At the risk of sounding overly dramatic (something I have never been accused of before - lucky for me no one can see the eye rolling in my blog) I am in a hell of my own making! Now I realise that’s overstating the situation; I’ve been reading a couple of blogs of people blogging about their fight with cancer and I know the chaos I’m struggling with is nothing compared to what they are going though. They’d read my blog and simply laugh (not at my baseless and shameless attempt at being humourous but at the sheer lunacy at thinking that my situation bears any resemblance to either chaos or hell).
But in my boring run-of-the-mill type life (touch wood it stays that way) chaotic hell is the best way to describe what I currently have to undertake. I have to sort though all my digital photos from my recent trip to New Zealand.
Now, at the time I took the photos, I thought; “This is great! Oh that looks neat! Wow look at that.” Snap! Snap! Snap! (ok, the Snapping is my blogging manifestation of what my digital camera sounds like as it takes a picture – in actuality I have turned off the sound so I’m not sure it makes any noise when it takes a picture, but having typed that, I think it must, otherwise how would I know that I actually captured what I had hoped to do).
In my photographic exuberance I took over 1600 pictures in 24 days, if you do the math, that’s an average of over 66 photos PER DAY! Far, far, far too many photos than anyone person could possibly need to take in such a short space in time.
I blame the camera, no, it wasn’t taking pictures on it’s own, but by the shear fact that it’s a digital camera lends itself to being pulled out and used at any given moment no matter how un-momentous the moment is. I think digital photography was invented to pander to the instant-gratification sensation that seems to run rampant though society these days. I was accused the other day of being an impatient westerner because I didn’t think I could ever dedicate five days to a cricket match (actually, I said I wouldn’t waste 3 hours on the oddity – having attempted to watch it during dinner one night in NZ and having it make absolutely no sense, only to find out, after being informed by a co-worker after my return home, that some cricket matches can last DAYS!).
Cricket aside, I don’t deny I am not a patient person, red lights irk me and slow computers make me want to scream. But I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say I want instant gratification… but when it comes to digital cameras, essentially that’s what you get. It’s not like the “good ol’ days” when you had to purchase film, load it into your camera, take the finite number allotted on the film roll and then remove said used roll and take it in to get developed by strangers in times spanning one hour to one week. Thus was the 35mm world (the dark-room ages, as it were). Today’s digital camera is like the old Polaroid instant cameras, click the button and out spits a picture! But unlike the old Polaroid, today’s digital cameras don’t require film, in which, in my opinion, the evil lies!
The expense of having to buy film (and the added expense of developing 35mm film) made taking pictures (pre-digital) more of a selective process. Since each photo cost a definitive amount of money, most people (me included) would be reasonably selective about the photos I took. Ok, the 18 rolls I took during my 3 week European vacation about 10 years ago might suggest I am less than selective – but I just did the math, 36x18 is only 648 photos; less than half my NZ trip and I visited 4 countries when in Europe, 5 if you include England, which I guess I’d better since it is a country. So on a per-country basis, the Europe trip works out to under 130 pictures – a much more acceptable number.
It today’s day and age, when digital cameras are so widely available (some camera batteries less so) and memory cards so inexpensive, the financial dampeners are cast off leaving me at the mercy of my own self control. Apparently, when it comes to digital photography, I must admit I’m rather snap-happy which leaves me to wade though the many to find the few. Otherwise I risk putting all my friends to sleep or worse still boring them to death. On the bright side, maybe I can make digital slideshow of all my photos and market it as a cure for insomnia. But I suppose it’s not working for me, I’ve spent the last two days reviewing the darn things and I’m still not able to reset my mental clock to get it off of NZ time, which keeps telling me it’s only 6 PM when it’s 10 PM and by extension making 2 AM bedtime – which for me is absolutely unacceptable (as I’m needing to be up at 5 AM)!
Oh well, I guess I can start using the insomniac hours to cull the herd – at last count I was down to around 1200 – I wonder what a socially acceptable number to subject to friends and acquaintances is? Hmm, maybe a couple more weekends of culling will do it.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Right Stuff
Well, the trip is over and all that's left is the memories and the reflections.
So I wonder, as I look back on my slogging while blogging, what does it take to be a travel writer? What does it take to wax poetic about the road you travel? How can I be creative and concise, witty and wise, amusing and insightful all at the same time while also having the time to see the sights and socialize with my travelling companions?
For me it wasn't easy. I think that there might be snatches of creativity amongst the mundane masses of each of my blogs; but to describe them as a witty and insightful retelling of my travels would be giving me far more credit that I deserve.
For me, creativity is spontaneous; as I'm walking along the beach in my head I begin to wax poetic about the sea, surf and sand; but by the time I get back to the hotel room, the poetry is gone. I think on my next trip I need to carry a little notebook, everywhere I go, I'll carry pen and paper and then, when inspiration strikes, I'll be ready to take notes.
Looking back, my blogs seem like lengthy epics spanning several days of activities, episodic epics. Next time, I'll make the time to blog daily, even if I can't post it. I need to find quiet time each day to write up my reflections - travelling alone would allow me to do that, but I feel travelling alone I would miss out on the shared experiences aspect of the trip.
I think another component of a good travel writer is to be prepared, know the area I'm travelling to and know the main sights and some of the interesting facts of the area. That way my blogs could be more informative.Maybe I ask too much of myself, being untrained in the art of journalism and unpracticed in the realm of blogging, maybe ultimately, my last missing skill is simply time; time and experience writing.
With any luck I'll have many more trips, many more opportunities to wax poetic on the wonders of the world.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A Sprint to the Finish
...literally!
As I begin to write this, I am sitting in the airport in Vancouver, waiting for my 3 flight of the day (my first flight being almost 24 hours ago, but since I crossed the International Date Line, for me, today and yesterday are the same date - March 1st).
My first flight was from Christchurch to Auckland and took about 90 minutes, but it left almost an hour late making us almost late for our connection in Auckland. So as we raced from the plane that landed at the Domestic Terminal to catch our departing plane at the International Terminal, we literally ran from one building to the other. Getting there just prior to the general boarding announcement - a stressful and sweaty start to our 14 hour long flight back to Canada.
The flight itself, though very long and very cramped was not totally devoid of enjoyment (even though the food was devoid of taste and the passengers devoid of space). Air NZ has seat-back TV and I watched "Slumdog Millionaire" before trying to get some sleep and "The Secret Life of Bees" after giving up on the concept of sleep.
Now with about an hour's worth of breathing room as I wait for my final flight, I can reflect on my final days in NZ.
The last few days in NZ just flew by. We drove up the West coast of the South Island and since we had limited Internet access and I had even more limited energy and creativity, I neglected to blog about the final leg of our journey, until today.
Wanaka is a small town situated on a lake (called, shockingly, Lake Wanaka), a picturesque town surrounded by mountains (not of the proportions of the Rocky Mountains, but mountains none the less). We arrived in Wanaka late afternoon (later than intended because I felt compelled to toss myself off a cliff in Queenstown, see my last blog for clarification) and had a wander around the town and along the waterfront, before beginning our daily forage for nightly sustenance. I managed to catch a couple of sundown shots before my battery decided to pack it in for the day (I had been wasting battery power daily by trying to take artistic and beautiful photos out of the back window of the car, it helped prevent me from falling asleep).
So, battery dead and me a close second at "dead tired" we wandered back to the motel and called it a night. The odd thing about almost everywhere we travelled in NZ is the propensity of the shops to close at 5pm, so having no shops to pop in and out of in the evenings and not being bar-going folk, a hot drink in the room after dinner was the norm, and that evening in Wanaka was no different.
The next morning (Feb 26th) we took a short 90 minute hike up to the top of Mt. Iron. It being less than five minutes from Wanaka and easily hiked, round-trip, in less than two hours while still having a nice view of Lake Wanaka, Wanaka and the surrounding mountains was all the reasons we needed to hike it. The sunny weather was also a deciding factor, that and the fact that we all find the prospect of strenuous (or mildly strenuous) physical activity appealing in and of itself.
Our next night time destination was Fox Glacier (or at least the Township of said glacier) and we broke up the four hours or so of driving with a stop at the Gates of Haast (a small waterfall the we passed along the way, whose name, to me, makes it seem a lot more remarkable than they are - in my head a booming announcers voice declares "Now approaching THE GATES OF HAAST", maybe I'm eating too many Milo Bars (an awesome chocolate bar - that NZ touts as an Energy Bar, which manages to lessen my guilt quite nicely)).
We lunched at the end of some remote dead-end road which overlooked the ocean and a nice placid river mouth, however we became lunch as we were overrun by NZ Sand Flies (the size of a fruit fly) that feasted on our foreign blood until we fled, swatting and cursing hurtling down the highway in a sand fly infested car.
We got to Fox Glacier (the township) with more than enough time to check in and check out Fox Glacier (the glacier). Though as we were driving in to the township the clouds descended and a light rain began to fall. But being the stalwart (or desperate) tourists that we are, we hiked up as close to the foot of the Glacier as the NZ DoC (Department of Conservation) would allow, whilst fording raging torrents (read "small rocky creeks") and braving the potential of a rock-slide (of which we were in no danger of). After snapping a few pictures we headed back to the township for a warm drink then dinner.
Up before dawn on the 27th, we headed up to Lake Matheson to watch the sunrise and see the spectacle of seeing NZ's two largest mountains Mount Cook and Mount Able reflected in the still waters of Lake Matheson. After scampering through the forest trail in the pre-dawn near-darkness (as I marvelled at the fact that in NZ, since there are very few land mammals and none are predatory (except for the killer sheep - you'd have to know the movie Black Sheep for that reference - it was one of the many movies I didn't watch on my flight home) we got to the first look out in time to see the sun turn the clouds in the sky pink while doing the same to their water-bound counterparts where we began snapping an obscene number of pictures Well, at least I snapped an obscene number). After which we wandering around the lake, snapping more shots and enjoying the early dawn before heading back to the motel to once again, eat, pack and fold ourselves back into the car for the next leg of our journey.
Our next bed for the night was in a little sea-side town called Hokatika, which was rumoured (by the Lonely Planet Travel Guide Book that we nicknamed "Big Blue") to be a centre of arts and crafts in NZ and where we had hoped to find that unique and reasonably priced souvenir (in the end we found both a bit lacking).
We drove out to a surf-side point and had lunch at a leisurely pace (the wind was up a bit, which meant the sand fly population was down) while the waves boomed on the rocks beside us and the gulls hung about hopefully. After lunch we walked into the main part of town in search of the elusive local artisan stores. Not long into our search I realised that, on as nice a day as it was, the last thing I wanted to be doing was popping in and out of shops, so I told the others I was heading back to the car and I wandered off in search of surf and solitude.
I found both and sat down on a large boulder that made up part of the breakwater. I spent an hour reclining and reflecting while listening and watching the waves rumble in and swish out, constantly redrawing the shore.
Though I could have sat there indefinitely just listening to the surf and gulls and feeling the sun and sea spray on my face, eventually my travelling companions found me (not that I was hidden, having gone and sat on the breakwater near our rental car) and we headed off to check in at our hotel.
After dinner we wandered down to the beach to watch the sun set. Along with all the other day-end witnesses, we spent almost an hour on the beach watching the sky change colours as the daylight slowly slipped away...
The next morning we headed north along the coast to Greymouth and beyond. It was our final full day in NZ and the weather was less than welcoming as the sky was grey and the light was flat. We headed out to the Pancake Rocks, an interesting rock formation about an hour's drive north of Greymouth.
The coastal road (like most roads in NZ) was narrow and twisty and I was happy enough not to be driving. I was happier still, not to be driving when we came across a bad accident that had happened less than an hour before. As we rounded a corner we could see up ahead that the traffic was stopped and as we reached the end of the line of traffic a man in bright orange vest wandered over and told us that the road was closed because there had been a head on collision and the police and emergency workers were still trying to sort it all out.
After about a half-hour's delay (during which we watched a rescue helicopter come, set down, and the go off again) we were waved on and slowly navigated our way though the wreckage, one blood-smeared car already up on the flat-bed truck and the other crumpled at the side of the road, a surfboard sticking out what used to be the front windshield, with the front end and windshield being little more than a crumpled mass of metal and broken glass. We drove past, heart-sick, hoping that there had been no loss of life.
We drove the rest of the way to Pancake Rocks feeling more subdued. After photos were taken and coffee consumed we headed back down the road we had come up on, back past the scene of the accident, now long since cleared up, the only reminder being a small patch on the road where some absorbent gravel, or sand was laid down to cover the car fluids.
Back in Greymouth we waited for the Train and I spied a newspaper whose cover story caught my eye - "Surfer Involved in Head-On Near Ten Mile". Three air-lifted to hospital, one taken by St. John Ambulance (the main providers of Ambulance service in NZ); a family heading to a surfing competition, an American tourist going the opposite direction on the wrong side of the highway. I can report today, that there was no loss of life, though all are still in hospital.
By the time we had made it back to Greymouth the rain had started and it was raining in earnest the entire time we were there, limiting lunch location to the inside of our rental car and limiting our sightseeing to the Train Station and it's covered platform.
Though we had hoped the weather would improve once we left Greymouth on our "Scenic" trip to Christchurch, we had rain as our constant travelling companion for the duration of the trip, making it less scenic than anticipated and more of a disappointment (often the aftermath of anticipation).
A late train and slow luggage made us late for our dinner reservation, but the restaurant "Strawberry Fare" was more than happy to reschedule by half an hour. If you want a high end meal at a reasonable price and the MOST AMAZING looking deserts imaginable, go to "Strawberry Fare" for dinner when in ChCh (this is not a paid endorsement and I am no celebrity).
It was a dark and stormy night, no really - it was, ok, well MOST nights are dark (unless you go far enough North or South, which we weren't) but this night was definitely very stormy. Luckily the storm blew itself out by morning and on the morning of our final (almost full) day we were met with sunshine.
We went for a run in a rear by park before breakfast and trip on the public bus to Lyttelton (a small town outside ChCh (probably more like a suburb, but a small town sounds more glanourous). Lyttelton’s claim to fame (if you can call it that) is that it’s ChCh’s main port and also has a Timeball Station. Which to my Sci-Fi saturated brain, made me think of Dr. Who (my brain was Sci-fi saturated primarily due to a travelling companion of mine’s retelling of dreams had over several nights that for some reason involved aliens, and flying cars and earplugs that prevent you from being able to speak – I was happy to hear that someone else has strange and crazy dreams that make no sense).
Anyway, the Timeball Station is a historic landmark. It was, back in the day, a way for sailors to set their watches by in order to properly navigate across the ocean using the lines of Longitude and the position of the sun and moon. It is a building on a hill with a giant ball on a post at the of the building, this ball is raised and dropped (or was, in the day) at precisely one PM to allow sailors to set their watches by. It's now just a landmark, and the ball is rarely dropped anymore.
After wandering though the Timeball museum and through Lyttelton itself we had an outstanding lunch at The Lyttelton Coffee Co. before taking the bus back to ChCh so that we could get to the Airport in time for our flight to Auckland.
Heralding the end of my NZ trip and my current set of "The Rambling Traveller" blogs.
As I begin to write this, I am sitting in the airport in Vancouver, waiting for my 3 flight of the day (my first flight being almost 24 hours ago, but since I crossed the International Date Line, for me, today and yesterday are the same date - March 1st).
My first flight was from Christchurch to Auckland and took about 90 minutes, but it left almost an hour late making us almost late for our connection in Auckland. So as we raced from the plane that landed at the Domestic Terminal to catch our departing plane at the International Terminal, we literally ran from one building to the other. Getting there just prior to the general boarding announcement - a stressful and sweaty start to our 14 hour long flight back to Canada.
The flight itself, though very long and very cramped was not totally devoid of enjoyment (even though the food was devoid of taste and the passengers devoid of space). Air NZ has seat-back TV and I watched "Slumdog Millionaire" before trying to get some sleep and "The Secret Life of Bees" after giving up on the concept of sleep.
Now with about an hour's worth of breathing room as I wait for my final flight, I can reflect on my final days in NZ.
The last few days in NZ just flew by. We drove up the West coast of the South Island and since we had limited Internet access and I had even more limited energy and creativity, I neglected to blog about the final leg of our journey, until today.
Wanaka is a small town situated on a lake (called, shockingly, Lake Wanaka), a picturesque town surrounded by mountains (not of the proportions of the Rocky Mountains, but mountains none the less). We arrived in Wanaka late afternoon (later than intended because I felt compelled to toss myself off a cliff in Queenstown, see my last blog for clarification) and had a wander around the town and along the waterfront, before beginning our daily forage for nightly sustenance. I managed to catch a couple of sundown shots before my battery decided to pack it in for the day (I had been wasting battery power daily by trying to take artistic and beautiful photos out of the back window of the car, it helped prevent me from falling asleep).
So, battery dead and me a close second at "dead tired" we wandered back to the motel and called it a night. The odd thing about almost everywhere we travelled in NZ is the propensity of the shops to close at 5pm, so having no shops to pop in and out of in the evenings and not being bar-going folk, a hot drink in the room after dinner was the norm, and that evening in Wanaka was no different.
The next morning (Feb 26th) we took a short 90 minute hike up to the top of Mt. Iron. It being less than five minutes from Wanaka and easily hiked, round-trip, in less than two hours while still having a nice view of Lake Wanaka, Wanaka and the surrounding mountains was all the reasons we needed to hike it. The sunny weather was also a deciding factor, that and the fact that we all find the prospect of strenuous (or mildly strenuous) physical activity appealing in and of itself.
Our next night time destination was Fox Glacier (or at least the Township of said glacier) and we broke up the four hours or so of driving with a stop at the Gates of Haast (a small waterfall the we passed along the way, whose name, to me, makes it seem a lot more remarkable than they are - in my head a booming announcers voice declares "Now approaching THE GATES OF HAAST", maybe I'm eating too many Milo Bars (an awesome chocolate bar - that NZ touts as an Energy Bar, which manages to lessen my guilt quite nicely)).
We lunched at the end of some remote dead-end road which overlooked the ocean and a nice placid river mouth, however we became lunch as we were overrun by NZ Sand Flies (the size of a fruit fly) that feasted on our foreign blood until we fled, swatting and cursing hurtling down the highway in a sand fly infested car.
We got to Fox Glacier (the township) with more than enough time to check in and check out Fox Glacier (the glacier). Though as we were driving in to the township the clouds descended and a light rain began to fall. But being the stalwart (or desperate) tourists that we are, we hiked up as close to the foot of the Glacier as the NZ DoC (Department of Conservation) would allow, whilst fording raging torrents (read "small rocky creeks") and braving the potential of a rock-slide (of which we were in no danger of). After snapping a few pictures we headed back to the township for a warm drink then dinner.
Up before dawn on the 27th, we headed up to Lake Matheson to watch the sunrise and see the spectacle of seeing NZ's two largest mountains Mount Cook and Mount Able reflected in the still waters of Lake Matheson. After scampering through the forest trail in the pre-dawn near-darkness (as I marvelled at the fact that in NZ, since there are very few land mammals and none are predatory (except for the killer sheep - you'd have to know the movie Black Sheep for that reference - it was one of the many movies I didn't watch on my flight home) we got to the first look out in time to see the sun turn the clouds in the sky pink while doing the same to their water-bound counterparts where we began snapping an obscene number of pictures Well, at least I snapped an obscene number). After which we wandering around the lake, snapping more shots and enjoying the early dawn before heading back to the motel to once again, eat, pack and fold ourselves back into the car for the next leg of our journey.
Our next bed for the night was in a little sea-side town called Hokatika, which was rumoured (by the Lonely Planet Travel Guide Book that we nicknamed "Big Blue") to be a centre of arts and crafts in NZ and where we had hoped to find that unique and reasonably priced souvenir (in the end we found both a bit lacking).
We drove out to a surf-side point and had lunch at a leisurely pace (the wind was up a bit, which meant the sand fly population was down) while the waves boomed on the rocks beside us and the gulls hung about hopefully. After lunch we walked into the main part of town in search of the elusive local artisan stores. Not long into our search I realised that, on as nice a day as it was, the last thing I wanted to be doing was popping in and out of shops, so I told the others I was heading back to the car and I wandered off in search of surf and solitude.
I found both and sat down on a large boulder that made up part of the breakwater. I spent an hour reclining and reflecting while listening and watching the waves rumble in and swish out, constantly redrawing the shore.
Though I could have sat there indefinitely just listening to the surf and gulls and feeling the sun and sea spray on my face, eventually my travelling companions found me (not that I was hidden, having gone and sat on the breakwater near our rental car) and we headed off to check in at our hotel.
After dinner we wandered down to the beach to watch the sun set. Along with all the other day-end witnesses, we spent almost an hour on the beach watching the sky change colours as the daylight slowly slipped away...
The next morning we headed north along the coast to Greymouth and beyond. It was our final full day in NZ and the weather was less than welcoming as the sky was grey and the light was flat. We headed out to the Pancake Rocks, an interesting rock formation about an hour's drive north of Greymouth.
The coastal road (like most roads in NZ) was narrow and twisty and I was happy enough not to be driving. I was happier still, not to be driving when we came across a bad accident that had happened less than an hour before. As we rounded a corner we could see up ahead that the traffic was stopped and as we reached the end of the line of traffic a man in bright orange vest wandered over and told us that the road was closed because there had been a head on collision and the police and emergency workers were still trying to sort it all out.
After about a half-hour's delay (during which we watched a rescue helicopter come, set down, and the go off again) we were waved on and slowly navigated our way though the wreckage, one blood-smeared car already up on the flat-bed truck and the other crumpled at the side of the road, a surfboard sticking out what used to be the front windshield, with the front end and windshield being little more than a crumpled mass of metal and broken glass. We drove past, heart-sick, hoping that there had been no loss of life.
We drove the rest of the way to Pancake Rocks feeling more subdued. After photos were taken and coffee consumed we headed back down the road we had come up on, back past the scene of the accident, now long since cleared up, the only reminder being a small patch on the road where some absorbent gravel, or sand was laid down to cover the car fluids.
Back in Greymouth we waited for the Train and I spied a newspaper whose cover story caught my eye - "Surfer Involved in Head-On Near Ten Mile". Three air-lifted to hospital, one taken by St. John Ambulance (the main providers of Ambulance service in NZ); a family heading to a surfing competition, an American tourist going the opposite direction on the wrong side of the highway. I can report today, that there was no loss of life, though all are still in hospital.
By the time we had made it back to Greymouth the rain had started and it was raining in earnest the entire time we were there, limiting lunch location to the inside of our rental car and limiting our sightseeing to the Train Station and it's covered platform.
Though we had hoped the weather would improve once we left Greymouth on our "Scenic" trip to Christchurch, we had rain as our constant travelling companion for the duration of the trip, making it less scenic than anticipated and more of a disappointment (often the aftermath of anticipation).
A late train and slow luggage made us late for our dinner reservation, but the restaurant "Strawberry Fare" was more than happy to reschedule by half an hour. If you want a high end meal at a reasonable price and the MOST AMAZING looking deserts imaginable, go to "Strawberry Fare" for dinner when in ChCh (this is not a paid endorsement and I am no celebrity).
It was a dark and stormy night, no really - it was, ok, well MOST nights are dark (unless you go far enough North or South, which we weren't) but this night was definitely very stormy. Luckily the storm blew itself out by morning and on the morning of our final (almost full) day we were met with sunshine.
We went for a run in a rear by park before breakfast and trip on the public bus to Lyttelton (a small town outside ChCh (probably more like a suburb, but a small town sounds more glanourous). Lyttelton’s claim to fame (if you can call it that) is that it’s ChCh’s main port and also has a Timeball Station. Which to my Sci-Fi saturated brain, made me think of Dr. Who (my brain was Sci-fi saturated primarily due to a travelling companion of mine’s retelling of dreams had over several nights that for some reason involved aliens, and flying cars and earplugs that prevent you from being able to speak – I was happy to hear that someone else has strange and crazy dreams that make no sense).
Anyway, the Timeball Station is a historic landmark. It was, back in the day, a way for sailors to set their watches by in order to properly navigate across the ocean using the lines of Longitude and the position of the sun and moon. It is a building on a hill with a giant ball on a post at the of the building, this ball is raised and dropped (or was, in the day) at precisely one PM to allow sailors to set their watches by. It's now just a landmark, and the ball is rarely dropped anymore.
After wandering though the Timeball museum and through Lyttelton itself we had an outstanding lunch at The Lyttelton Coffee Co. before taking the bus back to ChCh so that we could get to the Airport in time for our flight to Auckland.
Heralding the end of my NZ trip and my current set of "The Rambling Traveller" blogs.
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