Back to the matter at hand: me moving around New Zealand.
I've come over all lackadaisical. For some reason, up to now, this trip once (and a bit more) around the world has felt like it holds some purpose. Like I am doing it for a reason. Like I am in pursuit of something. Straining.
Yes, I am visiting places that I set out to visit and am loving doing so. But in New Zealand I've dropped a gear or two and am quite content to merely amble around the countryside, travelling a short distance every day or two, taking life at an incredibly slow pace. Which is kind of ace. No need to chalk up another 300 miles on any one day. The antithesis of hard work.
I headed to Napier next, a town on the east coast of the north island with a long stoney beach on the doorstep of the hostel there. Before the waves I was met by an incessant sun and, with relish, set about the task of trialling the malaria pills I had been prescribed. These daily tablets may intensify my susceptibility to sunlight and this thinned-ozone region of the world is as good a place as any to test just how much I fry under their influence.
A night in Wellington came next, a short stopover ahead of the sail across Cook Strait to the south island.
The final hour of the crossing sees the ferry navigate Queen Charlotte Sound, a long fjord created during the last ice age. This northeast corner of the south island is dominated by similar waterways, and I spend the next couple of nights in the small town of Havelock, upon the banks of one of them. The first thing that strikes me about the south island is quite how lush everything is. I know it is the height of summer down here, but the flora looks positively satiated; thick bush jammed with bright greens cover every inch of the hills which punctuate the intersecting waters. It looks almost tropical such is the volume of plant-life and, upon leaving the car to explore on foot, I am met by a crescendo of chirruping and chattering; crickets and their ilk sounding off from every direction.
Next destination is the town of Takaka, in the region known as Golden Bay. I stay at an associate hostel - I guess you could call it a franchise, a privately run hostel affiliated to HI (Hostel International) - run by Allen and Miyuki. The place is buzzing with people, from the dorms in the house to the tents on the lawn to the summer house rooms at the bottom of the garden. The weather has remained gorgeous and, on Miyuki's recommendation, I visit Pupu Springs (reportedly the clearest spring-water on the planet) and Tata beach - a thin strip of sand lining an impressive bay on the edge of Abel Tasman national park: a Saturday afternoon (I think it was a Saturday) in the sunshine watching the gathered locals with their private motor boats and their varying levels of water-skiing competence.
Onwards to a night in Westport as I head south along the west coast. En route I swing past Cape Foulwind with its' resident seal colony. Pups somehow clamber over the boulders at the edge of the sea, defying the crashing waves and their own tiny forms, overachieving paddle-hands.
Another short hop, this one to the town of Greymouth, along another of these so-called "Top 10 drives in the world". The highway sticks close to the shoreline the whole way, passing 'penguin' warning road signs - a first for me for sure. I keep a keen eye out but don't see any on my way, but there is still time - the east coast, which I will reach in a week or so, reputedly houses more. The drive is impressive, but I have indulged this year and SH6 fails to make my own personal top 3 lengths of tarmac from the last four months.
The drive south from Greymouth sees the weather match the river there, thick and damp greys coating the landscape from the seas to the skies. The Southern (Misty) Alps (Mountains) are mysteriously shrouded on my journey to Franz Josef. Looming; dark shapes in the gathered gloom. The call of Gondor would surely have failed had Pippen chosen this day to ignite the beacons.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Thursday, 26 January 2012
#046: Marksism
Upon leaving the National Park I gave Katia, from Finland, a lift to the next town to keep her from hitch-hiking into the clutches of evil motorists. She is on a similar period of time out to me, and works in the Finnish banking sector. She was interested to hear if I had kept abreast of the state of the Euro, and the UK's 'choice' to opt-out of discussions. Finland, it seems, hasn't fared too badly in the current crisis and sought insurance from Greece (in the form of islands, according to Katia) over its' loans. Her suggestion was Greece sell off some of its' historic sites to private buyers. She was oblivious that the very same had been a genuine headline not 24 hours previous.
Our conversation prompted me to run my eye over financial affairs back in the UK. Whilst in the States, and seeing a large number of Occupy occupations first-hand (indeed, the Boston and DC protests were 'moved on' while I was in those actual cities...coincidence), I read around what the movement was about quite a lot. As far as I am concerned Occupy feels a little disparate - too many minor gripes being collated under the one banner such that little meaningful traction will result. To my mind, if Occupy is to succeed, it needs to focus its' aims, and more needs to be made of how Iceland coped with the financial crisis (remember where it all started?). The West is governed by politics whether you like it or not. Iceland has shown politics and, perhaps more importantly, 'politicians' can work for the greater good.
In UK politics, two stories piqued my interest this week: the welfare cap and executive pay.
The UK government has seen the opportunity to save £51m from the benefits budget over the three years to 2015, by placing a cap on the maximum amount a household can claim annually in benefits. It is a move supported by opposition politicians. However, the Lords has rejected the bill on the grounds that it includes child benefit, and will affect 220,000 children regardless of situation. 67,000 households will be worse off as a result of the measures, only 40,000 without the inclusion of child benefits. The Government is determined that the bill goes through in full, and looks to be digging its' heals in on the issue.
In the same Commons session, the government announced its plans regarding executive pay.
There is no doubting this is a contentious issue. The banking sector has, justifiably, come under immense scrutiny for its' outlandish rewards in the aftermath of global financial meltdown. Even this week, the chief exec of RBS stands to receive a bonus of £1.3m. £1.3m of taxpayers money. And that's on top of a salary of over £1m. Here, then, it seems, was an opportunity for the government to make a real statement. More than happy to point out the shortcomings of the previous government (chief exec pay was 40 times that of their employees when Labour came to power in 1997, rising to 120 times by 2007), might they even seek to cap salaries to a maximum, mirroring the minimum wage?
The answer is, sadly, no. All they could come up with was the need for "more transparency" and adoption of "best practice". In layman's terms, what they have done is nothing. Apart from guarantee the pockets of the wealthiest remain cosily lined for the foreseeable future whilst the disparity between the wealthiest and middle classes widens (certain chief execs now earn 1000 times the national median wage - British Gas, Barclays), not to mention those larger families living on the benefits breadline who will see their income slashed from 2013. In 1979, the top 0.1% of earners took home 1.3% of the national income. By 2007 this had risen to 6.5%. Certain individuals will tell you this increase is justified because the execs at the top are the 'risk-takers', the ones whose decisions ultimately determine the fate of a company. The truth is that an exec is 13 times less likely to be sacked than the lowest paid worker. Thirteen times. Hardly seems the position of a risk-taker to me.
"Best practice" is a term I am acutely familiar with, because it has defined my professional life for the past few years. The sad thing is, in reality "best practice" is virtually impossible to achieve. People will say they aspire to follow "best practice" processes but, when push really comes to shove, the comfort of existing procedures, the cosiness of familiarity, will result in little or no change. It takes a very strong personality at the head of an organisation, a project, a company, a country, to genuinely implement anything approaching "best practice". The UK government has just shown it is not up to the task.
For best practice to take and hold and work, you need one of two things: a workforce that is completely on song, 100%, with what you are trying to achieve; or, an accepted dictatorial approach from those in charge. It might be just me, my cynical view of the world from which I have taken this break, but I struggle to see a situation where chief execs, en masse, decide to reform the pay structures of their companies without legislation from government.
At time of going to press, the news is that the Liberal Democrats will tomorrow outline their countenance to the 'coalition' budget, calling for quicker reform of income tax to aid middle income families. All these different aspects represent a most delicate balancing act, of that there is no doubt. But balance is impossible when the scales are weighted so favourably in one direction.
Umm, yeah. Will try and talk about the trip in the next installment!
Our conversation prompted me to run my eye over financial affairs back in the UK. Whilst in the States, and seeing a large number of Occupy occupations first-hand (indeed, the Boston and DC protests were 'moved on' while I was in those actual cities...coincidence), I read around what the movement was about quite a lot. As far as I am concerned Occupy feels a little disparate - too many minor gripes being collated under the one banner such that little meaningful traction will result. To my mind, if Occupy is to succeed, it needs to focus its' aims, and more needs to be made of how Iceland coped with the financial crisis (remember where it all started?). The West is governed by politics whether you like it or not. Iceland has shown politics and, perhaps more importantly, 'politicians' can work for the greater good.
In UK politics, two stories piqued my interest this week: the welfare cap and executive pay.
The UK government has seen the opportunity to save £51m from the benefits budget over the three years to 2015, by placing a cap on the maximum amount a household can claim annually in benefits. It is a move supported by opposition politicians. However, the Lords has rejected the bill on the grounds that it includes child benefit, and will affect 220,000 children regardless of situation. 67,000 households will be worse off as a result of the measures, only 40,000 without the inclusion of child benefits. The Government is determined that the bill goes through in full, and looks to be digging its' heals in on the issue.
In the same Commons session, the government announced its plans regarding executive pay.
There is no doubting this is a contentious issue. The banking sector has, justifiably, come under immense scrutiny for its' outlandish rewards in the aftermath of global financial meltdown. Even this week, the chief exec of RBS stands to receive a bonus of £1.3m. £1.3m of taxpayers money. And that's on top of a salary of over £1m. Here, then, it seems, was an opportunity for the government to make a real statement. More than happy to point out the shortcomings of the previous government (chief exec pay was 40 times that of their employees when Labour came to power in 1997, rising to 120 times by 2007), might they even seek to cap salaries to a maximum, mirroring the minimum wage?
The answer is, sadly, no. All they could come up with was the need for "more transparency" and adoption of "best practice". In layman's terms, what they have done is nothing. Apart from guarantee the pockets of the wealthiest remain cosily lined for the foreseeable future whilst the disparity between the wealthiest and middle classes widens (certain chief execs now earn 1000 times the national median wage - British Gas, Barclays), not to mention those larger families living on the benefits breadline who will see their income slashed from 2013. In 1979, the top 0.1% of earners took home 1.3% of the national income. By 2007 this had risen to 6.5%. Certain individuals will tell you this increase is justified because the execs at the top are the 'risk-takers', the ones whose decisions ultimately determine the fate of a company. The truth is that an exec is 13 times less likely to be sacked than the lowest paid worker. Thirteen times. Hardly seems the position of a risk-taker to me.
"Best practice" is a term I am acutely familiar with, because it has defined my professional life for the past few years. The sad thing is, in reality "best practice" is virtually impossible to achieve. People will say they aspire to follow "best practice" processes but, when push really comes to shove, the comfort of existing procedures, the cosiness of familiarity, will result in little or no change. It takes a very strong personality at the head of an organisation, a project, a company, a country, to genuinely implement anything approaching "best practice". The UK government has just shown it is not up to the task.
For best practice to take and hold and work, you need one of two things: a workforce that is completely on song, 100%, with what you are trying to achieve; or, an accepted dictatorial approach from those in charge. It might be just me, my cynical view of the world from which I have taken this break, but I struggle to see a situation where chief execs, en masse, decide to reform the pay structures of their companies without legislation from government.
At time of going to press, the news is that the Liberal Democrats will tomorrow outline their countenance to the 'coalition' budget, calling for quicker reform of income tax to aid middle income families. All these different aspects represent a most delicate balancing act, of that there is no doubt. But balance is impossible when the scales are weighted so favourably in one direction.
Umm, yeah. Will try and talk about the trip in the next installment!
Sunday, 22 January 2012
#045: Let us be rid of it
One of the clear perks of spending an extended amount of time in these new and unfamiliar countries is I get to, over the course of a stay, learn the layouts of their supermarkets. In New Zealand they've got it all worked out: Fruit; Booze. Bosh, done!
New Zealand roadtrip destination number one was Rotorua, a few hours southeast of Auckland. Rotorua is slap in the middle of New Zealand's most geothermically active region and houses steam vents and geysers and mud pools, some features in Kuirau Park in the centre of the city even unprotected, allowing you to walk right up to them. I spent a day in Rotorua and visitied Whakarewarewa (fa-ka-ree-wa-ree-wa) Thermal Village. Whakarewarewa is a living and working Maori village, built right on top of the hot springs and bubbling mud pots, with 60 to 65 people permanently resident at the moment. The natural phenomenon upon the doorsteps are utilised for cooking and bathing but, for the sake of their longevity, are not over-used. Current residents describe diminished activity and disappearing geysers following the introduction of geothermal power plants in the region, which came as something of a surprise as I hadn't heard of anything similar on my visits to Iceland. However, the NZ authorities are reportedly working to reverse the affect they have had.
I move a short way south, towards Taupo and the great lake there. On the way I stop off at Wai-o-tapu, another site filled with activity resulting from super-heated water under the Earth's thin crust. The centrepiece is Lady Knox geyser, which spouts on command at 10:15am every day. Watching this spectacle has the effect of making me feel rather cheap. (Or should that be cheaper?) Hoards of people are gathered to witness it and the event is supplemented by a voiceover commentary. Tourism is by far the largest source of income in the region, granted, but it gnawed at me that the geyser couldn't just be left to erupt as and when the pressures below ground dictated, rather than being triggered by the introduction of some foreign agent. To me, having visited two other famously geothermic regions of the world, it felt like unnecessary exploitation.
Around the third day out of Auckland, as predicted, the live Yellow Fever virus - introduced to my body on my last day in the city - started to bare its teeth. Fortunately those teeth were akin to baby milk ones rather than a full set of vicious pointy gnashers, and I suffered nothing more than a case of man flu as glands enlarged and white blood cells set about the task of sacrificing themselves in the name of immunisation.
After Taupo I made my way into Tongariro National Park. You could say I was a little excited about this part of the trip. Tongariro is home to three volcanoes and numerous other craters and is probably quite familiar to a great many of you, especially by its fictional name: Mordor. This is where Peter Jackson located Sauron's domain for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mt. Ngauruhoe doubling for the famous Mount Doom. There are a number of popular hikes in the region, with pathways punctuated by incredibly well-equipped huts for people to shelter in overnight.
Despite the yellow fever keeping me somewhat edgeless, I wanted to get close enough to Ngauruhoe to get a reasonable feel for it so, having fuelled myself, I struck out with the intention of walking the Tongariro Crossing trail as far as Soda Spring - reportedly ninety minutes from the car park. I got there in under an hour and found myself compelled to tackle the next section as well, given I still felt fresh and had made good time. This brought me upon South Crater, a remnant of a previous eruption of Mt. Tongariro, situated, quite tantalisingly, at the foot of the track up 'Mount Doom'.
It was only midday and I had reached South Crater in an hour and a half, a whole hour less than the signs suggested was par for the course. Get me. And the signs also suggested the round-trip to the top of Doom would be another three hours...it didn't take long to decide to give it a go. I mean, it's not every day you get to overthrow an evil dictator by dropping a ring into a volcano. Needless to say, the slog up the ashen incline was totally worth it. And I've got a whole new respect for Samwise Gamgee, no matter how light his malnourished companion might have been.
See a pan from the top by clicking here.
New Zealand roadtrip destination number one was Rotorua, a few hours southeast of Auckland. Rotorua is slap in the middle of New Zealand's most geothermically active region and houses steam vents and geysers and mud pools, some features in Kuirau Park in the centre of the city even unprotected, allowing you to walk right up to them. I spent a day in Rotorua and visitied Whakarewarewa (fa-ka-ree-wa-ree-wa) Thermal Village. Whakarewarewa is a living and working Maori village, built right on top of the hot springs and bubbling mud pots, with 60 to 65 people permanently resident at the moment. The natural phenomenon upon the doorsteps are utilised for cooking and bathing but, for the sake of their longevity, are not over-used. Current residents describe diminished activity and disappearing geysers following the introduction of geothermal power plants in the region, which came as something of a surprise as I hadn't heard of anything similar on my visits to Iceland. However, the NZ authorities are reportedly working to reverse the affect they have had.
I move a short way south, towards Taupo and the great lake there. On the way I stop off at Wai-o-tapu, another site filled with activity resulting from super-heated water under the Earth's thin crust. The centrepiece is Lady Knox geyser, which spouts on command at 10:15am every day. Watching this spectacle has the effect of making me feel rather cheap. (Or should that be cheaper?) Hoards of people are gathered to witness it and the event is supplemented by a voiceover commentary. Tourism is by far the largest source of income in the region, granted, but it gnawed at me that the geyser couldn't just be left to erupt as and when the pressures below ground dictated, rather than being triggered by the introduction of some foreign agent. To me, having visited two other famously geothermic regions of the world, it felt like unnecessary exploitation.
Around the third day out of Auckland, as predicted, the live Yellow Fever virus - introduced to my body on my last day in the city - started to bare its teeth. Fortunately those teeth were akin to baby milk ones rather than a full set of vicious pointy gnashers, and I suffered nothing more than a case of man flu as glands enlarged and white blood cells set about the task of sacrificing themselves in the name of immunisation.
After Taupo I made my way into Tongariro National Park. You could say I was a little excited about this part of the trip. Tongariro is home to three volcanoes and numerous other craters and is probably quite familiar to a great many of you, especially by its fictional name: Mordor. This is where Peter Jackson located Sauron's domain for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mt. Ngauruhoe doubling for the famous Mount Doom. There are a number of popular hikes in the region, with pathways punctuated by incredibly well-equipped huts for people to shelter in overnight.
Despite the yellow fever keeping me somewhat edgeless, I wanted to get close enough to Ngauruhoe to get a reasonable feel for it so, having fuelled myself, I struck out with the intention of walking the Tongariro Crossing trail as far as Soda Spring - reportedly ninety minutes from the car park. I got there in under an hour and found myself compelled to tackle the next section as well, given I still felt fresh and had made good time. This brought me upon South Crater, a remnant of a previous eruption of Mt. Tongariro, situated, quite tantalisingly, at the foot of the track up 'Mount Doom'.
It was only midday and I had reached South Crater in an hour and a half, a whole hour less than the signs suggested was par for the course. Get me. And the signs also suggested the round-trip to the top of Doom would be another three hours...it didn't take long to decide to give it a go. I mean, it's not every day you get to overthrow an evil dictator by dropping a ring into a volcano. Needless to say, the slog up the ashen incline was totally worth it. And I've got a whole new respect for Samwise Gamgee, no matter how light his malnourished companion might have been.
See a pan from the top by clicking here.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
#044: Unger Oveur Oveur Dunn
Eleven hours across the Pacific first of all, inside the veal crate of the central section of a 747. A matter of minutes after devouring the evening meal and I start to get hayfeverish. Runny eyes. Most strange, given it is gone 10pm and I'm over 30,000ft in the sky. Grasping for an explanation, my internal monologue hypothesises the on-board conditioning system is comprised of Fijian air samples and, with it being summer there, is pollenated. Which is ludicrous, obviously. Then parts of my tongue start to tingle too. Odd pollen, I think. And what's this? A mildly swollen throat? Well, in 30 years of hayfever suffering that's never happened before. Anaphylwhatctic? I don't know how to say this, I mean, I know I don't really know you, but I've never been with a man before. Surely I can't be serious. I am serious, etc.
Headphones on, hoodie up, eyes shut, the condition and its' associated concern relent after half an hour.
The flight is largely overnight, and I arrive into Nadi in Fiji at 5am local time, serenaded by a local gent playing guitar and singing songs about sunshine. I managed a small amount of 'sleep' on the way. The international date line has been crossed. The 12th January 2012 never existed. Three hours become four waiting in the departure lounge for the transfer onwards to New Zealand. It is a relatively short hop -- two-and-a-half hours -- to Auckland, near the north end of the North Island.
Because of my change of itinerary (see #017 pt.4), I require some inoculations over and above those administered before leaving the UK and have arranged to attend a travel clinic in Auckland, so will be here a few days at least. The stay is welcomed - I'm fairly exhausted from the journey here and will probably take a few nights to stop automatically waking at four in the morning. I also still need to decide where it is I wish to go while I am here in New Zealand.
A couple of days in to my stay and I'm still not quite with it; I achieve little more than eating and sleeping, a general malaise preventing anything mildly adventurous. This state gets me thinking: even the smallest fluctuations in diet or sleep or daylight can have a massively detrimental effect on ones mood. On my last day in the States I was really excited at moving on and discovering somewhere new, but that feeling has disappeared completely. Following consideration, I've also become aware of how I can reflect this mood onto others, no matter how subconsciously. Choice of words or tone of voice, or a gesture, however minor or seemingly inconsequential, has the power to bring others down with me. And this is quite apart from all the world-shattering events that can befall us, on both a global and - just as importantly - an individual level. So I've decided that the 'negative' emotions are rubbish. Groundbreaking stuff.
I turned to visual entertainment to distract myself and watched Project Nim - a documentary about a 1970's experiment to teach a chimpanzee, Nim, to communicate. [Possible spoilers] At times even the most well-meaning carers were totally disastrous at meeting the needs of the primate protagonist. As if it wasn't bad enough that he was ripped from the hands of his mother aged two days. "But the mother won't mind because we did it with her five other children before this one, so she's used to it." [End spoilers] I think to myself how this experiment would work better the other way round, if it is necessary at all. Place a single human in a cartload of chimps (that is the actual collective noun, awesome hey) and try communicating then. À la Dian Fossey. As I watch Nim the thought of living with chimp cousins for a time is actually quite appealing. I hope my adjustment to New Zealand summer time happens soon!
So, yeah, New Zealand. A day or so of internet research and opinion gathering leads me to the conclusion that a hire car and five weeks touring round the hostels of the country would be the best option for me. The dirt cheap cars work out to about £18 a day to hire, which is much more appealing to me than a busload of 18 year olds. I think.
As I take my seat behind the wheel, it feels like I'm in a race car, so low to the ground I am sat. The bonnet stretches away out in front of me and half the vehicle off to my left. Three months in the van has conditioned me somewhat; this might take some getting used to. Good, then, that my charge for the journey is something of a living legend. Road trip royalty, no less. A Top Gear presenters wet dream. For the next five weeks I shall be piloting a king of the road: the iconic Nissan Sunny Super Saloon.
That's Super Saloon.
Headphones on, hoodie up, eyes shut, the condition and its' associated concern relent after half an hour.
The flight is largely overnight, and I arrive into Nadi in Fiji at 5am local time, serenaded by a local gent playing guitar and singing songs about sunshine. I managed a small amount of 'sleep' on the way. The international date line has been crossed. The 12th January 2012 never existed. Three hours become four waiting in the departure lounge for the transfer onwards to New Zealand. It is a relatively short hop -- two-and-a-half hours -- to Auckland, near the north end of the North Island.
Because of my change of itinerary (see #017 pt.4), I require some inoculations over and above those administered before leaving the UK and have arranged to attend a travel clinic in Auckland, so will be here a few days at least. The stay is welcomed - I'm fairly exhausted from the journey here and will probably take a few nights to stop automatically waking at four in the morning. I also still need to decide where it is I wish to go while I am here in New Zealand.
A couple of days in to my stay and I'm still not quite with it; I achieve little more than eating and sleeping, a general malaise preventing anything mildly adventurous. This state gets me thinking: even the smallest fluctuations in diet or sleep or daylight can have a massively detrimental effect on ones mood. On my last day in the States I was really excited at moving on and discovering somewhere new, but that feeling has disappeared completely. Following consideration, I've also become aware of how I can reflect this mood onto others, no matter how subconsciously. Choice of words or tone of voice, or a gesture, however minor or seemingly inconsequential, has the power to bring others down with me. And this is quite apart from all the world-shattering events that can befall us, on both a global and - just as importantly - an individual level. So I've decided that the 'negative' emotions are rubbish. Groundbreaking stuff.
I turned to visual entertainment to distract myself and watched Project Nim - a documentary about a 1970's experiment to teach a chimpanzee, Nim, to communicate. [Possible spoilers] At times even the most well-meaning carers were totally disastrous at meeting the needs of the primate protagonist. As if it wasn't bad enough that he was ripped from the hands of his mother aged two days. "But the mother won't mind because we did it with her five other children before this one, so she's used to it." [End spoilers] I think to myself how this experiment would work better the other way round, if it is necessary at all. Place a single human in a cartload of chimps (that is the actual collective noun, awesome hey) and try communicating then. À la Dian Fossey. As I watch Nim the thought of living with chimp cousins for a time is actually quite appealing. I hope my adjustment to New Zealand summer time happens soon!
So, yeah, New Zealand. A day or so of internet research and opinion gathering leads me to the conclusion that a hire car and five weeks touring round the hostels of the country would be the best option for me. The dirt cheap cars work out to about £18 a day to hire, which is much more appealing to me than a busload of 18 year olds. I think.
As I take my seat behind the wheel, it feels like I'm in a race car, so low to the ground I am sat. The bonnet stretches away out in front of me and half the vehicle off to my left. Three months in the van has conditioned me somewhat; this might take some getting used to. Good, then, that my charge for the journey is something of a living legend. Road trip royalty, no less. A Top Gear presenters wet dream. For the next five weeks I shall be piloting a king of the road: the iconic Nissan Sunny Super Saloon.
That's Super Saloon.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
#043: Interlude
Four months down. Two an' an 'alf to go. Actually, it's nine an' an 'alf down. Wow.
Last hour in the States right now. Off to LAX and a seventeen hour journey to Auckland.
I spent my last few nights on the road exploring a bit of Nevada. A cruise down the strip, a look at Hoover Dam, and other small towns and villages familiar to me thanks to my computer games interest. Primm, in the Mojave desert, presented me with a bona fide sandstorm as I pulled up to gawp at the roller coaster which adorns the casino Buffalo Bills, whilst Nipton turned out to be no more than a tiny oasis surrounded by trees and a few ramshackle huts right in the middle of a flat. No harrowing crucifixions on this visit thankfully. I had my virtual visit to thank for that.
So the roadtrip is ended. 12,001 miles on the money. And I'm a very happy and a very proud boy with my adventure. I got tips aplenty if anyone wants, and, I think, will always be open to the suggestion of returning to do it all over again.
Take care y'all - I'll see you on the other side of the Pacific.
Last hour in the States right now. Off to LAX and a seventeen hour journey to Auckland.
I spent my last few nights on the road exploring a bit of Nevada. A cruise down the strip, a look at Hoover Dam, and other small towns and villages familiar to me thanks to my computer games interest. Primm, in the Mojave desert, presented me with a bona fide sandstorm as I pulled up to gawp at the roller coaster which adorns the casino Buffalo Bills, whilst Nipton turned out to be no more than a tiny oasis surrounded by trees and a few ramshackle huts right in the middle of a flat. No harrowing crucifixions on this visit thankfully. I had my virtual visit to thank for that.
So the roadtrip is ended. 12,001 miles on the money. And I'm a very happy and a very proud boy with my adventure. I got tips aplenty if anyone wants, and, I think, will always be open to the suggestion of returning to do it all over again.
Take care y'all - I'll see you on the other side of the Pacific.
Monday, 9 January 2012
#042: Snake, Rattle & Ow!
Top tip for 2012: Don't step on a rattlesnake - makes them kinda bitey!
I spend the night after Meteor Crater in Homo Lovi (don't) State Park, a site with millennia old shards of Native pottery littering the high desert. The following days' drive takes me into the heart of nearby reservations - first the Hopi tribe, and then the Navajo. There are Hopi settlements high atop the rugged Mesa's that shape the landscape, as the road winds up and down the hills.
The following morning I start out in a small canyon, the mouth of which opens onto Monument Valley: it is just dreamy. My campsite was part of a small settlement called Goulding's Trading Post - they show John Wayne films (which feature the valley) each night. The view out my window in the morning alone makes me think the next week or so is going to rival Yellowstone and the Canadian Rockies.
I drive out through the valley, beneath and between the monoliths. This is quiet season, it seems, with only a small fraction of the roadside stalls set-up for business. The scenery is totally spectacular - it makes so much sense that Hollywood chose to locate in this region. The approach to the small town of Mexican Hat is perhaps the most impressive - twenty or so houses squeezed along a cliff edge above the river gorge that flows through the town.
As I think I mentioned, this next week is to be given to visiting the National Parks of southern Utah. First up is a couple of nights in Arches. I hike into the canyons there, along great fins of rock. Coincidence of timing sees me accompanied by a gang of fellow tourists, from Japan. They are rather loud fellow tourists. All eight of them. Being loud. In a massive echoey canyon. I daydream they are all ducks, and this is a different arch - Brunel's Sounding Arch in my hometown of Maidenhead. Ducks cannot quack under the sounding arch. An absurdity of acoustics. Alas, my daydreaming is to no avail.
Lunchtime, and I am treated to an arguing couple, their voices resounding around the landscape. It wasn't so much an argument, to be fair. More a bitter man, chastening his wife because their water was too cold. It is a fraction above freezing in the sunshine. He is, clearly, a twit.
I'll do my best to avoid the reportage of a fireworks display - all oohs and aahs. Suffice to say, the scenery - Partition Arch, a rock window on a cliff edge with views onto the canyon below, in particular - more than made up for the less peaceful visitors to the park.
These Americans don't mess around when it comes to naming stuff. Arches National Park is, well, loads of big (and not-so-big) rock arches, formed by the passage of water and the forming and melting of ice in cracks, and the action of the winds and the pull of gravity and of time. Canyonlands, as if you couldn't guess, is a devastatingly spectacular array of gorges and valleys and, er, canyons, where the Colorado and the Green rivers converge. Don't tell anyone but, in my opinion, it puts the Grand one to shame.
I could easily spend weeks working my way through these parks and wandering their trails. Unfortunately I have just the one remaining before my travel visa is up and I have to move on. Next up on my Grand Circle tour is Goblin Valley State Park.
I had to wonder whether 'goblin' is a euphemism on this side of the pond. This particular state park is probably not the place to go if you are in any way a sufferer of Freud's phallic fixation. 'Envy' doesn't quite do it, here. Goblin Valley is a veritable sea of bulbous rock columns (don't say that too quick) with pointed mushroom caps. It is as if the state punishes the textbook graffiti of its teenage boys by forcing them to recreate their illicit art in this desert, in clay. It is an amazing sight. Be prepared to find yourself agape.
Capitol Reef National Park comes next. It is so named because early explorers found the feature - where rock seams millions of years old have been pushed up and through the Earth's crust - virtually impassable, much like trying to sail through an oceanic reef. There are massive sandstone cliffs there, weathered into bizarre curves and monoliths. With a lot of nipples. Despite these, it is not in the same league as Canyonlands and Arches so, after a short but necessary walk up Miners (sic) Mountain, I move on.
Upon exiting I am confronted by cliffs with scores of strange buttresses - like the Assyrian Kings of old, seated side-by-side upon their sandstone thrones, surveying their lands before them. My route the rest of today takes me down Utah Route 12 and is a contender for drive of the year. The road peaks out at 9600ft and affords an extraordinary vista - land mass melting into the horizons in a gray haze, the foreground puckered by cliffs and canyons. Back down into a valley before rearing up again, the road leads along the proverbial knife-edge, with hundreds of feet between leaving the road and meeting the planet again, should one veer off the tarmac to either side.
Having experienced a drive like no other, and wound up alongside a frozen reservoir, virtually skipping for joy as the sun bestowed its' setting magnificence upon the ice and the trees and the world, I awoke the next day thoroughly in a mood; a quite marked swing in emotion. I don't think I have ever experienced mood swings this wild in my life. As I move through these epic landscapes I am regularly hit with almost overwhelming euphoria, only to find myself totting up the number of nights left in the US each evening. The solitude is taking its' toll - I've a really strong yearning to be back in the UK. I can't stress enough how important friendships and human interaction are to ones sanity.
And, so, Bryce Canyon, which I visited next, felt like just another pile of weathered rocks, just another ridiculously gobsmacking panorama. I'm now in Zion, which is equally incredible, and intend to stay here for two nights so I can take it all in. Perhaps the rest will do me good. I do feel rather fatigued. A day without a long drive to set me up for my last three nights on the road.
I conquer three different hikes in one afternoon in Zion - I think I must be getting used to the altitude or something, because the suggested hike times in the trail guide were wildly conservative. And so to my last stop on the desert canyons tour: Valley of Fire in Nevada. There are so many furry scuttley things running about - jackrabbits and cute little desert rats - it's like I've found the real-life inspiration for Sylvanian Families. The scene reminds me of the pristine dreamworld of Tubbyland, except it is parched and arid and has killer bees and poisonous scorpions thrown in. The desert rats are so plentiful I'm convinced they must have taken some bedroom pointers from the jackrabbits. They are everywhere I look.
Not content with the menagerie of cutesy death upon my doorstep, I decide to hike into the Nevada desert for the afternoon. I fill both my internal and my external bladders with a couple of litres of water and head out into the scorched wilderness. Death Valley notwithstanding, I am undecided whether my choice for 'first ever desert to hike across' - Valley of Fire - is wise or not. My intended destination is the park visitor centre, 3 or 4 miles away. I get there without incident, drinking another 2 litres of water en route. Inside I discover there are tarantulas native to these parts, just to compliment the poisonous snakes and scorpions. Also, daytime temperatures can reach as high as 82C out there - spectacularly high. Fortunately for me, it is the first week of January or something, so the worst I can expect is about 25C. Still, that doesn't mean the tarantulas won't be about foraging come sundown. I'd best get a move-on back to the campground if I am to avoid them. It's funny how I only notice the many strands of spider-web hanging between the desert plants on the return leg.
That night, out of the blue, I had a quite vivid dream. It was set in a future-place: a community tourism project of sorts, the likes of which I will be visiting in February. But the cast of characters were people from my past: university housemates; the ones I haven't kept in contact with. The dream compelled me to do some 'mystalking', or whatever the facebook equivalent is called.
I may have known this anyway, but I learnt that people's lives move forward at different rates. And I feel there is no right or wrong speed for this progression. Yet the very fact that these differences are possible triggers thoughts of 'what ifs'. Thoughts on the fringes of regret. Which must be down to jealousy on some level. Envy. And perhaps the fact these feelings exist points the way forward, the direction to next take.
I didn't step on a rattlesnake, by the way. The National Parks here are usually quite good at telling you when not to step on things, so I figured I should pass on the advice. It seems sound enough to me. If you do ever step on a rattlesnake, make sure you possess the reflexes of a better rattlesnake than the one you choose to step on.
Just a few nights left in the US...
I spend the night after Meteor Crater in Homo Lovi (don't) State Park, a site with millennia old shards of Native pottery littering the high desert. The following days' drive takes me into the heart of nearby reservations - first the Hopi tribe, and then the Navajo. There are Hopi settlements high atop the rugged Mesa's that shape the landscape, as the road winds up and down the hills.
The following morning I start out in a small canyon, the mouth of which opens onto Monument Valley: it is just dreamy. My campsite was part of a small settlement called Goulding's Trading Post - they show John Wayne films (which feature the valley) each night. The view out my window in the morning alone makes me think the next week or so is going to rival Yellowstone and the Canadian Rockies.
I drive out through the valley, beneath and between the monoliths. This is quiet season, it seems, with only a small fraction of the roadside stalls set-up for business. The scenery is totally spectacular - it makes so much sense that Hollywood chose to locate in this region. The approach to the small town of Mexican Hat is perhaps the most impressive - twenty or so houses squeezed along a cliff edge above the river gorge that flows through the town.
As I think I mentioned, this next week is to be given to visiting the National Parks of southern Utah. First up is a couple of nights in Arches. I hike into the canyons there, along great fins of rock. Coincidence of timing sees me accompanied by a gang of fellow tourists, from Japan. They are rather loud fellow tourists. All eight of them. Being loud. In a massive echoey canyon. I daydream they are all ducks, and this is a different arch - Brunel's Sounding Arch in my hometown of Maidenhead. Ducks cannot quack under the sounding arch. An absurdity of acoustics. Alas, my daydreaming is to no avail.
Lunchtime, and I am treated to an arguing couple, their voices resounding around the landscape. It wasn't so much an argument, to be fair. More a bitter man, chastening his wife because their water was too cold. It is a fraction above freezing in the sunshine. He is, clearly, a twit.
I'll do my best to avoid the reportage of a fireworks display - all oohs and aahs. Suffice to say, the scenery - Partition Arch, a rock window on a cliff edge with views onto the canyon below, in particular - more than made up for the less peaceful visitors to the park.
These Americans don't mess around when it comes to naming stuff. Arches National Park is, well, loads of big (and not-so-big) rock arches, formed by the passage of water and the forming and melting of ice in cracks, and the action of the winds and the pull of gravity and of time. Canyonlands, as if you couldn't guess, is a devastatingly spectacular array of gorges and valleys and, er, canyons, where the Colorado and the Green rivers converge. Don't tell anyone but, in my opinion, it puts the Grand one to shame.
I could easily spend weeks working my way through these parks and wandering their trails. Unfortunately I have just the one remaining before my travel visa is up and I have to move on. Next up on my Grand Circle tour is Goblin Valley State Park.
I had to wonder whether 'goblin' is a euphemism on this side of the pond. This particular state park is probably not the place to go if you are in any way a sufferer of Freud's phallic fixation. 'Envy' doesn't quite do it, here. Goblin Valley is a veritable sea of bulbous rock columns (don't say that too quick) with pointed mushroom caps. It is as if the state punishes the textbook graffiti of its teenage boys by forcing them to recreate their illicit art in this desert, in clay. It is an amazing sight. Be prepared to find yourself agape.
Capitol Reef National Park comes next. It is so named because early explorers found the feature - where rock seams millions of years old have been pushed up and through the Earth's crust - virtually impassable, much like trying to sail through an oceanic reef. There are massive sandstone cliffs there, weathered into bizarre curves and monoliths. With a lot of nipples. Despite these, it is not in the same league as Canyonlands and Arches so, after a short but necessary walk up Miners (sic) Mountain, I move on.
Upon exiting I am confronted by cliffs with scores of strange buttresses - like the Assyrian Kings of old, seated side-by-side upon their sandstone thrones, surveying their lands before them. My route the rest of today takes me down Utah Route 12 and is a contender for drive of the year. The road peaks out at 9600ft and affords an extraordinary vista - land mass melting into the horizons in a gray haze, the foreground puckered by cliffs and canyons. Back down into a valley before rearing up again, the road leads along the proverbial knife-edge, with hundreds of feet between leaving the road and meeting the planet again, should one veer off the tarmac to either side.
Having experienced a drive like no other, and wound up alongside a frozen reservoir, virtually skipping for joy as the sun bestowed its' setting magnificence upon the ice and the trees and the world, I awoke the next day thoroughly in a mood; a quite marked swing in emotion. I don't think I have ever experienced mood swings this wild in my life. As I move through these epic landscapes I am regularly hit with almost overwhelming euphoria, only to find myself totting up the number of nights left in the US each evening. The solitude is taking its' toll - I've a really strong yearning to be back in the UK. I can't stress enough how important friendships and human interaction are to ones sanity.
And, so, Bryce Canyon, which I visited next, felt like just another pile of weathered rocks, just another ridiculously gobsmacking panorama. I'm now in Zion, which is equally incredible, and intend to stay here for two nights so I can take it all in. Perhaps the rest will do me good. I do feel rather fatigued. A day without a long drive to set me up for my last three nights on the road.
I conquer three different hikes in one afternoon in Zion - I think I must be getting used to the altitude or something, because the suggested hike times in the trail guide were wildly conservative. And so to my last stop on the desert canyons tour: Valley of Fire in Nevada. There are so many furry scuttley things running about - jackrabbits and cute little desert rats - it's like I've found the real-life inspiration for Sylvanian Families. The scene reminds me of the pristine dreamworld of Tubbyland, except it is parched and arid and has killer bees and poisonous scorpions thrown in. The desert rats are so plentiful I'm convinced they must have taken some bedroom pointers from the jackrabbits. They are everywhere I look.
Not content with the menagerie of cutesy death upon my doorstep, I decide to hike into the Nevada desert for the afternoon. I fill both my internal and my external bladders with a couple of litres of water and head out into the scorched wilderness. Death Valley notwithstanding, I am undecided whether my choice for 'first ever desert to hike across' - Valley of Fire - is wise or not. My intended destination is the park visitor centre, 3 or 4 miles away. I get there without incident, drinking another 2 litres of water en route. Inside I discover there are tarantulas native to these parts, just to compliment the poisonous snakes and scorpions. Also, daytime temperatures can reach as high as 82C out there - spectacularly high. Fortunately for me, it is the first week of January or something, so the worst I can expect is about 25C. Still, that doesn't mean the tarantulas won't be about foraging come sundown. I'd best get a move-on back to the campground if I am to avoid them. It's funny how I only notice the many strands of spider-web hanging between the desert plants on the return leg.
That night, out of the blue, I had a quite vivid dream. It was set in a future-place: a community tourism project of sorts, the likes of which I will be visiting in February. But the cast of characters were people from my past: university housemates; the ones I haven't kept in contact with. The dream compelled me to do some 'mystalking', or whatever the facebook equivalent is called.
I may have known this anyway, but I learnt that people's lives move forward at different rates. And I feel there is no right or wrong speed for this progression. Yet the very fact that these differences are possible triggers thoughts of 'what ifs'. Thoughts on the fringes of regret. Which must be down to jealousy on some level. Envy. And perhaps the fact these feelings exist points the way forward, the direction to next take.
I didn't step on a rattlesnake, by the way. The National Parks here are usually quite good at telling you when not to step on things, so I figured I should pass on the advice. It seems sound enough to me. If you do ever step on a rattlesnake, make sure you possess the reflexes of a better rattlesnake than the one you choose to step on.
Just a few nights left in the US...
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
#041: How long is too long to spend looking at a big hole?
So I awoke on Christmas Eve in the shadow of Superstition Mountain, surrounded by 14ft tall cactus, on the very edge of the enormous sprawl of Phoenix, Arizona. I had one more drive to undertake before Christmas; north, and upwards, into the mountains and the town of Williams, which sits on the famous old route 66.
The drive was as breath-taking as the rest of Arizona; through deserts filled with impressive cactus forests, gaining elevation until they thinned and disappeared completely, onto a huge plateau with amazing views of the valley below, and then through different kinds of forests until they became alpine and the road was lined with firs.
I chose to treat myself to a motel for the few nights of Christmas, so stocked up on treats and settled in. Christmas morning brought an early rise. Arizona is 7 hours behind the UK and I had conspired with my sister to surprise the folks with a video call at 4pm their time. We managed five or ten minutes before the motel wifi gave up, so switched to Skype. Still, I got to show off my homemade Christmas cracker hat, repleat with three-tone (I only have blue, black and red pens) Christmas tree and snowmen.
Apart from sitting on Route 66, Williams has the added bonus of being just an hours drive from the Grand Canyon, so that is how I spent my Christmas day. Along with everyone else in northern Arizona. It is a very impressive hole-in-the-ground, it has to be said. But I'd wager it is even more impressive from the bottom. As it stands, I'd rate Badlands (which I saw in South Dakota) as the better of the two, though perhaps my choice is swayed by the fact I got to walk through and clamber over the canyons in Badlands.
After a couple of hours wander along the canyon rim, and looking at progressively older and older pieces of rock, I headed back to Williams and a rendezvous with a very cheap bottle of champagne and three different HBO channels. My Christmas night was completed by the discovery that they don't shirk with their Christmas film programming on this side of the Atlantic: Forrest Gump, Spider-man, War of the Worlds (Spielberg), Inception, (Peter Jackson's) King Kong, What A Girl Wants and, of course, Independence Day. Welcome to Earth!
Boxing Day has tended to be a 'visit the relatives' affair down the years and, despite being thousands of miles from mine, I did get to spend some time with a family. This one was a family of mechanics. The van had been making a noise the past week or so, and emails with the rental company revealed they were friendly with a garage in Williams. So I spent the day wandering around the quiet town while the mechanic family ordered in parts and fixed up the Nimbus, ready for the next leg of the journey.
I'm going to embark on a trip around the 'Grand Circle' - a well-worn roadtrip stopping off at all the great canyons in southern Utah and northern Arizona. Before I get to that, though, I decide to detour east slightly, and check out Meteor Crater - a 50,000 year old hole-in-the-ground measuring three-quarters of a mile across.
On our way around the rim our tour guide asks everyone where they have come from. He is noticably disappointed at the family who have travelled just six miles to be there, but relishes telling everyone he had some visitors from Austria a few days back - even further away than the London I offer him, he points out. Ah, I say, but did the Austrians drive over 10,000 miles across 32 States to get there? No? Ha! My oneupmanship is better than your oneupmanship.
I've got a lot of photo catching up to do...here's everything from DC to the Grand Canyon (I hope).
The drive was as breath-taking as the rest of Arizona; through deserts filled with impressive cactus forests, gaining elevation until they thinned and disappeared completely, onto a huge plateau with amazing views of the valley below, and then through different kinds of forests until they became alpine and the road was lined with firs.
I chose to treat myself to a motel for the few nights of Christmas, so stocked up on treats and settled in. Christmas morning brought an early rise. Arizona is 7 hours behind the UK and I had conspired with my sister to surprise the folks with a video call at 4pm their time. We managed five or ten minutes before the motel wifi gave up, so switched to Skype. Still, I got to show off my homemade Christmas cracker hat, repleat with three-tone (I only have blue, black and red pens) Christmas tree and snowmen.
Apart from sitting on Route 66, Williams has the added bonus of being just an hours drive from the Grand Canyon, so that is how I spent my Christmas day. Along with everyone else in northern Arizona. It is a very impressive hole-in-the-ground, it has to be said. But I'd wager it is even more impressive from the bottom. As it stands, I'd rate Badlands (which I saw in South Dakota) as the better of the two, though perhaps my choice is swayed by the fact I got to walk through and clamber over the canyons in Badlands.
After a couple of hours wander along the canyon rim, and looking at progressively older and older pieces of rock, I headed back to Williams and a rendezvous with a very cheap bottle of champagne and three different HBO channels. My Christmas night was completed by the discovery that they don't shirk with their Christmas film programming on this side of the Atlantic: Forrest Gump, Spider-man, War of the Worlds (Spielberg), Inception, (Peter Jackson's) King Kong, What A Girl Wants and, of course, Independence Day. Welcome to Earth!
Boxing Day has tended to be a 'visit the relatives' affair down the years and, despite being thousands of miles from mine, I did get to spend some time with a family. This one was a family of mechanics. The van had been making a noise the past week or so, and emails with the rental company revealed they were friendly with a garage in Williams. So I spent the day wandering around the quiet town while the mechanic family ordered in parts and fixed up the Nimbus, ready for the next leg of the journey.
I'm going to embark on a trip around the 'Grand Circle' - a well-worn roadtrip stopping off at all the great canyons in southern Utah and northern Arizona. Before I get to that, though, I decide to detour east slightly, and check out Meteor Crater - a 50,000 year old hole-in-the-ground measuring three-quarters of a mile across.
On our way around the rim our tour guide asks everyone where they have come from. He is noticably disappointed at the family who have travelled just six miles to be there, but relishes telling everyone he had some visitors from Austria a few days back - even further away than the London I offer him, he points out. Ah, I say, but did the Austrians drive over 10,000 miles across 32 States to get there? No? Ha! My oneupmanship is better than your oneupmanship.
I've got a lot of photo catching up to do...here's everything from DC to the Grand Canyon (I hope).
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