The Hobbits: 28, 29 April

"But I don't think I ought to leave my friends like this," (said Bilbo), "after all we have gone through together.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

They are bittersweet, these few days, because they are days of peace and pleasure, but also of goodbyes.

We make way to Tauranga, where we will bid farewell both to Tauranga itself and to Roxi, via a jet boat ride in Whakatane.

The ride is very different to the one we had taken before in Murchison, though no less special. The river is beautiful and we are driven down it by a friendly and warm spirited man who takes obvious pride in showing off the striking natural rick and waterways. He drives fast, and performs '360°' turns just as in Murchison, including one part in which we duck beneath a fallen tree, hanging over the river, but his emphasis is firmly on the verdant, reflective surroundings and the birds that inhabit them. It's a different kind of a thrill, and arguably, long lasting.

Back on dry land we head to Tauranga where we park at the foot of the beautiful Mount Monganui, with its grazing sheep and rabbits and its view over the glittering, surf studded sea. I show it off proudly, as though I personally, had created it. We meet Roxi in the amazing Pizza Library which I love so much and as she enters, beaming, I remember again just how great she us, with a hint of sadness as I know we are leaving her home country now and that it will be some years before we or she will be venturing over to the other side of the world again.

We bid farewell as is customary, by  saying, quite casually, that we will see each other 'later'.

"I will view the next few years as part of your trip back to Tauranga," says Roxi, "only you're going the long way."

And with that she is gone, having shared an all to swift beer and a pizza, home to nurse a burgeoning cold and to join Cal, whose cold has already burgeoned and has made him unable to venture out.

We suppress our sorrows the next day, with a trip to Hobbiton, the set of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies, depicting 'The Shire', a quiet, peaceful country village with little 'hobbit holes' cut out of the hillside, hobbit sized, where the hobbits make jam, grow potatoes, smoke fish, and generally go about their playful, peaceful existence. It is from this country eden, this harmonious, gentle, unassuming lifestyle, that Frodo and Samwise are snatched, in The Lord of the Rings, and from which, before them, in 'The Hobbit', Bilbo Baggins departed in his reluctant adventuring, and in accidental pursuit of The Ring.

“I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone." (said Gandalf)
"I should think so", (said Bilbo) "— in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

And I don't blame him. Hobbiton is beautiful. Helen in particular and I are captivated, half forgetting it's a movie set and isn't real. Its so beautiful. I can absolutely understand why the farmer whose land was hired to build on, didn't mind at all when they decided to leave it there. (Well that and the rather tidy profit he probably turns, but those kind of thoughts seem unnatural in Hobbiton.)

Small, coloured, circular doorways in blue, green and pink dot the hillside, each below a grassy mound, each about three quarters of a normal human height. Small washing lines are erected, on which blow small waistcoats, caps and trousers. Plants and vegetable patches, small real, some otherwise, abound, with small pitch forks and spades stuck into the ground beside them,as though the workers have simply paused for lunch.

One hobbit hole has a little table outside it selling homemade marmalade, another a smoking hole for fish. There is a maypole for parties, a tiny cart for horses, and a beautiful tree, a kind that doesn't occur in New Zealand in this climate, crafted out of many tiny fake leaves, wired onto its branches.

There is even a pub, the Green Dragon, where we can buy hobbity cider in hobbitty mugs. I am so willingly unable to tell fact from fiction that I am not sure whether the cat by the fire is real. Until it gets up and walks off.

It seems to me that life in Hobbiton would suit me, I love so much the lure of quiet and nature, of countryside and simplicity. And yet, like the hobbits I too have been drawn into an adventure, not always comfortable but always worth having, and after which, life will never be the same.

We bid a somewhat tearful farewell to Michael and Helen in the car park. They are going back to Hobbiton. We have an adventure to continue.

It feels, for a rather vertiginous moment, as we watch them depart, as though it simply won't be possible to travel to another country without them. They are friends of that rare and precious kind that demand nothing from you, and who, no matter what the situation, or how many months of absence, always feel perfectly natural, as though you were born with them in tow.

"Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Goodbye fellow adventurers.

See you in Hobbiton.

Journey to the Centre of the North Island, (well, nearly): 26, 27 April

Journey to the Centre of the North Island (well, nearly): 26, 27 April

"I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear." 

Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

En route to our campsite in Rotorua, we visit the 'Thermal Wonderland'. This is a vast complex of volcanic earthscapes, like the 'Craters of the Moon' in Taupo, only much larger and more dramatic - 'Taupo on Speed' as someone on trip advisor had termed it. 

We walk through a maze of pathways, winding through, around and, sometimes, over, huge yellow lakes, craters encrusted with thin spindly feelers of red, gold and a rather sickly green, steaming bubbling water and, most spectacularly, bubbling mud. 

The mud is quite definately the highlight, thick and grey and strongly sulphurous smelling, bubbling furiously, but not necessarily evenly, with frequent and rather sudden spurts reaching several metres in height. We crowd at the fence around it, and survey it. There is, as Jules Verne's narrative comments, a slight but definite of edge of fear in the watching. It comes, I think, partly from the obvious danger, the mud is heated well beyond boiling point and us viscous with chemicals not designed for interaction with the rather fragile human body, but mostly from a very pure and heady sense of awe. I want to lean in and enjoy this awe, to let my imagination run riot, faced with the power of this landscape. I want to try to imagine the dark and powerful mood of a God who created this element of our world.  If this is indeed, what is contained in the deep, dark reaches of our globe, is this landscape God's way of showing us the inner workings, like an orologist revealing the inner clockwork of his favourite time peice, that we might be all the more impressed by its intricacy. 

Such romantic musings are rather ruined, however, by the presence of Other Tourists, that most annoying of races. I decide to take a short video on my phone of the pulsating mud in order to remember one of the most atmospheric aspects of it, namely the gulping, glooping sounds of the mud as it bubbles. 

I turn on my video. The moment I do so a child begins a tantrum that lasts for the entire video. Replaying it, a little exasperatedly afterwards, it seems eerily as though the mud is shrieking. It's not quite eerie enough, however, not to have rather drowned out the sense of atmosphere. 

On my second attempt, the instant i begin filming an entire coach group arrives and makes its way to the mudpool. 

"Ha!" remarks one of them, loudly, "Wouldn't want to use THAT as a face pack, eh Marge?" 

This hilarious joke is then repeated as nauseum as new people clamour up to the fence. 

"Hey Marge, did you hear that?"

"No, hear what?" 

"He said you wouldn't want to use it....as a face pack!!!"

"What's that?" 

"Oh it was just Greg telling Marge she should use it as a face pack"

"Ha!"

"A what?"

"A face pack!" 

"Ha!".

I give up.

"My uncle wasted a great deal of breath in giving him directions, but worthy Hans took not the slightest notice of his words.” 

Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Hot pools are my nemisis, as I have, I think, said in a blog entry before, though I haven't explained it. Actually I think my nemisis is not  the hot pools themselves, but my own stubborn inability to do anything sensible when using them or to take the off repeated advice. Previous overlong soaks in hot pools in New Zealand, in Taupo and Hanmer, have left me with a headache and a promise to myself not to do it again. Prior, of course, to doing it again, getting a headache, and promising myself not to do it again... 

"Don't spend longer than twenty minutes in the hot pools." A sign always says. In every hot pool we have been to.

We generally spend a couple of hours. 

'It's OK this time, I am drinking water at the same time."

I tell myself. Or,

"It's OK this time, because it's raining..."

Or simply, "the pool is nice. I like it."

The hot pools at Rotorua are  no exception. They are lovely, and so I happily roam arpund, trying out each one until, predictably, given the accompanying strong smell of sulphur smell, I get not only a headache but rather fuzzy vision, and stagger out early (by which I mean, only an hour and a half in). 

I am cross eyed with pain for the afternoon. I try to sleep, drink water so fast I turn into a human colander which does no good, and have to spend Helen's birthday champagne drinking session sipping water and grinning bravely through a tilting, nauseus world of my own, rather stupid, creation. 

And the brave grinning part? Well, I'm not that brave. I go back to our van. To lie down and whimper.

And the moral of the story? Do obey instructions. Particularly if this has happened before. Try to learn from your mistakes as opposed to rapidly turning them into a habit. What? Obvious, you say? Not to some of us, it seems.

PostScript: I am now rather mortally afraid of hot pools and so I do, finally, learn my lesson. I don't soak in any more hot pools while we are travelling and will only venture into saunas under strictly timed conditions. Sometimes it takes a lot of stubborn recreation of mistakes before you learn...

Although there was that time in Bolivia....

"I dream with my eyes open.” 

Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

Thankfully, by the time we are collected for our evening, hosted by a Maori village, my headache has abated to a dull sort of fizzing behind my eyes. But the Maori experience is so distracting and so wonderful that the remaining pain actually adds to the experience, sharpening my senses and making the night even more memorable. Whenever we see something amazing, which is often, everything about it is wonderful in the light of it. Even pain becomes part of the visceral joy of it all. Which I suppose is a way of approaching life in general.

Our bus is driven by an ultra cheerful Maori lady, complete with Maori facial markings, known as Moko. We pick up other guests on the way, and, as we travel she explains to us that when we arrive we will need to be welcomed into the Maori village through the traditional Mauri ceremonial welcoming. This entails several Maori warriors coming out to perform versions of huka and war dances designed to intimidate the new potential intruder and as a show of strength, before ascertaining that the visitor is peaceful ans may be safely admitted into the village. We are  entreated not to laugh or smile during this ceremony, even though, to our culture, the part of the dance in which the tongue and eyes bulge out as a form of intimidation, may seem comical. Laughter at this point will cause great offence. Everyone on the bus makes an instant internal resolution not to laugh, withthe simultaneous fear that such resolve will only serve to heighten the impulse. The dance being done, our driver continues, the Maori warriar will offer a token of peace, thrown to the ground between Maori and visitors, which the 'Chief' of our 'tribe' (busload) of visitors must pick up to show his friendly intentions, following which he will be greeted in the traditional way - with a solemn meeting of foreheads. 

We therefore need a male chief, a title which is considered a great honour. Should our Chief perform the ceremony wrong or cause offence, we may not be granted admittance. 

"Oh...OK, OK, I'll do it then" says a voice from a rather giggly group near the back of the coach, in the notable absence of any discernible persuasion. 

And up to the front of the coach cones our 'Chief',  a whooping, air punching lad who I shall name Terry, who greets his subjects with a jubilant "yeah!!!!" and proceeds to lead the coach in three cheers, as far as I can tell, to himself, over the voice of our rather patient Maori driver who is beginning to try to explain his duties. 

When she gets a word in edgeways our driver teaches us the traditional greeting of a chief and his tribe, and some traditional Maori words.

" Puki Puki is the word for applause.  she tells us, "You should demonstrate Puki Puki whenever something is performed in front of you. Kia Ora is a greetung and a welcome. You can also use Kia Ora for..."

"Puki Puki" cries Terry, pronouncing it wrong and raising his hands grandly to signify our apparent tribal requirement to regard him nearly as highly as he regards himself.

There is tumultuous applause from his friends at the back, and various shouts in respect of how many beers he should drink when he gets there.

"What is the betting," I say under cover of the noise of Terry who is generally shouting random words over the still very patient microphoned voice of our driver, "that our chief manages to cause offence within the first fifteen minutes?"

"Fifteen?" Says M, "you're being a bit generous."

Perhaps I am being a little hard on Terry, though a mean voice inside me tells me I am rather under representing his apparent absolute need to be the centre of attention, literally, every minute. It does seem like a compulsion. Our Maori driver is fantastically good humoured, but I don't think I am alone in hoping, on that journey, to hear a little more from her and quite significantly less from Terry. He is fascinating, in that he seems actually incapable of listening when somebody else is speaking, and to grow increasingly fidgety and tense all the time the attention is not entirely and unadulteratedly focused on him. To get the attention back onto him he will simply shout something, anything, whether relevant or not, and, throughout the ensuing evening, thinks nothing of just running up to the front of whatever it is we are watching, even in the absence of any, even tenuous, excuse to do so. It seems like a continuous and pathological state of attention-hunger. Now I am being mean. Perhaps Terry actually does have a psychological problem and I should be rather more charitable about it. 

Because, in fact, when it comes to it, our hyperexhibitionist Chief does manage to perform his duties as required, respectfully and without giving inbto the temptation to try to join the warriors in their performance or otherwise direct attention onto himself. Perhaps, as such a disrespectful member of our tribe, showing such sarcastic and mutinous attitude towards our chef, I am far more in breach of Maori custom than he could have been, and, were there to have been any kind of thought policing, I would have been ousted at the gates.

Frankly, I defy anyone to laugh in the face of the warriors' welcome dance. It is absolutely breath taking and if you don't imagine that a tongue poked out as far as it can go, stretching down onto the chin and with wildly staring eyes above it, fixing you with their concentrated gaze, could be threatening, then your imagination is sadly lacking.

The warriors burst out in turn, dancing with incredible athleticism, wide legged and stamping, eyes wide, tongue out, always absolutely, doggedly focused on the small group of Chiefs from the various buses, daring them to show anything other than a peaceful intent. They are tattooed to varying degrees in the black inked patterns and swirls indicative of Maori custom. Their bodies are toned and muscular, and smoothly golden in the evening light. They carry a staff, some with a spear attachment at the end, and they are bare chested, their skin smooth and hairless on their torsos, but with thick, black gleaming hair on their heads. They wear 'skirts' woven with cloth and ferns and are barefoot and chiseled. They look quite beautiful.

For the entire performance everyone is spellbound and then our Chief picks up the token, and the traditional greeting takes place. We are ushered in, split as we go into smaller groups, ours being thankfully, sans Terry. I really want to learn about Maori life and I am not sure it would be possible, with Terry in our group, to learn about anything other than Terry.

The village is beautiful in the twilight, lit with fires and guarded by carved figures who protect the village and its occupants. 

We rotate in our small groups around various small stations, in front of small wood and straw huts, beautifully and strongly made, with intricate carvings of Maori symbols for peace, happiness, the world and the environment across the roof beans and at the entrances. 

Two lady Maoris teach us a game called Poi Poi, which is played by the women and children in the tribe, involving a small 'bean-bag'-like weight on a string, which the player flips around, skilfully, causing it to hit against their alternate hands. It's harder than it looks, and when Helen volunteers to try it, she finds it surprisingly difficult to coordinate in time to hit her hands in the fast rhythm dictated by the ladies, who expertly flip the bag around as though it were child's play. Which it apparently is. It is used to make percussion for music, sometimes, and other times just as a game, useful for improving coordination and dexterity. 

Moving on, a male Maori gentleman talks to us about the traditional black tattoos. These differ depending on the status of the wearer and their occupation. Women wear them on their lips and chins, men on their faces, buttocks and thighs. A warrior male might have more tattoos, particularly on his legs. A greatee number or size of tattoos (or Moko) denotes a higher status, a commanding of more respect, something which is quite understandable when you learn how it's done. The skin is pierced with a tool similar to a hammer and chisel, allowed to heal, then broken again so that the skin is grooved, literally carved rather than simply painted. The dye used to make the black colour is created using pigments from burned timbers. 

With newfound respect for the wearers of Moko, we move onward.

A lady shows us the plants used to make garments, rooves and rope. We touch the fibres and feel how soft but strong they are. Representative, perhaps of the Maori themselves with their combination of great peace and spirituality, and great strength. But this is my comparison, and not theirs.

Two men show us another Maori game, this time for the men. Michael tries it and finds, as did Helen earlier, that it is very much easier said than done, though he does manage to get through to the final round. The game is played around a collection of sticks, one for each player, which are stood on end on the ground. On a clapped command the players must move one stick to right or left depending on instruction, letting go of their own stick but grabbing the other before it can fall. Predictably, the sticks are then gradually moved further apart so that the dash becomes more urgent, and the players and their sticks are gradually eliminated as they fail to catch the next in time.

A bit of fun, perhaps but Maori games always have an object and, particularly for the men, are taken very seriously. We are shown another game in which a ladder formed out of sticks must be run through very fast by a man, his legs moving swiftly between the sticks without touching them, without pausing, overbalancing or placing more than one foot on the ground at a time. The height at which this horizontal 'ladder' is placed is raised gradually for greater athleticism and if the man trips of kicks a stick he is given a whack, albeit in good humour, round the back of the legs with it and must begin again. It teaches dexterity and swiftness of footwork, important for warriors. It also, I imagine, teaches discipline and endurance.

Finally, we are shown a shortened performance of the Haka, following which the men in the group are invited to learn it. This experience, enjoyed as much by Helen and I as it is by the boys, shows us that in fact it is indeed possible for a poked out tongue and staring eyes to be very conical, especially if performed, in Michael's case, with a constant delighted beam, and in M's, with a sort of academic concentration. Don't get me wrong though, as a later performance of the Haka by the experts reveals - done right, it is every bit as terrifying as it is intended to be.

We move, after that, into a large auditorium, where we are seated and addressed by a Maori man who shows us a short video and generally explains to us about Maori beliefs and customs. Faith in God is a key tenet, and God is at the centre of the earth and everything we do. The earth, as part of God, and he of it, must be held in great respect and cared for, for the sake both of Maori (and indeed anyone elses) children and the great ancestors, who are very important to Maoris. The Maori belief system emphasises peace, rather than war, and does not encourage fighting, seeing it only as a weakness if undertaken without clear and necessary cause. Peacefulness, reflection and meditation on important wisdoms and truths are prized highly. 

Following this, we are treated to a series of performances, including various dances by both men and women, including the Haka, and, most mind blowingly, song. The Maori prize music highly, but, when a man comes onto the stage and we are told he will sing a traditional song telling the story of a young Maori couple, forbidden to marry, who journeyed all the way across a wide lake in the dark to be together, I am still not expecting what we receive when he stands, without ceremony, in the middle of the stage -  and opens his mouth.

The sound which emerges is huge - dense and reverberating, deep and beautiful. I am amazed by its power, without a microphone, and it is not until a lady joins him, followed by several group performances after, that I realise that all the tribe seem to have the same, intensity and depth of voice. Is it hereditary, I wonder, as we wend our way home later and an  impromptu karaoke session means we are led in song by our Maori lady bus driver, who has just the same depth of vocal chords, is it literally in the Maori blood? Or is it cultivated, a certain style of song practiced from an early age and emphasised as part of life, as a thing that you do for fun, the way British people watch EastEnders. 

Either way it is beautiful and by time it is over and we are ushered out (I think Terry may have wangled his way onto the stage at sone point in it, but I may have blocked it from my mind), my ears are still reverberating with the sheer power of that song. I am unutterably impressed.

We are seated in the main hall ready for our Hangi, and we all bow our heads in relative silence (Terry, remember?) while the Maori leader prays to God to say thank you for our food. This done, we fall upon it. And, oh, what food.

A Hangi is food cooked in the ground, essentially by heating stones over a large fire, laying the stones in a pit in the ground, laying the food on top, covering it over and then burying the whole thing in earth. The food cooks slowly, essentially steaming, but it retains a beautiful and unmistakable peaty, smoky flavour, so that it needs no further flavouring. As vegetarians we are still extremely well fed, though the traditional main componant is chicken. We pile our plates high with potatoes and carrots, their barbecue flavour being overwhelmingly morish, and are provided with our very own mini lasagnas. The lasagnas are the only thing not cooked as part of the Hangi, though are still delicious, but frankly, I could have just eaten the vegetables and been perfectly satisfied. Dessert is huge slabs of sticky toffee pudding, urns full of custard, and enormous pavlovas, the size of both of which make it seem like some sort of Harry Potter style feast for giants. There is nothing in this whole meal which is anything short of exquisite - and huge - a combination not normally experienced in food, in restaurants at least. The posher, more 'exquisite' restaurants seem normally to require you to pay for the exquisite taste by being allowed only one baton of carrot, a sliver of the main coursr and a stick of celery, all beautifully flavoured with a sauce which is draped over in quantities designed more for decoration than taste, the whole thing being served on an oversized plate, as if to taunt you further. 

Not so here. We are exquisitely and bountifully stuffed like little sausages by the time the eating is over - and by the time Terry, once again, takes to the stage for no apparent reason. Once the, seemingly a little bemused, master of ceremonies manages to assume his own place centre stage, he announces that some of the visitors in our number have in fact been here all day, and are staying the night and have learned a Maori song, which they will now sing to us.

Accompanied of course, by Terry. Who has not been there all day and does not know the song. 

Before we leave, we are invited to join hands and make an entreaty for peace. 'Why should humans fight each other and die in violence?' asks our Maori host, in apparently genuine bewilderment and sadness. I wholeheartedly agree and as I join in the prayer for peace I send it out as far as I can to all those who are living in conditions of war, chosen not by themselves, but by leaders, clans or government who fight, very often, for a cause only they wholly believe in, and from the consequences of which which only they will be safe.

It sounds like a sombre end to the evening, but in fact I have been impressed by the peaceful and spiritual nature of the Maori, mixed so wholeheartedly with a sense of celebration and fun. There is an easy going feel, a belief that there is no reason why everything shouldn't be a party.

Which brings me to the karaoke session on the way home. Our driver, as we wend our way back, asks us which nationalities we represent. There are French, English, American, German, Chinese and of course, Maori. Our driver asks us each to sing a song from our country. She begins by singing us a Maori song in her beautiful deep voice. 

Unfortunately Terry is on board, otherwise it would have been good to hear the end.

The Americans go next, given that Terry seems to have started it anyway. The group begin to sing a song, oddly, at first without the unmistakable dulcet tones of the great Chief himself, though this is all explained when he starts to sing the song again from scratch, a couple of lines behind everyone else, thus, as was presumably the intention, drowning everyone else out in confusion. 

Other nationalities are harder to hear, and shyer, though the Chinese song has a beautiful lilt to it, and, gains in volume as the singers gain in confidence, and obvious enjoyment. 

The French song is drowned out by Terry. Also the German's.

When it comes to the English, we are of course hopelessly British about it. Hesitantly, I eventually start singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which our driver notes rather pointedly is actually not British at all but stolen from the  native American slaves. We sing it anyway. 

Terry 'joins in'.

Finally, we are approaching a roundabout. 

"You need to sing something special now," says our driver with sone glee, and she leads us in a jubilant chorus of 'she'll be coming round the mountain'. 

We do so, with increasing hilarity and vigour as we circle the roundabout five or six times, growing in fervour and volume and complete with 'beep-beeps' of the horn, wherever musically necessary.

Roundabouts, for me, will never quite be the same again. There are several revisions of this perform and, (though without the horns or the circling) that take place in our van throughout the rest of the trip. 

Finally, we bid good night to our Chief. Our driver thanks him with graciousness and humour. He has been great fun, she says, and very entertaining, and she leads us in a round of applause. I join in with fervancy, partly because I am feeling a little bad about the contradiction between the Maori attitude of acceptance and peace versus my own internal judgement of him. And partly because it is the first time that clapping him hasn't been his suggestion.

We disembark and float into bed, minds filled with incredible images and the beautiful Maori nature.

Spiritually must be taken seriously, as must our work, whatever it be, and our sense of respect and peace towards others.

Aside from that - everything is a party. Even the drive home.

"She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes,

She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes,

She'll be coming round the mountain, coming round the mountain,

Coming round the mountain when she comes.

Singing hi yi yippy yippi yi,

Singing hi yi yippy yippi yi,

Singing hi yi yippy,

Hi yi yippy

Hi yi yippy yippy yi.

She'll be driving six white horses when she comes (beep beep) 

She'll be driving six white horses when she comes (beep beep) 

She'll be driving six white horses, Driving six white horses,

Driving six white horses when she comes.

BEEP BEEP!"

The Lord of the Ridge: 24 - 25 April

"Their faces (the hobbit's) were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them)."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings Trilogy

Someone, on the internet or in person, must have once made the mistake of telling us that it is important, when doing the Tongariro crossing, to be sure to take plenty of food. The Tongariro crossing is a beautiful and quite famous day hike, walking over the ridge between the mountains, with an optional side track to the summit of Tongariro itself, then back down round the crater of a more recently active volcano, all of which is done in the immense shadow of Mount Ngauruhoe, aka Mount Doom, for those of us who know the Lord of the Rings novels and film well. It takes around seven hours including time for photographs, rest breaks and lunch.

For this day walk, the four of us are bringing the following:

Three set of sandwiches each
One huge bag of Apricot Anzac biscuits
A quarter of a kilo of salted peanuts each
A quarter of a kilo of honey roasted peanuts each
A peanut slab each
An apple each
A bag of fruit and nuts each
A packet of caramel biscuits between us

At least. There was more but I can't remember it. And that was before we met up with Roxi, Cal and their walking guide friend, Ben (pseudonym), who added home made Anzac biscuits (far superior to the others), a large bar of dairy milk, a large packet of jelly babies and various other delicacies.

Suffice to say we will not be going hungry, and we have taken our instructions seriously...

Actually in the build up to this you might consider forgiving us for this rather overenthusiastic provisioning as somewhere along the line we have been given the idea that it is quite likely that we will be stuck up there for several days, clinging onto a rock ledge and possibly having to eat each other once we'd run out of peanuts...

In their eagerness to prevent hapless tourists from trying to do the climb in t shirt and shorts, or from going up under prepared for steep climbs, mountain top chill and wind speeds, and potential sudden weather changes in winter, the internet, campsites and guides have all combined to give us the impression that the climb is barely possible, absolutely death defying and only to be undertaken by professional climbers wearing seventeen layers including whale blubber, with a top medical team hovering anxiously above them in a helicopter and having done at least four laps of Everest to warm up first.

OK perhaps I have mildly exaggerated, but we were offered the rental of crampons by our campsite early on, which sent us all into subtlely varying panic attacks as we wondered if we were signing up for a hike or a full on, vertical rock scale.

So with some vague trepidation, we rouse ourselves at five, don our seventeen layers, (we couldn't get whale blubber but decided a bobble hat might suffice) and our extremely heavy backpacks, crammed with food for a week, have a short squealing fest as we are reunited with Roxi and Cal, introduce Michael and Helen and be introduced to Ben - and we catch a bus to the foot of our mountain

“Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril – to Mordor."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

As a note, and to anyone reading who may be considering doing this hike - it's fine. It's not a walk into peril. And it isn't Mordor. The mountain used as Mordor in the films by Peter Jackson is Mount Ngauruhoe, which can be seen clearly from Tongariro, but is a more difficult climb. Possibly actually involving crampons. The Tongariro crossing is perfectly walkable without assistance by anyone who is reasonably fit. By which I mean you are not very very over weight or find walking very difficult. The only difficulty you will encounter is your own fearfulness, if, like me, you are a little squiffy about heights, or the cold at the top. And even that is not extreme as long as you are wearing a decent number of layers of clothing.

Thus, having ruined my reputation as a fearless mountain climber, I will begin.

The first part of the walk is on the flat, gazing upward at the magnificent shadows (remember that the sun is only just rising) of the mountains. It's the obvious point at which everyone strides about saying "well, this isn't too bad," just before they hit the next bit. I'll give you a clue just to set the scene a bit - the next bit is known as 'The Devil's Staircase'. (The devil, according to the various names for things all over the country, hangs out quite a lot in New Zealand).

Essentially the staircase is cut into the side of the mountain and made of wood logs (if my memory serves me right). Its the steepest climb and the one with out the same incredible vistas which distract you from the climb in other places, so probably, physically, the hardest of the upward parts. Actually the placing of this so early on in the climb is useful. We are all still fresh and excited, chattering away to each other and so personally, I find I don't notice the steepness of the climb until it's nearly over, when I take a breath from discussing racism, immigration and the poisoning effect of the Daily Mail on the British understanding of other nationalities and customs, and notice the view. As I look back, balanced and, by then, panting a little, on my step, I see the undulating view of green covered hills and turf below me, framed in the distance by other mountain peaks, growing upwards in hue from green to grey to white in the morning sun. If I look upward, I can see the perfectly volcanic, pyramid shape that is Mount Ngauruhoe, with it's grooved upwards stripes, making it appear all the taller and more imposing above us.

That, however, was nothing compared to what was to come. After about an hour and a half of climbing, we reach the top of the Devil's Staircase and walk out onto what I would describe as a hill top, except that, being in fact, a mountain top, or at least a sort of mountain clearing half way up, rather than grass we are walking on grey stones. That's not what takes my breath away though - nor the closer view of Ngauruhoe, now showing its deep, red markings as we move closer to it, nor the other mountains which now peak around us at varying heights. It is none of these things, though they are beautiful, but the few peaks and mountain hills which have collected to form a sort of bowl shape in which there lies a perfectly white, perfectly flat, perfectly dense layer of cloud. We are looking down at the clouds! What is more they are just so perfectly arranged, like a fluffy white carpet, revealing, from this vantage point, none of their actual misty flimsiness, but looking for all the world as though I could simply keep walking, straight out onto them, and bounce my way over to the mountains beyond.

I don't do that, though its very tempting. Instead I have a brief moment of near tearfulness at the beauty of it, and my surprise,at already having come higher than the clouds, and then turn to greet the others, our party having naturally parted as we each took our own moment to take in the view - and some lungfuls of air/jelly babies.

I could have stayed here all day, just gazing out at the clouds. They were so still under a very blue sky, and so silent. Many people do the Tongariro crossing daily, but at this stage there are not many others around and the scene is so peaceful, and so arresting it holds my footsteps, and makes it seem hard, rude somehow, to turn away and walk on.

By contrast, Mount Ngauruhoe's beauty is in its deep red hues, streaked at the top with snow that a reversed image of dripping blood. It's there in its imposing height, and its steep, seemingly almost vertical sides. The climb to the summit of Mount Ngauruhoe is a much harder feat, and more worthy of crampons. It seems to me that Mount Ngauruhoe knows this, and stares down majestically at our tiny, ant like figures, toiling their way up a much lesser path, daring us to take a 'proper' walk.

"One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just Orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep. The great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

I might perhaps point out that Mount Ngauruhoe is nowhere near this awful, and in fact very sedate and beautiful, and that I don't think the Devil really does hang out exclusively in the New Zealand countryside. In fact as far as I know he spends most of his time in Basingstoke Secondary Schools. Or possibly Yates's.

Even so, as we continue to climb, winding our way now, around craters and over narrowing, rock strewn paths beside steep, polished drops, punctuated by large boulders which seem to have only just paused in their plummet downwards, the ground and the inside of the craters and rock scapes we are skirting grow redder, and we grow hotter. Despite the fact that we are heading higher and into colder air, everybody has removed at least a couple of layers and has begun to make inroads into their water supplies. The colours around us are stunning now, streaked in hues of red, some dark enough to be a kind of bruised black, some nearer to pink. The boulders and rocks on the slopes are a darker colour, further from slate grey and closer to a sort of ceramic red brown. The ground is stoney and made up of scree, unevenly shaped and sized grey black stones, bits of flint and gravel which slip under our feet, revealing red earth in our footsteps.

At one point we manoeuvre ourselves past an outcrop of rock in the side of the mountain which the path is hugging, so that the path itself becomes cringingly narrow, and somebody has thoughtfully screwed a thick rope into the rock face for us to hold onto, or hang from if we slip.

"I held that rope so tightly I thought my hand would fall off" Roxi confides in me later. Me too. My hand is so tight on that rope I am nearly scraping the skin off.

"I read somewhere," says someone, "about a couple who were walking this and the wife just turned round one minute and her husband was gone! Down the mountainside! Just like that! Must have fainted or something."

I feel myself go pale. "Don't tell me stuff like that!" I say.

"Seriously," says M, extracting his hand from my death grip, "don't tell her things like that."

"Right!" says Ben through the giggling, "this is where we turn off the main path and do the side track to the Tongariro Summit."

"There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of even the fattest and most timid hobbit."
J.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

I am afraid of heights, remember? And also bicycles. And snorkelling. Come to think of it, travelling. And I am carrying three tons of snack food in my rucksack.

I am definitely the fattest and most timid Hobbit.

And so, as we begin this section of the walk, and I look up, fearfully at the pile of large boulders which makes up the summit, looking dangerously precarious and liable to topple, crushing us between them as we cascade down the mountainside in a heap of limbs and death screams. And I feel a little gulp, not in my throat but somewhere deep in my gut. The walk is still on scree, but the path is less obvious, and we fall largely silent as we concentrate on where to place our feet. We are winding our way carefully, partly on the narrow scree, partly clambering over or around boulders, and every now and then one of my feet slips on the scree and, though I don't fall, I freeze, heart pumping. I have no intention of having up or of going back, the thought hasn't even crossed my mind, it's simply that sometimes my legs, independently of my mind, suddenly refuse to move. I am dealing with these moments, being among very good friends, by talking myself out of it, aloud if necessary. It works because to speak I have to concentrate, on something other than my precarious position or the quivering nature of my knees. In the end though, it is Helen that resolves matters, when, close to the top, I pause for a little bit longer than previous.

"Are you OK?" someone says, and then, behind them I hear Helen say, sympathetically,

"Does she need a shove up the bum?"

She says it with such kindness and such perfect good judgement and I am so busy laughing and scuttling up the scree in a mock panic to escape the ensuing 'shove', that the mental block that causes the physical inertia is released, along with my shout of laughter, and doesn't actually make a reappearance. The whole thing has taken only a few seconds.

Not bad for a timid fat hobbit.

Later I talk with Ben, who is an avid mountain climber and guide. He tells me that he suffers from vertigo. In response to my incredulity he explains that he has found a way to combat the mingled vertigo, which is a physical response, and fear, which he also 'used to' be prey to.

"It's because you keep your eyes focused always just on the next bit of ground or rock in front of you," he says, "you think it will help but it actually makes it worse because then when you do glance up your mind is unable to adjust and it panics. What you should do is always keep your gaze up so that you take in the whole landscape in context."

I try this. It does work. An entire mountainscape, apart from being beautiful, is much more balanced than you might imagine. If you think about it, you are very rarely in a position, at least in a natural landscape, in which there is only you on a tiny platform, and then a steep drop. Even the highest most pointy mountains are not quite so pointy when you are actually on top of them, but pan out more gradually, and most mountains are nor isolated in the landscape, bit surrounded by others, some higher, some lower, and with passes in between. The whole horizon, breathed in altogether, is not nearly so terrifying.

Try it sometime. But take a trusted friend. The kind that can threaten to shove you in the rear.

We climb right to the top of the pile of large rocks, which is the summit of Mount Tongariro (after a slight diversion in which we accidentally play a game of Chinese Whispers and everyone gets very excited thinking we have reached the summit only for Ben to have to repeat himself rather copiously, that we are not in fact at the summit, it is simply a rest point, and that what he had said was that we were NOT at the summit.

It's very small, that word 'not', for something that makes such a significant difference...

We sit ourselves, smugly on a boulder each, looking out over the view from Mount Tongariro, don all our layers again (it's bitingly windy), and take out our sandwiches. And the biscuits. And some peanuts.

Well it's ten am after all.

Which everybody knows is lunchtime.

"You may tarry, or come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows. The further you go, the less easy will it be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Returning, rather fatly, from our perch, we begin the next, and by far both the most beautiful and the most dangerous part of the climb. I say dangerous, it feels more so than it is I think, and in fact the quote above speaks the truth in that I actually don't understand quite what it is I have just walked across until I get down the other side and look back, and realise just how thin is the ridge I have just walked across and down.

The easiest way to show you would be to use a photograph, purely in order that you believe me. We have walked, in the course of this trip, over some unbelievable landscapes, and you'd be forgiven for assuming I must have exaggerated. Unfortunately, having trawled through our extensive photograph collection, I don't actually have one! The ridge we are walking along is essentially a bridge between Mount Tongariro on one side and what is known as the red crater on the other. The reason I don't realise what I'm walking on is because of the sublime views I am distracted by. To my right the red crater plummets down from my thin path, made of scree which was once molten lava. It is a deep red, unmistakably coloured and reminding me of some huge, monstrous gaping mouth complete with tonsils. There is some giggling (another distraction from the terrain), among the boys, to the effect that the red crater reminds them, not of a mouth but of an unnamed part of the female anatomy. Cal goes back to have another look. Actually, I must admit, so do I. I don't see it though. At least not until later when I look at a photograph M took of it and omit a gasp worthy of any Victorian gentlewoman, covering up the legs of her tables because they are too suggestive and might excite the men. The photograph is on M's blog. Go back and look if you dare.

If you're the sort of person that goes back to look, that is. I, of course am above all that.

Moving swiftly on (Tolkien did not waffle off on tangents like this...no wait - the elf songs...), as I reach the highest point of the ridge I am treated to what must be one of the most surprising and beautiful sights in the world. In front of my the ridge snakes downwards, curving around three lakes, oval and glistening in the sunlight. One is emerald green, and I mean that literally, this is not a suggestion of colour, it is full and deep and unmistakable. Another is a lighter, more torquise shade, and then nestling behind it, another, bright blue. They are so perfectly delineated and so brightly coloured they look like gem stones set into the hillside. Or, given their smooth and unruffled surface, boiled sweets. I pause, as does every single one of the now numerous other walkers climbing the ridge, and simply stand and look. It is a view that does not only warrant it, but demands that pause. It is nearly impossible to glance up, unmoved, and carry on.

In my case I do have a slight ulterior motive, in that I have now seen the path of my descent. Which, though not steep, is slippery and narrow.

"Bury your feet in firmly in the scree," advises Ben, "it will act like sand then and you'll feel more secure."

I do. And I take a mixture of skids and steps downward. Ahead of me Helen is sitting, laughing on the ridge, having skidded over backwards. Bottoms, in this situation, are mankind's saviour. Its very difficult, when going downhill, to fall on anything else. The steep drops are to our left and right, but our bodies are weighted in just the right place so you never fall sideways. And that place, or at least in my case, is by far the most padded.

We stay at the shores of the gemstone lakes for a while, consuming more of our barely dented supplies, before continuing on. We are beginning our descent now, around the craters of dome of the more recently erupted volcano's (with a careful eye on the traffic light warning systems which will warn us if there is any sign of a repeat performance). The descent is long and very windy, through grassy landscape, entirely different to the rest of the terrain.

“Farewell!’ he said to Gandalf. ‘I go to find the Sun!’ Then swift as a runner over firm sand he shot away, and quickly overtaking the toiling men, with a wave of his hand he passed them, and sped into the distance, and vanished round the rocky turn.”
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Well...not exactly.

Although its beautiful, winding about in the green, misty wisps of cloud caressing our faces every so often, its a good two and a half hours worth of walking.

By half way down, everybody is limping to some degree or another, and the pace, despite the relative ease in comparison with the Devil's Staircase, or the relative sense of safety in comparison with the ridge, has slowed right down. The party gradually segregates, until we can just make out each other, as little toiling ants, winding back and forth above or below each other. Muscles begin to seize and protest even as we are walking, and I discover that there is, after ten years of 'wearing in', a point where my boot rubs.

"The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.”
J.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Arriving, finally at the bottom, we clamber stiffly onto the shuttle bus that will take us home. Roxi, Cal and Ben head homewards for hot pools and beds and the rest of us collapse in Michael and Helen's van and watch the rest of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, especially the bit we have just been walking on.

“Frodo drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.”

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: 22 - 23 April

"I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) '--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you, know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Taupo feels like a very grown up, civilised sort of wonderland, huddled as it is around the shores of a huge and reflective lake, framed by distant mountains and with, at least for the duration we were there, perpetual blue skies and sunshine.

"It's the sort of place," comments Helen, "that you might go on holiday to."

I admit that we are, technically, on holiday in Taupo now, but I know what she means. It's the sort of place you could retreat to for a week in which you would comment on the beautiful views while drinking tea in china tea cups with your little finger extended.

Of course we are at the 'scum' end of this spectrum and so we are staying in a free camping spot a little out of town beside a river, endowed with some of the smelliest hole in the ground toilets that I have ever, in my extensive toilet studies throughout New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia and South East Asia, come across. Unfortunately it's also the first time I have introduced Michael and Helen to the beauty of camping 'free'. They are not picky people, perfectly able to deal with mess, and admiring of the river and the peaceable atmosphere. But Michael returns from his first sojourn to the toilet pale and quivering. He doesn't quite get over it for some half an hour. He's a strong Yorkshire man with black belts in various martial arts, but I think he met his nemesis in that toilet. He's so disgusted he decides, for the first time in the trip, to 'set up' the toilet he and Helen have in their van.

This works out rather well for the rest of us. Michael is not the only one. I pride myself on using any kind of toilet without fuss or prudery, but I use the one in their ban on at least one occasion. It feels a little weird though, like pooing in their cupboard, and we eventually work out that the toilets get cleaned in the morning and only smell really bad at night so try yo time our bodily functions accordingly.  M, having his trademark iron self control, manages to accomplish this but my toiletry habits just don't really work like that. So I just become adept at holding my breath. It's all worth it for the sake of enjoying the company of ducks and the absence of A4 sheets of paper stuck up everywhere with blu tack proclaiming various rules and regulations from the necessity to clean barbecue facilities after use, to the necessity for absolute silence after ten, to the endorsement to please wash your hands after weeing. As I have noted before, the less facilities a site provided, the more fun it was. It is amazing how many necessities turn out to not actually be especially necessary.

The first thing we do is go out on a horse trek. Helen, as a horse aficionado (if that is an expression) is very happy and natural leaping onto her steed, for all the world as if she had won countless rosettes in countless gymkhanas. (Which indeed she has.) In fact we are all very happy and comfortable with the horses, though certainly rather less good at it.

"Is anybody afraid of horses?" Asks the stable manager as we pay our way in. I say no, and am, for once, not even lying. In fact I love the horses, the feeling of riding them - and the landscape. We trek through stunning and lush scenery and around the 'Cratets if the Moon', a site with some crazy volcanic pits full of bright chemicals, hissing steam and the smell of sulphur. We will visit them for a closer look later, on foot.

Recognising how happy I feel, (and indeed have always felt, having been on similar treks before), on horseback I toy with the best deal of adding 'learn to ride' to my extensive list of things I would like to augment my life with when I get back. But learning to ride is difficult and expensive and I conclude that the things I love about it would be better fulfilled by going on a similar trek once a month. I like the connectedness with nature and with the animals but prefer not to have to tell the horse what to do. It would ignore me anyway. Convincing authority is not my strong point.

"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”"
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

"You see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

...which two quotes together rather sum up this trip. We go to see the Craters of the Moon a d the beautiful, clear white foaming Huka Falls. We gaze quietly at the water, beautiful but deadly, and then head to the Craters. We walk around the steaming landscape, peering into deep holes in the earth coloured vividly in spikey red, yellow or orange, are enveloped in thick white steam emanating from  hissing geysers, and gaze down into spitting, bubbling pools of viscous liquid or mud, breathing in a distinctive and insistent smell of sulphur.

The pits and pools have names like 'The Devil's Ink Pot"  and "The Devil's Bath". I can see why. Looking down into them it seems to me that some other worldy creature must live here. Perhaps it does. We just can't see it.  Like Alice, this trip has shown me so many crazy things I am pretty much ready to believe anything is possible.

We end the day in the Taupo Polynesian hot springs, which are beautiful, natural and isolated in a way none of the other hot pools, however lovely, have managed to achieve. The pools are formed in natural terraces, of different temperatures depending on their distance from the volcanic source. The water is a clear white. It's stunning. There is really nothing more I can say to describe it other than that it feels like falling into a brightly coloured glossy catalogue and temporarily dwelling inside one of its fanciest pages.

"The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

We get up the following day, and, like all self respecting English adventurers, we begin by playing crazy golf. Lake and mountains glittering in the sun behind us, we do not stop until someone has been well and truly beaten and someone else has well and truly won. I think. Over the course of the game I think winning became rather less important than keeping some sort of track of whose turn it was, which entailed a large amount of giggling and which I don't think we ever actually mastered.

By the time we are finished and moving on towards Tongariro, I am not sure we are going to be considered old or mature enough to climb a mountain in two days time, and rather expect us to be turned away at the start.

"“Have i gone mad?"
"I'm afraid so, but let me tell you something, the very best people usually are.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Journey's End: 20 - 21 April

"RALEIGH [after a pause]: The Germans are really quite decent, aren't they? I mean, outside the newspapers?
OSBORNE: Yes. [Pause.] I remember up at Wipers we had a man shot when he was out on patrol. Just at dawn. We couldn't get him in that night. He lay out there groaning all day. Next night three of our men crawled out to get him in. It was so near the German trenches that they could have shot our fellows one by one. But, when our men began dragging the wounded man back over the rough ground, a big German officer stood up in their trenches and called out: ‘Carry him !’– and our fellows stood up and carried the man back and the German officer fired some lights for them to see by.
RALEIGH: How topping!
OSBORNE: Next day we blew each other's trenches to blazes."
R C Sheriff, Journey's End

The characters in Journey's End, set in the British trenches in the Second World War are normal people. Naive youngsters, older ex school teachers, jovial pranksters, heroes damaged and made brutal by war. Of course on the other side, in the German trenches, are a similar collection of individuals. But it's easier, it makes everything make more sense, if you can believe that the other side are monsters.

Personally, I believe that life is an individual, softer and subtler battle between good and evil for each one of us on a daily basis. It's why the good versus evil premise in films, literature, games, folklore and religion is so popular and so prevelant. We consider these sorts of narratives to be escapist, but I think we are each, individually fighting a smaller version daily. To lose our temper or to remain calm, to lie or to be honest and face possible condemnation, to give time to others when we don't really want to and there's no personal gain in it, to lose faith or to hold firm, to become cynical and negative at work, or to stay positive and focused against the odds. To give money to charity or to spend it in the pub.

The reason the film and literature versions can be considered escapist, is because they are so much more clear cut than real life. I have talked about this a lot in previous blog entries, the difficulties raised by the fact that real 'enemies' do not carry pitch forks and wave forked tails. Essentially the battle between good and evil narratives in our stories are escapist because we make it simpler. And that welcome simplicity applies not just to the enemies themselves, the way they look and act, their recognisability and obvious evil, but also to the nature of the fight. Where daily battles are fought and won on the basis of a moment of hesitation and an inner debate, and actual wars on the basis of money, weapons, equipment and strategy, these narratives make it a straight forward face to face physical fight in which the good to evil combat comes down purely to the endurance, skill and determination of the players, with the weapons and situation carefully balanced and everything, very often, coming down to a straight, one to one battle between the leader of good and the leader of evil.

Because it's inspiring. You can, as a viewer or reader, identify with it and get behind it. You can imagine yourself as that leader of good, saving whole populations with the strength of your courage. Who hasn't watched something like The Lord of the Rings and thought that of course they too, in that situation, would fight, felt a little pang of longing to have the chance, themselves, to lay waste to a few orcs. Many people literally play out these scenarios for themselves in computer or role playing games. The trick, literally is to take the real battle, and blow it up larger than life, lending, by doing so, the person who is watching, a larger, stronger persona with which they can fight these, clearly evil, monsters.

So arriving in Wellington and going to visit the Weta workshop where the artists specialise in the crafting of monsters, famously for the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and then going to see a newly opened exhibition about the first world war, for which Weta has made huge, four or five times life sized images of individual characters, men and women whose first hand accounts have been made available to us, and brought to greater than life, is rather pertinant.

Its funny how the Weta workshop visit is just a lot of fun, despite the weapons, monsters, armoury and other worldly creatures and landscapes being often centred on the creation and depiction of bloody battles, whereas the war exhibition, also centring on bloody battle and larger than life (literally) characters, is very far from that. In one sense this is obvious, because the war exhibition depicts a real event. We have to think about the reality and the actual suffering involved. But, having said that, the work done at the Weta workshop, albeit creating orcs and monsters, is still deeply committed to realism, at least within the bounds of whatever storyline the work belongs to. Monsters and weapons are modelled on real anatomy and actual weaponry. Much research is done in the very first stages of the design process. Even the actors craft their performances with as much realism as possible, during The Lord of the Rings production, for example, actors did as many as possible of their own stunts, learning for real skills like fencing  or horse riding. Our guide through the workshops shows us real chain mail, and then explained the process by which the workshops had tried to produce something as true as possible to the original, but light enough for the actors to wear. We hold in our hands a sample of both types of armour. The original is incredibly heavy. However we are told that one of the key actors in the Lord of the Rings trilogy chose to wear the real version in order to feel more at one with his character.

Perhaps, apart from obvious production values we strive so hard in films and fiction with a good versus evil premise, for it to feel real because we long for reality to be a simpler fight. The fact is that in fantasy the battle may still be bloody, but it's cleaner, clearer.

We are shown a set of armour designed for one of the key villains. Our guide talks us through the design and creation process.

"We needed it to be practical to wear," he tells us, "but still look cool." And it does look really cool. Much cooler than the rather grey, grimy every-day battles we fight with ourselves, or the shocking, nightmarish blood baths and violent deaths of fathers, brothers, sisters, children that occur in real war. And in real war there is not a clear enemy. There are no monsters. We must make them ourselves to cover the fact that we fight against what are essentially only other people.

The great war exhibition, newly opened to commemorate the role played by New Zealand soldiers in the Great War, follows the journey taken by the soldiers, who landed in Turkey for the battle of Gallipoli, largely composed of New Zealand and Australian men, fighting on behalf of the British. The Generals directing the fighting were British. The men on the ground were ANZACs. They landed in the wrong place on treacherous terrain to fight against a badly underestimated Turkish army. On several occasions there was such a bloodbath on both sides that first hand accounts talk of the stench and of the ground being thick with bodies. At one stage the two sides called a temporary truce in order that soldiers could bury their dead. Soldiers talk of the heavy silence of   that day, and of the fact that, due to the heat and the number of dead, burials were quick, mass and perfunctory. There was no time to shed a tear and say a prayer for your friend. You had to dig a shallow hole and heave him in. This is not the sort of battle you daydream about fighting.

The fact is the war feels like pointless attrition. The Turks allowing the men to bury their dead, indeed to bury their own, points to their humanity. They don't conveniently use the opportunity to break their word and shoot the soldiers while they have laid down their arms. They are no more monsters than the ANZACs are. In first hand accounts of both wars, in the football game on Christmas Eve, and the burying of the dead in Galipoli, in the accounts of the capture of enemy soldiers where the prisoner is described, rather compassionately as 'no more than a boy' we see that the front line soldiers understood this.

But it isn't simple. I am a confirmed pacifist. But I feel, as I make my sombre way through the exhibition, as I stand silent, looking at the exquisitely detailed statue of a young private trying to eat corn beef from a fly covered tin with blood stained hands, towering over me while his voice tells of his failure one night to keep awake during look out, as I stand in the firing line of a corporal, face twisted with sweat and fear, shooting over the fallen body of his comrade, as I move, slowly, blow by blow, through the account of the attempt by the troops to make inroads into the territory they are trying to conquer, I begin to feel their victory. After losing, with them (it is an immensely well designed exhibition) comrades and friends, and the person they were before they came to this battle, I am horrified by a quick stab of jubilance when a particular battle seems, finally, to have been clearly victorious. And with them, after all that has happened, I am not pleased, but angry and let down when, after long months of this struggle, the Generals, from their station so far away, decide the attempt isn't worth it, and order withdrawal.

Never have I felt I understood the reluctance of soldiers to come back home, from such foul and inhumane conditions, other than perhaps because they have changed beyond recognition and cannot bring themselves to present such a changed face to their loved ones, so innocent of this reality, back home.

But to withdraw, to finally, after so much attrition, be ordered to give up, means that every friend you saw wasted on those blood soaked landscapes had died for no reason.

It was all for nothing.

And this is the tragedy of war, the sheer fact that. try as we might to make a meaning, even if that meaning really is there and there is a discernable, genuine purpose, it all so often comes to nothing. Either, even in victory, it does not solve the initial problem (new dictators welcomed in by the people you stepped in to save from the last one, or anarchy and bloodshed following freedom from genocide because there was never any real opponent) or the fight, you now discover, was being fought for a disingenuous purpose in the first place.

But you lost friends to that purpose. You did things which, in the normal course of existence, seem terrible. You lost things you cannot even express, things which never had a name in the first place.

How did the British soldiers returning from Afghanistan feel following claims that it had all been an illegal war based on misinformation? How did the American soldiers returning from Vietnam feel, to be greeted by their people, not as heroes, but as murderers.

The trouble with battling good and evil is that it's very hard to tell which exactly is which.

There are too many humans and not enough monsters. And in the end, the defeated party and the victors? Well sometimes you still can't tell which is which. And often, for the soldiers, and for the rest of us, whether the troops are pulled out early or returned home victorious, the fight is still not necessarily finished.

Taking Liberties: 19 April

"When life has gone into overtime it’s easy to take liberties."
Jonas Jonasson, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Not overTIME, perhaps, but certainly our lives on this trip, could at the very least be said to have gone into overDRIVE. And therefore it seems perfectly natural that if you are going to be spending a day cycling from vineyard to vineyard sampling wines with friends you met in England, in a continent more than eleven thousand miles from home, having jacked in your jobs for a year in which you hop lightly from one country to another at least once a month, you really may as well do it on a vintage tandem.

Two tandems, to be precise. Helen and Michael are not people who see a chance for fun and turn away from it.

And so it is that we find ourselves, equipped with helmets and reflective jackets, because no sensible adventurer forgets his or her safety code, setting off, rather shakily, on route to the vineyards of  Marlborough, New Zealand.

M and I are old hands, having ridden a tandem before. This means that we remember quite clearly how hard it is, especially if the person on the back is a control freak, and can't help trying to steer. M and I are experts, and so I know that if we wobble and lose control this is definitely M's fault for not warning me he is planning to go fast or stop suddenly, and M knows that it is definitely my fault for panicking and fidgeting about on the back.

Michael tries to video our first attempt at riding it. I say 'tries' because he has to abort it eventually  because we can't get the foot stand up. After I have tried and failed, M has rolled his eyes, then tried and also failed, and Helen has rolled her eyes, then made a cameo entrance into this masterpiece of film making, and also failed, Michael shuts down 'take one' and intervenes. He flicks the stand up easily, returns to his post and we try again.

This attempt is more successful and the film, now immortalised on Michael's Facebook, makes it look rather smooth.

"And they're off!" cries Michael admiringly in the background as we sail over the road and onto the pavement on the other side, where we come to a vaguely dignified stop. At this stage the film ends. Which is lucky really because there is actually a protracted period of wobbling and shrieking before we manage to get back off the curb again and point ourselves in the correct direction for vineyard number one.

Helen and Michael, in our wake, mount their steed and progress, slowly but smoothly off in their first ever attempt. There is not even one shriek. Though I think there may have been a wobble.

"Drinks with an alcoholic content ought to go down your throat and into your belly as quickly as possible, not stick to your palate.”
Jonas Jonasson, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Now I am a big fan of Jonas Jonasson, and of this book in particular but I must admit I don't agree. Alcohol should taste good. It should taste so good that you want it to stay in your mouth all day. It should be like chocolate, with potential drunkenness simply being a slight downside, rather like potential obesity in the case of chocolate, which is unfortunate purely because it might mean you have to limit how much of it you have. I have never been a fan of shots or of 'downing it'. I like my alcohol to taste and I like to have time to pontificate on about it.

We progress, steadily, through five vineyards, a champagne yard (?) a brewery and a fudge shop.

We pontificate. At the beginning, I suspect we are sounding rather more informed than we do by the end but in each case the vineyard owners or servers seem genuinely pleased to serve us our tasters and talk excitedly to us about their wares.

Somewhere in the day there seems to have been an inspired but unspoken agreement that everyone would buy a bottle of something that we all liked, especially for the sake of showing support for the smaller businesses. By the time we wend our wobbly way home, therefore, we are armed with a red, a desert wine, a champagne, a selection of beers and a block each of fudge.

We are mightily pleased with ourselves.

Moby Dick: 17 - 18 April

"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

We, M, Helen, Michael and I, are going on a whale hunt. We are headed for the famous whale watching trips in Kaikoura, and on the way we will spend a night in Hanmer Springs, famous for, well, its hot springs. Because all whale hunters and other such adventurous sorts need a good long soak every now and then. And a cup of tea.

We park up in our spot for the night, and from there walk through the woods to the springs. It begins to rain as we emerge, a little goose pimpled, from the changing rooms, but this is fine. The springs have many different pools, all at different temperatures and/or mineral contents, and it's rather nice to run between them and sit in warm water being peppered by cold. When we've finished we nip into the pub next door for one of those 'snacks to keep us going' which turns out to be about four 'snacks', each of which is about the size of all four of our heads.

When we roll back out again, burping a little and saying 'phew!' at regular intervals as though the act of eating was some sort of hardcore endurance exercise, we discover that it is pouring with rain and that the very idea of a taxi seems laughable to the locals at Hanmer Springs. Because, you know, everything's walkable. As long as you remembered to bring a torch, obviously. And some sort of coat.

In fact this is lucky, because we walk home turns out to be by far the most fun part of the day.

We have no rain jackets and our only light is Michael's phone. The forest path is totally unlit and goes, well, through the forest.

With no choice, we set off like slightly less glamorous versions of every horror film protagonist who has ever thought it was a good idea to investigate a noise in the attic without turning the light on or wearing anything more protective than a nightie.

Predictably, walking through woods by torchlight in the rain is quite creepy. The horror movie feel is made worse by Michael, who in lieu of an umbrella, is wearing his towel over his head like a cross between something out of The Blair Witch Project and an extra from a children's nativity play. As he lights up his face with his torch, full nostril illumination as per Blair Witch, it occurs to me, suddenly, that if we do encounter a werewolf, ghost or axe murderer, we may not have much trouble scaring it off.

Helen trips over a tree root. I scream.

We arrive home soaked through, whereupon we hang around in the rain a bit more. Because it's funny. And because Michael wants to get a picture of himself with towel on his head.

"...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The next morning we move on to Kaikoura. We are all excited. The whale watching trip involves going out on a boat, has rave reviews and tells us that we are actually guaranteed to see at least one whale!

Kaikoura is a small and friendly town, pleasantly reminiscent of an English seaside though without proper, fatty chips as previously bewailed. All looks very promising - until we arrive at the departure office and they tell us that the morning trip has been cancelled for safety reasons, but that we may be able to sail on the afternoon voyage.

Oh. The seas is too rough, apparently. I suddenly remember a cheerful TripAdvisor reviewer, "you WILL chunder", he said. I wonder if an anecdote in which I puke on a whale would be entertaining enough to be worth it. Possibly. Possibly not.

So we go into the town and we find a nice cafe and then we eat our body weight in rich cooked breakfasts. Because that is the only sensible thing to do when preparing for a trip on a rough sea.

We also have desert. Obviously.

"Why, thou monkey...we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here"
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

We go back to the office. We are out of luck. There are no whale watching trips today.

Poor Helen has tried to do this several times including on previous trips to New Zealand. Maybe, I suggest, it is an elaborate con and no whale watching trips have ever actually gone. And there are no whales to be seen off the coast of New Zealand.

Oh well.

We are a little disappointed, but apparently we are in the right locality to possibly spot a few seals.

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Of course the place for the seals is impossible to find. In the end we almost stumble upon it after parking up at a 'look out spot'.

"I am not sure we are actually gping to see any seals," I say laughingly, as we all get out of our vehicle/homes and walk to the lookout. "Never mind though. We've got card games."

We peer over the wall, down at the rocky outcrop below.

There are hundreds of seals.

Some are feeding their pups, lying out, tilted carefully so that the slippery, sliding pup can get a good grip on her teats. Others sit up straight, barking into the spray filled air to warn off any passing intruders. Some smaller pups are alone, their mothers out hunting, and they seem a bit lost, dragging themselves around rather plaintively, only to be warned off by a growl and a snap from the adults if they come to close to another, feeding pup. Other pups are curious and full of energy, fighting each other in the shallows. A natural circle of rocks a little elevated from the water, but nevertheless filled by the occasional high wave, forms a sort of seal swimming pool, and heaves with activity, the water in it churning with playful, diving baby seals. It's amazing. We all sort of lose each other a bit as we gaze down. We take numerous pictures and I take several identical videos, trying in vain to capture the sound, sight and smell of so many seals.

When we can finally tear ourselves away, we decide to go for a quick walk up the stream that leads to a small waterfall where apparently the seal pups like to go when they are old enough, to play.

I expect there to be some pups. But I expect them to be far away, small shapes in the waterfall perhaps, which we can view from behind a fence of some sort.

They are l literally at our feet. The walk along the stream is just that, we stroll right next to the stream, and every now and then a small shape appears, and bullets it's way smoothly and expertly past us in the water. One pup has paused in his journey upstream, and is turning somersaults in the water, alternately rolling and swimming, hiding and floating, comically, on his back, for all the world as though he is deliberately showing off.

As we reach the waterfall the seals are all around us. They slide down from the steep grassy banks into the waterfall, they writhe about under the falling water, the fight each other at the sides, once losing balancing and tumbling, together, into the pool, with all too obvious and abundant joy.

"The pups are curious," says a sign, "and may approach you. If they do, gently back away."

It seems to me we are intensely privileged to have the opportunity to 'back away' from a seal pup. We are all entranced and all of us, separately and on multiple occasions, point out that if we had gone whale watching today, we would have missed this, we would not have had time to see it in daylight. And the whales, if we were to have seen them, could hardly have been this close to us. At least not without a rather unfortunate capsized boat into the equation.

We stay there a long time, taking more pictures of our delighted faces with nonplussed looking seal pups in the background.

"Stupid seals," says the lady at the nearby camping ground that evening, "coming out suddenly from behind a rock to roar at you when you're trying to walk the dog."

Maybe adult seals, with their strong smell and their imposing size might not be the ideal companions for a quiet coastal walk...

But we don't mind. We don't see seals every day. We go out for a walk that evening on the exact stretch of beach she describes, hoping to see a seal. We do. (Though admittedly we keep it at a very safe distance.) We go back to our campers enormously happy.

And who needs a whale anyway?

I never did understand Moby Dick.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: 14 - 16 April

"I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains."

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

This is a book about a journey, and in that sense it fits, but otherwise I admit that to choose as my theme a book about war and loss seems odd in the light of the jubilant reunion that these days encapsulate, as we meet up with good friends from home, Helen and Michael (pseudonyms), who have come all the way out here to join us on part of our New Zealand journey.

But, at least in this quote, there is an echo of hope, and the themes over these few days in Christchurch are twin. We celebrate our luck in getting to see our friends again, and we walk through a Christchurch which has been devastated only five years ago by a huge and cruelly unanticipated earthquake.

In the city centre, there is a monument to the people who lost their lives in that earthquake, and, by extension, to the people they left behind to grieve for them. It is a set of 185 empty chairs, one for each lost life. They are all painted white, and they all have attached to them a holder for a single flower. The chairs are all different. Because the lives lost were all different. There are armchairs and bar stools, rocking chairs and dining chairs, wheelchairs and baby bouncers. Death is no respecter of age.

It's one of the most affecting memorials I have seen.

And I very nearly called this entry 'Empty Chairs'. Because the metaphor works for any kind of absence. The empty chairs, for M and I, of those back at home, who we often find ourselves wishing could just be here and see this for themselves.

"So and so would love this"  we say wistfully, be it an amazing brewery, a beautiful plant, or a jet boat experience. We are lucky, because our empty chairs, unlike those who have left the world forever, can be refilled.

Bereavement is not something to even begin to be glib about. And yet there is something beautiful about that remnant Hemingway talks of, the sense that the lost are not ever, in fact, lost.

Helen and Michael join us and walk in silence, each in our own thoughts, among the empty chairs in the memorial, remembering quietly the lost of Christchurch and our own lost, past and present, whose memories remain as solid as the chairs we walk among.

But before that, we have had the pleasure of seeing our own empty chairs refilled, in the form of each other.  As M and I drive up from Dunedin, having stayed the night in a beautiful, autumn hued arboretum, I have the same sense of restless excitement that I did as we prepared to see Roxi and Cal, though I manage to resist the ridiculous impulse to put make up on in preparation. Both M and I are fidgety and jittery as we drive, and we have to stop just outside Christchurch to have a coffee and refresh ourselves, as the occasion feels too special to warrant us turning up half asleep and musty smelling from the drive. We have, in the UK, generally seen these people at least three times a week if not more. It's been seven months. What will they think of us now, I wonder, will we have changed beyond recognition, become more confident, more relaxed, more worldly wise?

Helen and Michael come running full pelt around the corner in the campsite to greet us, and everybody more or less leaps into each others arms.

"Oh it's so good to see you!" says Helen, happily, later, as we settle into each other's company again with absolute ease, "you haven't changed a bit!"

I am not sure what I think about this, though I understand how pleased she is because I too, am quite pleased to find them unchanged. They are the same easy company, the same fun, the same people I loved to spend time with in England, and now love to spend time with in New Zealand. They fit perfectly into their much familiar, much loved, empty chairs.

But that doesn't mean I want to be the same. I want to be quirky K, newly travelled and informed, unrecognisably confident cent and soaring far above all that inferiority that was me before I travelled. I want to be sage now, a guru, a fearless adventurer.

Who am I kidding? Helen's right, I'm just the same. And at the end of the day who am I to decide whether that's such a disappointment? I think Helen and Michael are perfect as they are. I love their quirks and their foibles, their moods and their humour. What change would I welcome given that status quo?

Only one change, I think, as we settle in to their, far more luxurious, camper van, to drink beer, wine and tea in equal measure, and begin a set of evenings that will characterise our time with them, playing increasingly silly card games, watching films, being us. Only one change, and that is the addition of Mark (pseudonym), who, in Southampton, usually completed this little set. There is a Mark shaped empty chair around our card table, and it is remarked on often. When we get home one of the first things we will do is call Mark, collect Helen and Michael - and complete the set. It will probably be messy. There is usually beer.

For now though, we laugh, drink, chatter and just relax again into each other's company, knowing of course that, when Helen and Michael leave, and we continue our journey, those chairs will be empty again, and all the more poignant for having been warmed.

But what are human relations if not poignant? And how much of what is always with us do we, inevitably, take for granted?

"Tomorrow can be a day of much valid action. Tomorrow can be a day of concrete acts. Tomorrow can be a day which is worth something. That tomorrow should come and that I should be there."

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Talking about Christchurch in terms of loss and damage is unfair.
As we walk through there is, admittedly, a very strong sense that the earthquake devastation us recent and visceral. Buildings are fenced off, standing, apparently in defiance of gravity, piles of bricks around them. There are building works and areas which are closed because they are unsafe. But even in the most tragically shattered remnants of old buildings there are, literally in one case, roses growing out of them.

A cardboard cathedral has been erected to be used whilst the long restoration process takes place on the original. The cardboard has a touching, transient quality, reminding us perhaps if the transience of our lives and the literal transience of earthly structures, particularly when built in an earthquake zone. It is a beautiful cathedral, cleverly crafted of cardboard pipes and tubes. It is an arresting design in and of itself, an artwork and a place of worship in its own right, not simply as a replacement for something else. There are numerous shops and restaurants which have rehoused themselves into colourful shipping containers, a tourist attraction in and of themselves, and doing perfectly good business. With this new way of living, this change to the norm comes a new hope which is much more than simply making do whilst the previous situation is restored.

Can old issues, geographical injustices be laid to rest in the new plans for the city? Are the shipping containers not beautiful in themselves? How sad would it be to see them go, replaced once  again, by conventional shops?

Where change might be unwelcome in someone you love, or unnecessary in something you admire the way it is, it can also be a wonderful bonus.

I talk later with another friend about the expectations I had of being a new improved version, following this adventure and she laughed. "You might be the same person to sit down and have a drink with," she says, "but there will be subtler things, little changes in attitude or in the way you choose to see the world. And who wants a beer with a smug traveller anyway?" A good point. Am I trying to turn into Brad?

The fact is, of all the things I may or may nor have learned on my travels, one of the clearest is that there really is, however clichéd it might be, something beautiful in everything. Shipping containers, courage, cardboard tubes, Helen and Micheal coming here to see us over thousands of miles, a simple cup of tea or glass of wine with friends, cold drinking water and hot washing water, or ducks trying to climb into a small painted van, which in turn, due to a few sheets of MDF in the back, becomes a home.

Beauty and hope come in plenty of guises. Even a set of empty white painted chairs.