Lunch on a summer's day

It's still a novelty celebrating my birthday in summer, and this year I made the most of it with a lunch from 1pm - 11pm at the lovely Atlas.

Out and about in Auckland

Usually I spend a fair proportion of my year in London counting down until the trip to the southern hemisphere and this time was no different....anyway after an excellent looong flight on the lovely Emirates A380 we arrived in sunny Auckland. I was very happy to see our old London friends who have now set up in Auckland, and spend time sipping wine on Bulli's parents peaceful balcony. We did get out and about in the great outdoors a lot - two fun nights on the road with Lynn and Rog down at Rotorua and Mt Maunganui and some great day trips. I also loved our stops at the rugged, hostile-looking beach at Piha, and the run over the black, hot sanddunes where you're rewarded with a dive into massive, almost deserted fresh water lake down the other side.

I was also lucky to go to Villa Maria winery with good friends and enjoy a chilled afternoon/evening watching Dave Dobbyn, Tim Finn and Bic Runga perform crowd pleasing classics under pink, fluffy-clouded skies....

We did a four hour walk around Waimangu Volcanic Valley - see the thermal steam. It was cool, we got there early and there were no other people in sight for most of our walk.

Tour leader Bulli led another big walk, this time around an Auckland Regional Park called Waitakere. It was really dense vegetarian, lots of old old Kauri trees

After yet another walk! This time at the top of Mt Maunganui. We swam in some amazing beaches; the joys of mid week day trips = no crowds!!

Olivetti's, Red Hill

There's no place like home, and I really enjoyed the fun dinner with the Bryden ladies, Mum and Zoe at Olivetti's in prep for Zoe's wedding.

Egypt and Jordan experience

Here are some snaps from our two weeks in Egypt and Jordan. It was amazingly interesting, educational, eye-opening, fun and only occasionally frustrating (notably: mistakenly giving 20 USD to a toilet attendant instead of the obligatory 1 Egyptian pound; spending 14 hours on a ferry - four of which we spent looking at our destination waiting for the tug boat to come and save us; learning that the trip notes are useless, i.e. when they say you don't need a sleeping bag for a winter's night in the desert, you really really do).

Sunset in Wadi Rum - Lawrence of Arabia Territory and home to tribes of bedouins

Our camp for the night in Wadi Rum

Another style of accommodation - our overnight train from Cairo to Luxor. The ladder is to my top bunk and under the little shelf you can see is the basin. This was an old old train, and it's uphill to Luxor. Consequently I kept hitting the wall, literally, everytime the train lurched uphill. I can say we had every form of transport on this trip - plane, train, bus, boat, camel, donkey, horse and cart...

Back in the Jordanian desert - me and my camel

Chris's camel was always hungry

Some scenes from our boat as we cruised up the Nile

More life by the banks of the Nile

From the top of Mt Sinai - it surprised me that this was one of my highlights of the trip. We were lucky to get to Sinai due to flooding the week before. The roads were really washed away in parts and it made for some hairy driving. Very windy conditions at the top, one guy did take a tumble when the wind picked him up. We came down by torchlight.

After much discussion with previous Egypt travellers I decided to take the 4-hour, dawn bus trip to Abu Simbel, temple of Ramses II. Was very worthwhile. Hard to believe it was covered by sand for centuries, and that they moved it and reconstructed it to save it from the rising dam waters.

An Egyptian friend in Edfu temple

Me and some very well preserved sandstone rams at Karnak Temple, Karnak. They don't look 3000 years old do they?

The sandstone temple of Queen Hatshepsut - imagine in it's time it was brightly painted, with grass all around path leading up to it...

Feluccas lined up on the Nile

Chris in Karnak temple - our guide here was amazing, and gave us so many intricate insights into this place. Nothing was as simple as it seemed as there was symbolism and a story in everything.

Hot air balloons early morning above the Valley of the Kings

A Shorrolds Christmas

It's become tradition for a Shorrolds reunion every Christmas...

We did a pre-Christmas pizza fest then Christmas morning some champagne and mince pies.

Our Cunnamulla Fella

Before you make the rabbit stew you've got to catch the rabbit, he would chant as he spent hours and hours teaching Ryan and I to ride. How many city kids knew three ways to hold the reigns on a horse bridle, to check inside their boots for snakes, how to shoot an airgun or boil a billy tea? How many city kids had pulled a calf from the pregnant cow tied about the 4WD? Well not me, but Ryan did.

With our Cunnamulla Fella it was dinner in front of Frank and Kay from Channel 7 news, a quick kip before a comeback later for the evening movie. After dinner in our pjs and slippers, we'd stomp happily through the damp grass, torches in hand, hunting for the horses to treat them to their evening biscuit. Morning runs in the ute or the jackeroo for papers and scratchies were ritual. Always a scratchie, one for all four of us. Over morning cuppas we would all laugh over our meagre luck, $15 was probably our biggest win, but in the bigger picture weren't we lucky.

Our Cunnamulla Fella was tough as nails and soft at heart. If he said we could do something, then we could do it. On horseback staring down a steep and sandy descent that would take us splashing across the river - he said we could do it, so ok who were we to doubt it, and we did it. I thought I was the Man from Snowy River on a grand adventure.

Bushman's treatments for the order of the day. Sharp words were only once traded and it was the day I'd had enough of sitting over the boiling hot bowl of steam and eucalyptus with a tea towel wrapped around my head, he wouldn't let me stop until my asthma let up, and you know what, it bloody well worked. 'Course it bloody did' he would grin.

We know the Cunnamulla Fella was a horseman through and through, but whether it was a running race at QE2, a soccer game at Mitchy or softball games from Brisbane to Toowoomba, he and Nana were there.

He'd come to the phone - 'Renee or Ryan of the Overflow' he would slowly say as his greeting. The 'Over and Out' when it was time to wrap up. Always a cap or a hat, always a leather belt, even if it was to hold his trackies up!

Our Cunnamulla Fella battled back from illnesses and ailments, like a cat with nine lives, and he was in our lives longer and larger than we could have ever hoped for. Even in hard times we would laugh. Whether he was telling us that Nana could only get the token role of triangle player in the church choir so they didn't have to hear her sing, or when we were talking about the vegetable garden he was looking after at the village. 'Looks great Pa,' I would say 'Cool you are doing that' - 'Yeah,' he said. Then 'No, not really, it's pretty shit'...and we both just laughed..and of course there were the politically incorrect moments when his dark sense of humour would emerge, you know those times you know you shouldn't be laughing, but it's just too funny.

And now our Cunnamulla Fella has said bye for now, and he's back on his beloved Bessie, and out droving with the boys...

From Clancy of the Overflow

Clancy's gone a droving 'down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wonderous glory of the everlasting stars.

Cinque Terre

Chris and I have just come back from Cinque Terre (5 lands), Italy. Was a great few days of walking, walking and walking (it's 300 steps up to one town alone), eating REAL seafood pasta and calamari and just enjoying a glass of wine while soaking up beautiful views. Also, I love people watching in Italy. I could just watch Italians talk to each other, and go about their daily business all day. They are just so colourful and animated and they love the simple, good things in life... The place we stayed was awesome, and we were surrounded by vineyards, in which the locals were working hard getting in the grapes for next year's vintage...

Also a highlight was Trattoria dal Billy where I enjoyed the best Italian food I've had. Billy himself was a highlight, but the menu was amazing. Chris doesn't really love seafood, but at the recommendation of the lovely Italians sitting next to us we shared a squid ink seafood pasta which even Chris loved, which I think shows how fresh the seafood is if even a non-seafood lover is impressed. We sat here waiting out a pretty wicked storm, watching the lightning crack over the vineyards. The place was full of characters, including one of the waiters/owners - when I asked him if he was the brother of the owner of our room, he said 'yes, bastard' and never came back and served us again! I kept seeing him around town and hiding from him after that...guess you had to be there for that to seem funny, but it was!

Near Riomaggiore train station - no need for a car, just the train and your walking shoes

Manarola main street

The equivalent of the Saturday morning sausage sizzle in Monterrosso

View from Aria Di Mare where we stayed, in Manarola, the second of the five villages

With a balcony like this, no need to go out...


Looking back to Manarola


Manarola is carved into a hillside rock and is supposedly the oldest of the five towns

There are heaps of walking trails around the Cinque Terre and most of them uphill; my calves felt like knives were digging in some days!


Also heard so many Aussies on the trail - most Aussies I've ever heard on one of our trips. That Getaway story must have worked...


And Bulli insisted on exploring off trail - you can see him in the green shirt. This was after he got up a bit tangled up in the scrub below when he went off the beaten track. I had to use my zoom to try and find him...

Up among the vines. We bumped into our host Maurizio up here. The locals work so hard in the vineyards. One stormy night we could see the torches of three people up on the hill working late in to the night...

A wave from Chris from the top of the tower in Vernazza, town number 3

View near the Convent in Monterrosso

Up in the hills, way above the walking track

Local wine and snacks from a lovely wine bar and garden

From a park on the point in Manarola

Vernazza

A walk before the storm

You can dive into the swimming hole this way...

Or this way...

From Riomaggiore to Manarola is the via dell'amore (love path). There is a path where people have written love message in graffiti in the old tunnel, or something that has been added since I was there five years ago are the padlocks to symbolise love, romance etc etc

Our lovely balcony at Aria Di Mare, seriously one of the best places I stayed in terms of views, value, location, everything...