In the mood

---

Seven days to go before takeoff to NZ, and it's a South Island kind of day here. The horses outside are standing, mournful but uncomplaining, in a form of ultrawet drizzle that saturates your windcheater without your being aware that it's happening. We figure we're heading for weather that's just like that, but colder.

Seven days would normally mean five more working days, and for me it does. Notionally for Helen, too, but three of them are to be spent by her on a two-day conference (does that compute?) in relatively sunny Maroochydore. It will give her some suitcase practice.

Little time left, then, for itinerary planning. It's not like the two-month UK odysseys of our past, where the days stretched out so far that we set out with nothing more than vague intentions. We have twenty days in New Zealand, into which we must wrangle a set of must-see destinations and must-do activities, all the while minimising travel cramp and unpack-repack dead time.

We have a work in progress (see pictures). In South Island the route starts out from Christchurch, executes a joyful loop through the middle then heads south to Queenstown, up the west coast, dashes into Abel Tasman National Park then across the water. North Island is just a northward zig-zag via Hastings/Napier, Rotorua mud-pools, Hobbiton and Waitomo Caves until we reach Auckland. We drag ourselves exhausted to the airport, head to the Cook Islands for 5 days of R&R, then return for a 48-hour coda up to the Bay of Islands before returning home. Four weeks.

I said it is a work in progress. There is one more site I would dearly love to visit: the albatross colony near Dunedin. You can see the birds' nesting sites, the nearest one fifteen metres away, from an observatory (www.albatross.org.nz). It's way off our route, and would cost us one out of our allotted twelve South days and about eight hours' driving. At the moment it looks out of the question, a matter for regret less acute than that of the Ancient Mariner.

Anyway, the new camera, a Ricoh Caplio R4, arrived on Friday and I tried it out yesterday at the football at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It was the only thing that performed properly there all night, and I abandoned the Cats after half-time to put it through its paces. In fully automatic mode on default settings it handled the blazing MCG lights superbly (see pictures). A city nightscape was a bit dark and had to be Photoshopped up a bit. We have six days to adjust the camera, and ourselves, to ideal settings.

- Andrew

---

Photos

MCG 1
Geelong v. Collingwood, May 19, a train wreck witnessed by 70,000 people

Comments

[barbara]

off and flying
we hope you've landed safely by now on foreign soil, and got the maps working and feet walking. it's raining and cold here, so don't feel too discouraged if nz is living up to its reputation (south island anyway). find a glacier and ski down it!