Monday 14 May 2012

Following my blog at www.raeroadley.co.nz

Hi, thanks for following my blog - and now, finally, there are several following options for my relocated blog.
      * Email
              * RSS feed
                     * Networked blogs
Thanks, Rae

PS: News: We'll be on Country Calendar: Saturday, 21 July, 7.30pm, TV1.

Sunday 29 April 2012

Visit my blog at www.raeroadley.co.nz

You can now find my blog and pix at: http://www.raeroadley.co.nz/category/rae-roadley-blog/

Thanks to our hapless guests


The farmer and I thank visiting family and friends for coping with cold showers, collapsing chairs and curious possums.
About a year ago we bought eight new deckchairs which, as three hapless guests have taught us, have a design fault.
So far three chairs have cracked in the same place taking three different guests with them. The farmer and I use the chairs daily but none has broken under us. In the interests of our guests, we have had some chairs replaced and are working to resolve the problem.
It was great to have a guest for company when, just minutes after the farmer had gone out, a possum wandered into the dining room.
The startled creature fled upstairs with me in pursuit, but I was too slow to see whether it had left via the terrace or was hiding in a bedroom.
It was, therefore, handy to get a report from the guest when I returned to the dining room. In my absence she’d heard a squeal and opened the back door - a cat streaked inside.
She figured it had been the cat that yowled, but as the back deck was coated in possum fur, we concluded otherwise, reasoning the possum had jumped from the terrace to the ground where it had been set upon by Kate the dog.
The guest, who also turned out to be a handy source of information, said possums can shed fur so they can escape attackers; we never did find a dead possum.
The longer you stay the more likely you are to experience more than one mishap, so this same guest also scored a cold shower.
When one gas bottle runs out, the supply is supposed to flow from the other bottle but, for a reason that’s beyond the farmer and me, this doesn’t happen.
It was jolly unfortunate that the gas ran out when the guest was showering at 11pm. It was also jolly decent of her to insist that I didn’t emerge from my cosy bed to turn on the full gas bottle.
It was also handy to have friends staying when a fisherman snagged a shag in his net. Rather than ask his family, which was nearby, to help, he slashed the net with a knife until the shag was cut free – but it was still entangled in a piece of net.
We watched the action with binoculars – and growing alarm - as the bird struggled to a small sand spit to ponder its fate. Without intervention, this would have been an early death.
A friend and I set off with a towel, scissors and the sort of environmental righteousness which excels in company. The bird tried to swim away, but had no show. I waded out and grabbed it in the towel.
We were settling down to snip it free when it stretched its elastic neck and pecked a chunk out of my forehead.
I was amazed! What was the bird thinking, attacking me when there was a perfectly good guest available?






Sunday 22 April 2012

Visit my blog - it's now at my revamped website


Hi there, Finally . . . .I’ve finished revamping my website which now hosts my blog. I’d love you to visit www.raeroadley.co.nz and sign up for my blog there. Each blog now comes with pictures, my latest news is on the website and I’ll mention it in my blogs as well. Thanks to you all for following me.

I’ve included this week’s blog here - to ease the transition.  Warmest wishes and thanks, Rae 

News: Friday evening at Paperplus Whangarei - thanks to the great staff for their hospitality. Great wine, crowd (thanks to all who came along) and books - I talked about Love at the End of the Road and treated myself to Zen under Fire by Marianne Elliot.

News: The NZ Society of Authors plans to take my book to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. This year, NZ is the country of honour.   

Quick as you can


When the farmer pops his head in the door and yells “As quick as you can,” I know he needs help - and fast.
The expression was coined by his old friend and stock agent Goldie Rossiter. It’s best used when you want the other person to do something A) you don’t want to do, B) which is unappealing, C) you need help with or D) they won’t want to do but you know you can coerce them to do.
In this case A, B, C and D applied. Our objective, said the farmer, was to catch a sheep with fly strike. Fly strike is horrible. Blowflies lay eggs on sheep, the maggots burrow into the skin and the animal’s physical health and nervous system fail.
When we found the sheep snuggled beside a bank, the farmer slammed on the brakes, dived out of the ute and rushed at the sheep. In short, he demonstrated the sorry lack of communication skills I’ve found common to many farmers.
It was, therefore, no surprise that neither the dogs nor I were positioned to dive tackle the creature which took off like a rocket; sheep can run surprisingly fast.
After ignoring my unflattering comments, the farmer and I zoomed up the hill in the ute and watched the sheep disappear into some bush with the bewildered dogs in pursuit. It was lively for a sheep with fly strike.
We thought we’d lost it until I spotted it and the race was on again. The sheep plunged down a bank, under a fence and along a riverbed with the farmer on foot far behind it.
Ten minutes later, after heading towards his faint shout, I found him grinning sheepishly (sorry . . .) and in an embrace with the sheep. There is, I hasten to point out, no truth in all those grubby sheep jokes, however the sheep proved there is truth in jokes about their stupidity.
Rex had cornered it on a miniscule promontory on a river bank beside a fence. The only way out was across a stream where Kate the dog was cooling off by swimming in circles.
The farmer removed his gumboots and socks (a one-handed job done while he lay beside the sheep), tossed them to me then crossed the stream holding the sheep aloft.
Somehow it was my job to stop it escaping while the farmer got the ute and did a spot of cross country driving.
I kneeled beside the sheep and grabbed its legs while attempting to swat away a multitude of blow flies having the time of their life.
“Quick as you can,” I muttered grumpily, having found yet another opportunity to use Goldie’s invaluable expression.

Saturday 7 April 2012

Oyster farming ain't sexy . . . . maybe

Oysters might be an aphrodisiac when you eat them by the dozen, but they don’t do much for sex appeal when you’re at the pointy end of production.
About three decades ago my husband’s father and uncle pioneered New Zealand’s Pacific oyster industry by seeding the Kaipara Harbour with oysters. Since then, however, it's become apparent that oysters mature best on the east coast, while the Kaipara Harbour remains ideal for catching spat - baby oysters.
Over the years they built oyster racks by drilling into the limestone seabed below the high tide mark, banging in posts then mounting planks.
Each year oyster farmers drive hundreds of miles, from Houhora in the north to Ohope Beach in the south, rolling up in trucks laden with thousands of oyster sticks which they mount on the racks. 
After the spat have attached to the sticks, they take them to their east coast farms where fat, succulent oysters grow for your dining pleasure.
Now, in the traditional of family businesses, Rex the beef farmer has morphed into an oyster farmer and this summer he and his helper Tony have repaired and rebuilt racks for the spat catch which is now underway.
It's a messy and decidedly unsexy business, even though there’s lots of sweat involved. 
Low tide - the only time they can work on the racks - isn’t always at dawn or after dinner, it just seems that way, while limestone is definitely as hard as hell and the seabed has to be muddier than hell. 
One evening the oyster farmer stood at the doorway of the dining room coated in Kaipara mud - it’s mauvy-grey/brown, if you’re interested - and said, “How long do you think I should keep this mud pack on?”
Sometimes, apparently thinking he's clean, he collapses with a beer onto the couch where he showers sand, grit and sawdust.
The sawdust, which sprays from the chainsaw when posts and planks are cut, also lands in his gumboots and clings to his socks.
When he removed his socks in the bedroom moments after I’d vacuumed, I pointed out that this was akin to me merrily leaving gates open all over the farm.The next day he kindly took of his socks on the back terrace just after its once-weekly sweep.   
Honestly!! 
We live at the end of a gravel road and the tide comes in by the front gate. One of these steamy, sultry summer days I’m going to suggest he rinses off in the sea. I’ll insist that he takes his gumboots off at the front gate, then his socks, then his shirt, then his . . .


Sunday 1 April 2012

Human obedience class - listen to your dog


Dogs must get so exasperated with humans – we expect them to be obedient, but don’t take nearly enough notice of their instructions.
I’ve recently attended four human obedience classes and now know that when a dog acts in an unusual fashion I need to respond.
Lesson One happened when Kate, a smarter-than-average dog, rushed inside, circled the coffee table, danced about and raced outside.
I idly thought, “How odd.” I’d heard my father-in-law’s vehicle skid as he navigated our steep, rutted drive, but that was no surprise; it presents a challenge to all comers.
I peered down the drive but could see no problems. Boy, was I ever wrong.
A few minutes later said father-in-law arrives at the door. After planting his foot on the accelerator instead of the brake he’d rocketed off course, collected the front fence, narrowly missed a concrete strainer, and flown over the small seawall onto the beach. Luckily he only suffered a bruised hand and minor whiplash.
But I’d learned. The next night I was trimming the grapevine after dinner when Floss trotted across the garden to watch the pet lambs.
As she usually shows little interest in the pair, I idly thought, “How odd” - and followed her. Boy, was I ever right to do that.
Mary Kate had got tangled in her lead. She was suffocating and on the verge of expiration. I flew through the gate and quickly whipped off her lead.
The gasping lamb huffed and puffed for ages before she could stand up. Even though her paddock was quickly sheep-proofed, she became most suspicious of me.
Then, a few evenings later, Floss barked. Nothing unusual about that, except it wasn’t her, ‘humans are approaching’ bark nor was it her ‘pay me some attention’ yap.
I investigated. Yikes! Turns out it was her ‘forty or so escapee bulls are lunging around on the beach’ bark coupled with her ‘a nervous camper’s cowering in the doorway of the public toilet’ bark. We swung into action.
Then came fourth time lucky: We were on the beach when Kate stopped dead and assumed the transfixed stare that usually indicates an irritating seabird blithely floating just out of reach.
As there were no birds around, I looked harder. A pod of dolphins several hundred metres off shore was delivering a spectacular performance complete with leaps, flips and stylish dives.
It was high time a human obedience lesson yielded something good.

Sunday 25 March 2012

Late night vision - sloshed slob chomping chops


I decided the pet lambs, Ashley and Mary Kate, would retain special privileges when, at three in the morning, I was feeding Cliff, a lamb who didn’t make the grade.
I was crouched over Cliff with warm lamb milk dribbling up the sleeve of my dressing gown when I had a vivid vision of a seriously sloshed stock broker at a party in London gnawing on one of Cliff’s ribs. 
The detail was extraordinary.  He was overweight (I noticed he ate all the fat) and carried his excess round the hips like a certain former Prime Minister. 
He wore a pin-striped suit, a finely striped white shirt with the top button undone and a loosened tie bearing a club emblem.  Between chomping on Cliff’s chop, this glutton (let’s call him Hugo - with apologies to all Hugos) slurped really expensive champagne.  I didn’t see the bottle, but fancy it was Perrier Jouet from one of those classy bottles with embossed flowers.
Hair:  mousy brown and floppy.  Face:  a tad flabby and pale.  
The only good thing about the hallucination was that rather than being in a gracious home, Hugo was in the grotty kitchen of a grungy flat Kiwis are wont to call home during their OE.    
Hugo haunted me. While I was up in the night nurturing a lamb, he was gorging on bits of Cliff in a pre-Christmas orgy with no respect for the wee creature that had given its life for his gastronomic bliss.
A day later Cliff went to lamb heaven and I vowed to keep Mary-Kate and Ashley as pets.  This involved training them to eat bread so they’d stick around, fencing them out of the section and, trickiest of all, convincing the farmer this is a good idea.
When he found them eyeing his precious strawberries, the farmer merely shunted them into the paddock and threatened to cut their tails off.  As he’s done this with calm alacrity to thousands of lambs, but was using it as a threat to the pets I knew I had him
He then reinforced the post and rail fence at the bottom of the paddock, but filling gaps under the batten and wire fence was going to be tricky.  I told him I planned to tie garden mesh onto the bottom wire and fix it to the ground with huge wire staples.
He listened to my Mickey Mouse idea, sighed deeply and said, “Let me do it.” 
“What a guy,” I thought dreamily - for two days at which time he told me he had no recollection of our conversation. 
“What a guy!” I thought, with somewhat different emphasis.
I then agreed with his plan to let the lambs go while praying they’d be too fat and woolly to slither under the fence into our garden.  They promptly merged with the flock, herd instinct being stronger than their love for sandwich loaf.

Saturday 17 March 2012

Advanced lessons in possum disposal


Here’s a possum control method I’ll bet you’ve never thought of - invite an army-trained marksman around for dinner then, when you’re having pre-dinner drinks and the dogs go crazy because they’ve seen a possum, send him outside with a gun. 
In this case, the possum made it past the dogs and clambered onto the roof where it mistakenly thought it was safe and peered over the edge to watch the cavorting dogs. 
One tidy gunshot later, the possum was dead while poor shotgun-shy Kate the dog raced inside and attempted to climb onto my lap while I was perched on a bar stool. 
Disposal via sharp shooter proved simpler than getting rid of the possum which, unbeknown to us, had settled into the house.
Late one evening I closed the door to the back upstairs terrace - it had been open for several days. Late that night after walking upstairs, I found myself eye-to-eye with a possum which had been coming and going to his nest in what we quaintly call our ‘painting room’, i.e. it’s filled with unmentionable clutter. 
By the time the farmer and his gun came to the rescue, the possum had returned to its day-time hideaway. It was curtains when it emerged the next night; the farmer was ready with the gun.
Another possum who’d made this room its home was shot one evening after he jumped from the terrace to a nearby banana palm where he sat blinking in the torchlight. 
Possums also make homes out of leaves on the roof. We hear them after they make navigation errors and slide down the steep roof then tumble to the ground. It’s no big deal as they’re almost indestructible.
One day the farmer was on the roof with a guy who sells mesh to keep leaves out of guttering when they encountered a possum which nimbly avoided them, flew through the air, ducked past the dogs and fled to live another day. 
Pity our sharp shooter friend wasn’t here; he’d have got it in mid air with one well-placed shot.

Saturday 10 March 2012

Olive-picking peasants get rosy cheeks


An invitation to spend a day picking olives with other “rosy-cheeked peasants” promised a harvest lunch and eligibility for a bottle of oil. I thought the idea sounded great, but should have been warned when Rex chose to go fishing instead.
I was first to arrive and, for an anxious moment, wondered if the other peasants knew something I didn’t. But they dribbled in and soon eight of us were hard at it.
The reason peasants are rosy-cheeked soon became apparent. They’re hot and bothered from all that hard work. And you never hear about the cricked necks they get from picking olives above head height.
At least olive trees have flexible branches and you don’t get stabbed by sharp twigs. We wore gloves so we could run our hands down the branches and soon the air was filled with the gentle thud of olives raining on the old sheets and curtains we had lain on the ground.
We picked from two types of tree: Koroneiki from Greece whose tiny olives yield lots of tasty oil, and J5, the progeny of a massive tree planted in the 1850’s by Far North settlers. The latter trees have been so unimaginatively-named that we olive picking peasants have a plea to people high up in olive circles - come up with more poetic names.
After each tree was picked, we’d pour the harvest into cane baskets which reinforced our sense of peasantness, and plastic laundry baskets which didn’t.
It was tedious work so it’s no wonder olive grove owners joke nervously that after a couple of harvests they’ve worked their way through all their friends. Tellingly, a couple who'd planned to plant 20 trees on their lifestyle block decided after a few hours that three would be a good number. 
By lunchtime we suspected today’s peasants would watch our labours with bemusement because they would sensibly buy olive oil from their local supermarket.
This was our friends’ third olive harvest. In their first year they were done by lunchtime, whereas this was a two-day mission that produced 350kg of olives. After being cleaned, separated from twigs and leaves then pressed, the harvest yielded an (apparently) impressive 42.7 litres of oil, or 122 350ml bottles.
Back home I proudly showed my digital photos of the trailer-load of olives we’d picked to the farmer who said if he’d had the camera he could have shown me the monster snapper that got away.
After a few hours sunning himself in a boat, he’d caught enough fish for several feeds, whereas I'd slaved all day for a cup and a half of olive oil - plus a delicious lunch and a few glasses of wine which were so enjoyable I suspect I’ll show up for next year’s harvest.

Saturday 3 March 2012

Kate's jumping trick


This photo, published in Your Home & Garden, shows Kate relaxing - or she could be plotting to jump through the window of the ute....

Luckily Kate wasn’t hurt when she collided with the driver’s window of the truck in much the same fashion as a bug hitting a vehicle windscreen. Nor was her self esteem dented.  Kate is a heading dog whose inflated sense of self worth was evident from the moment we got her.
As a pup she travelled in the cab of the ute but, unlike the other dogs, she has never adjusted to the degrading business of being relegated to the ute’s tray.
She’s so fond of being a front-seat passenger that if the farmer won’t let her travel first class and there’s a load on the back of the ute, she’ll sometimes stay at home.
But as Kate loves going places, urgent action is called for and she jumps through the driver’s window. It’s startling, but her judgment’s impeccable. 
The first time she did this when I was at the wheel, I’d just nosed the truck up a grassy slope when Kate flew through the driver’s window. She brushed my left shoulder as she passed in front of me, then she landed on a pinhead on the passenger’s seat.   
As she finds it fun to chase the farmer on the tractor, seconds later she bounded out the window, only to fly back in again a few minutes later. She even does this when both Rex and I are in the cab, ending up on my lap. Her landings are always elegant.
As Kate is a muddy and unpleasant passenger in winter, the farmer tried to train her out of the habit. Each time she looked poised to jump, he’d wind up the window. But on one occasion Kate was airborne. Too late! She went splat against the window with a thump and scrabble of paws.
As she’s lean, super fit and hard as a world-class athlete, she promplty bounced onto the back of the ute where she possibly muttered, “Bugger!”
Kate’s other downfall, besides nicking the cats’ food, is that she’s overly affectionate. Pay her the slightest attention and she’s all over you - except when she’s a front seat passenger.
Then she sits bolt upright and stares ahead, barely deigning to give you a passing glance. You feel like a chauffeur for a haughty aristocrat and, what’s more, your short-term contract is under review.
Now the ground has dried out, Kate’s back to her tricks. She can regularly be found in the cab and when the ute’s parked at home, she hops in and out of the driver’s window as she pleases.
And when she’s out on the farm, the farmer will be fencing, fixing troughs or whatever and Kate will loll in the truck listening to Sports Radio at full volume. 
While she’s clearly pleased to see the end of winter’s muck and mud, we’re already hoping for rain.

Tuesday 28 February 2012

Africa - pre trip jitters

Enjoy this final blog on our trip to Africa. It's a glimpse into our psyches before we left - and a classic case of worrying about the things that never happen . . .

“You’ll have to learn to squat,” said Rex one evening out of the blue.
“Why?”
“To go to the loo. You won’t want to tip over backwards.”
“It’s you who’ll have to learn. Women have been squatting forever,” I retorted.
A few weeks later, having been inoculated against Yellow Fever by a specialist doctor who spent about an hour scaring us by detailing the countless medical nightmares on offer in Africa, I desperate for sleep - in the middle of the day.
The ‘wrong’ feeling was so minimal, it was only several days later that I figured with certainty it was a reaction to the vaccination.
No-one tells you about these things - not the full import of what it’s like building up for a trip to Africa.
It’s well worth having vaccinations. In 1867 the great-great grandfather of our neighbour contracted yellow fever while was helping the poor in Jamaica. He was a curate and only 33 when he died. This knowledge is as close as I want to get to the disease.
The next week I was transfixed by the shirt of our local doctor who we were seeing with a view to getting the rest of our vaccinations: flu, Hep A, typhoid, tetatnus, polio, diptheria. (It’s cheaper to go to your local GP for these jabs.) His shirt was sparkling, eye-dazzling white.
“You’ll need Immodium,” he was saying. “If you’re really streaming and have to get back on the truck, then take it, otherwise sit on a toilet and let it run. It’s better out than in.”
And his shirt was pressed to perfection, without as much as one crease. Was it brand new? 
I turned my attention to more pressing matters - the antibiotics we would be taking in case of dysyntery or infection. Plus we’d take doxycycline, a low-grade antibiotic which would help prevent malaria. The doctor explained that it only gave about forty percent cover, but taking the more effective alternative Malurone would cost us about $600 each. I guess it’s Madonna’s first choice. Others, like Lariam, can send emotionally wobbly people off track. I won’t take that, then.
He also said it would make us sun sensitive and could turn our teeth yellow. Lovely.
The next night the farmer and I watched a James Bond film in which 007 travels across North Africa.
“Has he got his vaccinations?” asked Rex.
“Sure. The MI6 organise them for him and he gets boosters every year,” I replied, while wondering what the Queen did when she went to Africa. She’d most certainly have used top-of the-range medicine. Would she have been surrounded by an army of people swishing mozzies aside, would her clothes have been soaked in permethrin?
These are the things people don’t talk about when they return from holiday because they’re marvelling at the wonders of wildlife, the joys of the journey, the thrills and hopefully no spills of their adventure. I’d trade tipping over backwards to be among them.
And of course, I was among them - without ever having to do the trade.

Sunday 26 February 2012

Africa: This is Africa


Each of the four times we checked into accommodation during our African overland adventure we were greeted by a tinkling ‘running’ toilet. And this was in a continent which boasts the world’s oldest desert - the Namib. After travelling through part of its 2000km long and 120km wide expanse, we were overjoyed to wash out sand and sleep in real beds at Swakopmund.
We scored beds for 12 of our 51 nights - at Cape Town, South Africa; Windhoek and Swakopmund, Namibia and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.
The irony with the dribbling loos says so much about Africa: one upward flick of the handle made them behave, but only at one place did a stern sign say: Lift the handle after flushing!
By our holiday’s end we were familiar with the expression, TIA - This is Africa. It helped us laugh when things didn’t work as they should.
At one smart camping ground, which had a 50m swimming pool, only one of the four women’s showers worked. At another, a fancy Government-owned camp where we stayed after climbing to a plateau where a wild animal breeding programme is underway, a handful of us adjourned to a gorgeous bar complete with glittering chandellier. The building had been the police station during a war with the Germans in the early 1900s.
The peculiarities here were fabulous facilities for so few visitors and exceptionally wide toilet cubicles. The equally wide doors, when opened, almost hit the toilets, thus getting in was a tight squeeze - just when you didn’t need it.
At Chobe National Park, when one shower was turned on the others dried up. One witchy woman spent so long washing we wondered if she’d died. A couple of blokes had a low-grade altercation.
In Tanzania and Kenya, we met squat toilets. The floors are always wet. Yik! An Internet search confirmed they’re the most common loos in the world, and revealed this tip in a nine-point how-to-go guide: the best way to keep your clothes dry is to remove your trou or skirt and hang it over the door.
In Karen, Nairobi’s smartest suburb, the camping ground had a shower block, a toilet block, another unisex loo - but only one handbasin and it was outside, tacked onto a wall.
Having traversed Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, we reached Nairobi airport after a perfect holiday: no illness, injury or threats.
But when we checked in, the woman looked puzzled. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually, “we have no record of your booking.”
While I was thinking, ‘Disaster!’, the farmer was thinking, “Upgrade!” But after relieving us of some US dollars for a mystery tax, we were soon in cattle class.
TIA, we said as we charged our glasses: ‘This is Africa’.

Saturday 18 February 2012

Africa: Camp life at Nakuru


“There’s a Masai,” called Tembo, the three-year-old.
And there stood a young man wearing a red skirt with sparkly baubles on it and the trademark red cloak of the Masai people. He’s the night watchman at our niece and nephew’s camp near Lake Nakuru in Kenya.
We only heard Tembo’s excited announcement because Ollie the dog had finally shut up after alerting us - a herder and his cattle were outside the 15-wire electric fence that keeps us safe - or does it?
Ollie is the sole survivor of a litter from the next village. His siblings were snapped up by a leopard that’s still at large. This prompted me to point out to the farmer at 2am that it could jump the 3m-plus fence - we learned this when we met a leopard in captivity in Botswana.
We arrived here after 'transitting' (travelling super fast) thru Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania.  Lake Malawi is a miracle in a country that writhes with critters that’ll eat you. It is calm, wonderful for swimming, and yields yummy fish. The farmer got paddled out in a leaky dugout and returned two hours later bailing like mad - with no fish.
At Nakuru, the Kimani’s camping ground, like everywhere we’ve stayed and unlike its kiwi counterparts, involves a flash bar and café.  
The construction process is also different. Three donkeys arrived pulling a cart loaded with cement. A trainee donkey linked to the trio relieved itself by our tent.
Loads of rocks arrived on a truck which drove through a gap the workers had made in the electric fence at the back of the camp. They were dumped near our tent and a guy, working barefoot, is using an axe to chip them into perfect rectangles for a house.
Another worker is chipping rocks for the base for a concrete terrace; it’s cheaper to buy them whole and have them broken with a pick.
The workers - there are several who all arrive by bike each day - are served morning tea and lunch by the two young women who do the laundry and cleaning.
I taught one how to make beef stew. She told me they don't use garlic or flavouring, just fry meat, add water and vegetables and cook till its dry then wrap it in chapatis.
Lorna said the stew we made together tasted sweet to her. She’d taken some home, walking along the sandy road which is frequented by buffalos at night as they search for maize fields. Buffalos are one of the “big five”, named thus by game hunters because they can fight back when they’ve been shot.
Just as well we’re safely tucked up in our flimsy canvas tents behind that electric fence. But - and here’s another 2am thought - did someone turn it on after the truck had gone?

Sunday 12 February 2012

Africa: Stalked by . . . . a plastic bag?


The hippos lolling on a sandbank in Chobe River could have been mistaken for boulders - until our boat got stuck beside them. After tolerating our vessel’s roaring outboards for several minutes, they headed into the water. Some emerged nearby, only their eyes and ears to be seen.
When Moffat, our boat captain, said he'd only been stuck once before in his twenty years on the job we started making hysterical jokes about our plight. Chobe National Park has more elephants than anywhere in the world and we’d seen many, including adorable babies spilling water from their trunks they hadn’t yet mastered. If we remained stuck, would they smell peanuts on our breath? We’d been enjoying them with drinks.
Luckily another boat came along.  "Anyone who was good at long jump at school goes first," suggested the farmer’s sister as several of us jumped onto it, enabling our boat to float free.
Soon we were sailing along indulging in our favourite activity - animal spotting.
A few days earlier I’d been chatting to our tour leader, a Kikuyu from Kenya who’s wise in the ways of the animal world. As we watched flitting weaver birds, I said, “Look, one’s got a worm. It’s amazing that a worm’s close to the surface in such dry conditions.” Then I noticed the ground was damp. “Someone’s thrown water there. It’s brought the worms to the surface.”
After a pause, Karoma said quietly, “It’s our spaghetti from last night.”
After making that gaff, you’d have thought I’d have done anything to avoid an encore. But the next day the farmer and I were up early to spot animals at the waterhole near camp. As we stumbled half-asleep to the viewing area, I froze. I’d spotted a dark shape moving in an erratic fashion - and it was only twenty metres away.
“There’s an animal,” I hissed. “Could it be the honey badger that’s been spotted in the camp? It had better be.”
“I don’t think it’s an animal,” replied the farmer as he bravely headed towards the danger spot where I’d seen the scurrying shape. “Thought so,” he said laughing. “It’s a black plastic bag.”
“Being blown by the breeze?”
“Yep.”
It was an ideal time to reassure myself: Yesterday after a fellow traveller had called, “There’s an elephant!” we’d all peered in the direction she indicated to see . . . a public toilet. We named it ‘the elephant house’.
No-one could mistake the elephants that wander around town at Victoria Falls or the monkey that sprinted through the outdoor café while we ate lunch, or the warthogs.
They trotted across the road in Kasane near Chobe National Park and snuffled around the truck while we loaded groceries on board.

Sunday 5 February 2012

Africa: "Would you like to stroke my cheetah?"


This would be a great pick up line - and the young men whose parents started a cheetah park on their multi-thou hectare farm in Namibia could use it as most of the 31 overland companies that operate in Africa target young people. Our trip, however, provides no potential - African Touch specialises in tours for ‘mature travellers’.
And, unlike leopards or lions, cheetahs can be tamed. At Otjitotongwe Cheetah Park we meet three - they purr like cats, lick like dogs, and, when they’re excited, chirp like birds.Then, in 250ha that’s fenced for wild cheetahs, farmers throw chunks of meat and, after thrilling scuffles, the victors rush off to relish dinner - and we retire to a bar which features among its decorations a New Zealand flag and a kudu head.
Wine is not commonly served in rural Namibia, and mine arrives in a tumbler filled to the brim. After having a few beers, the farmer, who must seem like danger material, gets a gin in an enamel cup. The guys, having morphed from cheetah guides to barmen, are done with drunk overlanders breaking glasses
Next stop: Etosha National Park which covers almost 23,000 sq km. In fact, 15 percent of Namibia is national park. Young zebra chase springbok for fun. An elephant swipes at a bird with its trunk. Giraffes step gracefully away and inspect us in Sangoma the big green truck.
Each night, Rex and I walk to the illuminated waterhole by the camp and, in magical half light, observe elephant and rhino, hyenas loudly lapping, guinea fowl - and more. Electric blue starlings hang about camp, as does a honey badger and a ground squirrel.
The days are warm with clear skies after chilly mornings. Each day we board the truck - a converted Scania that’s surprisingly comfy - and set off on a game drive. We pass a hundred-plus zebra heading to a waterhole where they take slurps and leave. Springboks slip away as well.
Ahhh, lions are approaching. I guess other animals will soon arrive, unaware Simba and friends are in situ, or those that do will get so thirsty they’ll take a risk. After watching nine lions stake out the waterhole the ‘stay in your car’ warning really makes sense – they are almost impossible to see in the long grass.
Later we return to find more lions staking a claim – two females and six teenage cubs. How can a lioness stalk anything when the kids hoon round, pounce on each other and play rough and tumble?
At another waterhole, two thirsty giraffes hesitate. Is a lion nearby? Oh, the stress! Giraffes have valves in their necks which pump blood to their head. Drop their head for too long and they get dizzy. Sleeping is so risky they nap for less than two hours a day, resting their heads on their hind quarters. If a giraffe is drinking and a lion grabs its head, the world spins and they fall over. The lion scores - so easily.
Thankfully, today is a lucky one for the giraffes.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Africa: Don't think about the stripes


"Don't think about the stripes," counsels the farmer as I take a teensy nibble of zebra steak. I thought only lions ate zebra! But here we are, on our first night in Namibia, at a restaurant in Dutch-influenced Windhoek, snacking on animals we still haven’t seen in the wild. Those in our group who opt for game deem kudu delicious while that morsel of someone else’s zebra is definitely chewy.
Namibia is a desert and among the world’s least densely-populated countries when it comes to people - and cattle. The farmer spotted the occasional mob gloomily nosing rocky earth and nibbling dry, golden grass.
We camp on two 5000ha properties where farmers graze one animal to about five hectares and, not surprisingly, are turning to tourism. Each camp includes a gorgeous lodge, generally made of local stone, a stylish bar and often some other attraction, perhaps a spectacular land formation or animals - cheetahs; rock dassies, dear little guinea pig-sized creatures related to elephants; or meercats which stand on cue just as they do on telly adverts.
The quality of accommodation and similarities to South Africa surprise me but then I didn’t know where Namibia was until we decided to visit. However, the farmer is onto it - the All Blacks played here when the country was part of South Africa.
The country is flat then there’s a canyon, mountain, rock formation or, in one place, an assembly of 250 or so quiver trees, an aloe used by natives for quivers. After the earth’s plate cracked 650 million years ago, Fish River Canyon, the second largest after the Grand, started forming. Perched on its edge, we gaze from a lookout waiting for the promised startling sunset which doesn’t perform. Wine and cheese compensate.
At The Giant’s Playground, rocks are piled atop each other for miles.  After tectonic plate movements a mere 180 million years ago, molten magma oozed through before wearing away to expose misshapen giant toy blocks. At Ai Ais hot springs we bath in pools made of slate tiles, with water tumbling from one to the next. The resort, another one with a perfect thatched roof, surpasses anything similar in New Zealand. The South African campers also surpass anything in New Zealand - the snazzy tents, the women with backpack-sized toilet bags, the dryers going by 5am.
We drive 60km between endless dunes at Sossusvlei. Called ‘star’ dunes, they are formed by opposing winds and, glowing red at sunset, a photographer’s dream.
By the time I climb 200m high Dune 45, a giant toilet bag might help remove the orange sand that’s seeped everywhere. You might think that after dune climbing, we’re steaming hot. But it’s winter here and the cold snap has even surprised the locals.
I clamber into my new fleecy track pants after a shower and wear them to dinner. I’m too cold to care and, anyway, it’s dark by six, we’re in bed before eight and, if not reading in the glow of a headlamp, asleep soon afterwards.

Thursday 26 January 2012

Cape Town: Beauty and the beast


Africa: Shocked rat jump starts holiday prep

For the next few weeks I'm blogging about our African trip. We travelled with our niece and nephew Tasha & Karoma Kimani - their company African Touch  specialises in 27-day trips through East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania finishing at Zanzibar) for 'people of a certain age'. Our adventure was a one-off through Namibia, Botswana to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Then a handful of us travelled - at speed - through Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania to Karoma & Tasha's camping ground near Lake Nakuru in Kenya.



The farmer and I had no idea what overlanding and camping through Africa would bring, but we tried our best to prepare. When a rat killed itself and our living area lights by gnawing a cable, we wore headlamps in the evenings and scuttled around like glow worms. Then the electrician did repairs - and disconnected power to the bathroom. This kicked off renovations which meant showering elsewhere.
Thus prepared for ‘roughing it’, we visited Cape Town before flying to Windhoek in Namibia where we joined a trip with African Touch, owned by our niece Tasha and her Kenyan husband Karoma Kimani.
After Namibia, we were to check out Botswana and Victoria Falls, then a few of us planned to drive through Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania to Kenya where Karoma and Tasha are establishing a camping ground (now finished and fabulous).
Headlamps and decamping for showers hadn’t prepared us for one of our first Cape Town sights -miles of shanties that compose the ‘township’ of Khayelitsha, populated by about a million people. Nor, after daylight suddenly snapped out, was I prepared to be led by a guard to our fortified lodge. It was along the road from the backpackers and not set prettily in its garden as I had invented.
We went through a locked gate, a locked wrought iron door, a locked door and a locked bedroom door before meeting a long-awaited bed - and a locked safe for valuables. I didn’t need to be warned twice not to walk anywhere at night.
Friends took us for a drive and to lunch where the farmer had his first African animal experience – he found springbok carpaccio tasty. 
During the next few days, we visited the wine country, rode the cable car up Table Mountain, jaunted to the Cape of Good Hope, and sauntered around the jazzed-up harbourside. We were charmed by baboons near the Cape, despite that they would have nicked my handbag had I not left it in the vehicle. Finding no food they’d likely have tossed it over a cliff.  
The Dutch/German influence was evident in the cutesy villages in the winelands where, to reintroduce zebra, wildebeest, springbok and Eland, the largest of the antelope, farmers graze them with cattle. At a cheetah park, Anatolian Shepherd dogs are being bred. They live with sheep and goat herds, frightening away endangered cheetahs and thus preventing farmers shooting or trapping them.
We walked to a shopping mall while I clutched my handbag as if it contained my entire blood supply. Of course we experienced not the faintest safety threat. The most aggressive assaults came from assertive shop assistants. “Try them on,” one snapped as I vacillated over track pants. I just wanted them to sleep in, having left my sweatpant/pyjamas fluttering on the line at home. Turning down bossy boots was a cheap thrill - until the only other contenders were in a pricey sporting shop.
My new trackies were so fleecy and heavy I felt sure I’d roast - but that turned out to be another expectation shot down in flames.

Sunday 22 January 2012

Bulls at gates - when I'm the gate


As there has to be truth in the age old saying ‘to charge like a bull at a gate’ it’s no wonder I get nervous when I’m the ‘gate’ and bulls are involved.
Recently when we were separating some steers and bulls, the farmer shouted, “Just stand there” while indicating the gateway, then he rocketed down a sludgy slope in a manner which showed he hadn’t taken notes at the FarmSafe course we attended.
My job was to stop the bulls from running out of the gate while letting the steers exit to their new paddock. Pretty soon all the steers had bolted except Mr Hereford who played fast and loose until he got the concept.
Then we were off to get a bull out of a neighbour’s heifer paddock. The neighbour had asked the farmer to do the job having deemed the bull “a bit of an insistent sort of fellow”.
Once again I was left standing at the gate to stop the heifers leaving while the farmer separated the bull. If this task was left to me, the bull and the heifers would have lived a long and happy life together. This is, of course, why I’m not a farmer; if insistent bulls were to their own devices there’d be rogue bulls everywhere.
It was pleasant standing in the sun watching a fantail ducking and diving under a cabbage tree until the bull ambled from the paddock followed by the farmer on the quad. He (the farmer not the bull) wore the adrenalin-charged maniacal grin which always indicates a close call. “He nearly got me,” he said, “but I remembered some moves from my rugby days.”
Then I was a gate again. Two bulls had got tangled with about 20 yearlings because the farmer had cleverly left a gate open. Tony, who helps out, and Rex rounded them up while I stood ankle-deep in mud in the gateway. The yearlings circled, making it clear they wanted to go through the gate - they know that’s what gates are for. Only me and my madly flapping arms stopped them.
I couldn’t imagine how the farmer and Tony would separate the bulls from the mob - and said so until I remembered all the good reasons why I was a lowly gate and promptly shut up. What I lacked, I decided, were rugby skills.
Then, like magic, the two bulls stepped towards the gate, I sidestepped at the crucial second (picture a forward dodging the defence while going for the try line) and they were through.