All hail the travel agent

I hate this woman. Or, rather, I hate the TV ad that this actress appears in so much that I can't grab the remote fast enough to mute her whiny voice. What is even more alienating than that though, is what she's saying, which is dissing travel agents for being lazy, ignorant and incompetent, unable to access flight information that this clever woman can use WebJet to discover instantly.

I think travel agents are wonderful. To be able, as they do, to bring together so much disparate knowledge about places literally all over the world, from nuts and bolts to aspiration/inspiration, tailor it to the client, organise it all into a simple format, and then be there as back-up in case of unpredictable hiccups or even out-and-out disasters - well, that's so very admirable. I've worked with both high-end operations, like World Journeys, World Expeditions and Adventure World, as well as your literal high-street outlet like House of Travel, and have been impressed every time.

This year, for example, it was Marlene at Adventure World who put me in a place and at a time to experience the entire year's most unforgettable moment: standing just metres away from a wild elephant which was straddling the path between the restaurant and the bar at Royal Zambezi lodge in Zambia - a country I'd never even thought of visiting, until she slipped it into my South Africa itinerary.

Travel agents have in the recent past taken me effortlessly to Galapagos, Easter Island, Kakadu, Iguassu Falls, Machu Picchu: the travel so enjoyable because it was so stress-free. I knew I was in the hands of experts, and that everything would go smoothly. And it did.

Compare that with the trips I did this year that were DIY. They were only around NZ and to Tahiti and Hawaii, but the time and effort it took to piece them together, coupled with my perpetual mistrust in the value and workability of the final itinerary really did suck away a lot of the enjoyment of the trips. Instead of being proud of having done it all ourselves, I was suspicious of how much better - and, yes, more cheaply - it all might have been, if done with more inside knowledge and expertise.

So, out of this year's trips - horse-riding the Coromandel Peninsula, self-driving around New Zealand, ditto with exponentially higher stress levels in Louisiana, attending a conference in New Orleans, swanning through South Africa (and Zambia), sunning myself in Tahiti, swimming in Hawaii - it was the ones that were sorted by travel agents that were by far the most satisfying and the most fun. Suck on that, WebJet.

Fly, my pretty!

The premise of this blog, that every day brings reminders of and connections to your travel, does mean that there have been a lot of references to world events that are less than cheerful. Terrorist attacks, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, pollution, eruptions... they've all featured here, and will doubtless continue to pop up at fairly depressing intervals. But today we'll take a break.
Today, I saw the first of the seven monarch chrysalises that I've been overseeing hatch into a beautiful butterfly, and I was as delighted and proud as if I'd birthed it myself. Her, in fact - the spots on the wings are the giveaway. It's been a long process, watching them first as hungry caterpillars, munching relentlessly through my swan plants, getting bigger and bigger. Fearful of wasp attacks like those that nixed them all last year, I brought them inside, to be astonished at the volume of poop - frass! - that they produce. Then, suddenly and always while I was looking elsewhere, they became pupae, in elegant green and gold. Long wait, then a colour change, and today, finally, I saw one that had emerged and uncrumpled its - her - wings, getting ready to fly. Magic, and a miracle, and a marvel, truly.

And of course, it reminded me of somewhere I've been: Iguassu Falls in Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay, where the magnificent, astonishing, overwhelming size and volume of the waterfalls were offset by the small, delicate and dainty beauty of the yellow butterflies that flocked to drink from a muddy puddle beside the path.

Buzzing

"More addictive than heroin - and more expensive, too" - that's what Peter the chopper pilot's first flying teacher told him about what he was launching himself into, and nothing about what he's experienced since has led him to disagree. Me neither. I was making my 6th flight today, 20 minutes that felt like 10 on a circuit over Auckland. That's how time works, in helicopters, in my experience: I did 90 minutes buzzing over the South African veldt looking for rhinos last year that I would have sworn was half an hour, tops.

I've hopped across Lake Wakatipu, I've done a sunset flight in Australia's Red Centre, a loop around Mt Taranaki, a swoop above Iguassu Falls in Argentina/Brazil, a dusk flit around Long Island and now this birthday buzz over Auckland. And apart from being trapped in the centre in the back on the Iguassu flight and able to catch only glimpses of the falls between the professional snapper's big camera on one side, and another writer's (spit) iPad on the other, they've all been brilliant ways to see the scenery.

Iguassu, in those snatched images, was truly spectacular; South Africa was amazing because for the guys in front this was their daily job and they were so matter-of-fact about the whole deal (also, you can never beat seeing a rhino in the wild however you come at them); Kings Canyon is a piece of work from any angle; so is Manhattan; and this country's not too shabby either, scenery-wise, and I wouldn't like to have to rank Mt Taranaki against the Remarkables - but despite all that, there's something very special about seeing your familiar surroundings from 300 metres up, everything recognisable but at the same time so strange. It all fits together so neatly - who knew?!

The whole experience was soured, however, by Peter's saying at the end that in a couple of days he's piloting a couple of Germans with tons more money than time on a 3-day chopper trip that will include a Tauranga winery, Huka Lodge, Rotorua, White Island, another fancy lodge somewhere further south, and Abel Tasman NP. Spit. I was just writing about that White Island helicopter trip this week for an inflight magazine, and I had to do it third-hand because, for once, I hadn't done it myself. Double spit.

Been there, done that. Sort of.

I've been around a bit since I started travelling at 23, especially over the last 10 years - but I wish I'd done it all properly. Almost right from the beginning of my travels, I've dipped in and out. My OE back in 1977 was abandoned just three countries in, in Singapore, when I realised I didn't have enough money to continue overland all the way through south-east Asia and beyond to Europe: I flew straight to London. In 1980 when I had a second go at it, it was less back-packing, more jet-setting, with only 3-4 nights in most of the countries we visited on the route back to the UK from NZ, through Australia, Asia, India, Russia, Scandinavia and northern Europe.

Despite living for nearly 17 years just across the Channel from Europe, I only got to France a handful of times, and then mostly to the same areas. On trips between England and New Zealand, I added more countries to my tally, but only on short visits. And now that I'm a travel writer, it's the pattern to swoop in, whisk past umpteen places, skimming over the top, and then return home again just a week or so later.

I envy my daughters, one of whom is making a thorough job of South America, going to far more places than I ever did (though some of them are the same, eg Iguassu, above) while the other is taking weeks to cycle the full length of France, from Cherbourg all the way down into Spain, and then across to Antibes. Their experiences are so much more thorough than mine, more real, more in touch. Good for them, but I wish I could start again. It's too late now, though, so I'll have to be content with a tasting menu rather than gorging myself.

At least I've done Australia properly - so well that sometimes I think I've used that continent up. But tomorrow I'm filling in a gap: back to the Northern Territory, one of my favourite bits, to do some tramping and camping in Kakadu. I'm really looking forward to it, crocodiles notwithstanding. No internet though. See you on the other side.

Too hard to choose, today

So, what link do I go with today? The flash floods in Port Louis, Mauritius, that were reported on the news tonight, with scenes of torrents of muddy water sweeping through an underpass, helpless people bobbing along on the surface? Cars piled up on top of each other, human chains across roads running waist-deep in churning water, shuttered shops with water halfway up the doors? Eleven dead, apparently - so far: it's a busy and crowded city, of narrow streets choked with stalls, elegant old buildings as well as flimsy ones, a fort on the hill above and fancy new shopping and eating precincts along the waterfront, where beautiful young people pose and preen.

Or maybe the Earthflight documentary about birds that I watched tonight? This episode was focused on South America, and featured Andean condors, which I saw spiralling up out of the Colca Canyon; and the vultures that sit hunched on rocks above the incredible roaring maelstrom of Iguassu Falls, apparently impervious to the violence and power of the water all around them; and scarlet macaws clustered on clay lick banks along the Amazon, nibbling the dirt for minerals and to offset the toxic effects of the unripe fruit they eat. When I stood in the jungle, watching them, they circled restlessly and perched in the trees, but didn't land on the clay - something was worrying them, and on the programme I learned it could have been an eagle. Or a jaguar.

Perhaps Cotopaxi, which was an answer on QI last night? In Ecuador they claim that it's the world's highest active volcano, and according to Stephen Fry it's higher than Everest - if you're measuring from the centre of the Earth, that is, because the planet is flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. When I went up to the high paramo for lunch - and delicious canelazo, cinnamon-scented orange tea with rum - at a lodge within sight of the mountain, it was skulking inside cloud and I didn't see it, though the normally more elusive Chimborazo, above, was for once in the clear; but late that night after a long and musical dinner in an Inca-built dining room, on the way to a bath by the fire before bed, Cotopaxi was clear and bright and symmetrical in the moonlight.

Or, prompted by the cover picture on a library book brought into the house today, the Glenfinnan Viaduct? It's a graceful concrete curve of 21 arches in western Scotland, build by Robert McAlpine, 'Concrete Bob', in 1901. It’s still standing strong as the elegant Jacobite train crosses it taking tourists from Fort William to Mallaig - or, in the Harry Potter movies, young witches and wizards to a new term at Hogwarts. I stood knee-deep in wet heather waiting to take a photo of it as it puffed towards me, and regretted, in my cold and soaking jeans, laughing at the Hooray Henry types at breakfast in the hotel that morning in their silly - but actually very sensible - tweed plus-fours.

Or I could just stop skiting, and go to bed.

A face only an orthopterist could love...

It's a bit startling to come into the living room and find something like this - or actually, exactly this - lying on the carpet struggling with the fluff. It's a weta, but not a giant fortunately. They can reach 10cm/4in in body length, plus spiky legs and antennae, and weigh more than a sparrow, the heaviest insect in the world. This one was a tree weta, half that size, and a bit woozy from the automatic flyspray, so it wasn't too scary to take it outside, though I did keep my fingers away from those fearsome mandibles. I'm guessing it decamped out of the Christmas tree, which is a very dense one this year. Of course now I wonder what else is lurking inside it, but I'm not going to look, just in case I find something.

Where to go with this, travel-wise? Insects I have met... there were cave wetas when I went to Waitomo and ziplined underground through the dark in an unfetching blue boilersuit and freezing works white gumboots. There was the vast net of spiderwebs connecting the tall thistles in a gully that I rode my horse through while wearing just a bikini in South Australia - obviously, I didn't see them till too late, and my skin is crawling still. There was also the tarantula there that the girl going into my room ahead of me spotted, and reduced to a big red and black smear on the bedspread before I had the chance to fix in my memory forever all its horrible hairy detail. Then there was the invisible swarm of whining mosquitoes in New Caledonia that emerged, voracious, from crevices in our long-unused room and spent the entire night feasting on our blood until, fatigued and frustrated, we were driven to sleep on the floor in someone else's kitchen before I went to work the next morning with 47 bites on my face alone. The man ahead of me on the 4-day Bay of Fires walk in Tasmania had a shiny black leech attach itself to his sock. But really, considering some of the places I've slept and walked through, my insect and spider encounters have been very few, thank goodness.

Rather than leave you with the nightmarish images above, I'll finish with the order that I've happily seen most of: butterflies. In an aviary in Kuala Lumpur, where I spent a happy but extremely sweaty hour chasing them from flower to flower. Up the Amazon in Peru, where I blithely blundered through the jungle surrounding the lodge peering through my viewfinder at the glorious iridescent colours and completely forgetting about my sandalled feet in grass that hid snakes. Much more tamely at Changi Airport in Singapore, where people, dislocated both mentally and physically, can reconnect with a bit of nature in the butterfly room. And with delight in Brazil at Iguassu Falls, where a yellow puddle edged with a flock of even yellower butterflies was in its small way as glorious a watery sight as the thundering falls themselves.

Spot the difference (no spots included)

As the thunder grumbles rather thrillingly around the sky, I offer you this: one of these places is where I last heard thunder, and is half a world away from the other. What are the links, and what are the differences?

Of course, the links are obvious, with the architecture and the pattern of the cobbles which, apart from the surface being treacherously slippery, is also as bad as yesterday's Floating Pavilion for making you feel drunk when not a drop of the drink has passed your lips. The other is that they're both Portuguese, which means that now you know the difference, if you've been paying attention as you've dutifully been reading this blog.

Yes, on the left is Macau, and on the right, Cascais near Lisbon. Back in the fifteenth century, the Portuguese were all over the world like a rash: Africa, Mauritius, India, Japan, Macau, Brazil... They beat the British to the world's first global empire by quite a margin, and hung onto it longer too, because they weren't made to hand back Macau till 1999, which was two years after the Brits reluctantly let go of Hong Kong. They were fully occupied with slaves, sugar and spices for centuries; but they did export a few things too: they claim that when they went to Japan, where they founded the city of Nagasaki, they gave them their word for 'thank you'. Obrigado - arigatoo: you decide.

What's certain is that Japanese tourists are a lot more adventurous these days than back when they moved about en masse and only emerged from their coaches to take photos of each other... Oh, well, all right, maybe things don't change that much. But that's a 150 metre sheer drop right there. [Capo da Roca, north of Lisbon, Europe's westernmost point.]

Things to do, places to go...

Turns out when you add a 21st birthday party at home on to an upcoming 6-week trip to the other hemisphere, straight after a flit round an entire continent, things get a bit frantic, domestically, work-wise and sleep-wise. The middle-aged brain struggles to keep all those mental balls in the air, which include a story about Iguassu, steroid boosters for the ancient cats, fitting timers to the heated towel rails (what? you don't do that before you go away?) and making a series of jelly Easter eggs for the non-cake birthday cake.

It's a long time to be away, and though I'm now reassured that the cats will (most likely) still be here when I get back, the dog's another story, sigh. It's autumn here now, AKA Indian summer, especially over Easter when the weather was glorious, kind of making up for our very crap summer - but when I get back it will be winter, the trees will be bare and the guttering leaking.

But I must resist this tendency to worry and conduct endless arguments with myself over what shoes to pack, because once I'm on the plane it will all drop away and I'll be caught up in the moment: flit to Sydney with Air NZ then swap to Etihad (always sounds like an anagram to me, but apparently it's Arabic for 'united' - though the OH reckons it's really 'reckless') business to Abu Dhabi, on to Paris, down to Marseille, onto a river cruiser on the Rhone for a week, then England for family stuff, Poland for a war story, Eastern Europe for a coach trip, and then back home. Lots of trains in the mix there, some theatre, Badminton Horse Trials, and lots of friends.

Starting with one from the Great Australian Cattle Drive in 2006, who's now working in Dubai and will be meeting me for breakfast in Abu Dhabi. (That's the most exotic half-sentence I've ever written.) Tahira is good fun - we got a lot of amusement out of the loofah she brought with her into the Outback, and the fancy seat-saver the equestrian outfitters equipped her with in London (though we were all envious of it in the end (on our ends?))

From all sides now

Today was all about the waterfalls, which we've now seen from the air, from the water, from the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. The helicopter view would have been terrific, had I not been sitting at the back in the middle with a column in front of me, a large man with an iPad on one side and a keen photographer on the other - if you do it, it's sauve qui peut: race for the front seat. Because these falls are so spectacular, you mustn't miss any of them. (Thank goodness for live view on my camera - it got a better view than I was able to.)

We drove back to the Argentinian side to walk right along the edge of the falls on a metal walkway with huge catfish lurking below and delicate butterflies floating above, and it was amazing to see so much water pouring and roaring over the drop. But it's not just spectacular: it's pretty too, with fresh green grasses growing on rocks in the river, flowering plants on the islands, and the butterflies. It helped, too, that after two days of cloud and rain, today was brilliantly sunny, with rainbows everywhere. (When it's a full moon, you can go out at night to see the falls under moonlight with moonbows.)

And then it was time to pack up again without really enjoying our lovely hotel with its inviting pool and wandering coati and pretty rooms and all, sigh. So tonight I'm in another fancy hotel, in Lima, and it's 1am here, which means 3am in Brazil, and I still have my homework to do, sorting out my afternoon activities for tomorrow. "Think about it overnight," suggested Johanna, without apparent irony.

Dam fine

More cute coatis on the way to breakfast this morning. I'm soldiering on through epic jet lag and off-the-scale blood iron thanks to a paleolithic intake of red meat: possibly a connection? Who knows. Anyway, after yesterday's 'Whoa, nature showing off, here' moments with the waterfalls, today was about how man can whip up the odd marvel too, given some time and co-operation. So we were taken to the Itaipu Dam, 65 storeys high, 18km long, 20 turbines using 10 times the volume of the Falls... er, an hour? a day? The statistics became a blur, after a movie, a bus tour, the commentary - what is more impressive, is that it's a bi-national project by Brazil and Paraguay, the river forming their border. The construction, the maintenance, the power, they're all split 50:50 in a shining example of international co-operation.

Then lunchtime brought another revelation: my first churrascaria, a barbecue restaurant where you fill your plate with a selection of fresh salads and vegetables (or chips) and then a succession of waiters arrive at your table with what could be a heart attack on a stick, but is so delicious, who cares? We were offered from long skewers every type of barbecued meat imaginable, and some not (like chicken hearts) - filet mignon, rump steak, pork tenderloin, lamb, plus onions, cheese balls, sausages... all hot and crusty outside and meltingly tender inside. Delicious! And afterwards the completely unnecessary dessert selection recalled the very best in children's parties, with every permutation of sugar and cream possible. And it was only lunchtime!

At the bird park my zip toggle was gently examined by a toucan with his huge orange beak; a rhea came rushing excitably up to the fence and immediately fell asleep leaning against it; blue and yellow macaws swooped low overhead; we were frowned at by a harpy eagle and, happily, ignored by a large hairy tarantula; we went crazy trying to focus on super fast-forward hummingbirds and were draped with an anaconda; and my camera got into a snit and let me down, sniff.

Wet and wild in Brazil

"You will get 100% wet." That was Anderson, here at the Hotel das Cataratas in Brazil at Iguazu Falls, when we were preparing for our boat trip not just along the river but, disquietingly, "under the falls". These would be the falls where 1.4 million litres of water thunder over the escarpment every second. Images of boats full of water, disappearing under the surface, never to be seen again...

After more fuss and waiting about than you could imagine (apparently, it's a Brazilian thing; it's strangely un-mollifying to consider that it would be worse in India) we got settled into our inflatable and set off upstream over churning, moiling water and some actual rapids, for a view of part of this astonishingly long series of waterfalls. Then it was time to tuck our cameras away as we entered The Devil's Throat, a canyon obscured by swirling clouds of spray, where the boat flirted with some heavy-duty falls, skipping around the edge, close enough for us to feel the wind and be blinded by the spray - and then nosed up into the cascading water, which drenched us completely without - some skill here, happily - filling the boat.

It was fun, if silly, and the water was pleasantly warm; and then afterwards we zipped along fast enough to blow-dry our hair; though we were stuck with the historical sensation of wet pants for the rest of the afternoon. I was completely diverted, though, by a large family of coatis, busily looking for food up and down tree-trunks, on top of rubbish bins and inside people's bags left carelessly on the ground. Very sweet and cute, and the symbol of Iguazu Falls my brochure tells me, saying they "may occasionally be seen". Only everywhere we went.

That was never 11 days we had just then

Why yes, that was rather a long gap between posts. Mainly it was because of marketing: selling stories linked to events and dates, and though the ones I've been fully occupied writing about are marking the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic a whole month from now, and Anzac Day even further away on April 25, there's been a bit of a rush to do it because I've got some travelling coming up. On Sunday I'm being whisked off to Buenos Aires on LAN's lovely business class, and thence to Iguazu Falls, Lima (again) and then, most excitingly, Easter Island. I once reviewed a book that was set there - rather unimaginatively titled 'Easter Island' - by Jennifer Vanderbes, who had clearly done a great deal of research into ancient angiosperms that she didn't want to waste, so by the end of the book I was quite the expert (temporarily) on fossilised pollen. Never heard the term 'palynology' before? Now you have.

Then after I've been home for less than a fortnight, I'm away again, for an incredible 6 weeks this time, to Europe: partly private but mostly work, and it's going to be very busy. Fun and interesting, but busy, and tiring. It doesn't help that there are three very old animals in this house, who miss me when I'm gone, and who so far have always been here when I've got back from a trip but, one day...

So anyway, the Titanic. I keep bumping into it, so to speak - of course, in Ireland last year, when we went to Cobh which was the ship's last port of call before setting off across the Atlantic, and where there was a really good exhibition in the old railway station there. Then there was an astonishingly, not to say anally, comprehensive travelling exhibition that I came across while I was in Copenhagen, that absorbed me for the best part of two hours while rampaging Hamburg football fans laid waste to the city outside (well, almost). We'll be going to a new one at Greenwich Maritime Museum while we're in London; there are, I discovered, others in Southampton, Liverpool and Cherbourg, all Titanic sister cities that I've been to; and several in Halifax, Nova Scotia where I haven't been, but have been increasingly hankering to go to over the last few years. Lots of the recovered bodies were buried there, including one J. Dawson, who was actually James, a boiler-room hand, but that doesn't stop a steady stream of fans of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack going there to leave red roses on the gravestone:

Sit. Vac. - Rattenfänger

It's very hard to concentrate on writing about having coffee with a countess in an English stately home upstairs from a library of 6000 leather-bound books, Napoleon's desk and chair from St Helena and an array of framed family photos on the grand piano that include the Queen and Diana - very hard, I say, to concentrate on all that while there are rats rampaging around in the ceiling insulation above my head.

Although, given that Highclere Castle was neglected for years so that the upper storey of 50 bedrooms is pretty much uninhabitable because of the leaky roof, I'm sure rats are not unknown to Lord and Lady Carnarvon. Perhaps we could have bonded over that. Too late now.

Here I am, back home half a world away, with rats in my roof - probably the very ones I've been inadvertently feeding down in my sieve of a henhouse. This very cold winter they must have moved from their damp tunnels in the dirt up into our roof to snuggle cosily under the pink fibreglass duvet there. The Man has been through with his nasty baits, and in a week or so all should be quiet - although that won't describe my state of mind, envisaging decaying corpses scattered all over the ceiling. Poisoned rats don't go outside to die, apparently - and unfortunately. Urban legend.

I have no photos of the rats in my roof, but it's only a short leap from them to bats in the belfry, and thence to the wonderful sight of vast clouds of fruitbats flying out over the northern Queensland town of Cairns to feast on mangoes: their nightly outing from where they roost in trees on the other side. It was a staggering sight, but I haven't got any photos of them either; though there is this one of the stainless steel fish in the swimming pool on the Esplanade where I was sitting when I saw them. It's where everyone swims because there are crocodiles and stinging jellyfish in the sea. Oh and sharks - nobody mentions them because they're pussycats compared to the danger presented by the others. Rats, bats, crocs, stingers and sharks: is that enough animals for you today?

Not my fault

I would like to make it clear that I take no responsibility whatsoever for the terrible floods in Brazil. I have never been to Brazil. The nearest I ever got was eating a fresh Brazil nut in the Amazon jungle in Peru; but the young people flaunting their perfect bodies in front of us last Sunday at Palm Beach were, I thought, Brazilian (on the basis that I couldn't understand what they were saying so obviously it couldn't have been Spanish) - does that count?

Seriously, tragic stories from Brazil. And seriously bad ones still from Australia, as mop-ups uncover bodies in Queensland, flooding spreads in NSW and Victoria is badly affected. Also, Tasmania, where I'm going in just over a week (calamity, worryingly, now preceding me as well as following on my heels): two teenagers airlifted to safety after being swept along Cascade Gorge, which was on my itinerary, and where I have been previously. It's a huge, er, gorge between rocky cliffs, very spectacular, especially when viewed from the ski lift arrangement that spans it, on which you're suspended below a cable and move very slowly across the surging waters.

Near Heathcote, in Victoria, we went up to look at Lake Eppalock, to see the phenomenon of the spillway not just wet but actually foaming with water: the first time it had been put to use since it was built in the 1990s. Our host was still taken with the novelty of it all, that the lake was 107% full so soon after a time when "We thought we were going to lose the lake". It'll be a lot more impressive right now, I bet.

And back in Queensland, in Charleville, our guide there was still astonished by the floods they'd had just 4 weeks earlier, when Bradley's Gully overflowed and swept through the town from behind while everyone was watching the stopbanks on the Warrego River out front: half a metre of muddy water right through the town, including the bottom floor of the historic Corones Hotel, scene of high society in the first half of last century but the elegance now faded, and many treasured items spoiled by floodwater. Poor Jane, the tourism lady, found herself playing lady's maid, hand-washing gowns over and over, flushing the fine dirt out of seams and hems.

Australia's fine red dust is probably the most-cursed dirt on the planet: up in Broome, the pearl-masters deliberately chose to wear white linen suits to show how rich they were, able to afford not just lots of sets of clothes, but also the laundry maids to wash out the pindan dust every day, in water that had to be filtered over and over before it could be used.