FACT: I stopped 150 meters short of reaching home.
car in river 1
RUMOR: Nobody was hurt.
car in river 2
ACTION: NZ Police sent a rescue diver straight away.
car in river 3
CHARITY AUCTION: Due to the tidal nature of this river (Heathcote Estuary, Canterbury, New Zealand), free test-drives are being offered only at low tide. You may book one by registering on our website.
car in river 4
I had a very dense trip back, not much time to write and hardly any time to take photos. I shall mention only one thing. I flu Emirates from Dubai to Sydney – 14 hours upstairs in the business class section of a new Airbus 380-800. It is a good experience.
After such a long flight, you get to your destination fresh and relaxed. Unless you spent too much time in their well-appointed round bar. It is through one of the bar windows that I took these photos of the Terminator – the line between day and night, which I reached just above the Equator over the Indian Ocean.
It is not such a fine line between day and night as one would expect.
This ends my three weeks trip. However, I have plenty of stories and photos that I may share in this mockoblog at a later date. Thanks for following me and sorry to disappoint if my travel accounts have been few and far in between. There are times to write and times to read. My trip to Europe and surely back was about living above all.
I’m leaving Dunedin today.
This is Air New Zealand style! This is arguably the friendliest national carrier you’ll ever fly. My propeller flight is one hour late thus they put me into a jet half an hour early. I’m just about to board the Boeing that takes me back to Christchurch. It may actually take a while, as this aircraft has just landed and passengers are still coming through to the terminal. The weather has been desperately strange during these less than 24 hours in town: 27 Celsius yesterday afternoon and 7 at night, sunny in patches today but very cold Antarctic wind. (…)
On board now: This plane again is packed, many youngsters, exchange students from Otago University, I guess. And only three little kids all of them crying and all of them seated just behind me. I had taken window seats with my booking, but yesterday a farmer’s wife sat on mine and I surrendered the room with a view. (…) Again I had my Nokia switched off for takeoff. We are flying over the Pacific and all I can see is deep blue water.
We are announced that the weather in Christchurch is pretty bad: wintry drizzle. This is supposed to be summer. At least in Dunedin I could walk for a couple of hours and I took these photos of houses, churches, the old railway station and the new Chinese Gardens, where I enjoyed a cup of oblong tea.
Now, as we approach Christchurch, we’ve caught up with the clouds. This flight is so short for the 737-300, that it actually climbs to 25,000 feet and it then starts descending straight away. This time all flight attendants are quite nice, but a blonde in particular is very easy to look at (sorry, no picture). I should have booked an aisle seat. The service is minimal: a choice of packed snacks and a glass of mineral water but that’s more than enough for about 35 minutes in the plane. Four our peace of mind, the captain told us not to worry this flight is running late, it’s just a replacement for the one that broke down (because it was replacing one that had broken down?). Then the captain goes on and on about what we can see outside (if you are on the western side you can). Then we land. No sign of drizzle. Just a quick note: today Air New Zealand commemorated 30 years since its only crash involving passengers. This was on Mount Erebus, in Antarctica.
Soon I’ll have to carry on with the English girl’s story.
(Later in that flight)
No wonder I couldn’t read the secret meaning of her bracelets. Something was terribly wrong! And it wasn’t then, no, then it was just beautiful, the comfort of the guilty feeling when you know for sure you can’t be guilty at all. The wrong part only comes now, as I write: I have just realized that it takes a wee bit of Dali and quite a strong dose of Picasso to make the hand and arm of the English girl in the KLM flight perfectly match the described position with her book, blue jeans, white fingers and the arm rest of my seat. She was young, all right. Attractive over the limit, all right (in a 22-hour one-stop flight who wouldn’t be?). But contortionist, no way! Russian ballerina, no way! How was she, actually?
Now, as I remember, she was asleep. Or so she seemed.
She moved slightly as the plane shook from some lateral wind and the light dimmed and most kids cried but only a few mums shushed. Her left leg crossed over my right one, which was a severe violation of my private economy class space but I could see no air marshals or even better looking hostesses, so I chose not to induce any panic on board and I did not complain. The light got dimmer but not fast enough to prevent me from seeing her fragile, almost argyle, agile, ankle. A while.
She was wearing sandals: vandal’s teeth marks, shark’s in her flesh, fresh. I didn’t like her much. So I didn’t touch. I looked at my watch. There was NO time. Just a chime. We were stopping soon, in Bangkok, at noon.
——
NOTE: By mistake or just randomly chosen, the airliners featuring in this post and the previous one replace British Airways and its partners, with whom indeed I flew. This is thanks to a charge they applied to my MasterCard for trying to contact over their satellite (?) phone a number on the ground, as I was flying over. It was something like 30 US a minute for NOT getting through. I wrote to British Airways and that letter came back at some expense, too. But never mind, the girl was real. I just picture her in a plane belonging to a company I am more comfortable with.