"Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies,": living the fishing dream in NZ

The Tongariro river is world famous for its trout fly fishing. The closest I remember ever coming to holding a fishing rod was scooping for minnows with a green net and cane in the rock pools at the edge of the North Sea. But as you know ´proper´fishing is unbelievably expensive at home. In New Zealand you can buy an annual licence for just over a $100 that allows you to fish in any river anywhere in NZ for no extra cost. Not bad, eh!?
Unfortunately, we seemed to be starting the sport at the deep end. Fly fishing is apparently the highly skilled end of the sport. Like sword fighters, the skill of fly fishing is considered to be more of an art form. By the end of our afternoon we clearly understood why!
Our guide was a lovely old fishing veteran called John Sommervell. He had big rough hands full of cuts and large patches of callous skin from standing waist deep in running water holding on to his tackle for years on end. (Sorry, mum!) His jacket had tens of pockets, all full of essential fishing gear and ´stuff´. He had recently returned from a trip to the rivers in Mongolia fly fishing for taimen, a long distant cousin of trout. He was one of only 3 to catch one. We knew he was good.

He was adamant that we learnt the basics of fly fishing properly. Other guides apparently showed people how to cast off and then took over form the client and caught the fish for them. Waders on, we were READY TO FISH! It was a lot to take in. We learnt all about loading the rod and casting off, then about the ´presentation´of the fly on the water. After about 1 and a half hours of practise we were ready to give the real thing a go. The problem now was trying to coordinate all the things he had been telling us. My mind was a blur. No wonder it takes years to learn and become good at it. He teased us with tails off people who had caught a fish on their first cast. We weren´t to be so lucky. The real difficulty is that you don´t actually feel when you have got a fish on the fly. You have to watch the floating guide like a hawk. If it moves, dips or does something strange, chances are you have a strike. Then, you yank the rod with your right arm and pull the line with your left to hook the fish on the fly. What followed was about 2-3 hours of us both concentrating really hard and then desperately yanking the rod to see if we had a strike. John stood behind us and watched over us, occassionaly screaming ´STRIKE´as an indication that we needed to react. Unfortunately, the reaction time between a strike and reacting with the rod is less than a second. After 5 hours standing in the middle of a fast moving river, neither of us had caught anything. We hadn´t even come close. But John was very complimentary about our casting style and presentation. We both really enjoyed it (I would love to have another go) but today wan´t to be our day.

Fast forward a couple weeks to a boat drifting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the Bay of Island in the North of NZ. This time we were fishing for red snapper. No fancy technique this time, just a rod, a very long line and a bucket of sardines and mullet. More of a waiting game than an artform, we started hooking up some smaller snappers after about an hour. Unfortunately, they were too short at under 30cm to keep and we had to throw them back. Goldfish, the skipper called them!

Another hour passed and still we had caught nothing. The skipper decided to move the boat and change the bait from sardines to the more expensive mullet. Within 5 mins I could feel a much bigger wait on the end of the line. This is the feeling I had been wondering about and waiting all this time for. My mind rushed away with images of the catch and pictures of me arms fully stretched holding the prize. As the hook got near the top of the water, the skipper wondered if it could be a John Dory. When it flipped and splashed itself out from the waves it showed itself to be a a a.. a... SHARK! If only a smallish school shark. Still, I had caught a shark. Cool!. "I think we´re gonna need a bigger boat!" (and more quotes from Jaws sailed around my foolish head). Sadly, the spritely youngster caught itself in Kathy´s line and twisted and jerked itself into such a mess that it took the skipper ten minutes of cursing, swearing and bopping the poor shark on the nose to release it.

Not long after we started getting lucky with some gurnard (they have colourful fins and look more like butterflies). Thankfully we were allowed to keep them. Our dinner tonight was banking 100% on this trip! The skipper dismissed them as carrots. Although it was unusual to catch them, he still wasn´t impressed. His trip in the morning had proved very fruitful for nice large snappers, he felt he was letting us down. The truth was that Kathy and I were overjoyed to catch anything at all after our last trip. We didn´t care. We felt like true seadogs at last!
By the end our total catch between us was 3 goldfish (snappers), 5 carrots (gurnards) and 1 great white (school shark)! The skipper sent us packing with our freshly filleted gurnard and the wings off the snapper he had caught in the morning.
Dinner that night in the camper van was sensational. Mashed tatties, mushrooms and spinach tossed in garlic and pan fried fish (tossed in seasoned flour).
Breakfast was almost even better! The leftover tatties and fish were transformed into fishcakes. With a big dollop of Watties (made by Heinz but spicier) tomato ketchup we scoffed them overlooking the waters where we had done our hunting the day before. I felt amazing, Kathy looked amazing, the fish tasted amazing. Sometimes life does not get any better.

Breakfasting like a tramp: NZ

New Zealand feels like one massive outdoor playground for big kids. It is the home of the bungy jump and the home of the zorb; a giant plastic ball filled with water, that you climb inside and then roll down a big hill. The dramatic, achingly beautiful landscape is plastered all over Peter Jackson´s Lord of the Rings. Opportunities are endless for trekking (or tramping as Kiwis call it), camping, fishing, sailing, kayaking, rafting, skiing, snowboarding, swimming with dolphins, whale watching, penguin spotting or, as I already mentioned, flinging yourself off a bridge with a thick elastic band tied to your ankles. It was time for Team Kathole to wise up, get active and say "NO TO CHEESE!" But New Zealand also makes really good cheese and wine!! Well, after all that exercise you do need to unwind of an evening...

Our home for the next 3 weeks was to be a bright orange vehicle called a Spaceship. Half people carrier, half campervan, it had been cleverly fitted out with a DVD player, gas stove, double bed, fridge and plenty of storage space. We loaded up the van with a trip to Pak n´Save. It is the supermarket equivalent to Ikea. All the goods are stacked high for cheapness. The branding brought back distant memories of Fine Fare - I loved their smelly cheese n´onion crisps in the canary yellow bag... Kathy loaded up on oats for brekkie...

Cooking for ourselves for 3 weeks was a real luxury, even if it was in a camper van with only 2 burners and 3 pots. In between all the eating we did a fair amount of walking and hiking, (and swimming - it's a very cheap way to get clean as well as a bit of exercise) so we didn't quite turn into the flumps you'd expect after that ingredient list. Camping burns lots of calories, that's what I always say.
Of course, it´s always worst at breakfast time, which is the meal I have struggled with the most while we´ve been away. It´s not so bad for Athole - he can go till 1230 quite happily without much more than a cup of tea and a biscuit. But if I haven´t been fed by about 10 o´clock, I can become grumpy, unwilling and very, very stroppy. Poor Athole!

I think the least inspired breakfast we encountered anywhere was in Russia - pink, wet, limp hot-dog sausages with no skin; boiled to oblivion and then served semi-tepid with a choice of spaghetti or something unidentifiable that may or may not have been semolina or grits. On the side: tasteless cheese and raw onion with bad coffee and tea (8 spoonfuls of sugar obligatory). China wasn´t too bad so long as we were in hotels, although rice porridge with egg is singularly unappealing at 8am. Here in South America it is an unvarying diet of white bread, sticky, incredibly sweet jam, tea, coffee and relentlessly over- or under-cooked eggs. Yoghurt is an option, but it usually consists of sugar, powdered milk (milk dust as Athole calls it) and flavourings and e-numbers. What wouldn´t we give for a Markies fresh fruit greek yoghurt!

The worst was definitely Laos though - on our 3 day trek in the jungle we were treated to hand-caught frogs, boiled with land crabs and eels and served in a spicy soup. It is, of course, immensely rude not to try the food in that sort of situation, especially as our guide was the one who had been out at 3am in the fields catching the frogs. Athole and I cautiously nibbled at the legs of the frogs, peeling off the skin (they were boiled whole) and nodding enthusiastically. Meanwhile, our guide casually picked one up and bit its head off, chewing even more enthusiastically. Watching him chomp through the rest of the amphibian whole, we realised we were going to have to eat frog guts for breakfast. Eating the insides of something that lives entirely on flies is never appealing - at 0730 less so, but we both managed a bite or two before putting down our frogs. At which point our guide asked: "Are you finished?" and proceeded to eat our leftovers.

Luckily in New Zealand, we were self-catering, although trying to live as cheaply as possible. That meant one thing only for brekkie - porridge. I could eat it every day and not get sick of it, but Athole was ready for some cocoa pops after about 2 weeks. You should have seen his eyes light up when I figured out a way to make toast. Boiled eggs and soldiers was never such a treat!

Of course porridge gets you properly fuelled up for a big walk, of which we had plenty in NZ, so I think really we were very glad of the oats. Especially on the colder mornings where we had to turn the car around and wait for the sun to melt the frost on the windscreen while we had our porridge in the mornings! One of those mornings came before one of the best walks we had; in the ski-ing area on the north island. We set off around 9 and took about 3 or 4 hours, including a scramble up a steep, steep slope of shingle, to get to the most spectacular lookout across two extinct volcano craters, now formed into perfectly round and crescent shaped greeny-blue lakes. In the distance, we could see bigger and bigger volcanoes, all capped with shining, sparkling snow glinting in the sunlight. The sky was blue, we had great sarnies and biscuits at the top and we really felt like we had conquered the world. ( The only thing that could possibly remind us of our inferiority was the 60-ish man who jogged casually past us as we were huffing and puffing our way to the top. Bloody Kiwis.)

I think our other hardest walk was the Pinnacles, also in the north island, which was really tough - mostly because we had to climb stairs rather than walk alot of the way. The Pinnacles themselves are incredibly high, grey towers of rock, not far from Auckland. We set off to go half way up one of them, and found that the track we were following was originally made for timber-workers who invented a system of pulleys to harvest the enormous Kauri trees that were found in the area. They cut stairs into the rock in order to make the many trips up and down easier going in the rain and mud. We were getting puggled going up with just our daypacks holding water and a few mars bars - these guys must have been made of iron dragging all sorts of heavy equipment and tools up there! (Actually, it turned out they had horses and mules, but still.) Once we had reached the top, we could still see the Pinnacles above us, but it felt as though we were walking through the tops of the forest below, we were so high up.

There were many others - the scenery and landscape of NZ makes it impossible to go anywhere without discovering another lovely walk around the corner, and those two were the longest ones we completed. But I think Athole´s favourite was the Rob Roy valley, where we stomped our way up above the tree line in a really narrow valley to reach a mountainside that was just perfect - trees, snow, blue skies again and waterfalls cascading all over the sheer, rising cliff opposite ours. The only thing that was missing was a slug of rusty nail at the top!

See the stars under the stars

After Perth´s cool climate, it was a shock to land in the tropical heat of Broome in the North West of Australia. Fortunately it was a dry heat; not like the soggy conditions our peely wally Scottish bodies waded through in Asia. A mere sniff of the nose was enough to bring you out in another flood of sweat, gushing unstoppably from every pore in you body. Sure, Linx? Don´t make me laugh! If I had protected my body in two layers of tightly wrapped clingfilm, the sweat would still have found an escape route in less than a minute.

The plane journey to Broome was a spectacular bird´s eye view drifting across the Australian outback. The red, arrid landscape defined by stunning shapes, tones and blended colours; stretched out below like an infinite Aboriginal canvas. The plane does a final low acrobatic turn and sweep over Broome´s perfect white beach and emerald Ocean waters before skimming the shore on its way to touch down.

Broome is expensive. Our accommodation is the overpriced and sketchy Cable Beach Backpackers, which we share with lots of stewdent travelers and a smattering of aging hippies in worn tie-dye skirts. Including the men. To save on money, we stuffer a 3 day self-inflicted stint of tuna and pasta. And here´s me thinking our impoverished student days were behind us. But the landscape around Broome is stunning. At Gantheaume Point, Ospreys nest in the top of the lighthouse tower and beneath the orange rocks dinosaur footprints can be glimpsed at low tide. A lot more is on show at the nudist beach adjacent to the main Cable Beach. We almost dared but I´m not sure the rest of the world is ready for quite that size of shock. "Just fine where we are, thank you!" The sands were pure and the water crystal clear.

One evening, after yet another mouthwatering feast of cold, limp tuna pasta, we headed for the Sun Picture´s screening of The Dark Knight. Sun Pictures, founded in 1916, is the world´s oldest outoor cinema. The wood panelled interior and rows of metal framed deck chairs are all original. They even project films on 35mm film and not some crappy knock-off DVD that their mate brought back from Bali . It has lots of history. In the early days, the local Aboriginals (black fellas) were segregated from the rest of the white fellas. These days it struggles to attract many locals away from their recent import of Bali DVDs. Which is a travesty. The atmosphere is superb. "See the stars under the stars," is their poetic slogan. The atmosphere is also unique. Directly underneath the airport flightpath, a Quantas jet flies inches over the audience´s heads, literally tickling the tops of their ears during the early evening screening; and scaring the life out of any innocent newcomers!
Before our screening, we had been held transfixed with eery amazement at the spectacle of massive flocks (packs?) of flying foxes (fruitbats) silhoutted against the fading dusk sky. The film itself was tense, unsettling and truly excellent. Midway through the film a wayward, lone flying fox flew directly passed the screen, casting a huge batmanesque shadow across the picture. The audience shrieked in unison, then giggled collectively with nervous excitement and appreciation. You can´t scriptwrite that sort of thing. Movie magic!

Broome was also our point of entry into the Australian Outback, the largely unpopulated land that covers nearly 70% of the whole of Australia. Tim was our guide. He has had many previous occupations: former jockey, blcacksmith, diamond miner, taxi driver and more. He was also complaining of recovering from a cold as the Broome temparature had dared drop below 25C! Wimp! Our vehicle was a 4wd battle bus / tank that left little in its wake. It had a quaint basket of fruit positioned at the front, as if to show it was in touch with its feminine side too.
Our tank powered its way first of all to the sacred Boab Prison Tree. Boab trees (help ma Boab!) grow into adults of an awkward bulbous shape. As they grow they leave an empty chamber inside the trunk. In the dark days of the Colony many trees were used for imprisoning Aboriginals.
At Wijana Gorge we stood incredibly close to lots of shy freshwater crocs. I learnt that it is infact the saltwater versions that are the bad muthas of Crocodile Dundee legend. Tim says that him and his mates have been swimming here before. We were able to test out that theory at Tunnel Creek where we walked through shallow water containing freshwater crocs. Tim told us all about the Aboriginal folk hero Jandamarra who used Tunnel Creek as his hideaway. After initial violence, he adopted a campaign of non-violent protest with the police, against the treatment of local Aboriginals. He was able to trick, confuse and scare the white fellas for so long that local Aboriginals began to decribe his actions as magical and treated him like a living God. A fascinating story.

Our last 3 days in Oz were spent enjoying the chilled out European vibe of Melbourne. We messed around on the fabulous trams, visited art museums, walked in the botanic gardens, watched an historic AFL match on the telly (Dave would be SO proud) and purchased some very nice bottles of skinless wine. The main highlight, predictably, was food. In St. Kilda, the shore district of Melbourne, we found a very strong contender for the ´best fish and chip shop in the world.´ At ´Clamm´s´we devoured a blue whale´s helping of fresh fish, scallops, squid and Kathy´s favourite - the pineapple ring (I´m sure blue whale´s love pineapple rings too). With chips and a bucket of tartar sauce.