Category: Travelling

Tonga Part Three: Bikes and Booby Traps

So, we swam with the local humpback whales (see part two) and the ground beneath us was still imitating the rolling waves as we arrived back to the guest house. That morning, the owner had invited us to a family feast being held in celebration of his niece visiting from Hawaii. The feast was the best food we experienced in Tonga: we drank from coconuts and were treated to octopus salad, chicken in taro leaves, fresh fish, and the privilege of being part of this private family occasion. One moment that will stay with me…

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Tonga Part Two: Swimming with Singing Humpback Whales

After a couple of interesting days in Tonga’s capital (see Tonga part one), we’d arrived at a hideously early hour to the domestic airport. We were awaiting our flight to Vavaʻu, where we had booked the focal activity that had brought us to Tonga in the first place: swimming with humpback whales.

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Tonga Part One: A Peculiar Paradise

I didn’t know what I was doing. In a bid to find a Pacific island paradise for my Kiwi friend and I to chill outus maximus, I was conducting late night Google image searches of the various options: Fiji, Rarotonga, Tonga, Niue. It was impossible to choose, they all looked the damn same. Idyllic, but the same. It was only when my eyes caught the words humpback whale swimming…

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Christmas away from home: Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got…

I didn’t think it would bother me that much. Yes, I’m what my nan would call a ‘home girl’ (turning up at their house every Sunday for dinner when they lived in London), but I’m also stubbornly independent. It’s just one year and I’m lucky to be midway through the trip of a lifetime right now, so spending Christmas in a hostel in Argentina would be ‘different’, sure, but not exactly tragic.

We arrived at the hostel on the evening of the 23rd, just in time…

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Travelling: the other things

I wrote this post for the joint blog of my travel buddy and I, as a reflection on all things travel. That is, apart from the actual travel bit…

Songbirds In Flight

Travelling is about places. They lead you to make plans, book flights, quit jobs (…get stressed ordering stuff you don’t need on Amazon, which you throw out once you get there). In the run-up to leaving, the places I’d be visiting dominated my mind’s landscape, filling me with anticipation and excitement. It’s what I talked about incessantly before I left, reeling off country names as if I were about to pop to Tesco for them.

Danielle and I have visited beautiful sites, listened to commentary, taken photos, and done the activities that we ‘ought’ to have done because we were there (and handed over a small fortune in the process). The majority of the time (and obviously excluding Stewart Island and the godawful ferry journey: see previous post), it was worth it: sea kayaking at Abel Tasman national park, taking a helicopter and hike up Franz Josef glacier, cruising…

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Beautiful Doubtful Sound (and Casanova turned asshole)

I’m very fortunate to be away travelling at the moment (only five years later than planned), so I should be writing this because I’ve been inspired by the breathtaking scenery of Doubtful Sound. Inaccurately named as a ‘sound’, it is a glacier-formed fiord on the south-west coast of New Zealand, with a plethora of waterfalls, dominating mountains and natural beauty that obliterates all competition.

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