the Indian loos - literally a hole in the floor of the toilet room, and I could see the tracks moving underneath the train as it barrelled along! On the outskirts of Delhi we went through terrible shanty towns, enormous piles of rubbish and squalor, worse than we have ever seen anywhere. When we got to Delhi main station, we had to bundle off again as we only had 2 minutes to get off, and the platform was terribly slippery and shiny. We played cat and mouse with the traffic to get back to the Hotel Perfect, but I managed to get some great pics of street scenes, people, vehicles and buildings.
For our final night we had dinner on a rooftop restaurant - a variety of dishes and tastes. It was very humid in town but all of us enjoyed the meal and we were all very quiet, thinking of the achievements we had had in our time in the camp, and I was thinking how weird it was to be at the end of all my travelling days (so far). Where did the time go - 4.5 months seems to have gone in a flash, and yet I have all those pics and all those flashes of memories to keep me going for a long time yet.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Saturday 15th - Sunday 23rd
Saturday/Sunday 15/16: we went on a Tiger safari this weekend down in Ranthambore NP. Unfortunately we didn't see any tigers, although they were in the park as the other trucks did see them. We saw a lot of other wildlife though - monkeys (running along the wall of the hotel, twirly tails held high in the air), chipmunks, pretty birds, peacocks, deer, bambis, scops owl. We were in open-air vehicles and the dust was so bad, I could literally scrape it off my face and I swear we were walking dust poles! The hotel was not that good, and by the end of the evening we were all wanting to be back in our little mud huts! Sunday: we were taken to Sawmodpur market. It was hot, dusty, exhausting, and I didn't buy anything. However I took lots of pics of the spice, and fruit stalls, the food vendors, the materials/saris/bags stalls, the hogs roaming in the streets, the kids begging, the camels being driven along. I felt more and more sick by the end of the day and indeed was when we got back to the camp. Felt drained and off colour. Yeuk!
Monday: Michael cycled to work today and he became known as "Michael on the Cycle" to all of the camp! He really was the Indian Professor! When we walked into the class, they all stood up and chorused "Good Mooorrrrning" and all their faces lit up into smiles. That really lifts my mood, whatever mood I am in.
This week our workshops are cookery classes (last week it was the Hindi lessons). Today we learnt how to cook Mixed Pulses in a lovely spicy sauce, and then had it for dinner.
In the evening today we heard drumming from the nomads camp just outside the camp gates. Manoj went over to them and invited them into the camp, and we were treated to a free dancing show, with drums and pipes, and the women and kids sitting in the shadows of the fire's twilight. Very evocative. They are here for the feast of Holi which comes up over the Easter weekend.
Tuesday: had to knock down the birds' nest which they have been busily building right above my bed. I know it is cruel, but I don't want birds s**t all over me and the mosquito net when the eggs hatch. I voiced to Sarhu today (the project helper/translator) that I was missing "green", and he agreed - he comes from Himachal Pradesh, up in the mountains and was just posted down here in rural Rajasthan, so he does understand where I am coming from.
Wednesday: I was dropped off last and late at school today and when I got there, Michael had already started Old Macdonald - they had learnt the words and sounds so quickly I was really proud of them. Michael had a bad session today, as he tried to teach times-tables, but they just copied the tables and had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and the lack of English understanding really does not help.
Thursday: a huge wind blew up from the west overnight and I had to shut the shutters to keep all the dust out. It went on for a long time and the door rattled - all the gaps in the straw thatch and under the door didn't keep the dust out very well, so I had to shut my bag completely, and wrap up clothes and journals etc. I had to shake out my bedding as it felt all gritty when I got up. Today had a mega pain flare up and overall inordinate weakness. I slept most of the day under the mosquito net and missed meals - not a good day at all.
Friday: felt a little better today and not so weak. At least I had power in my muscles and didn't ache so much. This was a good thing as we had to be driven 6 hours west of the camp to Pushkar to go on our camel safari. It was the start of the Holi holiday (festival of colours) and the colours (red, blue, green, yellow, purple) were being thrown everywhere, including at vehicles. Whenever we stopped we had to shut the windows against being splatted! It was odd going back to Jaipur as we have been there on so many occasions, that I could actually recognise the streets and routes we were taking. The road west to Pushkar was amazingly good - all tarmacked, traffic lights, overpasses - quite the westernised style of road-building.
In Pushkar our hotel was the Ram Guti Guesthouse and it was the best hotel we have stayed in so far. The porch and round front tower were painted in white, with pale blue and yellow edgings, with a brown tiled reception area, with a Ganesh shrine on one side and heavy wooden furniture. Graziella and I had the largest bedroom and it was like a suite with 2 single beds, a settee stretched round the corner walls, a huge bathroom and a fan that was like a helicopter's propeller, it was so large and efficient!
We decided to go out into the market area as it was cooler by now. We walked along a tarmac road but it was all covered with the dust and muck we are now immune to. We passed bag shops, sari materials, jewellery outlets, fast food/fried food stalls, fried sweetmeats, a juice bar very colorful fruit stalls, open smelly fires burning in the gutters. We went down through a gap in the buildings to the edge of the lake and the view across the ghats was stunning with the setting sun illuminating the lake and the white buildings. We ate at the Moon Garden restaurant and we all chose Italian dishes. I had penne puttanesca and after so long on a plain diet I enjoyed the taste, but ate too much rich sauce! The others had pizza and felt similarly rather full-up afterwards, although there was always room for vodka and brandy, in our large room so that everyone could sit down and rest after the long day.
Saturday: Holi day. We watched the festivities from the roof terrace. The adolescents go round the streets with drums and water, and then either mix the powdered colours with the water, or throw it dry! Either way it makes an awful mess, of clothes, specs, skin, and I was glad to be above it and just enjoy the colours an fun from far away! I got a lot of good pics of the fun.
In the afternoon we walked to meet our camels. Mine was led by 2 boys and they did a wonderful job of leading it, making it run/jog, and encouraging it on. Getting on was a challenge - you have to lean right back and then lollop forwards as the camel gets to its feet. I found myself gritting my teeth and straining to not fall off - Michael got a very funny pic of me, which he has just sent through email - thanks Michael!!!
Once we got out of Pushkar, the scenery was so different to around Sunderpur. It was in a hilly area, crops like maize, mango trees, marigolds and farmed roses in the small protected fields. The farm holdings were very simple structures, often just 4 sticks stuck into the ground and the "walls" made of grass woven together and slotted in between the sticks. We got off the camels for them to have a rest and a drink and we were all walking like John Wayne! My coccyx and upper legs felt numbed, but it was all good fun and an adventure. The sun was going down by the time we got to the camp (5 hours of riding), and we were surprised to see proper pitched tents, with camp beds, mattresses, pure white sheets with blankets, and the best thing of all (which you will never believe) we had a flushing toilet in its own little patterned canvas tent, right in the middle of the rocky desert. Unbelievable, but great :). We had dinner around the open fire, and our group of 8 were the last to go to bed (after midnight) as we were talking so much about all our adventures.
A gale force wind and sandstorm blew up overnight and the beds were covered with dust and sand. Thankfully I had tied in the the apron to our tent tightly, but Viv and Jenny had dust even in their sealed bags. However I used the time during breakfast to walk up to the top of the dunes and got pics of the blue-tinged sunrise, with the sun's rays shooting through the clouds. I also saw geomorphology in action - the sand was being turned into stone as its colour and texture changed from a light cream to a honey color. I also got some pics of desert plants, footprints and sand patterns
Most people opted to walk 1km back to the road but I rode in the cart and getting down from the wooden flat-bed to take a pic of the camel's feet, I ripped my right hand on a metal nail. Thank goodness I had had an update of my tetanus vaccination! Once we were back in Pushkar we went out to the markets again and I bought pretty soft cotton bags, and a Rajastahni wall hanging (blue silky materials, different stitching and textures) which I had been looking for for ages. We reached the Brahman temple but my feet were too sore to go any further and so I sat with Chris in a roadside cafe and had pure freshly squeezed OJ. Not done through a machine though - this was literally pushed through a hole in a wood nozzle with a pointed piece of wood, and the juice and bits all served up in a long glass. It was the first street food I had had and it was SO delicious and refreshing. For lunch we stopped at the Sun and Moon restaurant and the tortoises mooched around our feet and nipped Jane's toes!!
The road trip back to the camp, via Jaipur was 6-7 hours long and very tiring indeed. Everyone was pooped out at the end of the trip but we had a quiet night round the campfire and I went to sleep to the sound of the mouse nibbling at the straw above my head!
Monday: Michael cycled to work today and he became known as "Michael on the Cycle" to all of the camp! He really was the Indian Professor! When we walked into the class, they all stood up and chorused "Good Mooorrrrning" and all their faces lit up into smiles. That really lifts my mood, whatever mood I am in.
This week our workshops are cookery classes (last week it was the Hindi lessons). Today we learnt how to cook Mixed Pulses in a lovely spicy sauce, and then had it for dinner.
In the evening today we heard drumming from the nomads camp just outside the camp gates. Manoj went over to them and invited them into the camp, and we were treated to a free dancing show, with drums and pipes, and the women and kids sitting in the shadows of the fire's twilight. Very evocative. They are here for the feast of Holi which comes up over the Easter weekend.
Tuesday: had to knock down the birds' nest which they have been busily building right above my bed. I know it is cruel, but I don't want birds s**t all over me and the mosquito net when the eggs hatch. I voiced to Sarhu today (the project helper/translator) that I was missing "green", and he agreed - he comes from Himachal Pradesh, up in the mountains and was just posted down here in rural Rajasthan, so he does understand where I am coming from.
Wednesday: I was dropped off last and late at school today and when I got there, Michael had already started Old Macdonald - they had learnt the words and sounds so quickly I was really proud of them. Michael had a bad session today, as he tried to teach times-tables, but they just copied the tables and had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and the lack of English understanding really does not help.
Thursday: a huge wind blew up from the west overnight and I had to shut the shutters to keep all the dust out. It went on for a long time and the door rattled - all the gaps in the straw thatch and under the door didn't keep the dust out very well, so I had to shut my bag completely, and wrap up clothes and journals etc. I had to shake out my bedding as it felt all gritty when I got up. Today had a mega pain flare up and overall inordinate weakness. I slept most of the day under the mosquito net and missed meals - not a good day at all.
Friday: felt a little better today and not so weak. At least I had power in my muscles and didn't ache so much. This was a good thing as we had to be driven 6 hours west of the camp to Pushkar to go on our camel safari. It was the start of the Holi holiday (festival of colours) and the colours (red, blue, green, yellow, purple) were being thrown everywhere, including at vehicles. Whenever we stopped we had to shut the windows against being splatted! It was odd going back to Jaipur as we have been there on so many occasions, that I could actually recognise the streets and routes we were taking. The road west to Pushkar was amazingly good - all tarmacked, traffic lights, overpasses - quite the westernised style of road-building.
In Pushkar our hotel was the Ram Guti Guesthouse and it was the best hotel we have stayed in so far. The porch and round front tower were painted in white, with pale blue and yellow edgings, with a brown tiled reception area, with a Ganesh shrine on one side and heavy wooden furniture. Graziella and I had the largest bedroom and it was like a suite with 2 single beds, a settee stretched round the corner walls, a huge bathroom and a fan that was like a helicopter's propeller, it was so large and efficient!
We decided to go out into the market area as it was cooler by now. We walked along a tarmac road but it was all covered with the dust and muck we are now immune to. We passed bag shops, sari materials, jewellery outlets, fast food/fried food stalls, fried sweetmeats, a juice bar very colorful fruit stalls, open smelly fires burning in the gutters. We went down through a gap in the buildings to the edge of the lake and the view across the ghats was stunning with the setting sun illuminating the lake and the white buildings. We ate at the Moon Garden restaurant and we all chose Italian dishes. I had penne puttanesca and after so long on a plain diet I enjoyed the taste, but ate too much rich sauce! The others had pizza and felt similarly rather full-up afterwards, although there was always room for vodka and brandy, in our large room so that everyone could sit down and rest after the long day.
Saturday: Holi day. We watched the festivities from the roof terrace. The adolescents go round the streets with drums and water, and then either mix the powdered colours with the water, or throw it dry! Either way it makes an awful mess, of clothes, specs, skin, and I was glad to be above it and just enjoy the colours an fun from far away! I got a lot of good pics of the fun.
In the afternoon we walked to meet our camels. Mine was led by 2 boys and they did a wonderful job of leading it, making it run/jog, and encouraging it on. Getting on was a challenge - you have to lean right back and then lollop forwards as the camel gets to its feet. I found myself gritting my teeth and straining to not fall off - Michael got a very funny pic of me, which he has just sent through email - thanks Michael!!!
Once we got out of Pushkar, the scenery was so different to around Sunderpur. It was in a hilly area, crops like maize, mango trees, marigolds and farmed roses in the small protected fields. The farm holdings were very simple structures, often just 4 sticks stuck into the ground and the "walls" made of grass woven together and slotted in between the sticks. We got off the camels for them to have a rest and a drink and we were all walking like John Wayne! My coccyx and upper legs felt numbed, but it was all good fun and an adventure. The sun was going down by the time we got to the camp (5 hours of riding), and we were surprised to see proper pitched tents, with camp beds, mattresses, pure white sheets with blankets, and the best thing of all (which you will never believe) we had a flushing toilet in its own little patterned canvas tent, right in the middle of the rocky desert. Unbelievable, but great :). We had dinner around the open fire, and our group of 8 were the last to go to bed (after midnight) as we were talking so much about all our adventures.
A gale force wind and sandstorm blew up overnight and the beds were covered with dust and sand. Thankfully I had tied in the the apron to our tent tightly, but Viv and Jenny had dust even in their sealed bags. However I used the time during breakfast to walk up to the top of the dunes and got pics of the blue-tinged sunrise, with the sun's rays shooting through the clouds. I also saw geomorphology in action - the sand was being turned into stone as its colour and texture changed from a light cream to a honey color. I also got some pics of desert plants, footprints and sand patterns
Most people opted to walk 1km back to the road but I rode in the cart and getting down from the wooden flat-bed to take a pic of the camel's feet, I ripped my right hand on a metal nail. Thank goodness I had had an update of my tetanus vaccination! Once we were back in Pushkar we went out to the markets again and I bought pretty soft cotton bags, and a Rajastahni wall hanging (blue silky materials, different stitching and textures) which I had been looking for for ages. We reached the Brahman temple but my feet were too sore to go any further and so I sat with Chris in a roadside cafe and had pure freshly squeezed OJ. Not done through a machine though - this was literally pushed through a hole in a wood nozzle with a pointed piece of wood, and the juice and bits all served up in a long glass. It was the first street food I had had and it was SO delicious and refreshing. For lunch we stopped at the Sun and Moon restaurant and the tortoises mooched around our feet and nipped Jane's toes!!
The road trip back to the camp, via Jaipur was 6-7 hours long and very tiring indeed. Everyone was pooped out at the end of the trip but we had a quiet night round the campfire and I went to sleep to the sound of the mouse nibbling at the straw above my head!
Monday 10th to Sunday 16th March
After finding out yesterday that we don't have hot water piped to the huts, I found the standpipe this morning. OMG that water was hot (it wasn't always during the month though)! However I will never complain about cold or badly working showers at home again - at least we can just turn the tap on, in tiled bathrooms, and the water comes out. In the village and our camp, all water comes from the well, which has to be pumped up by (usually) the women or the children. We are very spolit in the west as to what they have here.
As part of the morning chorus this morning I heard peacocks crowing from the open fields along with sparrows, pigeons and birds that look like the noisy mynahs in Australia. We all went native and dressed in our new Indian clothes, even the boys, and we quite felt part of the landscape. These dresses were to become part of us by the end of the month and it really made a difference in the schools to be dressed appropriately.
This morning we had a tour around the work areas - schools, day care centre, and a home-based school for adolescent girls who work on creating saris. I think the tiredness of yesterday and the travelling caught up with me as I felt very tearful that I couldn't do this teaching, that I wouldn't be able to get on with the kids. However all of the group was feeling the same and we all commiserated with each other and cheered each other up over lunch.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with the camp manager who allocated us to schools and work areas - I was paired with Michael from Germany to teach in Bagadi Primary School, and with Graziella to teach the adolescent girls. Being paired with Michael was great - he is a maths teacher in Germany and so I can watch his style of teaching and learn a lot from him. Before dinner we had Hindi lessons, using transliterated words, and not the Hindi script, but the words were very useful in the classes later on.
Tuesday: had a tiny splatter of rain this morning and heard thunder in the distance, but the day ended up overcast and warm. Every day now, we have to plan lessons between 9.30-10.15 and Michael and I worked together to plan them to be complimentary - i.e. I could help with maths and he with English.
We were dropped off at Bagadi school first and here are some observations of the village as we were driven there: dusty, brown, rural huts, bricks sometimes, porches made of straw and branches, goats, dogs and cows roaming the streets, and in people's yards, water pumps at which children were jumping up and down on the pump handle to get enough pressure to get the water out, round flat pats of cow dung shaped and mixed with straw, laid on roofs to dry out and then are used for fuel and manure. A woman carrying a huge load of straw on her head walking down the middle of the road; men usually sitting on slatted beds, knees hunched up to their chests, white circular head-dresses; women working a huge circular open wheel to do the laundry in the field; laneways were bashed-down dust lanes, deep ruts and potholes; crops in the fields standing up in stooks or lined up at the edges of the roads for drying and then storage.
Class: Michael and I were led into a class of 7-12 year olds, approximately 12-15 each day. We had been told that today we would just be observing the teachers to see what we would be doing, but it immediately became apparent we would be doing the teaching TODAY and that literally were no teachers for these classes. Michael therefore started with number games, lining them all up against the walls and checking their counting and understanding of maths. I did a Look and Say on letters and images and I was really surprised by how much they did know and remember. I also asked them to spell parts of the body and although there was a lot of collusion on the part of all the kids, they clearly understood and remembered their spellings. It is just such a shame that their talents and aptitudes are hidden in rural schools, just because their parents can't afford (paying) schools in town or city for the talented kids.
Michael and I were pretty happy with what we achieved this morning, but the others felt really down-hearted and not happy with their placements. Again everyone gave moral and emotional support, which was valuable on all sides. We had chai tea at 4.00 and I had to have a nap before dinner as I was exhausted with today! Overnight I heard a lot of rustling and chewing in the straw - I think I have a mouse in the thatch!!
Wednesday: when the kids were naughty or non-attentive today I put on a "stern" face! but really they didn't need a lot of telling off. At break time, I taught the girls hop-scotch and as I said to C at home, it is a shame that adults have to grow up. When one has the opportunity to play with kids and play their games, and see things from their perspective, it reminds us adults what we have lost and what an opportunity to regain the fun and joy of life - which had been lacking in my life for so long.
As we left the school today the girls insisted on holding my hands - I had about 5 of them hanging off me as I walked down the rutted, muddy and wet-cow-patted lane; and the boys fought over the privilege of taking our equipment box back to the minibus. I promised them a rota of doing this through the weeks and they were happy with that. A lovely memory of leaving the school each day is the kids running alongside the minibus, waving at us with both hands high in the air and say Bye, ma'am, bye ma'am, bye gerugi (which is the Hindi word for (male) Teacher). Lovely!
Thursday: had to do the washing today. None of this shoving it into a washing machine. I had to lug the hot water from the standpipe, mix it with cold from the tap into the bathroom, and swirl around the Travel Wash gunge. I disappeared in a cloud of bubbles as I misjudged the amount of gunge I needed!! However the clothes were clean :). All had to be handwashed and then hung on the line strung between the huts - it looked like a chinese laundry when all 3 of us around our little quad had done all our washing! However with the sun being so hot, and getting hotter, I could do a wash after breakfast and it was all totally dry and stiff in the sun and wind by lunchtime.
I began the teaching day in a bad mood - something one of the staff had said had really wound me up, but do you know by the time I worked with the kids at school today my mood had lifted the clouds. Michael praised me for being innovative in teaching and we worked together on his maths problems, me illustrating what he was teaching by writing words and images on the board. Oh yes, we worked with dusty white and coloured chalks - non of this white board stuff. No computers either!
Afternoon I called home using the extremely cheap phone line. C answered and it was lovely to hear a familiar voice from home and to hear what was going on. I am so looking forward to seeing C again - even when one is travelling with people and working in a team, one can be lonely and miss the little things from home.
Friday: it was really cold overnight, would you believe, and I had to wrap my costume scarf around me and get into my sleeping bag. However the sun poured through the window - which is really a hole in the mud hut wall, supported with a wire cross and covered with mosquito netting. It warmed up fast today and in the afternoon I had to sit in the shade. Class was a disaster - my own fault as I didn't prepare well enough, but this was enough to make me feel very downhearted and again doubt my own abilities to see this volunteer project through, especially as everyone else had had good days and were crowing over their achievements. I took my MP3 out into the dust fields behind the camp and listened to music to myself. I had to get out of the camp just for a while, but people noticed and were very supportive later.
As part of the morning chorus this morning I heard peacocks crowing from the open fields along with sparrows, pigeons and birds that look like the noisy mynahs in Australia. We all went native and dressed in our new Indian clothes, even the boys, and we quite felt part of the landscape. These dresses were to become part of us by the end of the month and it really made a difference in the schools to be dressed appropriately.
This morning we had a tour around the work areas - schools, day care centre, and a home-based school for adolescent girls who work on creating saris. I think the tiredness of yesterday and the travelling caught up with me as I felt very tearful that I couldn't do this teaching, that I wouldn't be able to get on with the kids. However all of the group was feeling the same and we all commiserated with each other and cheered each other up over lunch.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with the camp manager who allocated us to schools and work areas - I was paired with Michael from Germany to teach in Bagadi Primary School, and with Graziella to teach the adolescent girls. Being paired with Michael was great - he is a maths teacher in Germany and so I can watch his style of teaching and learn a lot from him. Before dinner we had Hindi lessons, using transliterated words, and not the Hindi script, but the words were very useful in the classes later on.
Tuesday: had a tiny splatter of rain this morning and heard thunder in the distance, but the day ended up overcast and warm. Every day now, we have to plan lessons between 9.30-10.15 and Michael and I worked together to plan them to be complimentary - i.e. I could help with maths and he with English.
We were dropped off at Bagadi school first and here are some observations of the village as we were driven there: dusty, brown, rural huts, bricks sometimes, porches made of straw and branches, goats, dogs and cows roaming the streets, and in people's yards, water pumps at which children were jumping up and down on the pump handle to get enough pressure to get the water out, round flat pats of cow dung shaped and mixed with straw, laid on roofs to dry out and then are used for fuel and manure. A woman carrying a huge load of straw on her head walking down the middle of the road; men usually sitting on slatted beds, knees hunched up to their chests, white circular head-dresses; women working a huge circular open wheel to do the laundry in the field; laneways were bashed-down dust lanes, deep ruts and potholes; crops in the fields standing up in stooks or lined up at the edges of the roads for drying and then storage.
Class: Michael and I were led into a class of 7-12 year olds, approximately 12-15 each day. We had been told that today we would just be observing the teachers to see what we would be doing, but it immediately became apparent we would be doing the teaching TODAY and that literally were no teachers for these classes. Michael therefore started with number games, lining them all up against the walls and checking their counting and understanding of maths. I did a Look and Say on letters and images and I was really surprised by how much they did know and remember. I also asked them to spell parts of the body and although there was a lot of collusion on the part of all the kids, they clearly understood and remembered their spellings. It is just such a shame that their talents and aptitudes are hidden in rural schools, just because their parents can't afford (paying) schools in town or city for the talented kids.
Michael and I were pretty happy with what we achieved this morning, but the others felt really down-hearted and not happy with their placements. Again everyone gave moral and emotional support, which was valuable on all sides. We had chai tea at 4.00 and I had to have a nap before dinner as I was exhausted with today! Overnight I heard a lot of rustling and chewing in the straw - I think I have a mouse in the thatch!!
Wednesday: when the kids were naughty or non-attentive today I put on a "stern" face! but really they didn't need a lot of telling off. At break time, I taught the girls hop-scotch and as I said to C at home, it is a shame that adults have to grow up. When one has the opportunity to play with kids and play their games, and see things from their perspective, it reminds us adults what we have lost and what an opportunity to regain the fun and joy of life - which had been lacking in my life for so long.
As we left the school today the girls insisted on holding my hands - I had about 5 of them hanging off me as I walked down the rutted, muddy and wet-cow-patted lane; and the boys fought over the privilege of taking our equipment box back to the minibus. I promised them a rota of doing this through the weeks and they were happy with that. A lovely memory of leaving the school each day is the kids running alongside the minibus, waving at us with both hands high in the air and say Bye, ma'am, bye ma'am, bye gerugi (which is the Hindi word for (male) Teacher). Lovely!
Thursday: had to do the washing today. None of this shoving it into a washing machine. I had to lug the hot water from the standpipe, mix it with cold from the tap into the bathroom, and swirl around the Travel Wash gunge. I disappeared in a cloud of bubbles as I misjudged the amount of gunge I needed!! However the clothes were clean :). All had to be handwashed and then hung on the line strung between the huts - it looked like a chinese laundry when all 3 of us around our little quad had done all our washing! However with the sun being so hot, and getting hotter, I could do a wash after breakfast and it was all totally dry and stiff in the sun and wind by lunchtime.
I began the teaching day in a bad mood - something one of the staff had said had really wound me up, but do you know by the time I worked with the kids at school today my mood had lifted the clouds. Michael praised me for being innovative in teaching and we worked together on his maths problems, me illustrating what he was teaching by writing words and images on the board. Oh yes, we worked with dusty white and coloured chalks - non of this white board stuff. No computers either!
Afternoon I called home using the extremely cheap phone line. C answered and it was lovely to hear a familiar voice from home and to hear what was going on. I am so looking forward to seeing C again - even when one is travelling with people and working in a team, one can be lonely and miss the little things from home.
Friday: it was really cold overnight, would you believe, and I had to wrap my costume scarf around me and get into my sleeping bag. However the sun poured through the window - which is really a hole in the mud hut wall, supported with a wire cross and covered with mosquito netting. It warmed up fast today and in the afternoon I had to sit in the shade. Class was a disaster - my own fault as I didn't prepare well enough, but this was enough to make me feel very downhearted and again doubt my own abilities to see this volunteer project through, especially as everyone else had had good days and were crowing over their achievements. I took my MP3 out into the dust fields behind the camp and listened to music to myself. I had to get out of the camp just for a while, but people noticed and were very supportive later.
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Thursday 6th - Saturday 8th March
Orientation days with Idex. We had Hindi lessons at the office which came in very useful at the schools later in the month. We had Indian food at lunchtimes (rice with seeds in, tomato, cucumber and beetroot salads, beans and vegetables in spicy sauces, chappatis or other breads (can't remember the name just now).
On Thursday we were taken to see a Hindi Bollywood movie. Now this was quite interesting as it was all in Hindi, and obviously it was a humourous film as the crowd broke into laughter at regular intervals - but we couldn't understand any of it!! The movie theatre was straight out of the 1970s - swirly carpets, pink shell-shaped decor, plastic flowers, a balcony for men to view/ogle what was going on below, the smell of stale popcorn, and over all the "smell" of India - mustiness, pollution, people, dust, dirt. We all decided to leave at half-time - indeed there was an interval in the film! We headed toward the old city and Jane and I hit the markets - she made good bargaining deals on jewellery and I bought a very nice blue top from the government shop in which I paid a fixed price - I was not in the mood for bargaining!
Friday - an exhilarating but exhausting day. We were picked up early and taken to the Amber Fort, just outside town. On the way there we saw a lot more of the old city - majestic red/pink buildings, shuttered up with red and green-painted shutters, an elephant being driven down the extremely narrow street so that it filled the street. The Fort was majestic on the hills - white/pale stone, gardens below, older red sandstone forts and walls above it climbing up the hills. We walked through the elephant stable yard and I got lovely close-ups pics of their feet, their painted faces, their gentle eyes and flapping ears. We had an elephant ride up to the Fort and it turned into an elephant traffic jam as some were going up and some coming down. We were also sprayed regularly by the ellies as they exhaled!! The sun was very hot and we felt quite regal climbing up to the Fort entrance.
The Fort itself was mind-blowingly beautiful - arched doorways, intricately carved in marble and stone, with inset semi-precious stones. The main gate fascia hasn't been changed in 400 years due to the quality of the original building. Elephant images were everywhere, especially holding up arches and doorways, a glass palace full of mirrors and glass, an inner sanctum for the maharajah and his wives only, secretive passageways which were illuminated only by the flash on my camera. As we walked out of the back gateway a monkey sat on the battlements and flicked water (or something else?!?) down at us.
By the time we finished there the heat was very high and my feet were complaining hugely of too much walking and stress on them. We walked in a group back down to the minibus and had a very welcome lunch and rest back at Idex office.
In the afternoon we went shopping!! Graziella and I shopped together as we were looking for the same kind of things - dresses and silks. We had great fun in one shop as the vendors kept pulling costumes, dresses and shalwars out of plastic bags, and we tried on many of them in a room the size of a kitchen long cupboard!! I bought a pure cotton outfit in bright blue with intricate stitching on it which I wore every day when teaching, and another one which was a heavier material which I didn't wear as it was too hot for me. Graziella's, in the same material, shrank in the wash! I found blue patterned bed covers, and she bought pure silks for her sisters, and I found some blue decorated bangles to match my clothes.
We were wandering along the covered walkway outside a material shop and suddenly a big brown cow just meandered across in front of us!!! with the beautiful sari material one side and the gutter and street on the other! Only in India!
We all convened at 6.30, having been walking round the market for 4.5 hours and we were all happy with our purchases. Chris and Michael had bought real "Indian teacher clothes" - white cotton shirts and trousers, and Chris had had shirts made, which would be delivered this evening. Only in India would you get such good tailoring and customer-oriented service.
Back to the host family and Anju surprised us by bringing out saris and Graziella and I played at dressing up - I bought mine as it is a bridal sari in a deep red, with blue silk fibres and gold edgings, and very beautiful indeed. Bed very late on our very hard bed - it was literally just the metal part of a bed, no mattress, which meant that we were both very stiff and tight in the mornings. The bathroom was small and serviceable but with no hot water, so we had to get used to cold bucket showers - such is life in urban India.
Saturday: up later today, with a tepid bucket shower, and after taking our farewells of Anju and Ritesh with lots of photos, we were taken to the Idex office and then got on the minibus which would take us down to the project camp. The group of 8 of us felt as though we had known each other for years now, and we all agreed that moral and emotional support would be very important to all of us in the following 3 weeks.
Out of Jaipur and back along the tarmac road. However we turned off at Dausa and got our first taste of rural Rajasthan - the conditions in the village were dire - poverty, child destitution, women in terrible manual jobs, dirt and rubbish piled all over , streets not tarmacked, animals roaming everywhere. Lalsot was worse, but our camp was about 10km further on and we were in deepest rural India villages called Sunderpur and Bagadi.
We got to the camp after dark. It was purpose-built to house the volunteers in this area. We were welcomed with a bindi on our foreheads and very sweet chai tea in the recreation room. The buildings were long low mud huts, with straw roofs, a long thin "bathroom" area with a concrete floor, only cold piped water, no hot water unless it is heated when the power came on and it came out of a standpipe. The bed was hardboard tacked onto a metal frame, and I had a full mosquito net over mine. The mattresses were thin palliases, and I pulled two from the spare bed (as I had paid for a single room for this month) onto mine to make a really comfortable bed for the 3 weeks. The walls of my hut were nicely decorated with patterns and images but others had plain walls. The electric power was always intermittent, and we relied on the generator when the government-controlled power went off. Viv and I turned our beds over and over to check for er, bugs, and I saw evidence of mice being in the hut. We both feared that we had done the wrong thing coming here, but this was first night nerves.
After dinner, the brandy and vodka came out and a good time was had by all, and I mean all.
On Sunday we went to Lalsot for the market, but it was such a horrid experience for us all (being tagged by kids, cameras being pulled off shoulders, being pushed and shoved by the kids, digging into my back) that we went back to the camp within an hour. I was also very ill (er, bowel-wise) in the afternoon so felt under the weather, which was very hot and sultry this afternoon. Viv woke me up for dinner and I felt better later.
Monday 10th March: more updates to come. See you soon......
On Thursday we were taken to see a Hindi Bollywood movie. Now this was quite interesting as it was all in Hindi, and obviously it was a humourous film as the crowd broke into laughter at regular intervals - but we couldn't understand any of it!! The movie theatre was straight out of the 1970s - swirly carpets, pink shell-shaped decor, plastic flowers, a balcony for men to view/ogle what was going on below, the smell of stale popcorn, and over all the "smell" of India - mustiness, pollution, people, dust, dirt. We all decided to leave at half-time - indeed there was an interval in the film! We headed toward the old city and Jane and I hit the markets - she made good bargaining deals on jewellery and I bought a very nice blue top from the government shop in which I paid a fixed price - I was not in the mood for bargaining!
Friday - an exhilarating but exhausting day. We were picked up early and taken to the Amber Fort, just outside town. On the way there we saw a lot more of the old city - majestic red/pink buildings, shuttered up with red and green-painted shutters, an elephant being driven down the extremely narrow street so that it filled the street. The Fort was majestic on the hills - white/pale stone, gardens below, older red sandstone forts and walls above it climbing up the hills. We walked through the elephant stable yard and I got lovely close-ups pics of their feet, their painted faces, their gentle eyes and flapping ears. We had an elephant ride up to the Fort and it turned into an elephant traffic jam as some were going up and some coming down. We were also sprayed regularly by the ellies as they exhaled!! The sun was very hot and we felt quite regal climbing up to the Fort entrance.
The Fort itself was mind-blowingly beautiful - arched doorways, intricately carved in marble and stone, with inset semi-precious stones. The main gate fascia hasn't been changed in 400 years due to the quality of the original building. Elephant images were everywhere, especially holding up arches and doorways, a glass palace full of mirrors and glass, an inner sanctum for the maharajah and his wives only, secretive passageways which were illuminated only by the flash on my camera. As we walked out of the back gateway a monkey sat on the battlements and flicked water (or something else?!?) down at us.
By the time we finished there the heat was very high and my feet were complaining hugely of too much walking and stress on them. We walked in a group back down to the minibus and had a very welcome lunch and rest back at Idex office.
In the afternoon we went shopping!! Graziella and I shopped together as we were looking for the same kind of things - dresses and silks. We had great fun in one shop as the vendors kept pulling costumes, dresses and shalwars out of plastic bags, and we tried on many of them in a room the size of a kitchen long cupboard!! I bought a pure cotton outfit in bright blue with intricate stitching on it which I wore every day when teaching, and another one which was a heavier material which I didn't wear as it was too hot for me. Graziella's, in the same material, shrank in the wash! I found blue patterned bed covers, and she bought pure silks for her sisters, and I found some blue decorated bangles to match my clothes.
We were wandering along the covered walkway outside a material shop and suddenly a big brown cow just meandered across in front of us!!! with the beautiful sari material one side and the gutter and street on the other! Only in India!
We all convened at 6.30, having been walking round the market for 4.5 hours and we were all happy with our purchases. Chris and Michael had bought real "Indian teacher clothes" - white cotton shirts and trousers, and Chris had had shirts made, which would be delivered this evening. Only in India would you get such good tailoring and customer-oriented service.
Back to the host family and Anju surprised us by bringing out saris and Graziella and I played at dressing up - I bought mine as it is a bridal sari in a deep red, with blue silk fibres and gold edgings, and very beautiful indeed. Bed very late on our very hard bed - it was literally just the metal part of a bed, no mattress, which meant that we were both very stiff and tight in the mornings. The bathroom was small and serviceable but with no hot water, so we had to get used to cold bucket showers - such is life in urban India.
Saturday: up later today, with a tepid bucket shower, and after taking our farewells of Anju and Ritesh with lots of photos, we were taken to the Idex office and then got on the minibus which would take us down to the project camp. The group of 8 of us felt as though we had known each other for years now, and we all agreed that moral and emotional support would be very important to all of us in the following 3 weeks.
Out of Jaipur and back along the tarmac road. However we turned off at Dausa and got our first taste of rural Rajasthan - the conditions in the village were dire - poverty, child destitution, women in terrible manual jobs, dirt and rubbish piled all over , streets not tarmacked, animals roaming everywhere. Lalsot was worse, but our camp was about 10km further on and we were in deepest rural India villages called Sunderpur and Bagadi.
We got to the camp after dark. It was purpose-built to house the volunteers in this area. We were welcomed with a bindi on our foreheads and very sweet chai tea in the recreation room. The buildings were long low mud huts, with straw roofs, a long thin "bathroom" area with a concrete floor, only cold piped water, no hot water unless it is heated when the power came on and it came out of a standpipe. The bed was hardboard tacked onto a metal frame, and I had a full mosquito net over mine. The mattresses were thin palliases, and I pulled two from the spare bed (as I had paid for a single room for this month) onto mine to make a really comfortable bed for the 3 weeks. The walls of my hut were nicely decorated with patterns and images but others had plain walls. The electric power was always intermittent, and we relied on the generator when the government-controlled power went off. Viv and I turned our beds over and over to check for er, bugs, and I saw evidence of mice being in the hut. We both feared that we had done the wrong thing coming here, but this was first night nerves.
After dinner, the brandy and vodka came out and a good time was had by all, and I mean all.
On Sunday we went to Lalsot for the market, but it was such a horrid experience for us all (being tagged by kids, cameras being pulled off shoulders, being pushed and shoved by the kids, digging into my back) that we went back to the camp within an hour. I was also very ill (er, bowel-wise) in the afternoon so felt under the weather, which was very hot and sultry this afternoon. Viv woke me up for dinner and I felt better later.
Monday 10th March: more updates to come. See you soon......
5th March - Agra to Jaipur
We had to be up really early today as we were going to the Taj Mahal. We piled into tuk tuks, but they were the Rolls Royces of the fleet - gleaming green metal work on the front, cream colored plastic seats with bright red and orange flowers on them. We joined the main road traffic madness, but then turned off into a side street - just outside the main gate of the Taj there was the extreme poverty that we were rapidly getting used to, including animals roaming the streets (hogs, cows, goats, mangy dogs, chickens), open fires rubbish and trash everywhere, knee deep in most places, and over all the dusty brown choking air.
We had to walk the last 200 yards to the Taj and through the sandstone gatehouse it was suddenly calm and peaceful. The buildings outside the Taj main area are sandstone, carved intricately, colonnades, arched doorways, green green grass, monkeys climbing over the ramparts. We were open-mouthed with the beauty of this, but much better was to come. As we turned left towards the Taj, we could see it framed perfectly in the archway of the inner gatehouse. According to the guidebook the gatehouse symbolises the divide between the secular world and paradise, and indeed the Taj looked like it was in paradise, the sun just coming up in the east and tinging the marble a subtle pinkish/blueish colour. The Taj is revealed gradually as you walk through the gateway and the minarets then come into view, completing the picture. My camera went into overdrive - pictures of the perfect symmetry of the building and the gardens in which it is set, the beautiful flower beds, the cypress trees (symbolising death) and the fruit trees (symbolising life). As I walked up towards the Taj itself its true beauty was revealed - the marble glistening, the towers, the domes, and most stunning of all the huge numbers of semi-precious stones carved into exact shapes of flowers, leaves, swirls, etc and embedded into every surface and face of the Taj, symmetrical on every side. Graziella and I went into the tomb itself (shoes off or covered) and we were blown away with the intricacy of the marble carved screen, the Koran all over the walls, and the semi-precious stones covering everything. No pics were allowed in here, but it is just as amazing in the memory. I walked around the back of the Taj and the view across the river was like an oil-painting - completely still and subdued colours, hazy river, the air light-brownish with pollution, the river's tranquillity just broken by a boat being punted along. Stunning!
We got back to breakfast by 9.00 and by 9.45 we were speeding through Agra's streets to get a bus to go to Jaipur. The luggage hold was round the back of the bus - no vacuum was required to clean out the metal box as the dust just fell through the gaps in the floor. Our bags were all stuffed in here, and on the 5-6 hours down to Jaipur got totally covered in dust and Graziella found that dust had made its way into her rucksack and ruined some of her clothes - yeuk! The trip to Jaipur was actually not too bad - it was long, hot and tiring, but it was on a made, tarmac road, albeit being made as it was being driven on!! None of the western "waiting a couple of years for the road to be made", this was being constructed in real-time, the traffic using one side of the road to go both ways, but somehow there were no crashes or narrow-squeaks!
We entered Jaipur through the old city (the usual market stalls, dirt, dust, animals etc), but once up into the "new" Jaipur we found a lovely city - quite my favourite of all the cities I visited in India this trip. Wide open spaces, green parks, colonial buildings kept clean, not so polluted, but enlivened by the market stalls, fruit and veg being sold everywhere, tuk tuks and traffic etc. We were taken to the IDEX office for paperwork completion and our first taste of very sweet chai tea, and then after some time (we were very tired by now) we were dropped off at our host families. Ours were Anju (wife) and Ritesh (husband) with Aryan and Emon (sons). This was our true taste of Indian city life, and we had a delicious evening meal, and played with the kids. We were also joined by Michael from Germany, the 8th and final member of our team, and who was to become an important person in my life for the next 4 weeks.
We had to walk the last 200 yards to the Taj and through the sandstone gatehouse it was suddenly calm and peaceful. The buildings outside the Taj main area are sandstone, carved intricately, colonnades, arched doorways, green green grass, monkeys climbing over the ramparts. We were open-mouthed with the beauty of this, but much better was to come. As we turned left towards the Taj, we could see it framed perfectly in the archway of the inner gatehouse. According to the guidebook the gatehouse symbolises the divide between the secular world and paradise, and indeed the Taj looked like it was in paradise, the sun just coming up in the east and tinging the marble a subtle pinkish/blueish colour. The Taj is revealed gradually as you walk through the gateway and the minarets then come into view, completing the picture. My camera went into overdrive - pictures of the perfect symmetry of the building and the gardens in which it is set, the beautiful flower beds, the cypress trees (symbolising death) and the fruit trees (symbolising life). As I walked up towards the Taj itself its true beauty was revealed - the marble glistening, the towers, the domes, and most stunning of all the huge numbers of semi-precious stones carved into exact shapes of flowers, leaves, swirls, etc and embedded into every surface and face of the Taj, symmetrical on every side. Graziella and I went into the tomb itself (shoes off or covered) and we were blown away with the intricacy of the marble carved screen, the Koran all over the walls, and the semi-precious stones covering everything. No pics were allowed in here, but it is just as amazing in the memory. I walked around the back of the Taj and the view across the river was like an oil-painting - completely still and subdued colours, hazy river, the air light-brownish with pollution, the river's tranquillity just broken by a boat being punted along. Stunning!
We got back to breakfast by 9.00 and by 9.45 we were speeding through Agra's streets to get a bus to go to Jaipur. The luggage hold was round the back of the bus - no vacuum was required to clean out the metal box as the dust just fell through the gaps in the floor. Our bags were all stuffed in here, and on the 5-6 hours down to Jaipur got totally covered in dust and Graziella found that dust had made its way into her rucksack and ruined some of her clothes - yeuk! The trip to Jaipur was actually not too bad - it was long, hot and tiring, but it was on a made, tarmac road, albeit being made as it was being driven on!! None of the western "waiting a couple of years for the road to be made", this was being constructed in real-time, the traffic using one side of the road to go both ways, but somehow there were no crashes or narrow-squeaks!
We entered Jaipur through the old city (the usual market stalls, dirt, dust, animals etc), but once up into the "new" Jaipur we found a lovely city - quite my favourite of all the cities I visited in India this trip. Wide open spaces, green parks, colonial buildings kept clean, not so polluted, but enlivened by the market stalls, fruit and veg being sold everywhere, tuk tuks and traffic etc. We were taken to the IDEX office for paperwork completion and our first taste of very sweet chai tea, and then after some time (we were very tired by now) we were dropped off at our host families. Ours were Anju (wife) and Ritesh (husband) with Aryan and Emon (sons). This was our true taste of Indian city life, and we had a delicious evening meal, and played with the kids. We were also joined by Michael from Germany, the 8th and final member of our team, and who was to become an important person in my life for the next 4 weeks.
4th March - to Agra
At breakfast today I meet Jane and Yvonne who had flown in this morning from Scotland - 2 more members of our India team. Chris from Norway came up, bleary-eyed from his long flight too, and that made 7 - just one more to come later in Jaipur. The others went out to the markets again, but I was still too tired, so spent the morning in my room, away from most of the heat and pollution. When we left in early afternoon I couldn't breathe very well, and I felt like I was suffocating and as if a heavy weight was on my chest. I put that down to the pollution - yeuk!
We took a mad tuk tuk ride with Deepak to the train station, which was also a total melee of people and noise. While waiting for the train I people-watched: porters and traders trundling along with square topped wooden carts, men and women carrying huge loads on their heads, women and kids squatting on the station surrounded by their wordly goods. I got a really good pic of a kid dragging a wicker basket along, who then sat on the filthy stone step and looked into his hands for a long time. He was joined by another little boy and they put their heads together - fab picture, newspaper material!!
We went through some dreadful slums on the way out of Delhi - crumbling grey walls, dust dirt, corrugated tin roofs on shacks, poverty everywhere. The countryside was dusty and brown, but with occasional green areas and quite a few deciduous trees. On the train we heard the "tomato soouup" man, which became a running joke for Jenny and Viv on all train journeys we took subsequently. 4 hours later we got to Agra and the hotel was a traditional Indian one - ever so slightly decayed and "colonial", but clean and serviceable, and I shared with Graziella. Again I couldn't breath properly which was rather distressing.
We took a mad tuk tuk ride with Deepak to the train station, which was also a total melee of people and noise. While waiting for the train I people-watched: porters and traders trundling along with square topped wooden carts, men and women carrying huge loads on their heads, women and kids squatting on the station surrounded by their wordly goods. I got a really good pic of a kid dragging a wicker basket along, who then sat on the filthy stone step and looked into his hands for a long time. He was joined by another little boy and they put their heads together - fab picture, newspaper material!!
We went through some dreadful slums on the way out of Delhi - crumbling grey walls, dust dirt, corrugated tin roofs on shacks, poverty everywhere. The countryside was dusty and brown, but with occasional green areas and quite a few deciduous trees. On the train we heard the "tomato soouup" man, which became a running joke for Jenny and Viv on all train journeys we took subsequently. 4 hours later we got to Agra and the hotel was a traditional Indian one - ever so slightly decayed and "colonial", but clean and serviceable, and I shared with Graziella. Again I couldn't breath properly which was rather distressing.
India week one
Firstly, many apologies to everyone who has been awaiting the update to this blog. It is 3 weeks since I got home, and this is the first time I have been able to get online to TRY and update the blog for India. As it was a 4-week project, I will split these entries into the 4 week periods, so you don't have a lot to read in one go!! Remember, when the blog is published the final week will appear first, so scroll down to read it in order
2nd March:
The flight from Auckland-Sydney-Mumbai-Delhi was SO long. I had to leave the Auckland hotel at 0300 and had to pay NZ$25 departure tax at the airport, which was really annoying. Good thing I still had some currency on me, wasn't it. It was raining horizontal rain in Auckland, which kinda rounded off the NZ trip quite nicely as on the first day in AKL in January it was also raining!
I got to Sydney really tired and I was not impressed by having to walk through the transfer area rather than getting a full wheelchair transfer. My TCS today was really bad today - stiff and tight back, and painful feet, so that didn't put me in a good mood for the 12.5 hour flight to Mumbai. Luckily, for the time between flights (the outward one was delayed by 1 hour) I found a line of seats all together and slept quite a bit and felt a lot better afterwards. On that Sydney-Mumbai flight I got a bulkhead seat so could really stretch out my legs, but I still had terribly painful feet (pins and needles, cramp, numb feet - grrr).
As we flew over Mumbai the atmosphere was grey and polluted - a taste (literally) of things to come. In the airport I saw surly bureaucrats, and little tin-pot officials gesticulating and ordering people around for seemingly no reason. As my case was very delayed coming through, I feared that it had got lost somewhere between the cities and the spectre of having to deal with those officials hung over me. Thankfully it came through and I got transferred to the Jet Airways flight. The transfer "bus" was very dilapidated and it had to stop on the airport ring road as a cargo plane taxi-ed and stopped just feet from the edge of the road. Health and Safety there ain't!! The Jet Airways flight was a couple of hours up to Delhi and I slept all the way.
Delhi airport - NIGHTMARE!!!!!
I was shattered when we got to Delhi but I still had to wait a long time for my case to come through. I had to fend off the bumsters asking "taxi, ma'am, ma'am" and I walked out through the empty (by now) arrivals hall, expecting to see someone from IDEX to meet me. There was no-one there. I had had a dreadful sinking feeling since part-way through NZ that this would happen, due to many administrative failures by my sending company - and it happened. I was stranded at the AP, with a phone number for IDEX that didn't work and totally alone as I was the only person coming in on a domestic flight to Delhi.
The guard in uniform suggested that I take a pre-paid taxi into town, and after a lot of other things going on I eventually got to the Hotel Surya Shelter - and found they didn't have a booking for me. Apparently (as I found out a week later) my hotel booking had been changed by my sending company, and despite me telling them that I was out of email contact from the previous Friday onwards (and being +13 hours to GMT) they emailed me the new hotel name on the Saturday?!?!? when I was in transit from Auckland to the airport and then in the air for approximately 16 hours. How inefficient can you get?!? By this time I was in emotional collapse - I couldn't stop crying for tiredness and frustration, I couldn't understand all the Hindi being gabbled around me, and I didn't know where I was meant to be staying for the night, or indeed whether I would be able to join the project the next day.
Here I must commend the male night receptionist of the Surya Shelter hotel. He was very reassuring and seemed to know the contact for IDEX, and suddenly a guy from IDEX appeared and arranged for me to go to the Hotel Perfect, just round the corner. The receptionist at the Perfect, wasn't! He was a surly bas***ard and wouldn't help much with contacting the rep. I took the decision to sit in the reception area and wait for the girls from the BA257 flight to come in in the morning. I had snatched bits of sleep, but nothing helpful. By this time I had been up about 26 hours and my body was hurting more than it had done for the whole trip, I was physically and emotionally drained and feeling very lost and alone.
At last Deepak, the rep, came in with the 2 girls from the BA flight - Viv and Jenny from England. They were very pleasant and unfortunately listened to my woes, but were reassuring and helpful. We got showed to our rooms, but by this time it was time for breakfast. We went up onto the rooftop terrace and had, er, cornflakes with hot milk!! and toast! The atmosphere was brown with pollution and not nice to breathe but there was nowhere else to go to eat. Graziella from Sydney/Switzerland came over from the Surya Shelter and that was 4 members of our India team.
We decided to go out and explore Delhi. Although I was crying out for sleep I agreed, as it would be the only opportunity to do so before we got on the road to Agra and Jaipur. We were surrounded by hawkers and transport, tuk tuks, bicycles; we passed fruit stalls, and stalls holding all kinds of products. The overall memory I have of this walk is a dust-covered, hazy brownish urban landscape, full of a crush of people, choking haze, no peace to oneself, no personal space, kids tagging and begging. Graziella suggested we go up to Connaught Place by tuk tuk, and once we had found one which didn't rip us off and change his charges as soon as he turned the thing on (!) we joined the melee on the road. It was every man for himself, no lane control, no lights on any vehicle, no direction, tuk tuks shared the road with cars, vans, trucks, people, horse and cart, hand carts, cows, goats, horns blaring. The smaller vehicles banded together to get across roundabouts and intersections, and went hell for leather, not looking to left or right, but just going. In our tuk tuk we went ooh and aah but got to just outside the rotunda of Connaught place in one piece. By this time we were all feeling frayed round the edges and jet-lagged, and the western-style tea place appeared like a mirage!! We entered an air-conditioned place (like Starbucks) and I had Darjeeling Divine, which was like nectar. When we had finished this, I decided that 40 hours of being up was too much and so Viv and I got a tuk tuk back to the hotel. I did fear that we were being taken in the wrong direction but we got there eventually. I staggered up to my room, locked the door and slept for the next 16 hours non-stop. Even when the girls and Deepak knocked at my door I didn't hear them. Only a text from CJ at home woke me up at 8 pm and then I just went straight back to sleep.
Thus finished my first day in India.
2nd March:
The flight from Auckland-Sydney-Mumbai-Delhi was SO long. I had to leave the Auckland hotel at 0300 and had to pay NZ$25 departure tax at the airport, which was really annoying. Good thing I still had some currency on me, wasn't it. It was raining horizontal rain in Auckland, which kinda rounded off the NZ trip quite nicely as on the first day in AKL in January it was also raining!
I got to Sydney really tired and I was not impressed by having to walk through the transfer area rather than getting a full wheelchair transfer. My TCS today was really bad today - stiff and tight back, and painful feet, so that didn't put me in a good mood for the 12.5 hour flight to Mumbai. Luckily, for the time between flights (the outward one was delayed by 1 hour) I found a line of seats all together and slept quite a bit and felt a lot better afterwards. On that Sydney-Mumbai flight I got a bulkhead seat so could really stretch out my legs, but I still had terribly painful feet (pins and needles, cramp, numb feet - grrr).
As we flew over Mumbai the atmosphere was grey and polluted - a taste (literally) of things to come. In the airport I saw surly bureaucrats, and little tin-pot officials gesticulating and ordering people around for seemingly no reason. As my case was very delayed coming through, I feared that it had got lost somewhere between the cities and the spectre of having to deal with those officials hung over me. Thankfully it came through and I got transferred to the Jet Airways flight. The transfer "bus" was very dilapidated and it had to stop on the airport ring road as a cargo plane taxi-ed and stopped just feet from the edge of the road. Health and Safety there ain't!! The Jet Airways flight was a couple of hours up to Delhi and I slept all the way.
Delhi airport - NIGHTMARE!!!!!
I was shattered when we got to Delhi but I still had to wait a long time for my case to come through. I had to fend off the bumsters asking "taxi, ma'am, ma'am" and I walked out through the empty (by now) arrivals hall, expecting to see someone from IDEX to meet me. There was no-one there. I had had a dreadful sinking feeling since part-way through NZ that this would happen, due to many administrative failures by my sending company - and it happened. I was stranded at the AP, with a phone number for IDEX that didn't work and totally alone as I was the only person coming in on a domestic flight to Delhi.
The guard in uniform suggested that I take a pre-paid taxi into town, and after a lot of other things going on I eventually got to the Hotel Surya Shelter - and found they didn't have a booking for me. Apparently (as I found out a week later) my hotel booking had been changed by my sending company, and despite me telling them that I was out of email contact from the previous Friday onwards (and being +13 hours to GMT) they emailed me the new hotel name on the Saturday?!?!? when I was in transit from Auckland to the airport and then in the air for approximately 16 hours. How inefficient can you get?!? By this time I was in emotional collapse - I couldn't stop crying for tiredness and frustration, I couldn't understand all the Hindi being gabbled around me, and I didn't know where I was meant to be staying for the night, or indeed whether I would be able to join the project the next day.
Here I must commend the male night receptionist of the Surya Shelter hotel. He was very reassuring and seemed to know the contact for IDEX, and suddenly a guy from IDEX appeared and arranged for me to go to the Hotel Perfect, just round the corner. The receptionist at the Perfect, wasn't! He was a surly bas***ard and wouldn't help much with contacting the rep. I took the decision to sit in the reception area and wait for the girls from the BA257 flight to come in in the morning. I had snatched bits of sleep, but nothing helpful. By this time I had been up about 26 hours and my body was hurting more than it had done for the whole trip, I was physically and emotionally drained and feeling very lost and alone.
At last Deepak, the rep, came in with the 2 girls from the BA flight - Viv and Jenny from England. They were very pleasant and unfortunately listened to my woes, but were reassuring and helpful. We got showed to our rooms, but by this time it was time for breakfast. We went up onto the rooftop terrace and had, er, cornflakes with hot milk!! and toast! The atmosphere was brown with pollution and not nice to breathe but there was nowhere else to go to eat. Graziella from Sydney/Switzerland came over from the Surya Shelter and that was 4 members of our India team.
We decided to go out and explore Delhi. Although I was crying out for sleep I agreed, as it would be the only opportunity to do so before we got on the road to Agra and Jaipur. We were surrounded by hawkers and transport, tuk tuks, bicycles; we passed fruit stalls, and stalls holding all kinds of products. The overall memory I have of this walk is a dust-covered, hazy brownish urban landscape, full of a crush of people, choking haze, no peace to oneself, no personal space, kids tagging and begging. Graziella suggested we go up to Connaught Place by tuk tuk, and once we had found one which didn't rip us off and change his charges as soon as he turned the thing on (!) we joined the melee on the road. It was every man for himself, no lane control, no lights on any vehicle, no direction, tuk tuks shared the road with cars, vans, trucks, people, horse and cart, hand carts, cows, goats, horns blaring. The smaller vehicles banded together to get across roundabouts and intersections, and went hell for leather, not looking to left or right, but just going. In our tuk tuk we went ooh and aah but got to just outside the rotunda of Connaught place in one piece. By this time we were all feeling frayed round the edges and jet-lagged, and the western-style tea place appeared like a mirage!! We entered an air-conditioned place (like Starbucks) and I had Darjeeling Divine, which was like nectar. When we had finished this, I decided that 40 hours of being up was too much and so Viv and I got a tuk tuk back to the hotel. I did fear that we were being taken in the wrong direction but we got there eventually. I staggered up to my room, locked the door and slept for the next 16 hours non-stop. Even when the girls and Deepak knocked at my door I didn't hear them. Only a text from CJ at home woke me up at 8 pm and then I just went straight back to sleep.
Thus finished my first day in India.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Highlights and lowlights of New Zealand
Kia Ora from Wellington
As I did with the Australia trip, here are some highlights and lowlights of the New Zealand visit;
Highlights:
A Taupo (North Is) expedition - a personal challenge and triumph achieved
2 great Kiwi-Ex drivers, for different reasons - Spud (North Is) and Dave Race (South Is)
Quad biking in the pouring rain(!) in Westport, South Is. HUGE puddles to splash through :)
Kayaking in Abel Tasman NP, South Is, and seeing seals, sting-rays and blue penguins all in one trip
Luge in both Rotorua (North Is) and Queenstown (South Is). Zorbing in Rotorua - crazy idea, like being in a washing machine and getting a shower and hairwash at the same time!
Photographing fungi (inc fly agaric in the woods above QT) and flowers all over NZ
Bathing in hot mineral water springs at the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua
Seeing the bubbling mud and geothermal activity at Wai-o-Tapu, Rotorua
Seeing the Tasman and South Pacific Oceans meet in a V-shape in the Ocean off Cape Reinga
Amazing scenery all over both islands
Getting some perspective on my current and previous life, and future plans brewing
Lowlights:
A period of depression and self-doubt at Franz Josef
Devastatingly acute homesickness and missing special people at home
Pain flare ups - totally unexpected and unprovoked (e.g. not by doing mad activities)
Rain in the places I wanted to see and do things, which cancelled planned activities
Not being able to do the Franz Josef glacier walk due to my deformed feet not able to get into the required footwear (the first time they have stopped me doing an activity)
Overall NZ has not been the wonder (for me, that is) that it is marketed to be. I guess if you had a lot of money and a lot of time, and were young enough to be able to work and stay here for longer than 6 weeks, I would view NZ differently. However, on a limited budget, and with medical issues which banned me from the bungy, the Canyon Swing, the skydiving and the glacier walk, my activities were limited. This is not saying that the kayaking and the Taupo expedition, the Rock 'n' Ropes, and the zorbing (still a totally crazy idea!!) were not fun, but I would have liked to do a lot more. I wish also to be able to walk for the rest of my life - however if I had done the bungy etc above, my spinal cord could have been irreparably damaged, and so I wasn't able to do those things!
Scenery: it was interesting seeing the huge variety of scenery, some of which is found no-where else, but I can't say I was totally blown away by lots of it, like I was in Australia. The scenery around Taupo in the mountains, and that around Milford, were the exceptions.
Travelling: I must be getting old as I would never have thought this when younger. Travelling is very tiring - even when you would think sitting on a coach or ferry all day would be relaxing, it isn't! I am on my knees this evening, and could hardly get off the coach again. The Kiwi Experience is a brilliant idea - a hop on hop off bus, stay as little or as much as you like in places, get accomodation booked for you (at least for the first night) and have access to cut-price activities (www.kiwiexperience.com), BUT the early mornings are a killer, especially over a long period of travel, when you are on the go all the time.
The accomodation is of course at backpacker level (cheap, in other words), but some of the places that Kiwi Ex has deals with (to hold beds for the whole bus e.g.) leave much to be desired. I know of 2 people who picked up bed bugs in Base Backpackers in 2 different cities and I would not have put a dog in the Hot Rocks Base accom in Rotorua. However, there are some really good places around - Treks in Rotorua (www.treks.co.nz) and the Base in Taupo (brand new, only open 2 months) were like 5* places. All the YHAs I have stayed at have been brilliant - especially this one in Wellington which is again 5* rated and it shows.
OK, this is probably my final post from NZ. I hope you have enjoyed reading about it all, and some might have helped plan trips here for you.
I am off to India (Rajasthan) on Sunday. I don't know what the internet access will be up at the teaching project, so will update this when I can. If I can't get on a computer, I will update the whole month's activities in one go when I get back to the UK in the week commencing 31st March
best wishes and Haere Ra (goodbye) to all
As I did with the Australia trip, here are some highlights and lowlights of the New Zealand visit;
Highlights:
A Taupo (North Is) expedition - a personal challenge and triumph achieved
2 great Kiwi-Ex drivers, for different reasons - Spud (North Is) and Dave Race (South Is)
Quad biking in the pouring rain(!) in Westport, South Is. HUGE puddles to splash through :)
Kayaking in Abel Tasman NP, South Is, and seeing seals, sting-rays and blue penguins all in one trip
Luge in both Rotorua (North Is) and Queenstown (South Is). Zorbing in Rotorua - crazy idea, like being in a washing machine and getting a shower and hairwash at the same time!
Photographing fungi (inc fly agaric in the woods above QT) and flowers all over NZ
Bathing in hot mineral water springs at the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua
Seeing the bubbling mud and geothermal activity at Wai-o-Tapu, Rotorua
Seeing the Tasman and South Pacific Oceans meet in a V-shape in the Ocean off Cape Reinga
Amazing scenery all over both islands
Getting some perspective on my current and previous life, and future plans brewing
Lowlights:
A period of depression and self-doubt at Franz Josef
Devastatingly acute homesickness and missing special people at home
Pain flare ups - totally unexpected and unprovoked (e.g. not by doing mad activities)
Rain in the places I wanted to see and do things, which cancelled planned activities
Not being able to do the Franz Josef glacier walk due to my deformed feet not able to get into the required footwear (the first time they have stopped me doing an activity)
Overall NZ has not been the wonder (for me, that is) that it is marketed to be. I guess if you had a lot of money and a lot of time, and were young enough to be able to work and stay here for longer than 6 weeks, I would view NZ differently. However, on a limited budget, and with medical issues which banned me from the bungy, the Canyon Swing, the skydiving and the glacier walk, my activities were limited. This is not saying that the kayaking and the Taupo expedition, the Rock 'n' Ropes, and the zorbing (still a totally crazy idea!!) were not fun, but I would have liked to do a lot more. I wish also to be able to walk for the rest of my life - however if I had done the bungy etc above, my spinal cord could have been irreparably damaged, and so I wasn't able to do those things!
Scenery: it was interesting seeing the huge variety of scenery, some of which is found no-where else, but I can't say I was totally blown away by lots of it, like I was in Australia. The scenery around Taupo in the mountains, and that around Milford, were the exceptions.
Travelling: I must be getting old as I would never have thought this when younger. Travelling is very tiring - even when you would think sitting on a coach or ferry all day would be relaxing, it isn't! I am on my knees this evening, and could hardly get off the coach again. The Kiwi Experience is a brilliant idea - a hop on hop off bus, stay as little or as much as you like in places, get accomodation booked for you (at least for the first night) and have access to cut-price activities (www.kiwiexperience.com), BUT the early mornings are a killer, especially over a long period of travel, when you are on the go all the time.
The accomodation is of course at backpacker level (cheap, in other words), but some of the places that Kiwi Ex has deals with (to hold beds for the whole bus e.g.) leave much to be desired. I know of 2 people who picked up bed bugs in Base Backpackers in 2 different cities and I would not have put a dog in the Hot Rocks Base accom in Rotorua. However, there are some really good places around - Treks in Rotorua (www.treks.co.nz) and the Base in Taupo (brand new, only open 2 months) were like 5* places. All the YHAs I have stayed at have been brilliant - especially this one in Wellington which is again 5* rated and it shows.
OK, this is probably my final post from NZ. I hope you have enjoyed reading about it all, and some might have helped plan trips here for you.
I am off to India (Rajasthan) on Sunday. I don't know what the internet access will be up at the teaching project, so will update this when I can. If I can't get on a computer, I will update the whole month's activities in one go when I get back to the UK in the week commencing 31st March
best wishes and Haere Ra (goodbye) to all
Last couple of weeks in NZ
Hi, back in Wellington, North Island for the final 3 days of NZ. A quick update since Milford and then highlights and lowlights for the next post:
Still on the Bottom Bus I got back to Te Anau and joined the Milford Explorer for the trip to Milford Sound on Friday. Well I thought I had seen big mountains in Queenstown but Milford was BIIIIGGGGG. Absolutely classic glaciated fjordland scenery - with mountains 700m high - that's nearly a kilometre, with sheer sides, some sparse vegetation, mostly bare rocks, mostly snow covered with baby-glaciers hanging off the edges - bright blue ice shining despite the cloudy day. The cruise in the Sound was amazing - Mitre Peak is the classic postcard view and with the cloudy day I got pics of the scenery in muted blues, greys, pastels. I got the postcards to get the "sunny day pics!"
Back to QT - a 4-hour coach journey and I was totally shattered when I got back in. The hostel was full of bright young things, all going out clubbing and all I wanted to do was sleep - makes me feel very old when that happens! Anyhow I had to be ready for the trip on Saturday to Christchurch - 8.5 hours on the coach, but it was worth it when I got there. Had a day to myself, when once again I amused myself in the Botanic Gardens and got some amazing flower pictures. GT you will be interested to see them all, including a swallowtail butterfly sipping nectar from dahlias - beautiful
Kaikoura yesterday: on the east coast and on a beach, and so had full hot sunshine all day, and yes, Nina went on the beach to sunbathe and relax.
Back to Wellington today via the Interislander ferry. I think all this travelling is catching up with me as I feel totally worn out, and will be having a quiet night, I think. Tomorrow I have to do boring stuff like posting stuff home, laundry etc, to prepare for my flight to India on Sunday.
Still on the Bottom Bus I got back to Te Anau and joined the Milford Explorer for the trip to Milford Sound on Friday. Well I thought I had seen big mountains in Queenstown but Milford was BIIIIGGGGG. Absolutely classic glaciated fjordland scenery - with mountains 700m high - that's nearly a kilometre, with sheer sides, some sparse vegetation, mostly bare rocks, mostly snow covered with baby-glaciers hanging off the edges - bright blue ice shining despite the cloudy day. The cruise in the Sound was amazing - Mitre Peak is the classic postcard view and with the cloudy day I got pics of the scenery in muted blues, greys, pastels. I got the postcards to get the "sunny day pics!"
Back to QT - a 4-hour coach journey and I was totally shattered when I got back in. The hostel was full of bright young things, all going out clubbing and all I wanted to do was sleep - makes me feel very old when that happens! Anyhow I had to be ready for the trip on Saturday to Christchurch - 8.5 hours on the coach, but it was worth it when I got there. Had a day to myself, when once again I amused myself in the Botanic Gardens and got some amazing flower pictures. GT you will be interested to see them all, including a swallowtail butterfly sipping nectar from dahlias - beautiful
Kaikoura yesterday: on the east coast and on a beach, and so had full hot sunshine all day, and yes, Nina went on the beach to sunbathe and relax.
Back to Wellington today via the Interislander ferry. I think all this travelling is catching up with me as I feel totally worn out, and will be having a quiet night, I think. Tomorrow I have to do boring stuff like posting stuff home, laundry etc, to prepare for my flight to India on Sunday.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
South Island from Franz Josef to the bottom of NZ
Wednesday 13 to Thursday 21 Feb
This last week has been a mixture of good and bad.
Once we left the beauty of the deserted long beach at Lake Mahinapua, we headed up into the *rainforest* of the West Coast. There is something of a hint there, as we then got torrential, rainforest, monsoon, total downpour (you get the picture) rain for 2.5 days, all the time we were in Franz Josef. I had wanted to do the heli-hike, where the helicopter takes pax way above the top of the glacier, to the pristine blue ice, ice bridges, ice caves, crevasses etc, but 1. the cloud base was too low and so no flights were going up, and 2. (which to me was distressing) I could not fit into the hiking boots with crampons attached to be able to walk on the ice. Once again, my d...ned feet were stopping me doing things. I tried to make up for it the next day by walking as far as I could towards the tongue of the glacier, in a break in the rain for about 1/2 hour, but then the monsoon returned and I squelched back to the hostel ... and cried. The rain was unremitting and non-stop, the tops of the mountains were covered in low cloud, and so Anita, Gill and I (some now-good friends from Edinburgh) sat in cafes and drank tea and ate chips. Such is our experience of the beauty of Franz Josef.
Thursday 14th: Valentines Day. Good for me this year for the first time in my life. Usually I am the one not getting any greeting, but it was different this year :).
Yep still raining. Gill and Anita and I wasted the day. I wrote up my diary and rested, and we all treated ourselves to dinner at the end of the day - bangers and mash for me, and vino.
Friday 15th: still raining!!! Huge blobs and globules of rain, trickling down my neck when I took my case out to the bus, mists and curtains across the valleys and on the mountain tops, huge puddles to ?play? in, and yet it also made the NZ vegetation very "Jurassic Park" if you get my illusion.
HOWEVER, as we drove south, we got clear of the rain/monsoon. We stopped at Lake Matheson and the lake was so still that we got perfect mirror images of Mts Cook and Aoraki in the lake. My pics came out monochrome and very effective - they could be turned upside down and the image would be the same. We also had a good squint at Fox Glacier, which is more accessible than Franz Josef and so I kinda had my fix of glacier scenery.
Hooray the weather cleared to blue skies and puffy clouds. We cruised along the West Coast Highway and the beaches and cliffs were amazing. Lots of waterfalls coming down from the cliff sides, wide river mouths carrying white silt and rock flour into the estuaries, the water emerald green or sapphire blue, especially in the river estuaries. We stopped at Ship Creek, and it was sand-fly city - their bite is very subtle, but very quick and suddenly you are covered with red, maddeningly itchy bites, which take weeks to heal and leave yucky raised scars. Yes, ankles and legs got well and truly attacked and I am still scratching now. The beach here was wonderful, backed by the Southern Alps and soft, large grain sand, the waves were huge and I got some good pics of the surfing rollers falling over themselves and curling inside.
From the coastal area, we moved up into the alpine scenery up the Haast Pass. Deep blue sky, soaring mountain tops, white-capped with recent snow, deep green of the treees and vegetation, , blue-white sparkly rivers, deep rivers from both tectonic movement and glaciation, hanging valleys and waterfalls (more geomorphology lessons for you!). Reached Wanaka and had a good accommodation at the Wanaka Hotel - NOT a backpackers for once, and so had the best night's sleep for ages.
Saturday 16th: first stop today was at Puzzling World. Yeah, kids stuff, said the whole bus, but it took Cuddles (Dave the driver) a winch to get all these adults out of this great place!! There was an illusion room, where it was at an angle of 15degs and so the balance system in the ears goes wonky - I kept toppling over sideways, and then the eyes see the mirrors and the balance goes even more haywire. A sliding-chair seemed to go uphill, as did water, and when trying to stand on an angled-step, my body constantly wanted to fall backwards and not forwards. Really difficult to explain, but the photos do it justice. The "public toilets" were a mural of Roman toilets, and Gill amused herself by apparently sitting on the loo, er, with no trousers on - funny. In the Shrinking Room, we all played at Alice Through the Looking Glass - it was curioser and curioser as we all seemed to be tiny in one corner and giant in another - great fun. Then the whole bus played at the kids puzzles and mind-benders in the cafe, and, as I said, Dave had to drag us all out of there reluctantly! A good, cheap way of having a lot of fun in a small area, without chucking oneself off a bungee or doing shotover river rides in Queenstown.
Sunday 17th: late start today due to a well-needed TLC call from home (thanks for that). The rest of the day I amused myself on the luge (see the Rotorua entry for similar crazy adventures), and then walked up round the Skyline Loop walk, and found some great pics of fungi - fly agaric in all stages of growth and size, and brown capped ones, and yellow-undersided ones. I didn't touch any of them, but the macro-images of the gills of the fly agaric - well I am very proud of those images, as they came out so well.
Monday 18th: Late start again, but that was cos I deliberately overslept. Went to Arrowtown - the gold-rush town, and had an archaeological/historial lesson going round the Chinese settlement, of when they were gold-miners in the area. In the afternoon, I (yet again) exhausted myself by walking up Tobins Track, but the reward of the views at the top were amazing. Couldn't put one foot in front of the other when I got back to the bus, but at least I got up and down OK. Said goodbye to Dave the Driver today - he had been so helpful with carrying my bag in and out of inaccessible accommodations, and for moral support when I was so down last week, and I hope that he had a good trip back up the islands to Auckland. Also received a picture of my little nephew - he is adorable and giggling and cute - and I can't wait to see him in April.
Tuesday: up early today to meet the Bottom Bus. This is a partnership with Kiwi Experience to go right to the bottom of NZ, and into Milford Sound, and I got it as part of my Kiwi Ex ticket. The trip to Dunedin was ok-ish, nothing special. Nice city, full of fresher students, and Hot Sun - amazing
Wednesday 20th: We had a good day today cruising around the coast of Southland and the Catlins. On a deserted beach at Kaka Point, I found lots of shells, saw many seals playing in and out of rock pools, and in the afternoon, at Surat Bay saw sea-lions!! Huge, 6-8 ft tall, whiskered,, lolloping around the beach and flicking sand over themselves, but then when another male came along, one of them reared up and they spat at each other and fought. We got pretty close to them all and loads of good pics. What a privilege to get so close to them in such beautiful scenery. We visited a Petrified Forest, but unfortunately didn't see any yellow-eyed penguins. However I had had my penguin-fix in Abel Tasman, when one was just drifting along in the tide, about 2 ft from the side of my kayak. Wonderful.
Invercargill is right at the bottom of NZ (only Bluff is more south) and it seemed like a place where nothing really happens. I was too exhausted to go out and explore and I was in bed by 9.00. All the stress and distress of this week (not being explained in this blog) has caught up with me, and I was totally shattered. At least the accommodation was decent, with nice beds and so I got a nice nice sleep.
Thursday 21st: visited a paua carving place today and could carve our own pendants. Some of the group had a go at shearing a sheep but I, and many others on the bus, opted to just sit in the sun and drink tea/coffee. Spending the night here at Te Anau - the YHA is great, very comfortable and highly recommended by Lonely Planet - a good choice for me.
That's it for now. Up to Milford Sound tomorrow and then back to Queenstown. Then I start my northward bound journey back to Auckland for my last week in New Zealand. See you soon
This last week has been a mixture of good and bad.
Once we left the beauty of the deserted long beach at Lake Mahinapua, we headed up into the *rainforest* of the West Coast. There is something of a hint there, as we then got torrential, rainforest, monsoon, total downpour (you get the picture) rain for 2.5 days, all the time we were in Franz Josef. I had wanted to do the heli-hike, where the helicopter takes pax way above the top of the glacier, to the pristine blue ice, ice bridges, ice caves, crevasses etc, but 1. the cloud base was too low and so no flights were going up, and 2. (which to me was distressing) I could not fit into the hiking boots with crampons attached to be able to walk on the ice. Once again, my d...ned feet were stopping me doing things. I tried to make up for it the next day by walking as far as I could towards the tongue of the glacier, in a break in the rain for about 1/2 hour, but then the monsoon returned and I squelched back to the hostel ... and cried. The rain was unremitting and non-stop, the tops of the mountains were covered in low cloud, and so Anita, Gill and I (some now-good friends from Edinburgh) sat in cafes and drank tea and ate chips. Such is our experience of the beauty of Franz Josef.
Thursday 14th: Valentines Day. Good for me this year for the first time in my life. Usually I am the one not getting any greeting, but it was different this year :).
Yep still raining. Gill and Anita and I wasted the day. I wrote up my diary and rested, and we all treated ourselves to dinner at the end of the day - bangers and mash for me, and vino.
Friday 15th: still raining!!! Huge blobs and globules of rain, trickling down my neck when I took my case out to the bus, mists and curtains across the valleys and on the mountain tops, huge puddles to ?play? in, and yet it also made the NZ vegetation very "Jurassic Park" if you get my illusion.
HOWEVER, as we drove south, we got clear of the rain/monsoon. We stopped at Lake Matheson and the lake was so still that we got perfect mirror images of Mts Cook and Aoraki in the lake. My pics came out monochrome and very effective - they could be turned upside down and the image would be the same. We also had a good squint at Fox Glacier, which is more accessible than Franz Josef and so I kinda had my fix of glacier scenery.
Hooray the weather cleared to blue skies and puffy clouds. We cruised along the West Coast Highway and the beaches and cliffs were amazing. Lots of waterfalls coming down from the cliff sides, wide river mouths carrying white silt and rock flour into the estuaries, the water emerald green or sapphire blue, especially in the river estuaries. We stopped at Ship Creek, and it was sand-fly city - their bite is very subtle, but very quick and suddenly you are covered with red, maddeningly itchy bites, which take weeks to heal and leave yucky raised scars. Yes, ankles and legs got well and truly attacked and I am still scratching now. The beach here was wonderful, backed by the Southern Alps and soft, large grain sand, the waves were huge and I got some good pics of the surfing rollers falling over themselves and curling inside.
From the coastal area, we moved up into the alpine scenery up the Haast Pass. Deep blue sky, soaring mountain tops, white-capped with recent snow, deep green of the treees and vegetation, , blue-white sparkly rivers, deep rivers from both tectonic movement and glaciation, hanging valleys and waterfalls (more geomorphology lessons for you!). Reached Wanaka and had a good accommodation at the Wanaka Hotel - NOT a backpackers for once, and so had the best night's sleep for ages.
Saturday 16th: first stop today was at Puzzling World. Yeah, kids stuff, said the whole bus, but it took Cuddles (Dave the driver) a winch to get all these adults out of this great place!! There was an illusion room, where it was at an angle of 15degs and so the balance system in the ears goes wonky - I kept toppling over sideways, and then the eyes see the mirrors and the balance goes even more haywire. A sliding-chair seemed to go uphill, as did water, and when trying to stand on an angled-step, my body constantly wanted to fall backwards and not forwards. Really difficult to explain, but the photos do it justice. The "public toilets" were a mural of Roman toilets, and Gill amused herself by apparently sitting on the loo, er, with no trousers on - funny. In the Shrinking Room, we all played at Alice Through the Looking Glass - it was curioser and curioser as we all seemed to be tiny in one corner and giant in another - great fun. Then the whole bus played at the kids puzzles and mind-benders in the cafe, and, as I said, Dave had to drag us all out of there reluctantly! A good, cheap way of having a lot of fun in a small area, without chucking oneself off a bungee or doing shotover river rides in Queenstown.
Sunday 17th: late start today due to a well-needed TLC call from home (thanks for that). The rest of the day I amused myself on the luge (see the Rotorua entry for similar crazy adventures), and then walked up round the Skyline Loop walk, and found some great pics of fungi - fly agaric in all stages of growth and size, and brown capped ones, and yellow-undersided ones. I didn't touch any of them, but the macro-images of the gills of the fly agaric - well I am very proud of those images, as they came out so well.
Monday 18th: Late start again, but that was cos I deliberately overslept. Went to Arrowtown - the gold-rush town, and had an archaeological/historial lesson going round the Chinese settlement, of when they were gold-miners in the area. In the afternoon, I (yet again) exhausted myself by walking up Tobins Track, but the reward of the views at the top were amazing. Couldn't put one foot in front of the other when I got back to the bus, but at least I got up and down OK. Said goodbye to Dave the Driver today - he had been so helpful with carrying my bag in and out of inaccessible accommodations, and for moral support when I was so down last week, and I hope that he had a good trip back up the islands to Auckland. Also received a picture of my little nephew - he is adorable and giggling and cute - and I can't wait to see him in April.
Tuesday: up early today to meet the Bottom Bus. This is a partnership with Kiwi Experience to go right to the bottom of NZ, and into Milford Sound, and I got it as part of my Kiwi Ex ticket. The trip to Dunedin was ok-ish, nothing special. Nice city, full of fresher students, and Hot Sun - amazing
Wednesday 20th: We had a good day today cruising around the coast of Southland and the Catlins. On a deserted beach at Kaka Point, I found lots of shells, saw many seals playing in and out of rock pools, and in the afternoon, at Surat Bay saw sea-lions!! Huge, 6-8 ft tall, whiskered,, lolloping around the beach and flicking sand over themselves, but then when another male came along, one of them reared up and they spat at each other and fought. We got pretty close to them all and loads of good pics. What a privilege to get so close to them in such beautiful scenery. We visited a Petrified Forest, but unfortunately didn't see any yellow-eyed penguins. However I had had my penguin-fix in Abel Tasman, when one was just drifting along in the tide, about 2 ft from the side of my kayak. Wonderful.
Invercargill is right at the bottom of NZ (only Bluff is more south) and it seemed like a place where nothing really happens. I was too exhausted to go out and explore and I was in bed by 9.00. All the stress and distress of this week (not being explained in this blog) has caught up with me, and I was totally shattered. At least the accommodation was decent, with nice beds and so I got a nice nice sleep.
Thursday 21st: visited a paua carving place today and could carve our own pendants. Some of the group had a go at shearing a sheep but I, and many others on the bus, opted to just sit in the sun and drink tea/coffee. Spending the night here at Te Anau - the YHA is great, very comfortable and highly recommended by Lonely Planet - a good choice for me.
That's it for now. Up to Milford Sound tomorrow and then back to Queenstown. Then I start my northward bound journey back to Auckland for my last week in New Zealand. See you soon
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
More crazy stuff
Sunday 3rd Feb
Had a decent lie in today for the first time in weeks, and in the afternoon went on the Rock 'n' Ropes course. It is a high-wire walking course, and with my poor balance and uneven weight distribution on my deformed feet this was a real challenge. However the guide was great - he didn't take no for an answer and encouraged us all to do each wire-walk. I started on the one-foot-wire-two-hand-wires and, held on by my belayer, did very well to get to the end. The single-foot-single-hand-wire was more of a challenge as my left foot didn't want to balance anywhere. The rickety bridge and log crossing were worse as my balance was terrible, but all the time you are held on by your belayer below and I got over these. The final challenge was an upward-facing obstacle course where I had to go through, over and under tyres, logs of wood, wires and obstacle and thankfully, due to my upper body strength with all the swimming I do, I could do this one the best out of all our team. What a great afternoon and a non-stressful inexpensive way to have a great deal of fun.
Monday and Tuesday went to River Valley accommodation. The setting was lovely and peaceful, set in a deep river valley with no mobile reception, but unfortunately the beef roast meal had er, moving protein in it, and so this rather destroyed the experience of being in that place. I booked out as fast as I could and got on the bus to Wellington rather than staying 2 nights.
Had 2 days in Wellington: one was exploring the Botanic Gardens, via the Cable Car, and lots of pics were taken. The rest of the city was my type of town - small, compact, friendly, lots of places to rest and people-watch and yet do a lot of photography in a small space. It was also very clean, a complete contract to Auckland. The YHA was also spotless, and full of the best amenities - highly recommended. After this walking day the pain in my feet and legs was horrendous - I only just made it back to the YHA and couldn't put any weight on my feet at all so on the 2nd day, as it was a clear blue sky day I sunbathed and swam on the town beach, and had a thoroughly lazy day.
Friday 8th: the ferry crossing to South Island on the Interislander was like a Norwegian cruise. The scenery was stunning: flooded river valleys, deep green conifer covered mountain ranges, a scintillating deep blue sea and clear blue sky. Wonderful and a great introduction to South Island. Picton was the landing place but we stayed in Nelson, an industrial town, but with ok-ish accomodation
Saturday: before the rain came in, I did a whole day of kayaking up in the Abel Tasman NP. An aqua taxi took us up to Bark Bay and then we had to kayak 20 km back to Kaiteriteri. I was partnered with a seasoned kayaker from Canada and so it was easy for me, although I certainly did my bit and we raced the other crews across the expanses of water between the bays. On the way we saw seals basking in the sun, cormorants shaking out their wings, a little blue penguin pootling along in the dead-calm sea, and listened to the bell-bird and tui singing in the trees of a deserted island. Only us two in our kayak saw a sting-ray glisten as it crossed the sand-bar, and we floated gently past the Split Apple Rock. My shoulders and back were aching like crazy by the time I had finished, but it was a lovely day and I didn't have to walk anywhere for a long time, which was a great bonus for the huge pain in my feet at present.
Sunday: I had a lie in most of the day. Did boring stuff in the afternoon like finances, laundry, schedules, and then met the new driver, Dave, who is SO good and helpful to an older (and decrepit at the moment) Kiwi-Ex-er
Monday: the rain came down ALL DAY, but I did quad biking in the afternoon and got SO wet right through. It was great fun and again thankfully could use upper body strength rather than walking anywhere.
Tuesday: got to Lake Mahinapua on the West Coast. The accommodation was 200m from the deserted beach. I watched my first NZ sunset over the sea and got some great pics which were nearly as good as at Uluru, but not quite. We had the Poo (Mahinapua) pub party in the evening and the fancy dress theme was the letter P. People came as priests, parcels, plants, Pocahontas, Pink Panther, but with my fondness for bears, I bought a little Pooh Bear and hung him round my neck. Everyone loved that and I am sure someone special I know who is very little and only 3 months old, will love to hold and chew Pooh when I get back.
Wednesday (today): reached Franz Josef and its glaciers. Unfortunately it is still raining and so the scenic flights won't be going up tomorrow. It will be a day of kicking my heels for me, but I may be able to do a short walk or so. Depends on the pain in my feet and everywhere else. ggrrrrr
Also feeling very homesick and missing family and friends. It is hard travelling on your own, even if you do get talking to people on the bus and in the hostels. I feel very far away from home and sometimes wish I could change my itinerary. We'll see, but until and unless I can I will have to contain my sadness and get on with the trek as planned.
Had a decent lie in today for the first time in weeks, and in the afternoon went on the Rock 'n' Ropes course. It is a high-wire walking course, and with my poor balance and uneven weight distribution on my deformed feet this was a real challenge. However the guide was great - he didn't take no for an answer and encouraged us all to do each wire-walk. I started on the one-foot-wire-two-hand-wires and, held on by my belayer, did very well to get to the end. The single-foot-single-hand-wire was more of a challenge as my left foot didn't want to balance anywhere. The rickety bridge and log crossing were worse as my balance was terrible, but all the time you are held on by your belayer below and I got over these. The final challenge was an upward-facing obstacle course where I had to go through, over and under tyres, logs of wood, wires and obstacle and thankfully, due to my upper body strength with all the swimming I do, I could do this one the best out of all our team. What a great afternoon and a non-stressful inexpensive way to have a great deal of fun.
Monday and Tuesday went to River Valley accommodation. The setting was lovely and peaceful, set in a deep river valley with no mobile reception, but unfortunately the beef roast meal had er, moving protein in it, and so this rather destroyed the experience of being in that place. I booked out as fast as I could and got on the bus to Wellington rather than staying 2 nights.
Had 2 days in Wellington: one was exploring the Botanic Gardens, via the Cable Car, and lots of pics were taken. The rest of the city was my type of town - small, compact, friendly, lots of places to rest and people-watch and yet do a lot of photography in a small space. It was also very clean, a complete contract to Auckland. The YHA was also spotless, and full of the best amenities - highly recommended. After this walking day the pain in my feet and legs was horrendous - I only just made it back to the YHA and couldn't put any weight on my feet at all so on the 2nd day, as it was a clear blue sky day I sunbathed and swam on the town beach, and had a thoroughly lazy day.
Friday 8th: the ferry crossing to South Island on the Interislander was like a Norwegian cruise. The scenery was stunning: flooded river valleys, deep green conifer covered mountain ranges, a scintillating deep blue sea and clear blue sky. Wonderful and a great introduction to South Island. Picton was the landing place but we stayed in Nelson, an industrial town, but with ok-ish accomodation
Saturday: before the rain came in, I did a whole day of kayaking up in the Abel Tasman NP. An aqua taxi took us up to Bark Bay and then we had to kayak 20 km back to Kaiteriteri. I was partnered with a seasoned kayaker from Canada and so it was easy for me, although I certainly did my bit and we raced the other crews across the expanses of water between the bays. On the way we saw seals basking in the sun, cormorants shaking out their wings, a little blue penguin pootling along in the dead-calm sea, and listened to the bell-bird and tui singing in the trees of a deserted island. Only us two in our kayak saw a sting-ray glisten as it crossed the sand-bar, and we floated gently past the Split Apple Rock. My shoulders and back were aching like crazy by the time I had finished, but it was a lovely day and I didn't have to walk anywhere for a long time, which was a great bonus for the huge pain in my feet at present.
Sunday: I had a lie in most of the day. Did boring stuff in the afternoon like finances, laundry, schedules, and then met the new driver, Dave, who is SO good and helpful to an older (and decrepit at the moment) Kiwi-Ex-er
Monday: the rain came down ALL DAY, but I did quad biking in the afternoon and got SO wet right through. It was great fun and again thankfully could use upper body strength rather than walking anywhere.
Tuesday: got to Lake Mahinapua on the West Coast. The accommodation was 200m from the deserted beach. I watched my first NZ sunset over the sea and got some great pics which were nearly as good as at Uluru, but not quite. We had the Poo (Mahinapua) pub party in the evening and the fancy dress theme was the letter P. People came as priests, parcels, plants, Pocahontas, Pink Panther, but with my fondness for bears, I bought a little Pooh Bear and hung him round my neck. Everyone loved that and I am sure someone special I know who is very little and only 3 months old, will love to hold and chew Pooh when I get back.
Wednesday (today): reached Franz Josef and its glaciers. Unfortunately it is still raining and so the scenic flights won't be going up tomorrow. It will be a day of kicking my heels for me, but I may be able to do a short walk or so. Depends on the pain in my feet and everywhere else. ggrrrrr
Also feeling very homesick and missing family and friends. It is hard travelling on your own, even if you do get talking to people on the bus and in the hostels. I feel very far away from home and sometimes wish I could change my itinerary. We'll see, but until and unless I can I will have to contain my sadness and get on with the trek as planned.
Sunday, 3 February 2008
2nd week of New Zealand adventures
Hi everyone
Sorry for the lack of updates but I have only just been able to update my own written diary, and not this one. Anyway here goes:
Saturday 26th: left Auckland without a backward glance and went through beautiful mountain scenery towards the Coromandel Peninsula coast - windy, narrow switchbacks of roads, trees, palms, grasses, exposed red rocks, long reaching views of volcani plugs with vertical sides and no vegetation on them. We got to Hot Water Beach where at low tide you can dig a hole in the sand and get the hot thermal waters bubbling up through the sands. Unfortunately the tide was not low enough for us to do this, but I felt the hot water on my feet, before the next wave knocked me over!!
Instead of digging, the whole bus went sunbathing, and I and Zac (from Turkey) and his partner Teresa went swimming in the waves. The rollers were huge and the rip tide pulled and pushed us all over the place, pulling us off our feet and then we had to run up the beach to avoid the next one!. We stayed the night at Turtle Cove Backpackers - almost a homely place to stay and the owners cooked spag bol for the whole bus - yummy. It also made a change for me having to think about, buy and cook food in a variety of different kitchens.
Sunday 27th: up early again (as I questioned before "this is meant to be a holiday?!?!?"). On the road with a new driver to Rotorua, and such is the thermal activity here that we could smell the town before we got to it - sulphur and rotten eggs, yeuk! On the way we had a walk to the Karanagahake Gorge, which for my interest in industrial archaeology, was very interesting. All the old machinery for getting gold processed and out of the hills is still there, including a railway through 1km of tunnels. It was pitch black in there except for my tiny torch's light, and the best pics were with the flash of the camera. The views at the look-out points were lovely with the river running through the deep gorge and the blue sky reflecting in the calmer pools. The vegetation was a mixture of NZ trees ferns, deciduous trees, grasses, water plants - very unusual.
Rotorua: accomodation was dire - dirty, decor stuck in the 60s and not good facilities. However on Tuesday morning I moved over to the Treks Backpackers and it was excellent - so clean and shiny, well kept, efficient check-in, clean and stylish rooms. In the evening we went to a Tamaki Maori evening and saw the traditional Maori welcome (tongues sticking out, eyes rolling, the harsh gutteral "ha") challenging "invaders" to come closer and pick up the peace stick. Our "chief" of the minibus, Rob, went forward to pick it up showing we came in peace and we were allowed into the village, with its learning huts (carving, food-making, fishing, war-making), and then into the cultural meeting house where we were treated to the musical delights of Maori culture as well as hearing their folk tales. Their harmonics and singing are wonderful and they also did a haka (by the men) for us, as well as the women doing a poi dance with the white balls on the end of short ropes. Very colourful. Finally we had a hangi, which is a feast of food cooked in a pit, which was delicious - meat falling off the bones, mussels and shellfish just melting in the mouth, and vegetables done to their best. Yum again!!
Monday 28th: Had a lie in today as I didn't have to get up for the Kiwi Bus or any activities. Spent the morning sorting out trips for the next couple of days and then in the afternoon I went to the Polynesian Spa. I have been promising myself this since I began planning this trip so was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint. The adults only pool side consisted of 4 natural thermal pools with an idyllic look-out over Lake Rotorua, ranging in temperature from 36-42degsC, surrounded with native vegetation and lots of rock-features, knee-deep and with plenty of places to lean forward on the arms and er, go to sleep!! I got up to the 40deg pool but the 42deg one was FAR too hot, esp on my feet. I spent the whole afternoon there which, after 9 weeks on the road, was very welcome and relaxing.
Tuesday 29: before I started today I had to move accommodation, but once that was done I could spend the day being a child again :). Went out to the Agroventures site (as it is called) and my first stop was the Swoop. This is a kinda harness into which I had to step and basically be zipped up the back, attached to a wire on the back and pulled up by the bungee hoist. Be assured, Mr P, that this was NOT a bungee! The hoist pulled me up and yikes the floor was getting further away from me, and then *I* had to pull the rip cord. I did, fell about 20ft and then swung like on a trapeze, backwards and forwards and flew like a bird. At the top the pendulum was larger and so the swing longer, but it was such fun doing it.
Next I did the Extreme Freefall. No, NOT sky diving as I could never throw myself out of a plane, but it was being held up on a column of air from a huge fan, and attempting to stay there while the fan got stronger :). Into the jumpsuit, and then laid flat on the wiring, and the fan started. Well I got an instant face-lift! and then was pushed upwards, arms out like I was in a surrendering position, legs bent back at the knees and I was flying!!! I managed to stay on the air column for the full 4 minutes and then when the fan went down, I fell onto the huge cushions at the side, laughing my head off - enormous fun and probably better than skydiving.
Next ......... the ZORB! For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a crazy Kiwi invention, of 2 enormous-sized (like 12 ft tall on the outside) plastic ping-pong balls held together by long lengths of rope and suckers (trust me on this!) a smaller zorb inside into which a small amount of water is pumped, then the Zorbonauts get inside, the seal is put over the door and basically the Zorb is pushed down the hill (only in New Zealand!!!). Well it felt like being in a washing machine, I didn't know which way was up, I was pushed and pulled around by gravity rolling and rolling down the hill, got faster as I went down, and got absolutely soaked, but couldn't help laughing and giggling all the way. And yes I went back for a 2nd go, and loved it even more. Highly recommended for a stress-buster and also if you need an instant shower and hairwash!!!!!!
Well, it was only lunchtime and I had the whole afternoon to "play" with. I went on the shuttle to the Skyline Rides and Luge track. Had a nice, sensible ride up the side of the hill in the stylish gondola - a cube-shaped cabin attached to wires, and then got to the luge track. A luge is not the metal shaped tea-tray that you see on the Olympic games but something pretty close. It is a small black plastic tray, with chopper-bicycle handles on the front, you pull back to stop and push forward to go, and push off with your feet to start, stick them quickly inside and then steer FAST! The scenic route was compulsory, to get the feel of the luge and it was the longest, so I could get off at intervals and take pics. However on the downslopes, I got up a really good speed, and I went wheeeeeee down them, cornering a bit slower and hairing off again. Yee-haaa!!! I felt like a kid again, playing go-carts and had great fun, laughing so much and almost feeling like Mr Toad, going toot-toot as I passed kids going slower on the run! I had 3 goes on this and the final one was on the intermediate track which was steeper and longer, and yes, my yen for speed was satisfied :)
Wednesday 30th: a quieter day today, and practised my photography at Wai-o-Tapu which is a thermal area, with lots of beautiful volcanic waters, pools, steam, bubbles and mud-pools. In the afternoon I felt very off-colour and so did very little except go for a swim in the open-air chlorinated pool (and discovered I am very unfit!!)
Thursday 31st: on the road again out of Rotorua to Waitomo. Was a long trip so only did an above-cave walk today and got to the YHA early.
Friday 1st Feb (already?!): did an in-the-cave walk today and saw glow-worms and pretty rock formations. The others in the bus did Black Water Rafting - however bearing in mind my claustrophobia for small spaces, I didn't do this. When I saw the course that they had to do, I was SO glad I didn't do this activity.
In the afternoon we drove to Taupo "the activity centre of North Island" according to the blurb. I took a ride on the Huka Falls jet, which is a jet-boat that speeds along the river, cutting in close to the banks, and trees and vegetation and doing 360deg turns on the river, and sending spray everywhere, including on the passengers. We also got close to the Huka Falls, which discharge 2 Olympic sized swimming pools worth of water per second through a chasm, and when the water droplets are reflected in the sky the water turns a bright sapphire blue - very pretty and such awesome power of the water, especially when the boat was only about 20ft from the edge of the fall!
See you soon.
Sorry for the lack of updates but I have only just been able to update my own written diary, and not this one. Anyway here goes:
Saturday 26th: left Auckland without a backward glance and went through beautiful mountain scenery towards the Coromandel Peninsula coast - windy, narrow switchbacks of roads, trees, palms, grasses, exposed red rocks, long reaching views of volcani plugs with vertical sides and no vegetation on them. We got to Hot Water Beach where at low tide you can dig a hole in the sand and get the hot thermal waters bubbling up through the sands. Unfortunately the tide was not low enough for us to do this, but I felt the hot water on my feet, before the next wave knocked me over!!
Instead of digging, the whole bus went sunbathing, and I and Zac (from Turkey) and his partner Teresa went swimming in the waves. The rollers were huge and the rip tide pulled and pushed us all over the place, pulling us off our feet and then we had to run up the beach to avoid the next one!. We stayed the night at Turtle Cove Backpackers - almost a homely place to stay and the owners cooked spag bol for the whole bus - yummy. It also made a change for me having to think about, buy and cook food in a variety of different kitchens.
Sunday 27th: up early again (as I questioned before "this is meant to be a holiday?!?!?"). On the road with a new driver to Rotorua, and such is the thermal activity here that we could smell the town before we got to it - sulphur and rotten eggs, yeuk! On the way we had a walk to the Karanagahake Gorge, which for my interest in industrial archaeology, was very interesting. All the old machinery for getting gold processed and out of the hills is still there, including a railway through 1km of tunnels. It was pitch black in there except for my tiny torch's light, and the best pics were with the flash of the camera. The views at the look-out points were lovely with the river running through the deep gorge and the blue sky reflecting in the calmer pools. The vegetation was a mixture of NZ trees ferns, deciduous trees, grasses, water plants - very unusual.
Rotorua: accomodation was dire - dirty, decor stuck in the 60s and not good facilities. However on Tuesday morning I moved over to the Treks Backpackers and it was excellent - so clean and shiny, well kept, efficient check-in, clean and stylish rooms. In the evening we went to a Tamaki Maori evening and saw the traditional Maori welcome (tongues sticking out, eyes rolling, the harsh gutteral "ha") challenging "invaders" to come closer and pick up the peace stick. Our "chief" of the minibus, Rob, went forward to pick it up showing we came in peace and we were allowed into the village, with its learning huts (carving, food-making, fishing, war-making), and then into the cultural meeting house where we were treated to the musical delights of Maori culture as well as hearing their folk tales. Their harmonics and singing are wonderful and they also did a haka (by the men) for us, as well as the women doing a poi dance with the white balls on the end of short ropes. Very colourful. Finally we had a hangi, which is a feast of food cooked in a pit, which was delicious - meat falling off the bones, mussels and shellfish just melting in the mouth, and vegetables done to their best. Yum again!!
Monday 28th: Had a lie in today as I didn't have to get up for the Kiwi Bus or any activities. Spent the morning sorting out trips for the next couple of days and then in the afternoon I went to the Polynesian Spa. I have been promising myself this since I began planning this trip so was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint. The adults only pool side consisted of 4 natural thermal pools with an idyllic look-out over Lake Rotorua, ranging in temperature from 36-42degsC, surrounded with native vegetation and lots of rock-features, knee-deep and with plenty of places to lean forward on the arms and er, go to sleep!! I got up to the 40deg pool but the 42deg one was FAR too hot, esp on my feet. I spent the whole afternoon there which, after 9 weeks on the road, was very welcome and relaxing.
Tuesday 29: before I started today I had to move accommodation, but once that was done I could spend the day being a child again :). Went out to the Agroventures site (as it is called) and my first stop was the Swoop. This is a kinda harness into which I had to step and basically be zipped up the back, attached to a wire on the back and pulled up by the bungee hoist. Be assured, Mr P, that this was NOT a bungee! The hoist pulled me up and yikes the floor was getting further away from me, and then *I* had to pull the rip cord. I did, fell about 20ft and then swung like on a trapeze, backwards and forwards and flew like a bird. At the top the pendulum was larger and so the swing longer, but it was such fun doing it.
Next I did the Extreme Freefall. No, NOT sky diving as I could never throw myself out of a plane, but it was being held up on a column of air from a huge fan, and attempting to stay there while the fan got stronger :). Into the jumpsuit, and then laid flat on the wiring, and the fan started. Well I got an instant face-lift! and then was pushed upwards, arms out like I was in a surrendering position, legs bent back at the knees and I was flying!!! I managed to stay on the air column for the full 4 minutes and then when the fan went down, I fell onto the huge cushions at the side, laughing my head off - enormous fun and probably better than skydiving.
Next ......... the ZORB! For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a crazy Kiwi invention, of 2 enormous-sized (like 12 ft tall on the outside) plastic ping-pong balls held together by long lengths of rope and suckers (trust me on this!) a smaller zorb inside into which a small amount of water is pumped, then the Zorbonauts get inside, the seal is put over the door and basically the Zorb is pushed down the hill (only in New Zealand!!!). Well it felt like being in a washing machine, I didn't know which way was up, I was pushed and pulled around by gravity rolling and rolling down the hill, got faster as I went down, and got absolutely soaked, but couldn't help laughing and giggling all the way. And yes I went back for a 2nd go, and loved it even more. Highly recommended for a stress-buster and also if you need an instant shower and hairwash!!!!!!
Well, it was only lunchtime and I had the whole afternoon to "play" with. I went on the shuttle to the Skyline Rides and Luge track. Had a nice, sensible ride up the side of the hill in the stylish gondola - a cube-shaped cabin attached to wires, and then got to the luge track. A luge is not the metal shaped tea-tray that you see on the Olympic games but something pretty close. It is a small black plastic tray, with chopper-bicycle handles on the front, you pull back to stop and push forward to go, and push off with your feet to start, stick them quickly inside and then steer FAST! The scenic route was compulsory, to get the feel of the luge and it was the longest, so I could get off at intervals and take pics. However on the downslopes, I got up a really good speed, and I went wheeeeeee down them, cornering a bit slower and hairing off again. Yee-haaa!!! I felt like a kid again, playing go-carts and had great fun, laughing so much and almost feeling like Mr Toad, going toot-toot as I passed kids going slower on the run! I had 3 goes on this and the final one was on the intermediate track which was steeper and longer, and yes, my yen for speed was satisfied :)
Wednesday 30th: a quieter day today, and practised my photography at Wai-o-Tapu which is a thermal area, with lots of beautiful volcanic waters, pools, steam, bubbles and mud-pools. In the afternoon I felt very off-colour and so did very little except go for a swim in the open-air chlorinated pool (and discovered I am very unfit!!)
Thursday 31st: on the road again out of Rotorua to Waitomo. Was a long trip so only did an above-cave walk today and got to the YHA early.
Friday 1st Feb (already?!): did an in-the-cave walk today and saw glow-worms and pretty rock formations. The others in the bus did Black Water Rafting - however bearing in mind my claustrophobia for small spaces, I didn't do this. When I saw the course that they had to do, I was SO glad I didn't do this activity.
In the afternoon we drove to Taupo "the activity centre of North Island" according to the blurb. I took a ride on the Huka Falls jet, which is a jet-boat that speeds along the river, cutting in close to the banks, and trees and vegetation and doing 360deg turns on the river, and sending spray everywhere, including on the passengers. We also got close to the Huka Falls, which discharge 2 Olympic sized swimming pools worth of water per second through a chasm, and when the water droplets are reflected in the sky the water turns a bright sapphire blue - very pretty and such awesome power of the water, especially when the boat was only about 20ft from the edge of the fall!
See you soon.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Kia Ora from New Zealand
Kia ora everyone, from across the Tasman Sea. Yes I am in New Zealand now at the start of 6 weeks of (hopefully) mad and exciting things - such as ..... well, you will just have to wait and see :)
OK, this week I have been right to the top of the country, right up to Cape Reinga (pron. Ray-angger). The Kiwi Ex bus went up to Paihia (pron. pie-hear) and it is a tourist town with not a lot in the town, but is 2km from the place where the Waitangi agreement was signed between the English and Maori (pron. marlee) people. The Base Hostel was not exactly a bundle of laughs in terms of comfort, and was full of UK teenagers whose sole aim was to get off their head with drink until about 3am, but anyway, that is life on the road on a budget.
Anyway, I wasn't there for the hostel! On Thursday I had to be up at 6.00 (yet another early morning start), and thankfully the rain and mist of the day before (just like the UK in the winter) had gone away to bring a lovely sunny and blue-sky day. The Kiwi Ex partners, Awesome Adventures, collected us. The driver seemed to have springs for legs as he bounded everywhere! We drove for about 4 hours up SH1 (State Highway 1) which runs right from the Cape in the north to Bluff (by Invercargill) in the south (about 2000kms!). Eventually we got to Cape Reinga and had about 1km walk to the Cape. The walk was worth it - it is beautiful. Very high cliffs, headlands off to the left, in the Tasman Sea, with interconnecting deserted golden beaches and lines of surf rippling in ribbons onto the long shallow beach, and to the right in the South Pacific Ocean, just miles of cliffs and beaches.
BUT the most fascinating thing was actually seeing the 2 oceans meet. From the left the Tasman Sea came in from left to right, and at the "junction" in the ocean, the South Pacific waves broke from right to left - yes you could actually see that in the white tops of the waves breaking. It is hard to explain in words, but it was as if there was a huge dip in the sea and the oceans collided and went down the dip, taking the white tops as they went. Quite amazing.
What I thought was interesting is that no food or drink is allowed on the Cape. It is regarded as the most sacred site for Maori people, where their spirits go after death and so the site is kept as pristine as possible. It also means (in practical terms) that you don't get tourists dropping all their litter somewhere, and for a site with so much human traffic every day, that has to be a good thing.
Well we left there, sun still shining, and went down the Te Paki stream, literally driving down a shallow river ... to the SAND DUNES for proper sandboarding. Yes this time we had body boards, and the dunes were about 100m high - very hard on the unfit legs to climb up. We had to lie face down on the board, grip with wrists and elbows, and push off down a slope of about 80degrees! The highest speed on the slope has been clocked at about 75kmph, but I didn't get that fast. Feet are used as a brake and steering and on my second go (yes I trudged up that slope twice) I misjudged the steering and got a complete faceful of sand - eyes, ears, mouth, hair, down my top front and back, in my underwear (AGAIN!). However it was great fun and felt a lot safer than the one in WA, in that I could control the steering this time! One guy went so fast he ended up in the stream at the bottom and got a dunking!
And finally for the day, we drove along Ninety Mile Beach (well about 65 miles actually). It was low tide and so we got all the way along, at about 70kmph and bouncing around the sand-ripples and into the small streams coming down from the land-side. Great fun and such a wonderful stretch of sand.
Back to Auckland today, where the sun has come out again, after more rain in Paihia.
Starting my journey south tomorrow, first top Whitianga/Mercury Bay and the Hot Water Beach.
Kia Ora for now
OK, this week I have been right to the top of the country, right up to Cape Reinga (pron. Ray-angger). The Kiwi Ex bus went up to Paihia (pron. pie-hear) and it is a tourist town with not a lot in the town, but is 2km from the place where the Waitangi agreement was signed between the English and Maori (pron. marlee) people. The Base Hostel was not exactly a bundle of laughs in terms of comfort, and was full of UK teenagers whose sole aim was to get off their head with drink until about 3am, but anyway, that is life on the road on a budget.
Anyway, I wasn't there for the hostel! On Thursday I had to be up at 6.00 (yet another early morning start), and thankfully the rain and mist of the day before (just like the UK in the winter) had gone away to bring a lovely sunny and blue-sky day. The Kiwi Ex partners, Awesome Adventures, collected us. The driver seemed to have springs for legs as he bounded everywhere! We drove for about 4 hours up SH1 (State Highway 1) which runs right from the Cape in the north to Bluff (by Invercargill) in the south (about 2000kms!). Eventually we got to Cape Reinga and had about 1km walk to the Cape. The walk was worth it - it is beautiful. Very high cliffs, headlands off to the left, in the Tasman Sea, with interconnecting deserted golden beaches and lines of surf rippling in ribbons onto the long shallow beach, and to the right in the South Pacific Ocean, just miles of cliffs and beaches.
BUT the most fascinating thing was actually seeing the 2 oceans meet. From the left the Tasman Sea came in from left to right, and at the "junction" in the ocean, the South Pacific waves broke from right to left - yes you could actually see that in the white tops of the waves breaking. It is hard to explain in words, but it was as if there was a huge dip in the sea and the oceans collided and went down the dip, taking the white tops as they went. Quite amazing.
What I thought was interesting is that no food or drink is allowed on the Cape. It is regarded as the most sacred site for Maori people, where their spirits go after death and so the site is kept as pristine as possible. It also means (in practical terms) that you don't get tourists dropping all their litter somewhere, and for a site with so much human traffic every day, that has to be a good thing.
Well we left there, sun still shining, and went down the Te Paki stream, literally driving down a shallow river ... to the SAND DUNES for proper sandboarding. Yes this time we had body boards, and the dunes were about 100m high - very hard on the unfit legs to climb up. We had to lie face down on the board, grip with wrists and elbows, and push off down a slope of about 80degrees! The highest speed on the slope has been clocked at about 75kmph, but I didn't get that fast. Feet are used as a brake and steering and on my second go (yes I trudged up that slope twice) I misjudged the steering and got a complete faceful of sand - eyes, ears, mouth, hair, down my top front and back, in my underwear (AGAIN!). However it was great fun and felt a lot safer than the one in WA, in that I could control the steering this time! One guy went so fast he ended up in the stream at the bottom and got a dunking!
And finally for the day, we drove along Ninety Mile Beach (well about 65 miles actually). It was low tide and so we got all the way along, at about 70kmph and bouncing around the sand-ripples and into the small streams coming down from the land-side. Great fun and such a wonderful stretch of sand.
Back to Auckland today, where the sun has come out again, after more rain in Paihia.
Starting my journey south tomorrow, first top Whitianga/Mercury Bay and the Hot Water Beach.
Kia Ora for now
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Trip to the red Centre - update as promised
OK I know I am going back to Oz for this entry, but I did promise you an update of my visit to the Red Centre, so here goes:
On getting into Alice Springs AP, we didn't have an aerobridge and so we had to walk down the steps from the plane, into the heat that felt like it was coming out of a fan oven! Even the wind was hot. The AP was very modern and had AC but I could imagine what it was like as an airstrip with old wooden buildings and the town a patch on the vast landscape - I call it the land without end.
I always had the impression Alice was on a dead flat plain, but in fact it is sheltered from the south by the McDonnell Ranges - red/orange rocks, tilted almost upright by geologic forces. By mid afternoon the thermometer in the pool area of the YHA was showing ... 48degrees C!!! and even at 9pm it was only down to a balmy 36degs. In the "cool" of the evening I went up to Anzac Hill which gave good views of the surrounding areas, grid plan town, modern buildings against the hills. It only exists due to the need to get a telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin, respectively 1502km and 1550km north and south of the town!
Wednesday 16th: I had to get up at 0500 today to be collected the The Rock Tour. It is not just a walk in the park to get to Uluru et al - it is 441km southwest of town. On the way we saw lizards and snakes on the roads, and a huge wedge-tailed eagle rose up in front of us, no doubt looking for dinner. Its wingspan is at least 2m (6ft 6"). We got to Kings Canyon and the heat there in the shade was 43degs. We walked along an exposed path to the "river valley" - dry of course but the river runs underground, evidence of which is the mulga and eucalyptus trees as well as unusual grasses and feathery, purple-tipped fluffy flowers. The rocks smelt metallic, and as if we were being cooked by them as we walked in the ever-narrowing canyon. At last we got to the head of the valley and could see the layers of sandstone, and the vertical drop in the rock ahead which created the "canyon". As we turned away we saw a cycad, which strictly speaking should not be there as the environment is not right for it, but it survives by using water effectively and has done since the age of the dinosaurs.
After a touch of heat-stroke on my part I decided to walk back to the van and rest in the shade. Not good.... but I recovered after getting lots of water inside me
On the way back to the camp area for the night, our guide had a treat for us. In the cattle station there was a genuine, fully-chlorinated pool and we could get in!!! We couldn't move fast enough as the heat of the day and all that walking had been a little too much. Oh the relief of getting into a cool pool and messing around - loverly!
We had a long drive to Yulara now. The landscape varied between widely spaced trees, low bushes and green/yellow grasses to semi-arid desert land with scrubby plants against the deep red and/or ochre coloured rock and in some places huge red sand dunes, held together by spinifex and hardy tree roots.
The guide suddenly stopped driving the in middle of NOWHERE to advise us that as we would be camping in the bush and cooking on a bush fire we would need firewood, which we needed to collect. Not just piddly little branches, but whole LIMBS of trees, which he and the guys yanked across the sand, branches and twigs twanging off into the sand! This was all loaded onto the top of the trailer and we set off for the bush camp, again in the middle of nowhere.
The camp: the swags were unloaded and put in a circle, the fire was made in the middle and we had chilli and rice and veg, all cooked over the fire wood. Outside the light of the fire, the bush was dark, and moon rose and the stars came out. Swags were unrolled and thrown down directly onto the earth.
As the moon went down overnight, the true beauty of the stars came out - the Milky Way was as clear as a ribbon across the sky and Orion (upside down to us northerners) and the Southern Cross complemented each other. I could see the Magellanic cloud of galaxies and other masses of stars within the Milky Way, and I stayed awake most of the night to admire what we in the cities and light-polluted UK miss so much. However it wasn't totally pitch black overnight as the starshine was so bright and I could also see mars, Betelgeuse and Sirius.
Thursday: up early again to go to Kata Tjuta - 36 domes, translated as "many-headed" in the Ananga langauge. The valley sides were vertical and we walked 2.2 km to get to the Karinanga viewpoint which gave views over the rest of the domes - it looked like a "promised land" - plain of green trees, light colored rock, domes in the distance. The Kata Tjutas are made of conglomerate rock, which means that close up they have red, blue, orange, yellows in the rocks, in a patchwork quilt type of formation, due to earthquake and volcanic compression forces. In the evening, after another swim we walked round the base of Uluru, and got insights from the guide into the significance of the caves, the paintings, the sacred spaces and places within Uluru. I also got close up pics of the sandstone and its now vertical layers - did you know that at least 2/3rds of Uluru is still buried under the ground - now that it is a BIIIIIGGGGG rock!!!
Sunset: the sun seemed to race down the sky, getting lower behind us and the colours on the rock changed with every second, from bright orange to reds, oranges, golds, browns as the sun sank lower. The fissures in the sides deepened into shadows and the colours of the trees darkened and they went into silhouette. The sky behind the rock (i.e. in the east) went a deeper blue,, shades of violet, and the sky to the west went a brighter yellow as the sun went down to see you in the UK. The beauty and the majesty of the place was wonderful and can't really be captured in words, but I hope the pics I took do, and can be shown later.
Friday: up at 0430 and watched the sunrise. Long trip back to Alice and Saturday took the flight back to Adelaide.
The decision to go to Alice etc was one of the best I have made on this trip. It shows that spontaneity and travelling alone has its advantages and wonderful outcomes.
OK, I am in Auckland now, and will be OTR again tomorrow up to the north of the North Island, Paihia and Cape Reinga. See you soon
On getting into Alice Springs AP, we didn't have an aerobridge and so we had to walk down the steps from the plane, into the heat that felt like it was coming out of a fan oven! Even the wind was hot. The AP was very modern and had AC but I could imagine what it was like as an airstrip with old wooden buildings and the town a patch on the vast landscape - I call it the land without end.
I always had the impression Alice was on a dead flat plain, but in fact it is sheltered from the south by the McDonnell Ranges - red/orange rocks, tilted almost upright by geologic forces. By mid afternoon the thermometer in the pool area of the YHA was showing ... 48degrees C!!! and even at 9pm it was only down to a balmy 36degs. In the "cool" of the evening I went up to Anzac Hill which gave good views of the surrounding areas, grid plan town, modern buildings against the hills. It only exists due to the need to get a telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin, respectively 1502km and 1550km north and south of the town!
Wednesday 16th: I had to get up at 0500 today to be collected the The Rock Tour. It is not just a walk in the park to get to Uluru et al - it is 441km southwest of town. On the way we saw lizards and snakes on the roads, and a huge wedge-tailed eagle rose up in front of us, no doubt looking for dinner. Its wingspan is at least 2m (6ft 6"). We got to Kings Canyon and the heat there in the shade was 43degs. We walked along an exposed path to the "river valley" - dry of course but the river runs underground, evidence of which is the mulga and eucalyptus trees as well as unusual grasses and feathery, purple-tipped fluffy flowers. The rocks smelt metallic, and as if we were being cooked by them as we walked in the ever-narrowing canyon. At last we got to the head of the valley and could see the layers of sandstone, and the vertical drop in the rock ahead which created the "canyon". As we turned away we saw a cycad, which strictly speaking should not be there as the environment is not right for it, but it survives by using water effectively and has done since the age of the dinosaurs.
After a touch of heat-stroke on my part I decided to walk back to the van and rest in the shade. Not good.... but I recovered after getting lots of water inside me
On the way back to the camp area for the night, our guide had a treat for us. In the cattle station there was a genuine, fully-chlorinated pool and we could get in!!! We couldn't move fast enough as the heat of the day and all that walking had been a little too much. Oh the relief of getting into a cool pool and messing around - loverly!
We had a long drive to Yulara now. The landscape varied between widely spaced trees, low bushes and green/yellow grasses to semi-arid desert land with scrubby plants against the deep red and/or ochre coloured rock and in some places huge red sand dunes, held together by spinifex and hardy tree roots.
The guide suddenly stopped driving the in middle of NOWHERE to advise us that as we would be camping in the bush and cooking on a bush fire we would need firewood, which we needed to collect. Not just piddly little branches, but whole LIMBS of trees, which he and the guys yanked across the sand, branches and twigs twanging off into the sand! This was all loaded onto the top of the trailer and we set off for the bush camp, again in the middle of nowhere.
The camp: the swags were unloaded and put in a circle, the fire was made in the middle and we had chilli and rice and veg, all cooked over the fire wood. Outside the light of the fire, the bush was dark, and moon rose and the stars came out. Swags were unrolled and thrown down directly onto the earth.
As the moon went down overnight, the true beauty of the stars came out - the Milky Way was as clear as a ribbon across the sky and Orion (upside down to us northerners) and the Southern Cross complemented each other. I could see the Magellanic cloud of galaxies and other masses of stars within the Milky Way, and I stayed awake most of the night to admire what we in the cities and light-polluted UK miss so much. However it wasn't totally pitch black overnight as the starshine was so bright and I could also see mars, Betelgeuse and Sirius.
Thursday: up early again to go to Kata Tjuta - 36 domes, translated as "many-headed" in the Ananga langauge. The valley sides were vertical and we walked 2.2 km to get to the Karinanga viewpoint which gave views over the rest of the domes - it looked like a "promised land" - plain of green trees, light colored rock, domes in the distance. The Kata Tjutas are made of conglomerate rock, which means that close up they have red, blue, orange, yellows in the rocks, in a patchwork quilt type of formation, due to earthquake and volcanic compression forces. In the evening, after another swim we walked round the base of Uluru, and got insights from the guide into the significance of the caves, the paintings, the sacred spaces and places within Uluru. I also got close up pics of the sandstone and its now vertical layers - did you know that at least 2/3rds of Uluru is still buried under the ground - now that it is a BIIIIIGGGGG rock!!!
Sunset: the sun seemed to race down the sky, getting lower behind us and the colours on the rock changed with every second, from bright orange to reds, oranges, golds, browns as the sun sank lower. The fissures in the sides deepened into shadows and the colours of the trees darkened and they went into silhouette. The sky behind the rock (i.e. in the east) went a deeper blue,, shades of violet, and the sky to the west went a brighter yellow as the sun went down to see you in the UK. The beauty and the majesty of the place was wonderful and can't really be captured in words, but I hope the pics I took do, and can be shown later.
Friday: up at 0430 and watched the sunrise. Long trip back to Alice and Saturday took the flight back to Adelaide.
The decision to go to Alice etc was one of the best I have made on this trip. It shows that spontaneity and travelling alone has its advantages and wonderful outcomes.
OK, I am in Auckland now, and will be OTR again tomorrow up to the north of the North Island, Paihia and Cape Reinga. See you soon
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Bye Bye Australia
Well it is the end of my last day in Australia. Highlights and lowlights include:
Highlights:
Becoming an Auntie :) - on the day I arrived in Perth :(. Baby and sister doing very well
Keeping in touch with family and special friends by text, email and, best of all, by phone at Xmas and New Year
Sunbathing alone (and top..ss) and playing in the waves of the Southern Ocean on the 3 mile long D'Entrecasteaux beach in WA
Swimming with no fewer than 3 manta rays at Coral Bay, WA, and then snorkelling over the coral Ningaloo Reef the same day; drift snorkelling at Turquoise Bay the next day
Taking a natural mineral water spa under the stars near Monkey Mia on the Western Exposure WA trip
Meeting and getting to know cousins and relations I haven't seen since 1970 when they came out as 10 pound poms to Perth
Coogee Beach, Sydney, watching the huge rollers created by the tropical cyclone up north coming in from the southern Pacific
Manly Beach: walking above the bay, texting home, and photographing flora and fauna
New Year's Eve in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, watching the awesome fireworks
Creative photography in Sydney, especially of the Opera House and Bridge, and The Rocks area, as well as many plants and flowers in the Botanic Gardens at sunset
Adelaide: seeing my first koala, about 3 ft away from me, and then making acquaintance with many of his 'cousins' in the trees of the Wildlife sanctuary.
Seeing many platypus on nocturnal walks
Sunbathing on Glenelg beach, with a surprising outcome
Making the snap decision to go to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon and having the best 5 days since New Year.
Sunset AND sunrise at Uluru this week
Sleeping in a swag under the stars and moonlight in the bush camp in the Red Centre
Lowlights:
Rain, rain, rain in Sydney for the first 5 days I was there :(
Missing out so much scenery in WA as I didn't do my research properly!!
The Wildlife sanctuary not quite turning out as expected, but that has its advantages too (went to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon via Alice Springs instead!)
Saying goodbye to a friend in Adelaide
Accomodation in order of quality
Aunt's house in Perth!
Swag in the desert
Adelaide YHA
Sydney YWCA, Hyde Park
Augusta YHA
Albany YHA
Coral Bay YHA
Pemberton YHA - do not even mention that dump
OK, that's it. I hope you have enjoyed reading my Australia posts.
Tomorrow I go to New Zealand for 6 weeks, on the road with Kiwi Experience. For my route see www.kiwiexperience.com and find the ticket named "The Whole Kit and Kaboodle", starting in Auckland
G'Day and see you soon
Highlights:
Becoming an Auntie :) - on the day I arrived in Perth :(. Baby and sister doing very well
Keeping in touch with family and special friends by text, email and, best of all, by phone at Xmas and New Year
Sunbathing alone (and top..ss) and playing in the waves of the Southern Ocean on the 3 mile long D'Entrecasteaux beach in WA
Swimming with no fewer than 3 manta rays at Coral Bay, WA, and then snorkelling over the coral Ningaloo Reef the same day; drift snorkelling at Turquoise Bay the next day
Taking a natural mineral water spa under the stars near Monkey Mia on the Western Exposure WA trip
Meeting and getting to know cousins and relations I haven't seen since 1970 when they came out as 10 pound poms to Perth
Coogee Beach, Sydney, watching the huge rollers created by the tropical cyclone up north coming in from the southern Pacific
Manly Beach: walking above the bay, texting home, and photographing flora and fauna
New Year's Eve in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, watching the awesome fireworks
Creative photography in Sydney, especially of the Opera House and Bridge, and The Rocks area, as well as many plants and flowers in the Botanic Gardens at sunset
Adelaide: seeing my first koala, about 3 ft away from me, and then making acquaintance with many of his 'cousins' in the trees of the Wildlife sanctuary.
Seeing many platypus on nocturnal walks
Sunbathing on Glenelg beach, with a surprising outcome
Making the snap decision to go to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon and having the best 5 days since New Year.
Sunset AND sunrise at Uluru this week
Sleeping in a swag under the stars and moonlight in the bush camp in the Red Centre
Lowlights:
Rain, rain, rain in Sydney for the first 5 days I was there :(
Missing out so much scenery in WA as I didn't do my research properly!!
The Wildlife sanctuary not quite turning out as expected, but that has its advantages too (went to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon via Alice Springs instead!)
Saying goodbye to a friend in Adelaide
Accomodation in order of quality
Aunt's house in Perth!
Swag in the desert
Adelaide YHA
Sydney YWCA, Hyde Park
Augusta YHA
Albany YHA
Coral Bay YHA
Pemberton YHA - do not even mention that dump
OK, that's it. I hope you have enjoyed reading my Australia posts.
Tomorrow I go to New Zealand for 6 weeks, on the road with Kiwi Experience. For my route see www.kiwiexperience.com and find the ticket named "The Whole Kit and Kaboodle", starting in Auckland
G'Day and see you soon
Uluru
Well I decided to get out of the city, so on Monday I booked a 5 day trip to Alice Springs, Uluru, Kings Canyon and Kata Tjuta with www.therocktour.com.au.
A full update will be put on here when I have time, but just to say it was the best trip one could have taken. The scenery, the walks, the "spirituality" of all the places, the Ananga peoples' tales, the sunset over Uluru and the sunrise from the same point, were awesome, incredible and amazingly beautiful. I slept out under the stars in a swag for 2 nights, and the southern night sky is wonderful (with Orion upside down and the Southern Cross clear in the sky, although on its side. We collected wood by the roadside and cooked dinner and breakfast around a camp fire, and got up and went to bed with the rhythms of the days. Wonderful.
Back to Adelaide for a lazy day today - all that travelling and walking has really taken it out of me and the pain issues have reared their ugly heads again today. I am back on the road tomorrow, going to New Zealand (where it is currently raining :(), so will update this as and when I can.
Back soon
A full update will be put on here when I have time, but just to say it was the best trip one could have taken. The scenery, the walks, the "spirituality" of all the places, the Ananga peoples' tales, the sunset over Uluru and the sunrise from the same point, were awesome, incredible and amazingly beautiful. I slept out under the stars in a swag for 2 nights, and the southern night sky is wonderful (with Orion upside down and the Southern Cross clear in the sky, although on its side. We collected wood by the roadside and cooked dinner and breakfast around a camp fire, and got up and went to bed with the rhythms of the days. Wonderful.
Back to Adelaide for a lazy day today - all that travelling and walking has really taken it out of me and the pain issues have reared their ugly heads again today. I am back on the road tomorrow, going to New Zealand (where it is currently raining :(), so will update this as and when I can.
Back soon
Friday, 11 January 2008
Adelaide again
Hi, yep I decided to leave the Sanctuary a couple of days early and am back at the YHA in Adelaide for a few days before going to NZ next week.
The weather here is still amazing - clear blue skies and decent tolerable temperatures today (mid 20s) rather than the 42degs we had yesterday. I was literally gasping for air, even when I came into the city to go to the beach - the beach was hotter than in the hills!
Will keep updating blog when I can
The weather here is still amazing - clear blue skies and decent tolerable temperatures today (mid 20s) rather than the 42degs we had yesterday. I was literally gasping for air, even when I came into the city to go to the beach - the beach was hotter than in the hills!
Will keep updating blog when I can
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Koalas
Hello after my first full day of working here
We began this morning with trying to find the guy who is directing our work ... and he was trying to find us - well this place is 35 acres!
Our task for the day was clearing up the leaves and bark falls around the eco-cabins. The trees here (for various environmental and survival reasons) peel their bark off, especially in the very dry weather this area has been having for years. As a result the ground is littered with peelings of red bark, like dried up orange peel but thinner. The length of ground to be covered was about 800 metres and we did this all day till 3.00. Piles and piles of the stuff, and leaves, dust, stones, rubbish that people leave around after staying in the cabins overnight. We trucked away 4 loads, and by the end of the work, I certainly was glad I do a lot of swimming and am strong!! I think I will feel it tomorrow :)
Once the work is done and the "supervisor" finishes at 3.00 we have time to ourselves. I have just been down for a 2-hour walk in the Sanctuary by myself, no crowds, kids, staff etc and the most amazing thing happened: I got within 6 feet of a male koala and got some great pics of him. He was sitting on the ground, grunting to himself and when he saw me he decided to go up a tree - as you know they don't move very fast and so I could get close ups of him, his face, his white tufty ears, his oval black nose, his light brown/dark brown/white colours etc and he just SAT THERE!!, gently grunting as though working himself up to a full-throated roar to proclaim his territory. Wow!
The weather is heating up and we are due for another 41degs day on Thursday. It usually feels like the air is coming out of a fan oven and we aren't allowed to work on days like that. I feel another day of sunbathing coming on :), or walking in the "temperate rainforest" at the bottom of the sanctuary - all ferns and shady trees - and damn great big pattymelon wallaby which jumped out at me just now!!
See you soon
We began this morning with trying to find the guy who is directing our work ... and he was trying to find us - well this place is 35 acres!
Our task for the day was clearing up the leaves and bark falls around the eco-cabins. The trees here (for various environmental and survival reasons) peel their bark off, especially in the very dry weather this area has been having for years. As a result the ground is littered with peelings of red bark, like dried up orange peel but thinner. The length of ground to be covered was about 800 metres and we did this all day till 3.00. Piles and piles of the stuff, and leaves, dust, stones, rubbish that people leave around after staying in the cabins overnight. We trucked away 4 loads, and by the end of the work, I certainly was glad I do a lot of swimming and am strong!! I think I will feel it tomorrow :)
Once the work is done and the "supervisor" finishes at 3.00 we have time to ourselves. I have just been down for a 2-hour walk in the Sanctuary by myself, no crowds, kids, staff etc and the most amazing thing happened: I got within 6 feet of a male koala and got some great pics of him. He was sitting on the ground, grunting to himself and when he saw me he decided to go up a tree - as you know they don't move very fast and so I could get close ups of him, his face, his white tufty ears, his oval black nose, his light brown/dark brown/white colours etc and he just SAT THERE!!, gently grunting as though working himself up to a full-throated roar to proclaim his territory. Wow!
The weather is heating up and we are due for another 41degs day on Thursday. It usually feels like the air is coming out of a fan oven and we aren't allowed to work on days like that. I feel another day of sunbathing coming on :), or walking in the "temperate rainforest" at the bottom of the sanctuary - all ferns and shady trees - and damn great big pattymelon wallaby which jumped out at me just now!!
See you soon
Monday, 7 January 2008
Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary
Good Monday evening to you. Been up at the Sanctuary (WWS) since Saturday and it has been a mixed experience.
Bethany and I got the bus from Adelaide up into the beautiful Adelaide Hills - rolling vistas, tree-lined roads, VERY expensive houses (lots of $$$$ up here) and got off at Stirling, a quite large village with cafes, traditional stores like butchers, florists, greengrocers etc and were collected by a member of staff from WWS.
We are staying in eco-cabins, which are essentially made from canvas and wood, out under the trees and with no artificial light around, the night skies are beautiful (Orion is upside down here!). The cabins get very hot during the day but I have to have a quilt on at night as the temperature really goes down with the clear skies. Saturday, we had a short intro to the place by the owners, and then were pretty much left to our own devices, nothing planned, no work. A fire ban (temperatures over 38degC) meant that we were not even allowed down into the Sanctuary, so the time passed very slowly and both of us felt exhausted with the heat and rising humidity so slept for quite a bit of the afternoon.
The good thing about later in the day was that I joined a Nocturnal Walk and saw loads of wildllife: potoroos, bandicoots, wallabies, of all sizes and colours, Western Grey and Red Kangaroos, many platypuses in the lake (which was a total bonus as they are very shy creatures and don't like human company), and turtles, and then....a male koala, making a huge snorting and grunting noise (a cross between a pig and a walrus!!), and sitting about 5ft away from our group. He was amazing to see: white and brown coat, white on nose with a black tip to it, white tufty ears, claws like razors and just sitting there, snorting away at the other one high in the tree!.
Today Monday we had an intro to some of the work we will be doing. Unfortunately the spec that we were sent by our agents has been changed radically by WWS and both are disappointed that we won't be working with the animals as much as expected. We have to do a perimeter fence walk/patrol of 3 km, to check if any animals have got caught in the electric fence, and it is a nice way to pass the time, and see all of the WWS and its various habitats. I think it is also a quiet time here with the school kids on holidays (no school camps etc). I will assess what I do later in the week, but may be leaving here earlier than I had expected. We'll see, but I may also be seeing more of Adelaide than I had anticipated (which is good as it is a nice city).
Will contact people by email later but I have run out of time on here.
Bye for now
Bethany and I got the bus from Adelaide up into the beautiful Adelaide Hills - rolling vistas, tree-lined roads, VERY expensive houses (lots of $$$$ up here) and got off at Stirling, a quite large village with cafes, traditional stores like butchers, florists, greengrocers etc and were collected by a member of staff from WWS.
We are staying in eco-cabins, which are essentially made from canvas and wood, out under the trees and with no artificial light around, the night skies are beautiful (Orion is upside down here!). The cabins get very hot during the day but I have to have a quilt on at night as the temperature really goes down with the clear skies. Saturday, we had a short intro to the place by the owners, and then were pretty much left to our own devices, nothing planned, no work. A fire ban (temperatures over 38degC) meant that we were not even allowed down into the Sanctuary, so the time passed very slowly and both of us felt exhausted with the heat and rising humidity so slept for quite a bit of the afternoon.
The good thing about later in the day was that I joined a Nocturnal Walk and saw loads of wildllife: potoroos, bandicoots, wallabies, of all sizes and colours, Western Grey and Red Kangaroos, many platypuses in the lake (which was a total bonus as they are very shy creatures and don't like human company), and turtles, and then....a male koala, making a huge snorting and grunting noise (a cross between a pig and a walrus!!), and sitting about 5ft away from our group. He was amazing to see: white and brown coat, white on nose with a black tip to it, white tufty ears, claws like razors and just sitting there, snorting away at the other one high in the tree!.
Today Monday we had an intro to some of the work we will be doing. Unfortunately the spec that we were sent by our agents has been changed radically by WWS and both are disappointed that we won't be working with the animals as much as expected. We have to do a perimeter fence walk/patrol of 3 km, to check if any animals have got caught in the electric fence, and it is a nice way to pass the time, and see all of the WWS and its various habitats. I think it is also a quiet time here with the school kids on holidays (no school camps etc). I will assess what I do later in the week, but may be leaving here earlier than I had expected. We'll see, but I may also be seeing more of Adelaide than I had anticipated (which is good as it is a nice city).
Will contact people by email later but I have run out of time on here.
Bye for now
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