Show me your USA Road Trips

This link has been going around Facebook especially in the past couple of weeks. Though I don't live in the country, I think this is a great way to record where I've been and for approximately how long.

My key to the colouring:

Red: passed through (on a bus or train or airport layover)
Orange: short stay (a few days)
Blue: long stay (a week or more)
Green: Several weeks.

I realised after making it that Colorado should be blue, as I have spent more than a week there in total. But I'm not going back to start over and recolour all the other states too, so there we have it.

Make your own at http://www.defocus.net/visitedstates/generate.html.

After the Odyssey

Arriving in Rarotonga after 39 hours "on the road" was more than a little surreal. I kept forgetting where I was - it looks a bit like home, and a bit like other places I've visited, but it isn't any of those. This is a new country to me, a new culture, new air scented with frangipani, a balm to the senses after all that journeying in stale airline cabins.

I spent the first two flights scribbling frantically. Newly motivated and enabled to make blogging fun, the pages filled at a rapid rate. Transit in Denver was a little tight, walking the length of 60 gates, and my new shoes were hurting a bit. But I boarded, slurped squishy peaches and wrote again.

Once at Los Angeles airport, I took my time. Ten hours till the next flight. I ate a wonderful lunch in the lookout tower restaurant, watching the planes come and go, including some big-daddy A380's, amazing to see in action.

Through security and into my terminal, I typed up the stuff I'd scribbled and scheduled a bunch of blog posts, which you've hopefully seen by now. Drank soup and surfed. Ate yoghurt and posted more stuff, and there were still hours to wait. Finally got on my third flight of the day, watched two movies, dozed a bit, and went into transit at Auckland. 

A few hours later I was joined by family members for our shared adventure to Raro. We boarded the 777 - perhaps the same that brought me from L.A.? - watched another movie, ate, and arrived. 

Jetsetting may sound like fun, but trust me, it's pretty tough till you get there. 

Going Without...Internet

So here I am on a beautiful South Sea island - yes, I live on one too, but this is different - endless beaches, exciting foods, lagoon islands, wild animals and other cute locals. Still I find my mind wandering back often to my online life that's going on without me right now. Is anybody commenting on my scheduled posts? Are there questions waiting that only I can answer? My fingers itch to home in on a keyboard and connect.

But I mean, what the heck? That's not what I'm here for. I'm sitting on a deserted beach, turquoise water at my feet, the roar of the surf pounding the outer reef, and a friendly local dog who's taken up residence beside me in the golden sand. Why on earth would I even be thinking of the old everyday stuff? I could say I miss my friends, but it's only been one day. I'm stronger than that.

No, I'm here today to enjoy the solace of solitude, and other days to celebrate with my family. There's an internet café down the road at $12 an hour, so I could get on if I was desperate. However, I really don't think that's necessary. The world beyond this island can do without me for a week - or rather, the world and I can do without each other.

Photo Story: Yellow Café, Rouen, France

One fine September morning, I sat on a wall in the town of Rouen with my Mum, noshing on real French bread and cheese. Rouen's claim to fame is that it's where Joan of Arc lived and died. We had just landed in Paris in the early dawn; a chartered bus picked us up from Charles de Gaulle airport and we were whisked straight out of Paris. I've never done an organised tour before or since, it's not my style, but I was allowed to join a school group as an extra chaperone.

So we had wandered through twisted medieval streets with tall half-timbered houses, passed the darkly modern St. Jeanne cathedral, and conquered a local outdoor fruit market all in the space of an hour or so. It wasn't lunchtime, but we were all messed up from a 24-hour flight broken only by a couple of hours in Hong Kong.

We had our bread and cheese and a melon from the market, and sat to eat it on this wall between a grassy park and the scooter-filled street. Across the street was this café all set up for the midday rush - all in yellow and white, every knife and fork and glass in place. I like patterns, so I thought it'd make a nice picture.

Rarotonga: First Night

Greeted by a houseful of lizards, I enjoy the sight of my grown brother chasing them around. Wild chooks roam the lawn - an inordinate proportion of roosters makes for a lot of noise. The lawn is also full of fallen coconuts and more loom in the trees overhead.

On the drive over from the airport, I noted goats unfenced by the main road and also numerous gravestones set in the yards of homes. Mongrel dogs wander in public. The island's central mountains aren't high, but rise almost vertically to their jaggy spikes all covered in the wild green bush like New Zealand on steroids.

After dark we walked to nearby Mr Wu's general store. It was raining, and I had no coat or brolly, so I slung a towel over my head and shoulders to keep dry. Mr Wu sells petrol, canned goods, a small selection of fruit and veg, hot pies, ice cream, and intriguing fried snacks made of breadfruit and manioto.

We follow the barely-lit shoulder, torches bobbing in the black ocean of the island night that is itself but a pinprick in the wide, deep, black Pacific. Back at the house there is one TV channel. For ads, business owners voiceover their homemade slideshows.

Not wanting to leave the laundry outside overnight, we lay two brooms and a mop across the backs of two chairs and call it good.

Peaches

There’s nothing like a fresh peach, plucked from a laden tree, warm from the sun and so juicy we have to stand at a convoluted angle in order to drip only down our chins and not our shirts. It’s an old-time form of companionship, this standing around a tree, slurping the golden flesh of its reproductive cycle. And in such abundance! There were maybe a hundred peaches on the first tree, but at least five times that many on the second—globules of goodness clustered tightly around each limb for foot after foot, completely obscuring any sight of the bark. One branch even broke under the load, but its fruit was even too much for the bugs and it continued to ripen on the ground. I must have picked ten or fifteen pounds last Monday. Still the tree showed no sign of thinning out. There must be many pies in future, methinks, and alas that I’m not there to eat my fill. But I had a handful in my carry-on…and ate them somewhere high above the Rockies.

Another day on the farm

This one was a bonus. With flights delayed till the day after next, I was warmly welcomed back at the Woychik homestead. It was surreal, just like the other time this happened—back to “normal” one more time. Fed the cats, let the chooks out, watered the guinea pigs, picked peaches, and, in an accident of good timing, got to ride along on the tractor as Jerry cut the alfalfa for baling.

It was a beautiful evening, a peach-coloured sun dipping towards the trees at the edge of the field. Grasshoppers by the hundreds fled the tractor’s advance at every turn of the wheel and the haybine chewed the crop in tidy rows as Jerry flung and spun the steering wheel to keep it on track.

Riding five feet up, on the fender above the giant wheel, was a little nerve-wracking at first, but I got the hang of it (or should that be the “hang-on” of it?) and smiled all the way round…and round…and round. The fresh, balmy air, the drone and sputter of the John Deere, and the bumps in the turf made a very memorable experience for this city gal who’s got a lot of country in her heart after all.

Later, on those long, long flights, I closed my eyes and imagined myself back on the green fender with the breeze in my face.

Grace Odyssey 2013: Fiasco I

My airport face after 7 hours of layover

I could have called it “a cacophony of endurance”, and it would be true. I must have read that phrase in a book, or made it up, which I readily admit is less likely. Either way, those three words together are not something any writer can use more than once in a career and still be taken seriously. I’ve probably used way more than my quota just in social media. Ah well, there goes the reputation.

I am on a long journey. I can say that in public, because there are a lot of people who live in my house. A great side benefit of having flatmates—I don’t have to be all secretive about my travels. Hey, there’s actually one room available at present, so keep that in mind if you come across someone looking for digs in Glenfield. Anyway, I seem to have gotten back around to where I started, but I’ve written long enough for this one. Guess I’ll tell you about the Odyssey Fiasco next time.

Globetrotter's Gallivants

Well, I finally did it - culled some of the best photos from my travelling years, and put them all in one place. Theoretically I'm all caught up now - except for any NZ-themed shows that might still be in the offing. Anyway, here it is - a bunch of different countries, but largely Germany, which was my home base for seven years. At the end there are links to other, shorter themed shows. Enjoy!



The soundtrack is "Stepping Stones in Time" - so appropriate for these ancient places, and also for a decade of memories - once again provided by the talented Mike Rogers, and you can find the whole album over at http://michaellrogers.virb.com/magnetica.

Video: Lagoon Fish of New Caledonia

Filmed at sea and in the Nouméa Aquarium, back in July.
Music from http://michaellrogers.virb.com

Who are you, Nouméa?

So I’m home again from my travels, with plenty to tell you about New Caledonia. It was my first time there, and as the plane neared the island, the coral reef became visible – the reef that encloses the world’s largest lagoon, so I’m told. Outside the reef, choppy winter blue seas roll up and crash onto the divider. Within, pale sand shines through to form the brightest, purest turquoise colour, dotted with giant corals.

Coming in to land, great green slopes rise up around the aircraft. You thought New Zealand was lush? Well, it is, but it’s got nothing on New Caledonia in the wet season. "Wet" being a short downpour every fourth day or so. Tall folds of mountains clothed in rich forests wrap the road to the city. Soon I am alighting at Anse Vata. But I’ve already told you about that; go look at last week’s post if you haven’t already.

At first it was hard to grasp the character of Nouméa, a place both thoroughly tropical and thoroughly European – a contradiction in terms. But the island’s natives are all citizens of France, and the bakers produce fresh bread all day long as French custom requires. Of course the brand of French spoken here has its own quirks and is a little different to standard language – much like New Zealand English differs from British or American, I imagine.

Nouméa boasts just on 100,000 inhabitants, spread out across the hills and valleys of a sizeable peninsula in the southwest of the island of New Caledonia, just 350km long in the vastness of the Pacific. Locals never lived on this promontory before the coming of the Europeans, who settled there because of the deep harbour.  Later, during World War II, many thousands of soldiers passed through since Nouméa was the U.S. Army headquarters for the Pacific.

The local currency is Pacific Francs, of which you need a couple of hundred for a loaf of bread, and a couple of thousand to dine out. The cost of living is high, but you can haggle for bargains at the waterside markets where there is a building especially for fish, one for meat, and several for fruit, vegetables, baked goods, and handcrafts.

The gentle winter sunshine makes this the perfect escape in July, although it’s mostly too cold for swimming at this time of year. Wild and refined, stylish and rough, simple yet sophisticated – a unique place indeed.

Anse Vata, New Caledonia

Itchy feet again? Yep, it's your neighbourhood globetrotter reporting in from a tiny coral island off the coast of Noumea. Looking back across the water, I see the hotel mile along Anse Vata beach, and the towering mountains beyond the city.

Please excuse me if this post is a little scatterbrained. Another time I’ll get some background information for you on Noumea proper, but for now, all I’ve seen so far is the beach and this island.

A yellow water taxi brought me here this morning for the snorkelling. Alighting from the boat into shallow water, I stepped onto a beach consisting of strangely-shaped coral pieces. This is the Ile aux Canards,though I never saw a duck here. It is small enough to walk around in five minutes, each angle offering new views of the lush and rugged mainland.

We are still firmly inside the lagoon made by the protective barrier reef that surrounds New Caledonia's Grande Terre. Off to the east, white breakers are just visible beyond the Amedee lighthouse.

Anse Vata is where the tourists stay, but there aren't  too many here now in the tropical winter. At 25 degrees Celsius, that's equal to summer back home in NZ. There are a couple of decent restaurants and bakeries, but it's quite a hike to the supermarket.

Everything's pricey here, for the simple reason that it's nearly all imported. Even the butter comes from France - but boy, is it good! Tropical ambience mingles with European chic to make for a unique experience.

This island paradise is in fact still a colony of France, and all the locals are French citizens, whether of Kanak or European origin. They gather at the beach to sing and play bowls, and I've even seen them napping on the grass under the palm trees.

The aquarium at Anse Vata is well worth a visit. You get a real close look at brilliantly diverse fish and deep-sea life forms. I was particularly taken with the glowing corals in yellow and orange and blue, displayed in a pitch-dark room without artificial light.

And here at the Ile aux Canards, I've floated amidst hundreds of brightly-coloured fish just a few metres from the shore. This is a great place to be, and especially for us New Zealanders - it is only a three hour flight from home.

Rural Bavaria

   

For a country with only a little more land area than my own and twenty times the population, it has always surprised me that there is so much open country in Germany—where the silence is so heavy you can feel it, and the pace of life is slow and settled. This can be explained in part by the presence of apartment blocks even in rural villages, and of course the high density of the cities.

Country folks speak different dialects to city folks; they often travel far for school and work, and the young people move out when it comes time to take up tertiary study. A transport network of occasional buses links up the tiny townships with their little supermarkets, fire departments, and primary schools.

The larger villages also offer amenities along their tiny main streets: perhaps a baker, a butcher, a hairdresser, a driving school, and most likely a restaurant or two of the type where retired farmers are likely to spend the day nursing a pint of local beer and talking politics. The food available in such establishments is simple, filling and good value—even if it can be on the heavy side with its dumplings and gravies.

Cycling from village to village is a singular experience in Bavaria, as the edge of the settlement is clearly defined: one minute you’re passing tall housing blocks, and the next you’re in amidst the farmer’s fields with nary a soul in sight.

In the summer, the dry heat wafts up from the reflecting earth, and fields of corn and hay ripple in the breeze while dark conifer forests loom beyond the warm haze. Village dwellers can be found fishing in tiny lakes and walking their dogs on farm tracks between the fields, dotted here and there with a pilgrim’s cross or tiny chapel shrine to a saint. The hills of Bavaria are gentle, providing an easy walk for hot days.

In winter, blankets of snow intensify the silence until it becomes almost a personality in its own right. Fresh-tilled soil soon freezes solid. Out the window, the forest trees and the icy fields turn the world into a black and white movie, and you could easily believe you’ve travelled back a hundred years in time.

Rangitoto Island: Sleeping Volcano

By far the largest—and youngest— in the Auckland volcanic region, Rangitoto sits at the gateway to the city and is visible from any position high enough. It’s a classic shield-shaped volcano where the lava pouring out built up into an island, high and steep in the centre, low and flat at the edges, and circular in shape.

It is said to have erupted around 600 years ago, which is not long in volcanic terms. Motutapu is its immediate island neighbour, separated only by a few metres of causeway, but is not volcanic—it was there a long time before.

Rangitoto is a cliché of sorts in Auckland, an oft-photographed icon, yet so few tourists or locals visit its shores. That is a day trip very much worth doing: a short ferry ride from the city deposits you at a solitary wharf, and a couple of hours walking (or a ride on the tractor wagon if you want to cheat) will get you to the top, where you will be rewarded with a fantastic 360° view of the Hauraki Gulf, its islands, and the city of Auckland, which, though huge, is distinctly reduced by viewing it from the summit of a mountain.

Due to its young nature, there is no real soil on the island—merely decomposed debris lodged in the cracks between the lava. Hence the forest too is young, and sparse in places. There are even fields of bare volcanic rock that make you think you’re on another planet. Also, there are caves in the lava on the flanks of the hill as it becomes steeper towards the top: created by air bubbles in liquid rock which then solidified, leaving these irregular open spaces.

Ships pass by in the Rangitoto Channel to Auckland’s container wharves, and on summer evenings the cruise ships leave town by the same route, all lit up like Christmas trees, and dwarfed by the 260-metre volcano.

Always there, always brooding, often with a cloud darkening its top in otherwise clear skies—it is difficult to describe what Rangitoto means to a local who’s grown up in its shadow. A marvel of nature, definitely. A sleeping threat, perhaps. A symbol of home, for sure.

In case you missed it last year, here's my video of a visit there...

Balbriggan Town

The name alone conjures up memories of the sweet summer I spent there, scribbling in a room with a sea view. It proved easy enough to arrange accommodation in Ireland, even from another country, and that is how I ended up in Balbriggan.

The town is about 45 minutes north of Dublin by commuter train, though there is no longer much of a gap between the sprawling city suburbs and the satellite communities. It has always been a fishing village, but now it serves also as a home for city workers.

I believe it has a population of about 20,000—sharply growing—and there’s one hotel, several pubs and restaurants along the main street, four supermarkets, and a good number of suburbs itself. In suburban Ireland, housing is arranged in estates where each street has the same name. For example, the Clonuske estate has Clonuske Park, Clonuske Drive, Clonuske Close, Clonuske Rise, and Clonuske Green. It was certainly confusing at first!

The houses themselves are joined wall-to-wall more often than not—it is the finer homes that stand alone—and they often have brightly-coloured doors and window-frames in otherwise plain facades of brick and plaster.

Balbriggan faces the Irish Sea, looking towards Wales, as did my window. The beach is never far away in this town, and once there, you can walk for miles to the north along tiny coastal tracks that may get a bit rugged and adventurous in places. Once I encountered a herd of cows who had trampled down their fence and escaped onto the beach. They proceeded to enter a housing estate, where local boys kept them in check until the farmer was called.

The sound of the green trains is often heard, whizzing by towards Drogheda, or the blue ones that go to Belfast. And when the sun sets over the little hills at the western horizon, the colours rise up in the eastern sky, followed by the night—and I wrote on and finished a novel or two that summer, in that little room in little old Balbriggan.

A Tall Ship in the Bay of Islands

New Year, Kiwi Style

A group of my friends extended an open invite to join them in getting out of town over New Year’s. I jumped at the prospect, since the weather was fantastic and the city offered only humidity and an enormous fireworks display. It would be cooler down country. So we piled in and zipped off. First of all we crossed the harbour on the ancient bridge (50 years is ancient for us young folk!) then passed through the buzzing central city area to make another pickup. Then it was back to the motorway and south to the hills.

Just after we left city limits, we switched from State Highway 1 to State Highway 2 and took a more easterly direction. Rolling hills accompanied the road for some way, until we reached the flatland of the Hauraki Plain. We then passed through several small towns and stopped to eat at Paeroa, in a retro-style diner that’s retro because it never got updated, but the food is good and cheap and bounteous. Leaving Paeroa, the road changes almost immediately as it enters into the spectacular Karangahake Gorge. Gold was mined here once, and it’s here that my Irish great-great grandfather met my German great-great grandmother. But the gold ran out, leaving a ghost town and bits of machinery amidst today’s verdant bush.

We reached Waihi and pushed on to Katikati. Our goal was almost in sight: Tauranga. It’s the fifth largest city in New Zealand, but still gives an impression of countrified quiet to us Aucklanders. It sits at the south end of a long, shallow harbour fronted by the long, forested Matakana Island. Bit by bit our convoy arrived at the designated park, where someone had already cranked up the free public barbecues to receive what we would bring.


The moon rose above the Mount, full and huge and reflected in the harbour with the twinkling lights of the motel strip. A stiff west wind definitely cooled us down, so that we soon decided to go back to the house where we would spend the night. As midnight approached we set off on foot to the nearest beach, only to discover it was a tidal flat...and the tide was out. So we slopped out to the edge of the waves, and when it was determined we had one minute to go, they started a countdown from sixty and ran out into the depths. Soon they vanished in the dark, so it's just as well they were yelling out the seconds. I don't know how deep it was, but they managed to get wet anyway. The icy water kept me from going any further in, so I saw in the new year with my toes in the ocean.

Tauranga’s “pièce de résistance” is the harbour’s head volcano named Mount Maunganui. Here tourists and locals alike swarm the long beach in summer. It was here that we headed first on New Year’s day to dip into the waves. The water, however, was not any warmer than it had been at midnight - but the sun was as hot as I’ve ever felt it. So after a dip in the waves, we moved on again, snacking on cold cheese sausages left over from the barbie. They tasted so good, I can hardly describe it!

About a quarter hour along the road that would lead back to Auckland, we pulled aside for another swim: this time at a river waterhole deep in the bush in the lower Kaimai hills. Reaching the swimming hole involved climbing down steep banks, crossing the creek, and slogging through foot-wide paths between blackberry patches and mudholes and bare rock expanses, all in the space of five minutes. Barefoot, mind you.


Well! There had to be about a hundred people at least enjoying the wild location - including heaps of kids and dogs. Jumping off rocks, surfing the rapids, or just floating in the coolness. The sun continued to beat down, and the water wasn’t any colder than the sea had been.

Guess this was a pretty typical way to celebrate the new year around here. I can certainly recommend it!

Tour de France: Rouen and Bayeux

We landed in Paris at around 7 in the morning and waited a rather long time for the baggage, normal I suppose for a huge plane like that. I photographed the terminal's interior escalators until finally everything was gathered and we were able to head for our bus. It was much bigger than we had been told, so that we could spread out as we wanted.

The drive to Rouen began with excitement as we caught glimpses of La Grande Arche while leaving Paris. In Rouen, after some initial disorientation, we wandered through typical tiny streets and huge cathedrals. We ate fresh bread with lettuce and cheese, then had to head back to the bus.

Pics: Café in Rouen; Rouen cathedral; old houses in Rouen

Two hours later a very tired group disembarked in Bayeux to view the famed medieval tapestry. Despite its great age, the vivid colours and huge length are worth a close look. Then we checked into our gorgeous little hotel on the Place du Marché and visited the establishment next door for a three course meal - the first of many culinary challenges for our new travellers. We ate paté, grilled turkey with chips, and apple tart. And early to bed in lovely timbered rooms.

On Saturday morning we awoke early from jetlag and observed the vendors setting up their stalls for market day. A visit to the bakery provided an early snack, followed by a cup of tea in the café and finally breakfast in the hotel at nine.

We spent a good deal of time in the market, buying local cheese and fruit for lunch as well as some very French clothes. Time then for a wander through old Bayeux, with its coloured shop-fronts and yet another cathedral that seemed to glow yellow in the noonday sun. We lunched in a tree-shaded park and rejoined the group for a trip to the coast.

Haunting relics litter the cliffs far above those fateful beaches - mangled concrete bunkers and huge potholes, pocked with twisted rods and rolls of rusty barbed wire. Farther along at the military cemetary, we looked on as all the Americans present froze on the spot to sing their anthem. Along the road I noticed many houses bore metal decorations, some shaped like an S. Back at the local restaurant we ate crudités salad, roast ham, potato gratin, and pear custard tart.

Pics: café in Bayeux, hotel room ceiling, dogs viewed from hotel window, at the cemetary