Month: March 2020

At any given moment, I have a running dialog in my head. Observations. Which way to turn on an unfamiliar street. Things I want to write about. For some reason, I’ve been talking to myself in an Australian accent since I arrived. I practiced in my hotel room this morning, saying a couple of phrases out loud. I discovered that my out-loud voice sounds a whole lot less authentic than the one in my head.

I got into Melbourne late on Saturday night, and was surprised to see what a large city it is, rich with displays of light and architecture. I entered through a rainbow-lit tunnel, artistically designed to reduce noise through the area. Melbourne also boasts its own Ferris wheel, the Star Observation Wheel, and it greeted us with more light and pattern.

My travel agent arranged a private tour of the city the following day. It was just me and Tom, exploring. I had never done this kind of tour before, but I’d do it again in a hot minute. Melbourne is a town like many others, with fairly nondescript main roads. But the back streets. Oh, the back streets. The alleys, and the hidden speakeasy bars. That’s where the magic happens.

Each narrow alleyway is a canvas. Street art, not graffiti, lined the lanes with every imaginable shape and color. Work from artists like Sunfigo, known for his large-scale linear fence designs, and Rone, who paints haunting images, often on crumbling walls. I found work by an artist named Deb, who painted fanciful figures on brick surfaces. You could spend days wandering, and never see it all.

Rowhouse terraces are decorated with intricate cast-iron lacework, converted from bars of pig iron that was used as sailing-ship ballast in the late 1800’s. The city has also introduced a “Green Your Laneway” program, which promises to add life, vibrancy, and a whole lot of ivy to alleyways in the years ahead.

We then visited the Queen Victoria Market, an immense specialty and farmer’s market, operating since 1878. The footprint of the market covers around 17 acres! Frenzied shoppers bustled around beautiful displays of vegetables, olives, meat, and fish, which filled the endless stalls. You could buy kangaroo, crocodile, or Morton Bay Bugs, which are similar to a lobster, and I’m certain are more appetizing than their name would suggest.

We had lunch at the Abbotsford Convent, enjoying a sausage roll topped with “tomato sauce”, which we call catsup or ketchup in the states. I delivered the sauce to the roll with an ingenious “squeeze mate” packet. From a later internet search, I discovered I wasn’t the only flabbergasted user of this amazing delivery system, reading that the “Internet goes wild for Australian’s “squeeze-mate” tomato sauce packets”. It’s the little things.

From my fabulous guide, Tom, I learned many fun facts about Melbourne. Like the story of the late Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who earned the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to down a yard of ale (11 seconds), set in 1954, and why there is chest-high tile surrounding many of the local pubs. In case you’re wondering, quitting time in Australia was five o’clock. The bars closed at six. So, patrons had one hour to consume as much alcohol as they could in that timeframe, which was often a lot. The tile allowed for easy clean-up after the one-hour drinkfest. I’ll never look at that type of decorative tilework in the same way again.

I later had dinner with my beautiful Kiwi friend, Storm, who moved back to Australia a couple of years ago. She is a jewelry designer, teacher, dancer, and adventurer, who is simply one of my favorite people on earth. It was such fun to see a familiar face in an unfamiliar city. We laughed, told stories, and ate great food, and I had my first pavlova of the trip. It won’t be my last.

This afternoon, I’m off to my next adventure at Phillip Island, where I will see penguins and seals and sand. Until next time … cheers!

Today was a day I planned to not plan. To fly where the breeze took me, unencumbered by schedules or expectations. The kind of day where you wake up when your body is ready; where you start it slowly, with a cup of coffee in bed. I eased into the day, watching a New Zealand cooking show, where I learned to make marmalade.

It was a day where I relaxed in to all the senses; running my fingers over the softness of a sweater, knit from the finest spun New Zealand mohair. Watching frantic gulls, vying for a handout, dancing around an outstretched hand. Listening to a street performer strumming her guitar, softly singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Bending down to smell a sweet rose, one of many that brightened the path toward the water. Savoring a gelato, lakeside, with my feet buried in the small, smooth stones that line the shore.

I didn’t walk today. I ambled. With my hands clasped loosely behind me, like an old woman walks, with nothing but time on her hands. I looked, I listened, I took pictures of everything from some interesting pinecones to a beautifully elaborate cake in a display case. I ate my way through town, starting with melt-in-your-mouth eggs benedict from the legendary Vudu Café, and later enjoying a Fergburger on the beach. Fergburger claims to serve the finest burgers in the world; a claim that is tested by the long line of patrons extending from the counter and down the sidewalk. It was a damn good burger, and worth the wait. The last few days, I burned calories. Today, I restocked.

At breakfast, I shared a table with a local mom and her daughter, who told me about nearby Arrowtown, an old gold-mining town, established during the gold rush in 1862. I decided to take the bus and explore. On a tree-lined street, preserved miner’s cottages are marked with historical markers. The historical “gaol” (jail) has been restored and reinforced after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, which resulted in more stringent building codes. Cute shops line the main street, including a fabric store where I bought a few treasures.

I am spending my last night in New Zealand, heading to Melbourne, Australia tomorrow. I’ll have a bit of time to wander tomorrow before I catch my late flight to the land down under. I can’t wait to see a kangaroo … so for now, g’day, mates … and cheers!

There are a few ways to get to Milford Sound from Queenstown. You can drive, take a bus, or fly. Last March, 1.1 meters of rain fell on the South Island in a 48-hour period. That’s more than 42 inches! Many of the roads to Milford Sound were washed out or damaged, so getting there now by road is a challenge. I flew. In a 12-passenger Cessna over some of the most scenic mountains I have ever seen. We flew over glaciers and craggy mountaintops, alpine lakes and waterfalls. As I was looking over the mountains, I started thinking about how fortunate I am to be living this epic journey. About all the experiences I’ve accumulated as I set out to step on all the continents. The gravity of it all settled in, and I started to cry. Grateful, sloppy, messy tears. The kind that make you feel good after you’ve wiped them away.

I pulled myself together by the time we arrived in Milford Sound, and we headed over to the docks to board our boat, which would take us around the narrow, 15-km long bay that feeds into the Tasman Sea. The sunny, cloudless day we were experiencing is rare. This is one of the wettest places on earth. It is a temperate rainforest; one without soil. The cliff faces are covered with trees that cling to the rock; their roots finding cracks to grab hold. They lace their roots with other trees around them, creating a tangled latticework structure. This is good, mostly. Until you get 1.1 meters of rain in 48 hours. Then, one tree lets loose and collects a slide of debris cascading down the slope. There were a number of these “slips” evident along the way.

We saw graceful waterfalls, shiny with rainbows. The captain got us good, saying we could drink from one of the waterfalls. He’d get close, and we need only hold out our cups. He neglected to remind us that the path of water from a waterfall is unpredictable; that a gust of wind could abruptly change its course. We all looked pretty silly, drenched and laughing, with all our cups mostly empty.

After the cruise, we boarded our plane and made the 35-minute flight back to Queenstown. There was still a fair amount of day left, so I decided that I wasn’t quite done with the water. I headed into town and signed up for an adrenaline-junky fix on the jet boats. The boats traverse Shotover Canyon, careening their way through at speeds of up to 90 km per hour, and making abrupt, water-soaked 360-degree turns. I laughed until my belly hurt.

What a day. What an incredible, unforgettable, magical day.

Check-in time for my Tongariro hike was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. this morning. So just before bed last night, I went online for final directions and was dismayed to learn that the primary road to Tongariro, and the shortest route, was closed for construction. This wasn’t insurmountable, it just meant a detour that would add an hour to an already long drive. Going up and around the lake would get me there in about two and a half hours. I had already stayed up too late and working backward from 8:00 meant a very early morning. So, I squeezed my eyes shut and repeated, “sleep now.” “sleep now.” I don’t know about you, but this never ends up working well for me. Much too soon, my alarm went off, and I stumbled through an abbreviated get-ready process and hit the road.

On the way out of town, I saw that the short-route road was closed from 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Which meant it was now open! Lesson learned … when you’re checking for road closures, don’t just read the highlights. I got to the Adrift headquarters more than an hour early which is, by any measure, better than an hour late. I took the opportunity to squeeze my eyes shut and work to counteract some of my sleep deficit. This time, “sleep now” worked. For 40 minutes, anyway.

I had originally been signed up for the full Tongariro Alpine Crossing. This is a 20 km hike between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe in the Tongariro National Park with take-your-breath-away vistas and emerald-green lakes. After watching a YouTube video on the hike, however, I decided my creaky knees would settle for the half-day hike. Much of the hike is on boardwalk, interspersed with stairs and some rocky bits. According to my Fitbit, I climbed 126 floors and walked 8.1 miles, so I wasn’t a total pansy. In fact, Fitbit awarded me my Rollercoaster Badge for the day. (Insert victory pose here.)

Scotch heather was planted in Tongariro in the early 1900s as a habitat for grouse. As is often the case, this had unintended consequences, and it now crowds out many of the native plants. But if you squint and pretend you didn’t hear that, you can enjoy the purple flowers, which create a stunning blanket over the volcanic landscape. Another invader is pampas grass, which is native to South America. It is prolific here, with thousands of these unruly feather dusters emerging from the earth. They haven’t fully taken over, though, and I had great fun trying to find the tiniest flowers and hunt different varieties of lichen and berries. Tongariro is an active volcanic area, with Mt. Tongariro last erupting in 2012. The mountains surrounding the trail are stark and majestic, with rivers of lava and ash creating striations in every shade of gray.

On the way back to my hotel, I stopped at Huka Falls. The turquoise water here can flow at the rate of 220,000 litres per second. But even more importantly, it was pretty.

Tomorrow, I’m dropping my car off in Rotorua and flying to Queenstown. I put over 500 miles on the ol’ Camry while I was here, and I’m feeling pretty skilled at left-side driving now. I wonder how many times I will get in the passenger seat and wonder where the steering wheel is, once I get home. Cheers!

This morning, I sat down to breakfast next to a couple I later learned hailed from Liverpool. The man caught my attention first. Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come”, played softly in the background, tragically set to elevator music, but this gentleman’s soulful whistle brought the song back to life. “I love your whistle”, I told him. “You can take him with you”, his wife said. “You can rent him out at parties.” We all laughed and began a lively conversation that went from travel, to kids, jobs, London in the ‘80s, and to music.

Yesterday in Waitomo, I had an intense, tearful conversation with a recently retired combat medic, who was travelling without a plan, trying to find her way back to normal.

The day before, I had an animated discussion about farming with a young man from the west coast of New Zealand, who was in Auckland for a Tool concert.

This is exactly why I love solo travel. These moments are gold. I’m not sure I’d start a conversation with a couple two tables away if I could more easily talk with those at my own. I can choose to chat, or I can be blissfully, gloriously alone.

I chose the latter later this morning, driving to a geothermal site in Taupo called Orakei Korako Geothermal Park and Cave. My travel agent, Matt, had recommended it, and I’m so glad he did. To get there, you cross a narrow waterway by boat, and I was the lone passenger. There was a fairly large group returning as I was arriving. With their departure, I walked the beautifully maintained boardwalk with nothing but hissing steam, bubbling mudpots, cicadas, and a birdsong soundtrack to break the silence. I didn’t see another soul on the loop. The area is a hotspot for geothermal activity, and Orakei Korako is a doozy. Reminiscent of Yellowstone, silica terraces are covered with black, green, and yellow algae, creating nature’s own abstract art.

The afternoon was young when I finished the loop, so I got on the road and went for a drive. The hills on the way to Rotorua are different from what I saw on the way out of Waitomo. These were younger mountains … taller, with sheer, rocky cliffs. More sheep. More cows, with a corresponding abundance of milk trucks. Also based on Matt’s recommendation, I made my way to Lava Glass, where I watched master glass artist, Lynden Over, create a beautiful vase. I didn’t leave there empty handed.

Tomorrow is an early wake-up call. I’m headed to Tongariro National Park to chase some waterfalls. Cheers!

I white-knuckled my way out of Auckland this morning,until the unfamiliar left-side driving again became familiar. Unlike the U.K., cars in New Zealand come equipped with a right-side-of-the-steering-wheel blinker. I eventually got used to it, but not before I turned my windshield wipers on the dry wind screen more times than I’d like to admit.

I drove through endless rolling hills, passing towns with names like Whatawhata, which sounds fabulous when said with a Kiwi accent, and Ngaruawahia, which twists your tongue more thoroughly than a stubborn knot in a necklace. I passed a hillside cemetery, dotted from base to hilltop with elaborate headstones and family plots, reachable only by a dizzying procession of steps. Unless I was more athletically inclined, I’d wish the dear departed well from the bottom, and call it a day. Just sayin’.

Like my trip to England, certain road signs continued to elude me, like the giant, standalone exclamation point. I have no idea what it was trying to tell me, but it was very emphatic.

My destination, the Legendary Blackwater Rafting Company in Waitomo, is home to the Glow Worm caves, which made their way on to my bucket list years ago, when my bucket list was still short. We started by wiggling our way into our wet suits and boots, then hit the training hill for some rappelling practice. You’re essentially on your own, abseiling down 110 feet to the cave bottom, where we saw our first glow worms. We turned our headlamps off, and hundreds of brilliant fairy lights lit the cave’s anteroom.

Making our way further in, we hooked up to a zip line. We zipped our way further into the darkened cave, lit only by the luminescence of the twinkling “worms”. The Māori name for these creatures is titiwai, meaning “reflections over water”. We learned more about what they really were later in the trip, but don’t google it if you plan to go. It’s best to just think of them as subterranean constellations. For around two and a half hours, we explored the caves by foot, inner tube, and short swims, dodging stalactites and glow worm “silk”. For one stretch, we linked tubes and slowly floated. I think this is a place that may visit me in my dreams … it was ethereal, with just a touch of magic.

After climbing out of the cave, it was time for a quick shower, followed by some hot tomato soup with toasted bagels. I left Waitomo and wound my way through more rolling hills, one-lane bridges, and pastures filled with cows and sheep, with dozens of the sheep clinging to the steep hillsides like mountain goats. I reached Lake Taupo just as night fell on the town, so I haven’t yet seen the view. My lakeside room shows great promise, though, with the lake just steps from my door.

Tomorrow’s another busy day, so as they say in Māori … te po pai (good night). Cheers!