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Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America. #1: Cuba, da, da, da, da, da, Cuba.

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Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, family, food, holidays, humour, Pindar, Pindar Family, politics, travel, writing

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Cuba, Havana, internet, money

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So this is ten years on from our family gap year. The kids have grown up, the nest abandoned, for now; The Boy is working/getting drunk, etc in Australia, The Girl is waiting to start Uni. We have planned to go to Cuba for a long time, we nearly went fifteen years ago when we came into a few grand – where there’s a claim, there’s certainly a blame! But I put my foot down which is a rarity in hours for ‘Pushover Pindar’ as the family unit call me, then laugh like psychopaths! Instead we had a new kitchen fitted in the dilapidated basic house which we had just moved into. When I say basic, it had a gas fire and a shower in the kitchen! Yes a shower in the kitchen with no door on it – the house had been a multiple social security tenant’s house. I only tell you this as a few people say we are always travelling, sometimes it’s a fine line between being assertive and relaxed.

It is planned, The Wife has sacked her job off, I’m working at an academic school that is so desperate for Science Teachers, they are letting me go early and come back late – two and a half months we will be away in total, hurrah.

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The first and only major hurdle is getting visas for the Republic of Cuba. There is nothing on the online website’s dropdown menu that says we are going for a holiday, or we are tourists. The box you have to tick is ‘supporting the Cuban people!’ This will become our motto whenever we are being ripped off, which when you’re a tourist – ‘supporting the Cuban people’ is quite frequent.

You know you are in underdeveloped country when you have to line up patiently to have a headshot taken with a digital camera from an operative inside the customs both. People get annoyed, but we take it in our stride, it’s all part of the experience, I pass the time thinking of famous people in mug shots, I decide on Steve McQueen.

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Everyone’s bags are re-x-rayed, when it looks like we’re through! Money is a hassle in Cuba; there are two currencies that run side by side. The Cuban convertible (CUC) – tourist money and money the rich Cubans use (there are some, they all work in tourism!) and the peso, or local money, in theory only Cuban nationals can use this, but once you get acclimatised, you can buy some things with it, like food, especially in out the way places. We have to queue to get our CUCs as you cannot buy them beforehand; this takes nearly an hour at twelve o’clock at night. Cubans say their greatest exports are: cigars, rum, music and dancing. Whenever a Cuban tells me this I add, ‘queuing’ to the list! It always raises a smile.

The Airbnb we are staying in have ordered us a taxi, but it has not turned up. We have the hassle of negotiating a new one. There are two types of cars in Cuba; new ones, Japanese and Chinese produced, and old ones from before the revolution (1959!) classic American cars. We jump in one of the later and the pollution it’s producing is like something from Wacky Races. Heading into central Havana in an American Studebaker – if that doesn’t make you feel alive, stop the world and get off.

By now it’s 1.30am in the morning and the narrow and on first impression, shady looking and crumbling streets are empty. I pass the taxi driver the address along with my pigeon Spanish and he goes out of his was to make sure someone is home. From the outside, the apartment (112 Villages) looks rough, but inside it is immaculate, large ceilings, colonial elegance, fantastic.

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The government stipulates that all rented tourist’s rooms must have; AC, a fridge, shower/bathroom. We are too wired to sleep, so we head out and find a bar (Monserrate) still open and sip cuba libres. The toilets in Cuba are not for the feint-hearted! This is my first experience, a tiled bathroom, one lone urinal in the corner and one sit-downer, surrounded by an enclosure a pony could easily look over, it has a plantation shuttered saloon door on, with an ironic bolt lock. Anyone that enters the bathroom looks down on you both physically and socially. This is one of the posher bars that tourists frequent! I find it quite amusing, but if you’re a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the ‘sanitised’ place for you!

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We wake late to discover we are in the heart of the old town not far from Parque Central. It feels vibrant and safe, we eat brunch in Café Paris, queue for more currency for an hour and a half!, in a beautiful colonial bank. Use a service till if you can, there is no rhyme or reason which ones work, but some do. We go on an open top bus tour with Cuclo, the commentary is rubbish, a half interested young woman that looks as though she has been out clubbing all night tells us the name of every hotel, when it was built and how many people it can accommodate, and little else – I know more about Havana than her, except the history of the hotels! We get our bearings and sunburn.

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That’s me under the tv.

We head to PA’s bar on Agromante for great cold beers, I get chatting to the owner. He has football shirts adorning one wall of the top teams from around the world, with the omission of Man City! After much discussions he reluctantly agrees he should get a City shirt. The Wife asks me in all honesty if I know him! “I do now,’ I reply. The beer, heat and jetlag send us to sleep, we reluctantly pull ourselves out to get in sync with a walk and food in Plaza Vieja. Havana is crumbling, there is little money for renovation except in Vieja and the important public buildings, which have been restored meticulously back to their original architectural splendour. It has been going on since the 1970’s, Eusebio Leal Spengler is the mastermind, and the Habaguanex holding company (WWW.Habaguanex.ohc.cu) a charity that splits the money from tourism equally between restoration and social projects. I read recently there will be as many as 110 direct flights from the USA this year alone – that’s a lot of US dollar! The upside of this is a beautiful decaying city will be brought back to life and lots of people in Cuba will be better off. Havana reminds me of Beunos Aires, a city that is starting to decay around the edges – The Paris of the South, but forty years on from their financial disaster, again precipitated by America!

Cuba already feels good, we are relaxing into it, the people are friendly, and despite reports to the contrary, appear happy and helpful.

 

Here’s my initial/landing top 4 tips for Cuba;

  1. Pay an agency to sort your visa out, it’s not expensive and will save you mucho hassleo.
  2. When you land get enough money for at least three days, if in doubt go for a higher, rather than a lower amount.
  3. Buy an internet card (you put a code in to the only government provider available!) and head to a plaza with everyone else. Expect the connection to be poor to awful! Don’t use one of the big hotels.
  4. Americans only. If you get money out using an American account the Cuban bank/government will charge you 10%, yes 10%! Change all the money you need into Euros and exchange them. Western Union was good option for Americans I met.

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Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #2: It would be rude not to talk politics and revolution in Cuba –- Out 18/8/17

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

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#73: Journey’s end: life continues (back to life, back to reality.) The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in children, family, gap year, holidays, humour, south America, travel, writing

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family, Glastonbury, home, middle-classes, Quito, school, teenagers, travel

75 life

This is the last few days of what should have been a year away, but now has to be eleven months as we have to go back to get The Boy into his comprehensive school, so he’s not classed as a re-admission and on a waiting list. We go on our last excursion from Quito to the belt of the world at Cuidad Mitad del mundo (Middle of the World City).

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We jump back and forth from the northern to the southern hemispheres. The Boy is reluctant and remonstrating with us, “It’s such a sad touristy thing to do.”

“Yep, but when someone asks you how many times you have crossed the equator, you can say ‘dozens of times’. “ He is not convinced, he is practising to be a proper teenager in a few days’ time.

“In the merchant navy they shave your head the first time you cross the equator. We could shave your hair off in a symbolic gesture of solidarity to seamen.” He laughs, well, he’s nearly a teenager. “We could just shave it off anyway, so your new brutal hairstyle matches your personality!” A young non-nonsense Australian joins in, “Hey, you are a tourist, mate. Get jumping, you’ll feel better for it.” So reluctantly he joins his sister who is already bounding the line like she is in a Disney musical. He feels better for it and it lifts his, and everyone else’s mood. We take the obligatory photos of the brutal monument dedicated to 0º-0’-0”Latitude.

We visit The Magic Bean Café for the last time on the morning of our departure and evaluate our nearly-year away. It feels like we are in an ephemeral bohemian novel – Marquez springs to mind, surreal that it will soon end. We, the parents, could travel onwards forever now, more addicted than institutionalised, more enthused than jaded, with a topping of escapism thrown in. Should we have paid forty grand off the mortgage, rather than spent the equity on taking a gap year? I say ‘squandered on coming away’ to The Wife to evoke a reaction. The answer is obviously ‘no’. We discuss the best bits about the last year of our lives, and the good seem to outweigh the bad bits by about ten to one. But don’t kid yourself there won’t be travails, annoyances, and resilience needed during a full year away. Even the relative hardships untarnish to memories that make us laugh and smile.

We are in Quito airport, this is the last time we will need to check our bags in, the next time we will be reunited will be in Manchester, after they get delayed at Heathrow!, and we will be ‘home’. Customs have taken it upon themselves to go through all our bags quite methodically, (except The Girl’s, or ‘Pequena mula de drogas’ as we like to call her. The Boy is not only accosted by this perceived violation, but his hormones are nipping away at him as well, he is about to explode, we both try and calm him, but he can’t fight against it any longer, he bursts.

“My life is over…”he tries to contain himself, but he has no chance, “I’ve been backstage at Glastonbury… and, I’ve been around the world. WHAT ELSE is there left for me to do?!”Both The Wife and I burst into laughter. “WHAT, WHAT? “ Exhorts the pre-teenager.

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So we are back in the routine, we have been for, total disclosure here, ten years! This all happened ten years ago, ten years have got behind us all. Writing now, only affirms how much it has enhanced all our lives. All those that appear scared by life, or cannot bare the stress of any change, the comfort of the everyday, some seem visibly shocked by what we have done, even now after both the children have made it to university. But how did you educate them? What did you do for money? What about your jobs? I know most of us are only a few months away from the streets, but you cannot let your fears paralyse you, or you become a ghost in the machine, living to work – stay optimistic and good things happen to you, it’s not purely by chance – you won’t win the lottery, if you don’t buy a ticket. The Wife gets the same job back she left. My job as a shortage secondary science teacher is not only left open, they have decided to give me a three-grand pay increase for some unknown reason. The Boy gets back into his old school, but tells all but his very closest friends he has been away in London for the year. The Girl starts a new junior school nearer to our home. I ask her how her first day of school went.

“We had Geography, and we are doing about the Amazon Rain Forest. “ I light up as she tells me.

“Did you tell them you’ve been, about piranha fishing, the caimans, the anacondas, collecting poison arrow frogs, swimming in a river?”

“I didn’t want to show off!”I am both sad, and immensely proud of her at the same time.

“Did you not say anything at all? Offer to bring some photos in? The trinkets you bought from a Shaman?”The look she gives me, reiterates what she has already told me. Then she adds, “The teacher had most of it right, but I didn’t want to correct her!”

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Two months after being back I’ve been sent on a middle-management course. We have to give a five-minute talk on any subject after a coffee break and a few of us are deciding what to talk about. I genuinely have no idea and express these feelings aloud. ‘You must have done something interesting across the summer holidays?’ ‘I did go around the world with my family all last year.’They look at me as if I’m taking the piss; I’ve not even considered it might sound a bit showy. So I talk about this, I set about my talk giving a very brief résumé of the places and the people and pre-empt the worried questions the professional middle-classes always ask, always the education issue comes up first – can you image the fine now? I tell them semi-flippantly, ‘schools don’t mind when middle-class people take their children out of school, it’s the working classes they object to, as they’re not taking them to museums and immersing them into the language and culture.’ My time is up and the ‘facilitator’ asks if anyone would object if I was given a little more time to answer some more questions that people may have. A resounding ‘yes’ ‘that’s fine’ ‘I want to know…’ I become defined as the teacher that took a family gap year for the rest of the course, but there are worse things to be defined by.

People ask what our family gap-year away was ‘really’ like? At least for the first few weeks anyway;

We have;

Basked in the glow of the Golden Temple with relatives and roots,

met and impersonated penguins,

observed tigers on the stalk,

walked in the footsteps of Ghandi,

counted and framed shooting stars in the Australian dessert,

traversed glaciers,

submerged ourselves on the Great Barrier Reef,

ridden through Pushka on a camel with the wind in our hair,

stepped through petrified forests,

experienced the havoc a few can inflict on the many,

surveyed the sunrise over Micha Picchu,

Traced the Nazca Lines,

upheld the natural jewellery of poisonous arrow frogs,

been awed as pink dolphins break the water’s surface,

Epicured on piranhas in the Amazon,

abandoned black-screens for analogue books,

lived with few material possessions,

set our watches in every time zone,

witnessed The Boy undergo the biological change; wrestle the hormonal beast,

laughed with friends of every nation,

grown much closer as a family,

and… seen the world is connected by love and friendship…

I think… but mostly I just reply, “Yeah, it was great.”

If you take your kids out of school and go around the world for a year, you have to expect them to be more; independent, confident, secure, better readers, empathetic, wiser. The flipside for some is the travel bug bites them, they are more, as the great philosopher Eric Cantona once said: secure, independent and loved. But now they also have wings and they may glide further from the nest and end up working in Australia, or travelling through South East Asia, where they are now, but would we have had it any other way?: No! Don’t forget as parents we are only the bows, our children are the arrows, we have done the best we could, and will endeavour to do so, when at times it’s bloody hard, but that’s what families are about, that’s the invisible glue that sets fast.

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Disclaimer

I may have a break from my blogginations for a while; there is tricky book to finish. Recently I spent two and half months in Central America and Cuba with The Wife, I may tell you about that at some point. The biggest complaint I’ve had while writing this irreverent flickering images nonsense  is calling The Wife,‘The Wife!’, feminists hate this, and they have every right to do so, I appreciate that – she doesn’t hate it, and she is a proper feminist. When I set off with the first blog she didn’t want her name mentioned, this was probably a wise thought, ‘I know what you can be like, people that know me might read it.’ She has mellowed, she is the reason we went away in the first place, she is the real risk taker in our relationship – I was only a risk-taker by association. She was the one that made a decision that has enhanced all our lives measurably, and the memories only get rosier with the passing of time, for this and many other reasons, is why I love her, so when I write: ‘The Wife’, what I mean is ‘my’ intelligent, beautiful,  Punjabi Princess.

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BIG LOVE to you all for reading these blogs in numbers that have astounded me, and as you travel and travail through life, catching and avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune, take my BIG LOVE with you, always… and make sure the glue is setting hard.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

My latest book: Hull, Hell & Homecomings, is out later this year to coincide with Kingston upon Hull being the 2017 UK City of Culture.

 

Epilogue:  Through the Sun Gate: Machu Picchu.

This was the highlight of our family gap year: at least for The Wife it was. The sun creeping over the verdant Andes, the conical sides of Mount Huayna like benevolent reaching arms, to the blanket of the scattered ancient Inca ruins below. The Wife fighting for words to express its beauty; for her no anti-climax, for the rest of us the satisfaction that we have all made the three and a half day trek without oxygen and stretcher bearers. To stave off altitude sickness I have chewed the recommended cocoa leaves – all that occurred was an aching jaw like I had been hit a few days previous by Mike Tyson in a bad mood. The continued expectant eyes’ of the porters that I might have some ‘spare leaves’ – I felt like a drug dealer, I gave them all of them.

I have equal measures of wonderment and relief that we have made it, especially with a nine-year-old daughter, not so much in tow, more running ahead. The Wife has led us to the iconic photographic point – you know the one I mean. The children now more interested in the Mother and baby Llama just to our right, which are now bathed in the smiles of their own mother. The place is deserted; it is seven in the morning, ideal for photography in the still. She is punctuating the endless pictures with sighs of contentment and flowery adjectives – ‘this is why we are here’. The children are getting restless and not sharing her excitement now. Then it happens, whilst the baby llama is content to feed from its mother’s milk. The Madonna lets out the loudest expulsion of mammalian wind we have ever heard – ever! At the same time her short tail rises up and levitates in the air momentarily, before comedically falling back to its resting position. The children fall with it, into uncontrollable fits of laughter, I have no option but to follow suit. The laughter is not echoed by The Wife at the end of her (rudely) interrupted pilgrimage. Now would be a good time to break open the unused oxygen cylinder.

Several years pass and my wife is relaying the tales of our year out in the kitchen to a friend. She is waxing lyrical about the Incan ruins, her highlight, just as both the now teenage children enter the kitchen.

“What you talking about?” enquires the eldest.

The wife knows best not to mention Machu Picchu, it has been code named ‘Old Peak.’ – the rough Quechuan translation into English.

“She was telling me about Machu Picchu, it sounds soo wonderful. You are so lucky to have been.”

“Did she tell you about the Llamas?” The children look at each other trying to suppress something.

“No, what about the Llamas?” she lightly demands looking at The Wife, whom is shaking her head rhythmically from side to side.

Then they’re off again, transported back, memories underlined by laughter, and I have little choice again, but to join in.

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Madonna and child!

#72: Swimming with the Piranhas. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

20 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in family, food, gap year, holidays, humour, travel, wildlife

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Amazon, Antonio Valencia, crime, doctors, Ecuador, fish, Manchester United, medicine, pink river dolphins

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The family unit meets me at the airport in Quito, as I fly direct from the Galapagos Islands. We only have a week left of our trip and in my absence, they have been robbed on a bus in the mountains on their way into Quito. The classic bus scam, a man drops something on the floor, another grifter joins him, in this case it’s lost loose change around the feet of the kids and they come away with an iPod, a camera, and hopefully a guilty conscience somewhere down the line. It‘s upsetting, more so as I’m not with them when it happens. My son feels like he has let me down, he has stepped up to the plate in my absence and has been ordering and bartering over rooms in Spanish up in the mountains around Riobamba, then the robbery! This is a Spanish lesson you don’t get taught in school!

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The police are genuinely mortified when we tell them we have travelled the world and this is the only criminal mishap that has befallen us. They are only ‘things’, and we are insured, but it is the injustice, the violation, the lost photographs, that rankles at almost the very end of our travels.

Once we are settled in Quito old town in a hostel opposite the brilliant Magic Bean Café, the robbery is not so important.

We are booked on an eco-trip deep into the Amazon at Yasuni, described as arguably the most biodiverse spot on Earth. It’s relatively easy to get to this equatorial paradise, a 40-minute flight, a 3-hour minibus ride, and two hours in a motorised canoe – everything’s relative.

I’m expecting a tiny plane to take us into the Ecuadorian Amazon, something like you might see in an Indiana Jones film being buffeted in a thunderstorm, but there are over hundred people on this jet, there is a buzz, and the majority don’t appear to be dressed for an equatorial jungle environment. The plane lands at Lago Agrio (Bitter Lake) originally it was simply, and unimaginatively named Texaco, a town that has grown around the oil industry.

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Everyone and anyone stand expectantly by the runway; the Witch Doctor/Mayor/top army brass/tv reporters they are all there, excited eager faces. We alight the plane like tropical Beatles, but they have not come to see us, they have come to see their most famous footballer, and locally born – Antonio Valencia. Valencia appears to want none of the publicity; I’ve seen him hiding under a large baseball cap on the way off; hoping, unrealistically they might forget about him! He just wants to see his family, quietly. We watch intrigued as he presses the flesh and smarts from camera flashes.

The taxi driver makes me smile, he wants to know if we have come all the way here from England just to see Antonia Valencia! I inform him he plays for Manchester United, around the corner from where we live, if I wanted to see Tony V, I could walk down the road and tap him on the shoulder. He seems very impressed that we live in a city with football team.

Three hours in a Minibus vans, along a road designed to remove your fillings free of charge! We eventually meet the Cuyabeno river, then zip along deeper into Yasuni (Cuyabeno) National Park.

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We see a lot of wildlife, the flash of three species of kingfisher raise the spirit, sloths elevate it higher, but it hits a zenith when we reach the entrance to Laguna Grande – when we chance across pink river dolphins, fresh water dolphins in the Amazon! I knew there was some somewhere, maybe at the mouth of the mighty Amazon River, but this is breathtakingly magical, they break the surface near the canoe, they don’t jump out of the water, like some. We will see them every day and never tire of the sceptical, the lake is not far from our camp.

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We are in raised wooden huts arranged around a central plaza, with palm leaf roofs. It is the end of the heavy rainy season and most of the camp not elevated is flooded. There is no electricity in the huts, only the dining area. The kids are slightly horrified at the basic living units, they are actually better than I envisaged!:

“There’s a toilet, sink and mosquito nets, what more do you want?” I say to try and allay their fears.

“Electricity, light, windows–“ The Boy intercedes, but I cut in before the list gets any longer.

“It’s character building, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!”

“It‘s the animals that might kill me I’m worried about!” He replies, and so am I, but I hide my fear well. The Girl is oblivious to the poisonous, bitey, constricting, hidden things that surround us.

“We will be ok, won’t we?” The Wife asks when the kids are out of earshot. “I’ll do a body count in a few days.” I joke untactfully, and feel I need to add “Don’t worry, they wouldn’t let tourists come if it was dangerous.”She is not convinced.

Later as it’s getting dark, I spot a mother tarantula with three babies on the roof of a hut near the dining area. I point it out to Nesir our main guide, “It’s only a baby,” he dismisses. It’s not a baby, it is old enough to birth other tarantulas and it is a good 6-7 inches across. “No, not the babies, the mother.”I try and clarify further. “It is only a baby,” he repeats so I’m in no doubt it is ‘only’ a baby. I make a note not to point out the ‘baby’ tarantula and the baby-baby tarantulas to the family. If they do spot them, I will tell them it is fully grown and been on steroids down the gym for months, but not the steroids that make you aggressive, only make your willy shrink!

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Nesir also tells me it will be ok to swim in the river.

“What about Piranhas?” I ask trying to hide my horror.

“The bank is too steep for piranhas, it‘s safe to swim.” I’m reluctant to be the human guinea pig, but the children are desperate to get in the river as a rope swing hanging from a tree on the opposite bank is calling them. I ask Nesir again if it‘s ‘really’ ok, as I’m being volunteered further by The Wife and some of the others have come to see if I get eaten, and it’s all been a cruel Ecuadorian ‘survival of the fittest’– ‘who’s ‘actually’ gullible enough’, joke!

“Why am I getting in first? Why not you?” I ask The Wife.

“You’re a stronger swimmer than me. Don’t be a baby, just get in!”I have come to learn that I am better at everything compared to her if it involves possible injury, humiliation, or death.

“Not sure if being a good swimmer helps against piranha attacks?”I see Nesir nod his head in agreement – but I’m not sure with whom he is agreeing! As we will learn later when we go piranha fishing – the more you splash the more the carnivorous fish salivate, delight, and scoff.

“Shouldn’t we throw one of the children in first? I’m the second highest age-earner in this family.

“Get in you big baby.” There’s the baby taunt again “And anyway, you’re insured.” That would be an interesting insurance claim form and death certificate! I could make the Darwin Awards with a forward from The Wife! (and, the insurance company.) I’m nervous, and I get the feeling there is some disappointment from the watching Danish couple when I’m not thrashing around in a quickly spreading pool of my own blood. The Boy and The Girl are soon in and we are on the rope swing. This is one of the lies they tell you at school, if you fall the water in The Amazon you will be consumed by ravenous fish within seconds. It is not until I get out that I think to ask if they have those Canduri pencil fish that happily swim up your urethra, become lodged and have to be removed by surgery!! (definitely two exclamation marks!!)  If you want a memory to keep you warm when you are old and grey, swimming in The Amazon Rain Forest with your kids will just about do it for everyone. A lodged pencil fish in your penis will get you remembered via the gift of social media for many, many, generations to come.

We chat to the other tourists over and after lunch, and are careful to make sure our beds have no dangerous animals in before we get in. We are not been poisoned, bitten, or constricted in the night. We are up early every day and after a healthy and hearty breakfast we are into the motorised canoes and onto the water-roads of the Amazon to spot wildlife. When we eventually step out of the canoes for a dryish land stroll, I step on a twelve-inch centipede that makes a horrendous onomatopoeia sound to match. Nedir dismisses the squashed arthropod and says he has seen a pigmy marmoset camouflaged against the bark of a tree and none of us can see as he points it out. So he sets up a telescope and we are amazed that a primate only thirty feet in front of us is almost invisible, but to be fair, it is the world’s smallest primate, even fully grown it is only 15 inches tall. It is an honour to see such an exquisite creature, and without Nesir, we would have no chance.

On the second night we make the short journey back to Laguna Grande to watch the sun sink, the dolphins are there quietly breaking the surface, a multitude of birds flutter hither and tither to their roosts and the air is stilled in front of a burnt orange horizon.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” The Wife says allowed to our family and the boat in general.

“It’s not as good as Halo 3,” The Boy replies. We ignore him, but the Danish couple in the boat want to know what ‘Halo 3’ is. I explain it’s a game that involves you, the player, as part of a team of psychopathic mercenaries, killing as many of the opposing team of mercenaries as you can. Until there has been enough deaths and splatted viscera that you are deemed to have won. So this is what we end up talking about as we watch the sunset over The Amazon!

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It is easy to spot caimans as we motor back. On one occasion when we  stop at a very small village on the river bank, a couple of local children have a big lump of chicken on a fishing line and are mercilessly teasing a wild three-foot caiman below the jetty.

We go further downstream to the community of Siona, it has a two-classroom brick-constructed school, but it’s the holidays, to suggest it is basic, is an understatement, it has a chalkboard, tables, chairs and very little else. The local children are taught in Spanish, which few of the parents can speak, just their local language. Rifles have replaced bows, outboard motors have replaced oars. Change has arrived, but this is the easily accessible part of the jungle. We go collecting poison arrow frogs, there are plenty. Here another myth gets dispelled: If you touch them you will die! As long as your skin is not broken, they are safe to pick up and collect, we collect many of various bright shades and colours. To get the poison out for arrow tips, the locals gently heat them in a metal pot with a lid on, they sweat poison, and then they release them before they die (I think!).

On the walk from frog collecting, something mammalian is being barbequed on the first floor of a dwelling. When I enquire what they are cooking, Nesir says nonchalantly, “monkey.” It is largely responsible for persuading The Girl to become a vegetarian. They eat monkeys like we eat chickens and pigs, both Nesir and I explain to her, she’s not having it, “It’s just wrong.” She extolls, even though she thinks we are joking!

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In the afternoon we go and visit the Shaman, he is asleep his wife tells us, when we arrive. He’s not asleep, he’s putting his fancy-dress on for the tourists. So we look around his garden of medicinal herbs and edible produce. I’m told that most of the older locals trust ‘Charlatan the Shaman’ more than a medical doctor, they have access to both ‘medical’ systems in this area! Eventually he arrives and chants something that equates to: ‘I’ll soon be trying to sell you some trinkets, so get your money out.’ But not his supply of hallucinogenic herbs he seems quite keen on! He claims to have cured several people of cancer, unsurprisingly he cannot produce any empirical evidence, when challenged by a member of the group, he says we have to trust him! People try not to laugh openly as they move their heads from side to side. Then through the interpretation of Nesir, Shameful explains the treatment.

Shaking bamboo leaves over the patient, while he sings some folk song karaoke numbers. Usually this requires three hours work on very strong psychedelic drugs – for him, not the afflicted. This is the diagnosis stage! ‘This is’ private medicine in a rain forest! As we are leaving, a ‘patient’ is arriving by boat. “Tell her he’s not a real doctor, Nesir.” “He is to her!” He smiles as he says it, but I know he’s as baffled as I am. Don’t write to me, I know there has to be some meaning to the medicinal properties of plants, I’m just saying he would be my second choice, even in a rain forest! He has the last laugh, it’s been worth dressing up, chanting and dancing badly, The Wife and The Boy buy bracelets, and The Girl a wooden beetle. I buy snake oil, smoke and mirrors! – but it does not cure me of my healthy cynicism!

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Have you ever been Piranha fishing? This is what I say when ever asked a tedious fishing question in the UK. If fishing were this exciting I would go fishing. Fishing for piranhas is the opposite of ‘normal’ fishing, were you sit quiet and motionless, ‘Waiting for Godot.’ Put a lump of meat on the end of a thick nylon line, attached to a bamboo stick, and waggle the stick furiously in the water to simulate the thrashing struggling antics of an unfortunate drowning animal. Adrenaline levels are high: The Boy is the first to get a ‘bite’ and as he pulls the piranha from the water with a wide smile – both Boy and Fish, he is just about to drop it into the canoe and it drops off, both smiles disappear! Nesir hooks one and plonks it in the canoe next to my open sandaled foot, I jump up, and the vessel rocks wildly from side to side in the carnivorous infested waters, and we are all nearly in our own disaster movie! We take the biggest, and only catch back to camp to cook, we all want to know what piranha tastes like, like fresh water trout is the answer. Whilst on the disaster movie theme, we see many anacondas in the trees along the waterways, but these are not 4.6m long and capable of swallowing a small car, but about a metre, the ‘big fellas’ have gone further into the ‘drier’ jungle away from the water to forage for food Nesir tells us. I don’t fully believe him, but we are all prepared to believe him, so we can sleep better at night!

The day we leave the rain is torrential, and we re-zip along the waterways like we are in a Vietnam War movie. The rain stops before we reach the track to catch the minibus back to the airport. I buy some ground expresso coffee from a rangers hut to support local jungle projects. I don’t know what was in it, but I suspect, and I’m not joking, cocaine, as maybe a little ‘thank you’ for the charitable donation. We never finished it in the end, worried we might end up extras in a Danny Boyle film. It would have been great if you were on snipper duty of three consecutive days and nights, or a Russian Olympic athlete.

If I had to tell you my favourite place on the planet, it would probably come down to the toss of a coin between The Galapagos and The Amazon Rain Forest, the forest would probably win. I was with my family in the epicentre of magnificent pristine biodiversity. I would recommend it before it becomes a palm plantation or a cattle farm, but not if you are concerned about creepy-crawlies or things that slither. These are the memories that keep us warm when we are old, that binds families together, that make you smile inwardly on cold winter’s days. It’s an old cliché, ‘but , what doesn’t kill you, certainly, makes you stronger.’

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Caption competition: X-ray of a pencil fish in a male urethra! ?!?!?!?!?!?! I will send a signed copy of any of my books to the winner.

Next time: Journey’s end: life continues (back to life, back to reality.)

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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My latest book: Hull, Hell & Homecomings, is out later this year to coincide with Kingston upon Hull being the 2017 UK City of Culture.

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

#71: Evolving biodiversity. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in children, family, fiction, gap year, holidays, humour, south America, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized, wildlife, writing

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Brexit, Galapagos, iguanas, land tortoises, Lonesome George, penguins, photographs, xenophobia

 

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Guayaquil in Ecuador is a pleasant enough place next to the Pacific; some have said it has an edge to it. You can’t take your gun into a restaurant (or roller skates – Have you ever been threatened with a roller skate?) – That may suggest a slight edginess, (or an American High School disco!), but it seems fine to us. It has a nice coastal frontage, and the large numbers of land iguanas in Bolivar Park are well worth a visit, nothing says South America like feeding an iguana fruit, snorting cocaine, reading a Marquez book, toting your gun on roller skates during your main course and shouting random lines from Speedy Gonzales – I may have made the last parts up, or read them in a Hunter S Thompson book!

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Before we have come away, we have all written down one ‘dream’ thing we want to do, think of an achievable bucket list with one item on – tick, where’s the number for Dignitas! Everyone’s done his or hers now apart from me. I remember like yesterday getting a new Parker pen for Christmas in the sixth form and then setting about my A level Biology evolution assignment. I fell into it like you might fall into a fiction book, lost. Only momentarily being distracted by the young neighbourhood kids singing up at me “Pindus, success on a plate for you” This was a slight derivation on an advert at the time for Findus fish fingers – funny, the storage unit of the mind! I remember thinking then of all the places in the world I’d like to go, this is A number one, top of the pile (kick your legs in the air)… The Galapagos Isles – So good they named it after the old Spanish word for saddle, due to the shape of the giant tortoises backs’. So I told The Boy he was in charge on the mainland and left them behind, ‘Hideous Kinky’ as that maybe.

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The Galapagos lie 1000km west of the Ecuadorian coast and is part of the nation of the earth’s belt. This is where I have to check myself a little, have some measure, and not write a novella on the home of evolution. On landing we get shown to the 20-birth cruiser that will be home for the week ahead. We are all introduced to one another and the crew, Diago, the guide for the week is very charming and knowledgeable. I’m sharing a birth with a bohemian Italian, Fernando, he can speak four languages fluently. He shares a story about Heathrow Airport when I tell him I’m English. He has passed through there a few weeks previous. “I went up to the international help desk and asked them, “Do you speak Italian?” “No” the young woman replied, “French?”. “No”. “German?”. “No”. Exasperated he asks, “What languages can you speak?” “Oh, I can speak English!”She says like it’s a major achievement for her. “But it says this is an international help desk, what happens if people can’t speak any English?” “I can’t  help them then!” “Ok, let’s talk in English.”This is only one reason why Brexit was such a bad idea.

We take small boats around from the main town port of Santa Cruz to a natural mangrove nursery. The amount of biodiversity is enormous, I will avoid mentioning all the animals, but just on that first brief trip we observed; blue-footed boobies, land and marine iguanas, fire lizards, sea lions, Sally-Lightfoot crabs, bottlenose dolphins, manta rays, frigate birds, baby sharks, Galapagos hawk, lava herons, oyster catchers, storm petrol, green and hawksbill turtles. It is, bloody amazing!

The next morning we are up early to go and see the giant land tortoises, this is a mini bus ride and I sit next to Diago and naively  and slightly pleadingly ask, “We will see them, won’t we.” “If we don’t, it will be the first time ever we haven’t.”As we pull away from the small town (village), he casually points without speaking, to three we pass by the side of the road. Then as we pull off the tarmacked road and bump down the track, we have a comedic moment were a giant tortoise, this is four foot high, refuses to leave the track when the driver bibs the horn, and four of us have to alight to lift a 200kg turtle out of the way! We are heading to a watering hole and there are another fifteen there, several even bigger than lazy one we have met.

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You can never tire of seeing a giant tortoise, it’s like a cross between ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and ‘Around the world in 80 Days’. Their tastiness was almost their downfall, somewhere near 200, 000 were eaten; even Darwin ate them! But how did such enormous tortoises get from the mainland? Have a think about that for a second (?), they can weigh up to 400 kg! [Have you finished thinking – you’re only cheating yourselves!] One possible explanation – a now defunct land bridge from the mainland, but that is incredibly unlikely. The accepted theory is they swam!! Hey up, I hear you say in a Yorkshire accent. You would, and I did, think they would do the opposite of swimming, sinking without grace, so in 1923 William Beebe, a naturalist, threw an enormous one in the sea and watched as it “floated buoyantly!” He was astonished apparently, and so am I. So the most popular theory goes like this; turtles can float, pregnant turtle falls into the sea on the mainland, floats/swims/gets carried by strong easterly ocean currents and when she climbs out she has an island archipelago named after a body.

There are many great aspects to the boat, but falling asleep after lovely food and beer/wine and waking up at another new island in the Galapagos is the best. It was on the first Island – Bartolome, this is where my stills camera plopped into the sea, just after we had been to spot white-tipped sharks over the headland, on the opposite bay. On the sandy beach that also had the largest male sea lions I have ever seen. I excitedly spotted Galapagos penguins in the surf, so in my excitement to film tropical penguins and get my video camera out, the other camera, plopped out of the camera bag, and failed to work ever again, even the memory card followed suit, this is why there are no photos of The Fat Peruvian of Peru! Then to top it all, by the time I get the video camera cranked up, the penguins have gone. Out of the bad comes the good (positive peace), this meant I could only record everything with the video camera, and consequently have lots of better footage.

Some on board are not bothered about snorkelling around the iconic Pinnacle Rock, but I’m not missing out. So I set off on my own, the penguins are shooting and speeding around me in the warm water. I have no one to share it with, and amazingly none of the others see them, it was after the triumph of this I spot a very large murky figure in the water ahead, it is enormous, and the shape shouts one thing: shark! Fucking BIG shark!! And it appears to be getting bigger as it leaves the murk twenty metres away. ‘Cling to other people’, ‘make yourself bigger’, there is no one, just me. A twelve stone bloke, how big can I make myself? – it is not a great white nasty, it’s a male sea lion, weighing in at about a ton, we have been told not to approach them as they can be very dangerous. It fixes me in its eye-line, transfixes me, and moves towards me, whilst never taking its eyes from mine, it nudges me deliberately on the left shoulder and carries on. I’d rather it be a sea lion than an enormous hungry shark, but not much can scare me, I’ve been to prehistoric island of Komodo!

Galapagos Iguana

On our next excursion we come across a group of German photographers taking pictures, pretty much of everything, one appears to be snapping rocks. Diago tells me of one trip he ran for photographers, again German, they took 2,000 photos a day! 14,000 by the end, spent all nighty editing them down to just thousands, can you imagine, “Here’s a photo of an iguana, here’s another photo of an iguana, and another, just another 700 to go.”

Lonesome George, the last giant Galapagos turtle (died June 2012).

We visit the Darwin Research Conservation Centre on our last day, I’m keen to meet the legendary Gorgeous George, originally when he was discovered, the last of a sub-species from Pinta Island, each island has their own sub-species, not much swimming had appeared to be going on, why risk it? He’s gorgeous mainly because of alliteration only, originally he was Lonesome George. He’s a legend in his own lunchtime, he’s up there with Harriot, the female Giant Tortoise Darwin brought back on HMS Beagle in 1836 (died 2005) that ended up in Australia, and also metaphorically in an upward direction in heaven that are connected now. They have been throwing ‘sexy’females of other subspecies in with him since 1971, he died in 2012, but I can only conclude two possibilities; firstly, GG is xenophobic and will only make the beast with two-saddles with a Pinta female, or, he’s a homosexual. He took the genes with him, it was a lot of pressure to bear, he was well over a hundred years old. I hope the Anglo-Saxon race doesn’t depend on me to bring forth the fruit of my loins at that (un)ripe age with lots of tourists ‘doggedly’ exalting words of encouragement! Donald Trump appears to be in charge of that now! (I did read on the internet that he is thinking of banning anyone without a spray tan from all public places, as that’s where his random thought generator stopped whilst he lost interest on Twitter the night before! It must be true as its unreal news: unreal is the new real!)

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I buy a lovely photograph of three iguanas on the beach at Bartolome the night before I fly out, it is just three iguanas among the hundreds I saw, but every time I stop to look at it I can see beyond it to the white-tipped sharks, tropical penguins like arrows in the water, Pinnacle Rock and a massive belligerent sea lion giving me a territorial nudge.

 

All Galapagos iguanas eat vegetation, the marine iguana consumes only algae – this is very unusual in the animal world, a vegetarian lizard. They are amazing animals, to regulate their salt intake from the sea water they sneeze concentrated brine out of their nostrils, it is worth going there just to see this. And after the amazing ‘BBC Planet Earth’: iguanas vs snakes, that maybe another reason, the most amazing piece of documentary making ever (although some of it is staged!), watch it if you have never seen it, you will remember it for the rest of your lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3OjfK0t1XM

I see everything and more in the Galapagos, the only ones missing from my Eye-Spy book of Galapagos animals is the hammerhead shark and the flightless cormorant.

The Galapagos Islands are amazing. It is not only me with a degree in Ecology that feels this way, everyone agrees it’s been amazing. The only two other experiences people on board say gazump this is walking to Everest Base Camp and the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil.

On my return to England I am in the NHS system to get my left dislocating shoulder sorted out, and on my first visit I tell the consultant about how I dislocated it in Australia and how an aggressive sea lion also had a go. The next time I visit him he has scheduled me to be his last appointment before lunch, and he explains, “Tell more about the Galapagos Islands, I want to go.” I explain and advise him further that if you’re going that far, you have to go to the Amazon Rain Forest as well, that will also blow you away. The next time I see him after my shoulder has been operated on (not by him), he tells me he has booked both… he will not have regretted it, I’m absolutely certain of that.

Next time: Swimming with the Piranhas.

All the missing travel blogs can be found on https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

My latest book: Hull, Hell & Homecomings, is out later this year to coincide with Kingston upon Hull being the 2017 UK City of Culture.hull-hell-and-homecomings-8

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

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#63 Kangaroos on the Lawn, Satin Bowerbird in the garden. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in Australia, children, family, food, gap year, holidays, humour, thewritingIMP, travel

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kangeroos, satin bowerbird, Canberra, Australian parliament, hospitals, Old Tom, utopia, siblicide, Peter Carey, Bill Bryson,

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Sydney seemed to sprawl indefinitely but eventually we are out and on the country roads again – it feels good, through Wollongong – which means ‘Whiteman piss off’ in the local Aboriginal language, or just ‘The Gong’ to local interlopers.

We are heading to Batemans Bay to see a friend of close friends, Peter (real name), just to say hello as we have strict orders from them that we must visit him. He lives in the same house they used to live in just outside Batemans Bay in a lovely spot called Malloneys Beach. A beautiful house virtually on the beach, only a large kangaroo occupied municipal fifty-metre verdant lawn separates the two. When we eventually arrive there is a Mob – this is the correct collective noun for kangeroos – and it sort of sums them up. kangeroos have a strange expression; half startled: half belligerent! I half expect them to say, ‘Listen carefully, this is how it works Pommy, you don’t hassle us, we don’t hassle you. Oh, and that counts for your excitable kids as well!’They remind me of the story of the Italian tourists travelling through the outback in a jeep that hits a large male, take your pick from buck, boomer, jack or old man. The kangaroo looks dead, so they start dressing it with designer goods; Armani jacket, Rolex watch, a gold necklace, etc… but this old man was not dead, only stunned and as they are doing their photoshoot Jack comes round and bounces off into the night wearing all their lavish trinkets… this buck was definitely a boomer!

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You know you will always love the friends of your own best friends, and Peter is no different. After all the introductions (Peter is an enthusiastic History Teacher in the local High school), he sorts beds out for us all, we protest and say we’ll find somewhere in town, he is genuinely offended. He leaves us the run of the house and goes out.

It is a great spot in The Marramarang National Park with its abundant Gum trees,  we try hard to spot Koalas, but fail. It affords the amenities of Batemans Bay alongside the beauty of the forest and the coast, Pebbly Beach is the next beach down, another beautiful spot, where mobbing Rosellas are plentiful. In the garden is a Satin Bowerbird, like most creatures in Australia it is unusual, this particular animal’s unusualness is not its appearance. What this miscreant does is collet blue things, (I’m not making this up!) to attract a mate, blue plastic, blue bottle lids, blue movies, Picasso paintings, ballpoint pens, blue clothes pegs and blue flowers – it is the last two that especially pisses the locals off, the guy next door is a high-ranking ex-government official; the sort if he were American or British would be surrounded by men wearing sunglasses, black suits and earpieces, carrying concealed weaponry and looking nervous. He has taken a particular dislike to the Bird of satinness. Like Peter, he appears to know very little about the avian annoyance. He tells me its mating call grates on him, which having heard it, must sound like the call of a gathering of small children that have assembled to mock his decades of power, my interpretation! I can tell you no more as I have signed a confidentiality contract, and they would make it look like an accident.

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I know about the Satin Bowerbird, as I have taught it, I’m much more excited to see it than the locals. I think my enthusiasm annoys him as much as the blue collector!

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Batemans Bay is the nearest coastline to Canberra. Canberra is a bizarre place, it is so spread out that you have to drive virtually everywhere within the city, and no one appears to live there, well, when the government aren’t sitting. It is equidistant between Melbourne and Sydney, and when two cities that both think they are the capital can’t agree where to position parliament, it only leaves one location. We stumble across an oil painting of our neighbour; it is just missing a faint bowerbird in a tree in the background. I think Canberra is based on every 1960’s Sci-fi utopia, it is soulless, it shouldn’t be, it is actually quite beautiful, but it has no soul, not even the main camp chamber of the parliament can lift it – it has to be a gay architect’s idea of revenge!

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We visit the Science Museum and The War Museum (on the orders of Peter), but someone has kidnapped the people, maybe this is why making utopias is a bad idea, no one wants to live in them, too prescriptive and dictatorial? Either that or a plutonium bomb has leaked out.

We have our first taste of what we think is the outback at Braidwood, it feels like the outback at this stage of our travels – a pretty Wild West town, again with very few people in it. I wonder if they think we are the aliens?

One night Peter takes the kids fishing from the beach and catches a decent sized mullet for our tea. The Girl thinks this is brilliant, the fruits of the sea onto the plate in an hour. It is good for the kids to see the real connection between food and the platter.

We say our goodbyes; we have stayed 6 nights, reluctant to move on as we are having such a great time. The Wife and I discuss the fact that someone as lovely as Peter should have a decent woman in his life, as he has made no secret he is looking, but the only free females of breeding age are Kangeroos, and you can only marry those in mining towns! Soon after we leave he meets a lovely woman, they come over to stay with us in England and they believe they have conceived in our house, the rest as they say, is history, a lot of time, money, effort and sleepless nights.

I always read at least one book about the country I am going to visit as well as the guidebooks. I have read Peter Carey’s True History of the Ned Kelly Gang and Bill Bryson’s Down Under and it is through reading the latter I know where we are bound next: Eden

Old Tom was a mercenary misanthropic Killer whale whose skeletal remains are the basis for the towns imaginatively named: Eden Killer Whale Museum. The onshore whaling station, the countries once longest running, was founded by a carpenter Alexander Davidson and his grandson ‘Fearless’ George Davidson – fearless is another way of saying certifiably cracked, his mates called him ‘Crazy Fish’ but not to his face. Old Tom (and his pod) would help herd passing Baleen Whales into the bay. Old Tom would thrash around in the bay as the migrating Baleens passed pretending to be in distress to attract them from their migratory course. The Davidsons would kill them, then leave the whales anchored in the bay so that scallywag Tom et al could eat the tongue and lips, that’s all they wanted! I know it sounds like I’m making this up (again), but it’s true – honest! Here check it out http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-legend-of-old-tom-and-the-gruesome-law-of-the-tongue/ I did my own research into ‘Crazy Fish’ Davidson, deceased. Old Tom was classed as the leader, and he kept his epicurean verve for lips and tongues for four decades.

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Old Tom still looking quite pleased with himself!

Although I was engrossed by the museum, the children have found an old record player with a stash of 70’s disco and pop, The Boy is holding up an ABBA LP like it is the voice box recorder from an unadvanced spacecraft. “How does it work?” It looks a hundred years old now; they are amazed, they are laughing at it like a couple of bullies from the future. But I remind the boy, feeling slightly affronted and the protector of times past that I once took him to the Science Museum in Manchester and pointing at a 1950s cylinder Hoover and asked him what it was for, for him to reply: ‘Is it the first mobile phone!’’How mobile would that be?’ ‘Two of you could carry it!’I have to be dragged away by The Wife feigning hunger, it could be a double bluff, but at times like this I recall the beautiful elephants of Kuala Lumpur Zoo ( https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6946206-28-a-woman-in-bloom-travails-through-life-sometimes-avoiding-the-p ), and cannot risk it, the kids have become bored with the singing discs.

We set off later than planned for Melbourne, The Wife is impatient because of this we don’t have a proper breakfast – this is never a good idea. Everyone is ratty and I suggest we stop somewhere and get a bite to eat. There will be more choice in Melbourne, let’s keep going – The Wife is driving, The Wife is in charge (I may wear the trousers, but she picks them out and I iron them!) I have given the kids a large apple each in the back. The Boy has eaten his and then stolen his little sisters, he doesn’t want it, he just wants to torment her. She is maybe pinching him or using cruelty as a revenge weapon, I cannot detect from the front. She is very skilled at pushing his buttons, her favourite is to puff her cheeks out and rub an imaginary large belly – he’s not fat, but it annoys him, fuelled by his hormones, she will do this from behind the safety of her father! He threatens even greater levels of punishment in ever increasing threatening gangster tones. “I’m going to slap you up,” “just wait until this car stops; I’m going to kill you.” The Wife has already snapped, then he threatens her with siblicide again and I snap.  “Give me the bloody apple,” I demand as I shot my arm into the back at just the right angle for the side of the heavily cushioned seat to spring the ball form the socket of my shoulder. “SHIT!” “What, what is it?” Demands The Wife. “My arm’s dislocated.” She knows I’m being serious, I’ve done them so many times. The one that has decided to limp with gravity was due to be operated on before we came away after a dislocation during a football game, but I have put it off due to our travails.61596251d4dd7bed650fc35174cde4

I’m beside the busy road trying with all my might, fighting the pain to snap it back in against a tree like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. If I can get it back in before the muscles go into spasm, I have a chance, it is a stubborn bastard, it pops out easy, but is always reluctant to pop back in. A guy walking his dog is watching the pantomime from a bridge and ambles down to assist. He points us in the direction of the nearest hospital in very nearby Traralgon. The Latrobe Regional Hospital is deserted when we get there, they ask me for insurance, which I tell them I have, but then never again ask to see it. There appears to be a lot of bored medical staff glad to have something to do, I’m surrounded by so many looking at me like I’m a member of the royal family. They can’t get it back with Nitrous Oxide, so have to knock me out. When I awake it is at least back where it should be, and should hopefully endeavour to stay there.

I’m annoyed with myself both physically, psychologically and parentally. I hardly ever lose my temper; I’m like a laissez faire Dalai Lama on holiday. This injury messes things up and I know I have to be even more careful with it for the next three months. I was lucky we were literally ten minutes from a state of the art hospital; it will not be the same in South America. The family rally around, The Boy is feeling particularly guilty: someone has to have the blame, we live in a blame culture, but annoyingly the blame ultimately lies with me, and that never sits easy, even when all your sockets are in their correct positions and you are being fed chocolate and pizza!

 

Next time: Don’t scratch below the surface.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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62 The Sydney Ducks are after me! The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in Australia, family, gap year, holidays, humour, thewritingIMP, travel

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Sydney, biscuits, zoo, Opera House, Bondi, Australia, swimming, classical music, ducks

new-south-wales

We have done NZ, twice, that’s what it feels like, so the time is right to move on after three months. We get stopped at Sydney Airport – we are illegal food smugglers, unwitting pirates against the privateers – we have a few dried biscuits; and we only have them as they are, as the name suggests dried carbohydrate that no one wanted on the plane and we forgot to leave them behind. A man who has a double charisma bypass, one of only a small number on an island of ‘no worries’ – except when it comes to biscuits! He holds them between us like he’s the parent that has found our teenage stash. “Dried carbohydrate, commonly called biscuits, from the French bis meaning twice and cuit to bake til well done,” I think, but know it’s never best to aggravate a man in authority in an ill-fitting starched fancy dress. The wife is about to add something acerbic to his sarcastic inquisition, so I think it best to be jump in and be contrite, even though I’m thinking tourism is your biggest earning sector, so the customer is always right, but I bite my visiting lip, avoid any remarks about convicts and bread, and we are in Australia.

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Make sure you get the biscuits.

We have a middle-eastern taxi driver and judging by the way he is peering at the Sydney A-Z in his lap, and flitting occasionally at the busy roads, he has been in the country just marginally longer than we have. The wife is concerned, but we have travelled in India, where we had more accidents in three months than the combined forty-five years of driving between us. Eventually we arrive at the YHA at the end of Bondi Beach on Fletcher St. The Girl is a little stressed, leaving the bedroom she has shared with Don and Lauren’s two girls.

We are up very early as Australia is two hours behind NZ and we are down on Circular Quay with the commuters to buy a weekly family travel pass. The invigoration of a city we have only ever seen on the tele many times keeps us excited all day. We wander around The Opera House, watch the people climbing to the top of The Harbour Bridge, watch the ferries on their errands at Circular Quay, wander through The Botanic Gardens, marvel at the large fruit bats and over to Andrew Boy Charlton Pool and the views across the Harbour.

Tiredness catches up with us all. The kids are moaning, The Boy has damaged his foot a few days before, but it’s almost mended. The Girl is annoyed she has left her friends over two-thousand kilometres behind. The Wife hates it when the kids moan, but I tell her it could be worse, we could be home in England and they could be moaning! It culminates in a big barny between the mother and eldest offspring, they both ignore the blue hat I put on, so I pretend to be Dutch and withdraw to somewhere where I cannot see or hear the carnage.

I suggest we catch the Manly ferry and get something cool to becalm everyone. It works momentarily. We have bought cheap tickets for a classical concert at The Opera House for later that day – it seemed a good idea first thing in the morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, Volker Hartung is conducting The Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra through Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a bit of Mozart and Tchaikovsky. The young female sales assistant is so enthusiastic, she thinks I’m a connoisseur! I just nod and repeat, “Volker, hey, what an absolute bonus!’ I tell the family unit that: ‘We are in luck, Volker Hartung is playing this very night!’ ‘Who’s this Volker guy?’ The wife asks. ‘You’re an intellectual pigmy sometimes, Wife, you really are!’ But come the night and after a day of guerrilla sightseeing, we all just want some R&R.

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The concert has barely started and the children are fighting to stay awake and we are up in a box, overlooking the plebs, but not dressed right to pass any judgement. The Girl is asleep almost immediately before the end of the Ides of March in the spring movement. The Girl sleeps throughout the whole performance. The Boy manages a good fifteen minutes before he is lullabied to sleep by Volker, his Orchestra, and Vivaldi. The Boy wakes during a lull in the music: something has shaken him from his dream to shout out across the quiet auditorium:

“The ducks are after me, help me, stop the ducks, stop them!”

Then as soon as he as awoken, he is off again to leave his embarrassed parents being starred at by hundreds of high-brow Australians! The Boy has no idea about the aggressive ducks, why he has dreamed it, and why he would embarrass his parents so publically. It becomes a family in-joke, and remains the event I return to whenever I see The Opera House on the tv. The moral of the story is: Don’t try and do too much in one day… or the ducks will come after you for no apparent reason in public.

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The next day we visit Taronga Zoo, the kids have looked forward to going for months, and it does not disappoint. It is a great zoo, the animals sing Disney tunes, I know the arguments for and against zoos (I have degree in Ecology), it is a great zoo. I sit and watch the Duck-billed Platypus’s, they are my most favourite animals in the world. The Girl has her picture taken with a Koala, which may look cute on the photo (when not sleeping!), but have very sharp claws. We have learnt our lesson about doing too much in one day: duck and cover is in order.

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On several occasions (we are in Bondi for a week) we walk down into central Bondi Beach to eat and body board. We also mosey in the opposite direction on a few occasions: through Mark’s Park-Mackenzies’ Beach-Tamamara Beach to Bronte Beach, where we eat several times at La Plage, on the recommendation of a friend. It serves as focal point to a lovely walk.

One night the wife and I leave the kids in the hostel to watch a film with their new backpacking friends and go for a meal at the iconic Iceberg salt-water lido. It feels like we are on an exotic date as we watch the swimmers ploughing up and down, the waves crash against the side of the pool, but they plough on like human ice-breakers.

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I tell a friend’s brother about eating there when we get back to England, he is model, and he tells us a story of when he did a photo shoot there for a hair gel advert. In the advert they are to swim against two ex-Olympic swimmers, both well into their sixties. The week before the two early twenty something young bucks that are living the surfer lifestyle down in Bondi muse whether they should have a few warm up swims.

“Naa,’ they conclude, ‘we’re only swimming against a couple of old-timers.’

On the day of the shoot they are supposed to be keeping alongside the two bald ‘old-timers’, finishing together and immerging from the pool hair meticulous due to said hair product. The two ‘old-timers’ are gliding effortlessly through the brine like greased dolphins and the two ‘young-uns’ are competitively trying very desperately to keep up, the old timers are waiting for them at the end of the pool, as they both emerge together exhausted and wheezing to hear the director shouting, ‘Bloody hell no, cut-cut-cut, bloody hell.’ The advert was edited so they were not being humiliated by pensioners; but looking composed and gorgeous with immaculate hair.

We buy a video camera, our phones are too crap to record decent images. The one we brought away has died and it was a mistake not to get one in New Zealand, memories have been lost to the mists of time. The DVDs are Magical to look back on, but check that you are recording right; we have one full hours tape with no sound on!

The Girl and I go into Kings Cross to pick up a hired saloon car we will eventually drop off in Adelaide. The Girl feels like she is a grown up on an adventurous road trip, (still at the age where she would go with her dad!) I tell her it’s up to her what vehicle we rent. She is mainly making her decision on colour and cup-holder numbers. “You haven’t got anything in shocking pink with sweet and crisp holders, have you?” The helpful assistant plays along. I am making informed decisions on comfort and luggage/body board roomage, air conditioning, quality of radio. She is the ying to my yang. The assistant and I engineer it that she has made all the decisions and she is now leaving her new best friends back in the hills outside Auckland.

“Where shall we go first?” I ask her as the smell of interior polish hits me.

“The Zoo.” She replies enthused.

“We went there two days ago.”

“So, let’s go again. The zoo”

“It’s difficult to get to the Zoo from here,” I lie convincingly.

“Ice-cream then.” She knows how this parent/child-spoiling-thing works as she reels me in.

I read the guidebook the night before we set off and decide we should nip over to Broken Hill to buy some art as a keepsake of the trip away, the light is supposed to be spectacular for painting. It is west of Sydney. The Wife asks how far out of our way it is, as we are heading southwards down the coast. I check the small print 1,200km! – which is a slight deviation! We never visit Broken Hill.

At one point we are down walking around the Circular Quay area and I say to The Wife. “I might just nip across the harbour and get my hair cut.” I look out across the shimmering water as I utter it.

She is puzzled, “Where?”

I think for a moment. I am confused, I think I’m looking out across Auckland Harbour, where one day The Boy and I nipped across and got our haircut – we both have hair.

“Oh, I got disorientated. I thought we were in Auckland for a minute. I find Australasia a little confusing at times.” Her look of bewilderment is joined by an admonishing shake of the head.

“I worry about you sometimes; this is what you’ll be like when you have Alzheimer’s.”

“Well… at least I’ll have nice hair.”

 

Next time: Kangaroos on the Lawn, Satin Bowerbird in the garden.

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@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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#61: Drinking in the Morning Sun. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, fiction, gap year, holidays, humour, New Zealand, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized, writing

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New Zealand, Sharm el Sheikh, Ethiopia, Oyster Bay, Sauvignon Blanc, sperm whales, water, Terry Gilliam

sperm whale

It is good to have a few days back with Don and Lauren in the Waitakere Hills before my mum and dad arrive. When they do we basically go on an abridged whistle-stop rerun of the trip we have just completed. The day before they arrive we are sat up late, the warm glow of alcohol within and we move on from the time we all learnt to dive in Sharm el Sheikh. Lauren tells us of her crazy journey through East Africa back in the 90’s, a few of them buying a lorry to hopefully sell on at the end, fighting locals off trying to loot them, lost in Africa. An ex-boyfriend and her were the first tourists to visit Ethiopia after the civil war and they kept going back to the Consulate to try and get a visa to get in. The officials thought they were certifiably mad! But when they would not desist the consulate waivered with the reassuring words. “We are strongly recommending you don’t go, very strongly”, the austere man in an incongruous suit stopped short of saying ‘unless you have a large band of psychopathic mercenaries to protect you.’ If you are not the enemy in this world you are invariably ‘a friend’ and they had a wonderful time visiting historical monuments and staying with locals. It is a story I often turn to when I think my travels have been arduous in the past. There is only the scary night I spent on Komodo with prehistoric dragons that comes anywhere near, but that was only one night, and the rats were marginally scarier than the dinosaurs.

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My mother is flustered as I wait for over an hour at Auckland airport at one in the morning. Walking boots have to be cleaned in an autoclave if you want to get into NZ – my father has cleaned their boots so thoroughly they look brand new. Unfortunately my mother is carrying a small explosive device, well, a yoghurt from the plane, and is told off like she is back at school, she is flustered, I laugh at her, and she tells me it is not funny, but we all know it will be. Now is not the time to tell them I want them to take my acoustic guitar in a hard case back with them.

We stay in a hotel in Auckland opposite The Whitehouse brothel; it is an exact replica of its bigger brother – wonder if they have a Clinton/Lewinsky suite? My dad offers The Boy one of his T-shirts, which would have been moderately fashionable in the mid-eighties and the look on The Boy’s face is priceless, we take a clandestine photo later, it becomes a running joke between the two of us. The one on offer is a long way from ‘The live Fast Die Young’ garment that nearly spilled over to family violence in Goa, watched over by teenage hormones.

The other family in-joke is my father’s ability to sleep in the most unexpected locations. The one that makes the kids chuckle was a few days into their jaunt, he dozed off while throwing some dice (no one says ‘die’) out his hand, to be fair he may have been jet-lagged, but this does not stop the kids laughing uncontrollably and waking him up with their laughter. Another time after going to visit the Sperm Whales off the cost of Kaikoura he fell asleep while the boat was jumping like a bucking bronco. He is having the time of his life, this after being coerced into coming away. He is a friendly verbose Yorkshireman – in the Youth Hostel we stay in in Wellington, he knows everyone’s life stories within ten minutes of meeting them. We leave him alone for a few minutes and we hear a blow-by-blow account of every traveller’s life – he’s like a travelling counsellor. At this stage the Boy is baffled: “Does granddad know them?” Even though he is usually forty years older than the people he is talking to, I will reply dryly “Yeah, they bowl together.”

Glow Worm caves

Some of the new highlights are; the aforementioned Sperm Whales, the magical twinkling glow-worms at Waitomo Caves. The Girl especially loved it and it reminded her of her pet ever-multiplying Glowy back in Kerala. Kayaking past Split Rock in Abel Tasman National Park in fantastic weather, often I see the severed rock on the label of a Marlborough wine and it transports me back. Which in turn transports me a few miles up the coast to the time my dad, The Wife and myself went on an organised wine tasting tour, which was more like a sophisticated pub-crawl. The minibus was full of Brits and my dad to the untrained ear was a connoisseur!, expounding the qualities of his oenological skills. Spitting out would have been plain rude! By the end of the guided tour a little merry to say the least, one of the party says to my dad holding up a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc – my dad having just spoken to the bus driver/guide/retired police officer and armed with new information unknown to us, expounds further, “The Oyster Bay Wine Company don’t have to try particularly hard as every bottle they make is already pre-ordered or can be sold easily.””Wow,” says the impressed drunk as he looks on at the seasoned sommelier, “You really are an expert, Brian, where did you gather all your expertise?” My dad gives him a pre-emptive stare, “We went on a wine tasting in Germany once on holiday!” Brain’s latest book ‘Bullshit your way through Wine,’is only available to alcoholics! It still makes the Wife and I laugh to this day.

The other incident that makes me chuckle is Don’s hair brained idea to clean his large fresh water tank out in his garden. They have no mains water up in The Hills and all necessary water is captured from the guttering – this can lead to rationing of showers. I tell him no good will come from trying to clear the small amount of gunk that has collected in the huge sealed subterranean receptacle, and anyway, you have a filter system that removes gunk. I’m having none of it as he brings forth trunks, snorkels, face-masks, head-torches and swimming goggles and woeful scrapping kitchen implements. The Boy is willingly roped in. I quickly lose interest as I watch them through the hatch as they stir up the white-gunk and what appears to be a blind-cave fish, but turns out to be a small anaemic twig. I wander off to help in the vegetable patch, an hour later they emerge from their aquatic oubliette, Don Looks crestfallen, “Nupe, we’ve just made it worse, it’s no good.” The boy is still enthusiastic as his head appears from below life a human-mole, “I think we can still do it, if we just–“ Don cuts in, “I’m giving up, the tank’s contents are victorious.” “You’re like a couple of retarded Terry Gilliam characters,” I add with all honesty. Don lets out a laugh in agreement.

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Another nod to eco living, they have is a long drop toilet, as the name suggests the contents of the toilet drop a long way into the what looks like a cupboard in the garage below. It is not as bad as it first sounds, it doesn’t smell, and as you sit on the toilet you have an incredible view over the low hills to Bethells Beach. I ring him from England, it’s Father’s Day there and ask him what he has been up to. “Oh, today, I shovelled all the human waste of my family and occasional visitors out of the bottom of the long drop and spread it on the garden.” “Some of that waste is some of my best work, I’ll have you know, Shit-shoveller!”He goes on to tell me with the home-improvements they are going to carry out, the long-drop will have to go. “What about the planet? What will you do on Father’s Day next year night-soil engineer?” “I can’t fucking wait.” He concludes.

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If my dad has had a great time, it is easily matched by my mum’s experience. This has been the holiday of a lifetime; it will never ever be equalled. We have our final meal up the Sky Tower; I insist we do, so every time they see Auckland on the tele, they are reminded of their time away. We have also insisted they stop off at Sydney on the way home; we have tried to get them to stop at other places, such as Singapore, which my father last visited in the late 50’s! – but they are not having it. They love Sydney – why wouldn’t you. I ask my mum what Bondi Beach was like? And she replies, “It’s not as good as Bridlington Beach!”

No sooner have we dropped my parents at the airport, but a friend has popped over from Sydney to see us. She is in two minds whether to move from England to Sydney or Auckland, so we try and give her a feel for the city, by the end she has decided it will be Sydney.

Our time in NZ is coming to an end, it has been fantastic, the scenery, the coffee, the hospitality, the history, the walking, the driving, the list is endless. The only low point is the death of Lauren’s dad, Alan Bell; that reminded me so much of my own granddad. We will be back at some point; lots of friends appear to be fleeing to the other side of the world for some reason.

Recently New Zealand had a competition to design a new flag and then a referendum about changing it, which had to be a good idea, because most people outside of Australasia have no idea which flag belongs to Australia and which belongs to New Zealand. And for me as an outsider, the Union Jack in the corner just says: ‘Remember we still own you, and you like it!’ So why this entrant didn’t win, and they stayed with the empire Southern Cross traditional version, is again, beyond me! After you have read the caption underneath this entry from the ‘artist’James Gray, it could not fail to make you laugh every single time you saw it a fluttering.

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I have spent time with one of my best mates that lives on the other side of the planet. Technology now brings us closer; but never close enough, it is an emotional time at the airport after we have all killed time at The Butterfly Creek animal farm nearby. Two grown men trying to keep a lid on their emotions, a son realising it is ok to shed a tear when you are leaving someone you love behind, regardless of your gender, regardless who is watching… regardless.

Next time: The Sydney Ducks are after me.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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#59: Careful of the Wraiths. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

19 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, fiction, gap year, hobbits, humour, Lord of the Rings, New Zealand, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized, writing

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Lord of the Rings, Hobbits, Wraiths, glaciers, Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, Samwise, Gollum, Orcs, Jane Campion, Mordor,

Fellowship-of-the-Ring-horse-tidal-wave

For the next few days we stay in and around Glenorchy, at the top of Lake Wakatipu. We have past and visited, the Dart Valley and Queenstown – the latter we would be partying in if we were younger and not with two kids. The boy has a new journal, but it is no ordinary/bog-standard journal, it is a: Lord of the Rings Travel Diary Location Guide Book. It is a thing of beauty, I have shied away from LotR, but nothing says NZ like Lord of the Rings film locations – forget sheep and rugby.

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The boy has read it from cover to cover and held it aloft a few times to compare and contrast the photo with the scenery juxtaposed behind it. It was here I experienced two ‘precious’ Déjà vu Rings out of body experiences. Before any train spotters contact me, I started doing the research and I got bored – please don’t send me the exact gird references, I won’t thank you, no one will! We stay in Glenorcy in a bothy behind the pub, we look directly up at Mount Aspiring and it is quite spooky, on the snow-capped top we expect to see Frodo and Samwise climbing.

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I know it is overused and rarely apt, but, it is surreal, we are in a film. It is this sleepy place that Jane Campion’s dark TV series Top of the Lake is partly filmed, and as that series may suggest, it’s quiet, too quiet, and is best not to break the surface.

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It is with the excitement of Mount Aspiring as our backdrop we set of in the enema to find Mordor. The boy has his book for reference, but after about 20km the road has long since turned into a track and the track is fast about to turn into a path only accessible by Gollum. The Eye of Mordor is nowhere to be seen, both the boy and I are disappointed. On the drive back I stop and ask a young women with a horse where she’s hidden a bloody big place like Mordor. “There’s none of the set left now, it was mainly computer generated,” and she points in the near distance to a pine forest, “It was over there.” We have every right to be disappointed, I engage her in greater discussion about the film, until The Wife saves her, leaning forward and informing we have to get on. “You should be a tour guide for the Film,”I suggest. She points to lots of horses in two nearby fields. “All the horses here were in the film.”

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From what I can see everyone in New Zealand had some involvement in the films. At the start of our time in NZ, sat outside a café in Auckland I got chatting to a couple in their twenties. I informed them the boy is obsessed with the films, “We were both Orcs,”they casually tell me. I convey this to The Boy, but he knows better than to encourage me in conversations with strangers.

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When I used to teach the function of the eye in High School we used to have a model eye on a white column. I would start off by saying, “The Eye of Mordor is watching you,” in my best deep creepy Sauron voice. The kids loved this, and if they were messing I would look the other way and The Eye of Mordor would turn to watch them!

Mordor

 

The second surreal moment came when we decided to make a dam. Dam building is probably my childrens’ favourite outdoor activity. On this occasion we made the dam at the exact location where the Wraiths are chasing Arwen and Frodo in The Fellowship of the Rings, when the wave burst down the river in the form of galloping white-horses and washes the Wraiths away. I found this quite spooky, when I looked over to the tree line, I half expected the Wraiths to come crashing through the forest. It shows how powerful the mind can be and how it can conjure up the unreal, like believing in the ghosts or Donald Trump!

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We’re on the road again after a few days to see enormous slow-moving lumps of ice, through the Haast Pass; then we stop at a café with a fish farm. Tourists like us pay for fish food and feed it to the ravenous salmon – it appears to be a Win/Won relationship for the owners – and the fish – for now! We arrive late afternoon at the Fox Glacier National Park and stay nearby, we observe tinkling glow-worms in a cave guarded by an ‘Artful Dodger’ Kia parrot, any place with a Kia parrot can never ever be dull – all that surprises me is they don’t swear!

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I have never walked on a glacier before, and after an over the top safety talk that would suggest we are taking on the north face of the Eiger without any safety equipment. We are lead to believe there is one quite treacherous edge we have to negotiate, where there is only a metal chain railing to hold on to, unless you fall precipitously into the depths of hell, as we pass the tame path, the wife turns to the young male guide and exalts, “Is that it? Bloody hell.” To which he meekly replies, “Yeah, that was it, we have to point out any potential hazards to guests.” “Bloody hell” is her repeated mantra, and he knows her well enough to just keep quiet and slip is magical ring onto his finger. It’s exhilarating to be on a glacier in the sun, the kids absolutely love it, exploring the well-beaten crevices, they cannot contain their enthusiasm and eagerness to explore. I suppose in the scheme of things it is not particularly cheap, you can’t do it for much under $NZ 200 for a family of four, but somethings are worth forking out for – somethings money can buy.

The Wife turns to me as the offspring disappear into an ice-cave, “This is why we came away.”

I smile and reply, “All we have to do,” I pretend to smoke an imaginary long pipe and stroke a very lengthy beard, “is to decide what we have to do with the time that is left to us.”

She gives me an obtuse look, and then adds, “I’d like a nice glass of wine.”

Next time:   Rocks with your pancakes?

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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#58: Pissing On Lime Trees. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

26 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, gap year, holidays, humour, travel, Uncategorized

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Anthony Hopkins, Burt Munro, World’s fastest Indian, Japan, Kia parrots, Fiordland National Park, Milford Sound, walking, Tamagotchi

slope point

The first stop off after Curio Bay is Slope Point, the most Southerly protuberance on the South Island, but on this day the rain is intermittent, but mainly lashing down; it is the first time it has rained on our jaunt around the Southern Isle. They are keen to brave the elements and walk across a few fields to see a ‘tourist sign’. You know the type at the extremities of any major jutting landmass that points in various directions: New York, London, Tokyo, McDonalds, salvation, the toilets. I stay in the car and read The God of Small Things. We have already seen the 45 degree angled trees that have tried to cower from the wind; it is a warning sign for me to stay warm, dry and unwindswept. It also cuts down on special effects for the Lord of the Rings films.

Slope Point tree

They arrive back sodden, exuding equal measures of relief and exhilaration – as if they have just found a penguin egg that Captain Scott dropped. Ultimately they are pleased to be dry – I look at the photos and if evidence needed I had made the right decision, it stares back at me in grey sodden digital form.

We make our way to Invercargill, one of the world’s most southerly Cities – they call it a city, I wouldn’t with a population of 50,000. I’m interested to visit as it the NZ setting for the lovely World’s Fastest Indian film, about a motorbike, not a Native American, the film stars Anthony Hopkins as the land speed record (184mph) setting Burt Munro. I ask Alan Bell if he knows him, everybody knows everyone in NZ. “Yip, met him once, bit if a grumpy bugger, threw a spanner at one of me mates that worked for him.” Not how the film portrays him! When I ask about his world speed record on a bike under 1,000cc in 1967, Alan simply replies. “Yip, he did that as well.”

worlds fatstest in

Also in the film Burt, his real name was Bert, but an American paper spelt it wrong and he changed the spelling of his real name! When he flies away on his travels to the US he gets a neighbour’s son to pee on his lime and lemon trees. It is something Lauren has been making all the men do in her own garden up in the Waitakere Hills, I think it is literally a piss-take, but this film assures me the extra nitrogen is greatly received. It does not amaze me that people would urinate on a citrus tree in Invercargill, just the fact these trees could actually grow there!

The rain doesn’t abate, so we go shopping for books for the children and birthday presents for people back home. We let the children decide what film to watch to keep out of the elements and they choose a Jim Carey one. We drive out west and stay in a lovely place overlooking the sea in Riverton, the South Islands oldest ‘European’ settlement.

On the way to Te Anau we stop off at the Clifden Suspension bridge, a smaller replica of the World famous Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, unsurprisingly we are the only ones there. Te Anau is the gateway habitation to the Fiordland National Park, which contains Milford Sound. We check the availability of the first campsite we like the look of, it is not full, but the woman on the reception tells us Brenda further round by the lake has accommodation. This is another example of the sleepy honesty of New Zealand. Most other places in the world, they would be shuffling and rearranging to squeeze us in and get our custom, but instead she points down the road where they can birth us all within the same lodge. The air and sky are crystal clear and it feels like a Victorian health tonic – like we will live another few months longer by just taking large lungfuls of the ‘elixir of non-polluted atmosphere.’The clear skies give way to a cold night and the next day encouraged by the fresh air we walk part of the spectacular Kelper Trail – if you are a walker or tramper! The Kepler is one of the most enjoyable 37 miles you could ever wish to walk – we only complete six.

mirror lake

We are up early the next day to visit Milford Sound. The drive is spectacular through the mountains to the fiords; there are few tourists, most of which are Japanese. We watch, fascinated as a bus load of Japanese shuffle from their coach, half clad in face masks, like a Michael Jackson tribute fans’ day out, or a tag-team of surgeons trying to break the non-stop operating record! They waddle around the Mirror Lake, so called as you can see a perfect reflection of the snow-capped mountains in its glassy waters. The Japanese look as though they are on a shaky conveyer belt, not breaking stride once on their circular shuffles back onto the bus. We observe them and the boy asks why so many are wearing facemasks, after the obvious aforementioned jokes. I start to espouse some of the/my theories. 1 (and 2). Hygiene reasons, not just to stop aerial contaminants entering, but quite philanthropically stopping others getting theirs. 3. Cut down on communication through facial expressions – some psychologists believe this, and more so in the young, that don’t need to communicate with such outmoded analogue facial communiques, when you have social media for that, and you can marry your compatible computer, or your sexy Tamagotchi! 4. Deindividuation, another psychologists’ favourite, anonymity in the crowd, the comfort of being anonymous. 5. Hay fever. 6. Anti-social, sorry, I mean personal choice reasons – stick a facemask on and pair of earphones (headphones would attract too much attention!) as well, and you would have to be determined and really want to chat to someone to violate their ‘personal space. ‘ If I was a renowned psychologist I would call it: ‘ I just can’t be arsed talk to you ‘syndrome. 7. Popping to shops without your make-up on, apparently so! It would cut down on the Paparazzi getting a good shot! Just when I think I have heard them all, a friend has a Japanese student staying with her, who says it is because Japanese people are modest and don’t want other people to see them (8). The Boy is as baffled as I am when I have gone through all the theories I know of. They all hop back onto their coach like nervous paranoid penguins. I explain to the boy that they don’t get many holidays, the least in the developed world; some surveys suggest that of the 16.5 days holiday they are granted – most only take half! Maybe that’s why they’ve got the masks on, so people cannot see how pissed-off they really are? (9) It might suggest why they always look so austere/miserable as well, even with the Dick Turpin surgical disguises? If you have a ‘theory’ I have missed, let me know and I will add it, although 9 is probably enough, maybe a top ten would round it off nicely? If you are Japanese and married your Tamagotchi – I would love to see the wedding photos. Tamagotchis can be either sex and can now produce tami-babies! I would offer care as you can contract the nasty STD Tamagotchis Sillyfuss from them, but be sure to have your ‘significant other’ checked out before flipping them open before a possible hybrid Ho-no SapIan Tamagotchei.

japanese facemasks

I digress. The trek up the mountain to the Routeburn is too arduous for the girl, so we turn back like two defeated Hobbits. We eat lunch at the Homer Tunnel and eventually get to Milford Sound to catch the last boat of the day. We are transported to Scandinavia. We stay at The Blue Duck Pub, try and construct a dam in the steam next door, but are beaten back by sandflies. On the way back the next day we stop off at the Homer Tunnel again to meet the Kia parrots – the only Alpine parrot in the world, they are inquisitive/cheeky/belligerent depending if they are sidling up to you for closer inspection/robbing your lunch and coffee/or tearing the rubber seal and windscreen wipers from your vehicle!

kia parrot

They are protected, so many feel obliged to let them destroy their cars while they watch on and laugh, whilst filming the destruction enfolding! These ‘Clowns of the Mountains’ are amazing bizarre creatures, they are not small either, 47cm tall. Like most parrots they are intelligent, and with a ready supply of locals and tourists offering them food and drink, apparently caffeine doesn’t affect them, just who has carried out this quasi-scientific study, I have no idea. They look ripe for their own Disney full-length feature. We are reluctant to leave them behind, but we have learnt enough to surmise these are fickle creatures that will not miss us.

milford sound

We drive around the next day on the other road through The National Park to Arrow Town, an old nineteenth century gold mining village. It has been done up like a Wild West frontier town to attract tourists like us, but we don’t mind, it’s beautiful and the Thai curry we have is a delight. We walk down to the river, past the tourists’ slouches, where schoolchildren panhandle for freckles of gold in the holidays, to the lovely Arrow River. We read between the lines of the tourist information on the Chinese huts, dislocated from the main habitation of the day and try to envisage how hard it must have been for these men to leave their families behind in the hope of returning prosperity, but finding mainly hardship and racism. It leaves us both a little melancholy, but the hardship of distant others evaporates as we drink our wine and plan the route onward.

Next time: Careful of the Wraiths.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

Click here for a chance to win a free signed copy of my latest book: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind.’ Finding out too late what is important in life. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/175088-foot-sex-of-the-mind

 

#57: I’ll be bach. The Curious Incident of the Gap in the Year. Travails through life; sometimes avoiding the pointing fingers and arrows of outrageous fortune.

30 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by thewritingimp in family, gap year, humour, thewritingIMP, travel, writing

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holiday home, fossils, beards, Edward Norton, Wes Anderson, Scouts, penguins, humanity, hope, League of Gentlemen, memories, Curio Bay

T brail gorge

There is something about railway journeys, something magical and when that journey involves spectacular scenery on the Taieri Gorge Railway it only intensifies that feeling. At one point after crossing a large metallic curved viaduct the train grinds to a halt and we all get off and drink in the views across the valley; it is amazing; even the kids are impressed. An American tourist loudly exhorts to everyone it’s not the Rockies, which, he is right, it is not, but it is reassuring to know we will not be getting attacked by bears, and be able to get back to our campsite tonight!

Tired after dinner, we head out to Sandfly Beach. We won’t have time in the morning and reluctantly the parents enthuse the kids along. We meet Sea Lions and blue penguins on an almost deserted stretch of sand. In the morning we are all a little sad to be leaving Dunedin, we have had a fantastic time. It is now a significant town (New Zealanders would call it a city, but with a population of 125,000, I’m not sure it is), filled with only great memories, albatrosses, penguins, Sea Lions, magnificent train journeys and a gothic Scottish train station, chocolate… and a welcoming S&M sports arena (past tense now)!

We lunch overlooking Owaka and the sea. Then walk up to the beautiful McLean Falls.

Mc lean Falls

There are days that stay in the mind, have a glowing after burn; that you return to, warm you, make you smile. This day is such a day. I oft return here and it does warm me. Aptly it was a warm day and we promised the kids ice-creams at the next stop, so we alighted at a hamlet outside Waikawa – ‘a local shop, for local people,’like a scene from the TV comedy series, League of Gentlemen. I had pulled over as it promised tourist information, which transpired to be a rack of leaflets like you get in a seaside guesthouse, the shop was deserted, and the kids excitedly riffled through the chest freezer looking for sweet frozen produce in bright packaging. The female shopkeeper appeared, more League of Gentlemen. Gracious and eager to offer any assistance. I explain our need for accommodation for the night and she disappears in the back and returns with a set of keys. There is a free bach five miles down the coast in Curio Bay, why don’t you have a look at it, might suit you just fine for a night or two.” A Bach, pronounced batch is a holiday home – probably from the Welch for small – probably? Then she handed me the keys informing me how to get there and the fact I couldn’t miss it. I’m confused at the handing over of the keys and the high level of trust – I come from a busy city and handing over your keys to a complete stranger automatically flashes a red light an insurance head office and alerts the self-elected leader of the Neighbourhood Watch to get out of bed, get their mobile, a flash-light and a fully-charged Tazer.

LoG shop

“If you don’t come back in the next hour, I’ll assume you are staying and you can drop the keys off when you leave, pay then.” She said pay then, like that was another flexible option.

I go and explain the situation to the wife; that has decided to stretch her legs outside, she is confused, the boy backs me up. So we are up the road, until we spot the bach behind the dunes of the bay. We are all excited, it is a full house, the kids eagerly run around the house opening doors, cupboards, washing machines, drawers, etc. It has obviously belonged to an elderly couple that have now vacated it, but this adds to the charm. There are three bedrooms, so this is another added bonus.

hecs dolp

After the unloading of the enema, we walk over the dunes to the bay, a big Sea Lion is adorning the highest dune and we creep by him onto the sand, in the distance a group of people are surfing and behind the breakwater are Hector’s Dolphins breaking the briny. The small dolphins, that only grows 1.5m is also the world’s rarest dolphin species – who doesn’t like to see a dolphin, add to this the rarity factor, and you are forced to get excited, it’s obligatory.

sea lions

I tell the family unit that we have to now go and see the Petrified Forest around the headland, so we navigate back around the laconic Sea Lion and jump in the people carrier. There are a total of eight people at the attraction if you include us and the Ranger that is dressed like Edward Norton in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, he is adorning the most bushular ginger beard I have ever seen, it’s like a copper mine on Mars, or is the beard adorning him? I explain as much as I know to the children, knowing to summarise the key facts upfront and then moving onto the more esoteric if I can hold their attention long enough. It’s bloody amazing, ok I know not everyone gets animated by a forest that started fossilising next to a sea 180 million years ago, that is so well preserved you have to feel it as it could easily pass as living dark ebony type wood, it is cold to the touch. We are all amazed, even the wife – and she likes mountains mainly. The kids trail blaze off to try and find something exciting to show me. I take the opportunity to go and chat with the man-sized Boy Scout. As I approach him I spot a Yellow Eyed Penguin (the world’s rarest penguin) on mud cliff behind him.

ed nort

“Hi, you do know there’s a Yellow Eyed Penguin on the cliff behind you?”

Without moving his head, as not to alert the other distant six people on the rock shore, he replies, his mouth is in there somewhere, as his copper facial hair moves slightly, like an auburn talking Christmas tree.

“I know. I’m trying to keep people away from them!”

y e panguins

 

How he is achieving this baffles me, he appears to holds the custodianship and the greatest source of information about this unique location, one of only two pristine coastal petrified forests in the world (the other is in Argentina), if anything he is attracting people nearer the penguins, due to his perceived knowledge and his incongruous fancy dress outfit. We move on from penguins to fossilised plants. I offer up that if this was anywhere populous in the world it would be inundated with visitors.

“Oh, this is very popular – we had 50,000 visitors last year!”

He seems very proud of the ‘high’ number of attractants; I don’t want to burst his bubble. I can’t help thinking someone’s made him dress like that for a bet. I point out several other penguins before we leave.

The kids go out for a last forage on the beach before the night closes in, while we cook, the girl is worried the Sea Lion might eat her, it has moved on and her brother is there to protect her. We play cards for quite a while, three of us want to stay another night, but the wife wisely says we should move on as we have seen everything of note in the area, and there will be more bounteous beauty elsewhere – it is a tactful way of saying, she has seen the rare dolphins, yellow mascaraed penguins and enough coastal fossilised plants – thank you! We know she is right, so reluctantly we agree. In the morning we return the keys back to Cecelia ‘a local key, but not just for local people,’ along with the $95NZ for our stay. Glimpse Hector’s Dolphins in the bay for the last time, go back to the Petrified Forest to take a few photos, the Boy Scout has gone, numbers have dropped to below eight.

It is a day that stays with me, even though there is not a great deal chronicled in my journal. It was a day when we were all free, nothing to do, and all day to do it, the sea and the light crash and suck of waves in the background, the wind in the dunes, with the bonus of rare animals and even rarer natural phenomena. It was a day when we were in equilibrium, as a family, and with the planet; all healthy, happy, jobs and school another lifetime away, it was a day, not just a day, that even now makes me smile inwards and warms me, a hug from an invisible friend from the past. A memory that welds lovers, family, childhoods, and parenthoods together closer… and of course it will erode like the Petrified Forest of Curio Bay, but it will take a long, long, time to do so.

 

Next time: Pissing on Lime Trees.

monochrome imp swirly letters

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

You can enter for a chance to win a free signed copy of my latest book: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’ a novella about finding out too late in life what is really important. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/167005-foot-sex-of-the-mind

 

 

 

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