A Whole New World...The Start of a New Zealand Road Trip

It seems funny to think that this most epic of road trips began with some donburi and teriyaki bento in a little suburb outside Glen Eden, West Auckland. We were hangry and a little hungover and had already argued a little about map-reading techniques within the first ten minutes of the journey, but that's how it began.

We had spent most of the previous Saturday (this was Monday) drinking on a mini wine tour, then beers in the Hallertau brewery, followed by a couple of cans of Woodstock (a sickly sweet bourbon and coke mixture from A's adolescence), finishing off the night with a mix of different drinks - more beers, wine, and finally - ouch -whisky sours. The Woodstocks, I was told, had to be drunk outside, on the beach at Muriwai, and it was explained that this was West Auckland tradition: you couldn't have grown up as a "Westie" without having done that, so I chugged down the sweet alcopoppy thing, whilst realising I was on one of the most incredibly beautiful beaches I'd ever had the pleasure of watching a sunset upon. We started out full of chatter and laughter, but as the bright sun waned and we watched a million colours in the sky illuminated in the many rockpools on the ground, it seemed to quieten us, as if we had to pay reverent heed to what we were witnessing.

Actually, that was the second impressive beach I'd seen already in my first week in New Zealand. We had taken one of our first drives out a few days prior to Piha, a spectacular surfing beach on the Tasman Sea, with a permanent town population of 600. It's incredibly rugged, famous for a giant formation known as Lion Rock and the first ever NZ board-riding competition in 1958, and is surrounded by subtropical forest and various impressive hills and rock formations. It's one of the beaches where The Piano was filmed, and it lends itself well to melancholy art: a song, a poem, a piece of prose, a painting all might suggest themselves to someone so inclined, were they to have visited on a day like we did; overcast, windy, and brooding.

Driving through the countryside towards our first stop in Rotorua, I was reminded of Scotland's green peaks and burns shimmering in the low sunlight, but also of the great American landscapes I have only seen in films: the flat, wide roads, the tall pine forests, and the seemingly endless shapes of mountains forming on the horizon. We started out listening to Maori radio, and I felt inspired by the newness of this place, moved by its exoticness, its duality, its storytelling in two languages.

It was the same feeling I'd felt the evening before, as we had walked out of the house for the first time that hungover day just in time to see the sunset. We had walked to A's old primary school up the road, set on the side of a hill with a huge Macrocarpa tree, and looked out to views of the Waitekere ranges and prehistoric-looking forest. We noticed a Sunday church service taking place in the small school chapel, and the attendees were Pacific islanders, either Tongan or Samoans, speaking in a language we could not understand. Soon, however, as we started ascending the small footpath, we heard the strains of a haunting song sung by a choir of strong voices. It hung around us like the scent of flowers at dusk, and clung to us, silencing our chatter as we reached a magical little waterfall above the path, itself enclosed in a hushed cathedral of green.

I've spent much of the last three weeks feeling awed like that. Maybe the photos below will help to begin to explain it.

Three New Fledgling Poems

They're just tryouts, you understand. Feel free to give me feedback, I can take it. I think.

Concordance

Sky and Sea meet, 
in a concordance of colour
a string of understanding connecting them.
They know one another's needs and they move together,
finding in one another
a perfect lovers' kind of peace.

Wave-Walker

I watched her walk into the waves
slowly heading for the horizon
her back was straight, her hair
long and untamed,
her eyes fixed on everything 
and nothing.
She walked until her feet 
were lifted from the earth
and the waves took her
back to the place where she
was born.

Whittle

Whittle Me Away; just try!
Like driftwood, 
I'll often move with the tide
But I'll always have
My Own Form.

Ahora Caigo

HOLIDAY! CELEBRATE! And other words that end in an A sound...

We recently returned from a week in a teeny, weeny, holiday bungalini. It's been the making of this month. I calculated before we went that we hadn't been away on a holiday, just the two of us, without any computers, wifi coverage, nor much in the way of mobile phone reception, for the best part of 16 months. We didn't even....shhh... take any conditioner. (Straggly, unruly hair is a small price to pay for inner peace.)

The truth is we've not had much time, or many euros to spare. Oh, eff off, you live in a sunny place, I hear you protest. You can walk to a beach, you lucky biscuit. ¡Callate, puedes caminar a la playa, eres afortunada! OK, I admit, we can see palm trees from the living room, but we have chirruping emails to answer, rooms to clean, laundry to dry, ironing to do and several weekly food shops just like everyone else. Add some recent life/family/health/job insecurities to the mix and well, Little House on the Prairie it ain't.

So that's why ditching the city for this place for a bit was much needed. See how it makes the Mister look positively catalogue-model winsome?

The best bit was that there were two best bits: we could walk to a choice of two unspolit beaches along a rocky coastal path pretending to be mountain goats, and also - we had a barbacoa to put chicken on, something that took us right back to gnawing on jerk chicken with blackened fingers in our beloved Brixton. 
Oh, and a bonus thing. We learned loads more colloquial Spanish from the truly alien pleasure of watching telly in our little bungalow. We haven't owned a telly in more than a year. Ahora Caigo (quite literally, Now I Fall, or Now I Get It! - a game show where competitors fall through a hole in the floor at breakneck speed if they answer incorrectly - and  Millonario Anónimo (you know the format, but did you know it would be even more tear-jerking in Spanish? It's la crisis, you see) - were our favourites. 


I tell you what, we needed that holiday. Because the real work starts here. You remember that New York job I went for two posts ago?

They only went and gave it to me.

That's right, we're moving to NEW YORK FFS OMG ETC ETC.

I'll go first in August, and the Mister will follow in a few months, so now we are on EMOTIONAL HIGH ALERT and are bobbing wildly up and down like crazed trampolinists, veering between elation and woe at the thought of separating our lives - the ones we've just spent 11 months soldering together in this live/work space that has been our business and our home and our adventure and our comfort blanket all in one.

This is pretty big, yo.

Zakynthos 1, London 0

12 days on a Greek island, and I'm a changed person.

We stayed on Zakynthos, one of the Ionian islands, the next one over from (maybe) the more well-known Kefalonia, which attracts an altogether more middle-class kind of tourist. Zakynthos is definitely the smaller, poorer cousin who has, around its southern coastline at least, in the town of Laganas, decided to give up its day job and embrace a life of beer, football, sunburn and chasing tail.

We arrived not in Laganas, but in Alykes, on the north eastern side of the island, sandwiched between two holiday resorts very popular with Brits. Although vastly preferable to the resorts frequented by beer-swilling, strip bar clientele, sporting custom-made 'LAGANAS STAG DO 2010' t-shirts and surviving on a varied diet of both McDonalds fries and kebab shop chips, it was still not what we were expecting and was somewhat annoying to begin with. We had come to see Greece, not Blackpool on holiday. Although not as developed as other parts of the island, nor were there any fairground rides or penny-slot machines, it was enough to remind us that learning to drive, and the independence that comes with mobility, is important. Especially when trying to find The Real Greece and escape the package tour and 'egg and chips, please' Brits that favoured the island.

Luckily for us, the place we stayed was a delight - quite a haven in the midst of the resort of Alykanas, the larger and more brash of the two towns we straddled, complete with bars called 'D.N.A.' or 'Two Fit Birds' or whatever. Alykes, the smaller and more serene of the resorts, was still replete with full English breakfasts and more world cup screens and England flags than you could shake a stick at.

We managed to ignore most of that. We'd planned to see the best the island had to offer - nesting beaches for endangered loggerhead turtles (caretta-caretta), incredible blue caves made by the erosion of soft limestone cliffs around the island's north coast, framing perfect azure waters, and to try as much authentic greek food as possible.

Look! A real live caretta-caretta swam under our boat!

The studios we chose to reside in were called Anna Studios, run by a marvellously friendly couple from Dagenham and Suffolk, Ian and Sarah, (who met whilst working in the prison service), and were utterly unlike anywhere else I've been. Once you've stayed there, with Ian, Sarah, her son Fraser and their dogs, cats, chickens and geckos, you feel a little bit like one of the family.

We've certainly never experienced such warmth and hospitality that seemed so effortless. From our first email exchanges, to being met by Sarah at the airport, to being asked to sit and eat with our hosts at an evening barbecue, we've never felt so completely welcomed by any other place we've stayed.

The studios themselves were clean, well-appointed and comfortable. Ours was stocked with bread, some jam and butter, teabags and milk upon arrival. Sheets and towels were changed regularly and we were given a fan as soon as the temperatures started to climb. The rooms were suited to couples or small families - private but close enough to chat with your neighbours if you wanted to - and the pool was big enough for a proper dip, with pretty gardens surrounding it.

What we liked most about the Anna Studios, however, weren't the gardens, or the pool, (or the truth bar by the pool), or the fresh eggs from the roaming hens, or even the great location a 10 minute stroll to the wonderful beach at Alykes. It was the feel of the place, which encouraged you to do those things that we find are so often lacking in our busy modern lives - talk to other people, make new friends, and find the opportunity to truly relax.

In those last few days there, I felt my limbs lengthen, my heartbeat slow, and myself opening up to the many possibilities of alternative futures - that with 'one auspicious and one dropping eye' - no longer include London.

I'll let the pictures speak - they're better than words in this case.