I am New Zealand born and bred and have always had a home base in New Zealand, principally Wellington, which is my favourite city in the World. Wellington was named as the 4th top city in the world to visit in 2011 by Lonely Planet Best in Travel 2011. It went on to say: “In the case of Wellington, Best in Travel 2011 suggests that New Zealand’s most innovative and inspiring city might just be the ‘Coolest Little Capital in the World’.” Best in Travel 2011 writer Catherine Le Nevez describes Wellington in the book as “Cool-with-a-capital-C”. The abundance of arts and cultural events, the culinary and film scene, and the city’s attitude to sport are among the things that make the Wellington stand out. http://www.wellingtonnz.com/media/lonely_planet_acclaim_coolest_little_capital_world I have been very lucky in my life in that I have had many opportunities to travel over the past 55+ years and some years, because of work related matters, I have spent up to 60-70% of the year overseas. As a result I have visited around 70 countries (and I do not count touch downs for fuel stops or to drop off passengers where I have just stayed in the transit lounge), but I have counted Lichtenstein, where we stopped for around 30 minutes for afternoon team and an ice cream for the children,
The Vatican for a couple hours for the tour, and Sri Lanka for 13 hours during which time I made two presentations (at lunch straight off the plane from Chennai, and at dinner) and had 4 other meetings before catching the 1 am flight to Singapore, but they all count. I recently found an App on which I mapped all the countries I have visited – see map right. Having visited some 70 countries there are many more I want to visit, as we go to other countries to see and do things rather than holiday lying by the pool and we still have many places of interest to see. People keep saying to me you should write down your travel “war” stories and adventures, so this site is just some of my travel stories and experiences, which I hope you enjoy. I am happy to answer travel questions where I can and also put up other peoples’ travel stories if they want to share or have had different experiences at the same place. This Blog is for people to enjoy and maybe get ideas as to places to visit or get the confidence to strike out and do independent, structured or flexible travel.
When we first started travelling we kept dairies and took lots of photos, but then we just travelled. So where I find old photos I will share them and as I write some of these stories I will use the internet and to assist my memory and I will also include these cross references back to the internet sites so that the reader can click on the links and see more information if they are interested. I am not a travel agent, although travel agents that I have used have asked me from time to time to help with how to get to certain places or to provide helpful hints for their clients.
These days I am retired and this is a way of sharing my experiences with others while recalling various adventures and travels that we have done for our own enjoyment. When our children were younger we traveled with them, which makes for a different perspective in travels, but now we tend to just travel along on our own or travel with friends and do our own thing, and now we have grandchildren who we are starting to take on trips. My grown up middle daughter said our travels were the best education she had and we are trying to now do the same for our grandchildren.
Where did we get the wanderlust? In a sense my earliest travel recollection was travelling around the local farming district where I grew up with my Grandfather in an old Ford truck with a wooden built-on “twin cab” for carrying his workers around for his contracting business. The next recollection of travel I have is my mother taking me and my sisters up to Napier from our small country town on the Saturday train, the one that stopped at Te Aute College, a famous Maori Boy’s College, whose teams always beat us at Rugby when I was at high school and a high school who spawned many All Blacks – http://www.teaute.school.nz/history/detailed.html) to pick up the boys to take them up to Hastings to play rugby, so it must have been winter. This was a big adventure of about 30 miles on the train. I recall walking to the Marine Parade in Napier to see the sea for the first time. My first “overseas” trip was a school trip to Christchurch, coming down to Wellington on the train and then going across to the South Island on the inter-island ferry to Lyttleton to visit Christchurch for a few days – one of the things I remember was busing over the Port Hills from Lyttelton into Christchurch and stopping for breakfast at the “Sign of the Takahe” (which is still there and survived the recent Christchurch earthquake with only relatively minor damage http://www.signofthetakahe.co.nz/ ) and visiting a glass factory. My first flight was in my last year of secondary/high school on a DC3 from Napier to Auckland – so you can see I grew up the real “country boy”.
I did not do a “big OE” when I finished University as I was already working on a career path, but I am sure I got my wanderlust and desire to travel from my mother and father. My father was already in the Navy when World War II broke out and was one the first New Zealanders wounded in the war as has was on the Achilles at the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939 http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/battle-of-river-plate (On our trip to South American we went to Montevideo for the last day only to find that it was a Sunday and that they did not do the tour out to the wreck of the Graf Spee on Sundays – so a trip to be repeated). My wife and I were invited to the 70th anniversary celebration of the battle in Wellington in December 2009 and we were able to meet some of the survivors of the battle and one of whom was able to tell me about my father being wounded and carried below. My mother was even more adventurous in her day in that she sailed to England during the war and joined the Wrens (the Women’s Royal Naval Service; popularly and officially known as the Wrens) which was the women’s branch of the Royal Navy, and then returned to New Zealand as part of the original Women’s Royal New Zealand Naval Service that was established in 1942 http://rnzncomms.org/wrens/ and that allowed women to do the jobs of the men, so that they could be released to serve at sea. My mother and father were discharged at the end of the war and married on 1 September 1945.
My grandfather on my father’s side, the contractor I spoke of earlier had served in WWI in the Navy and his father, who I have always thought of as the 1st of our family to arrive in New Zealand and his father was Patrick, and they are buried side by side in Waipukurau cemetary. I always thought that Patrick was the 1st of our family in New Zealand, but I recently came across an article about a self-published book by Allan Arlidge, entitled ‘Captain Cook’s Discipline’ (Published by the author. 2013. ISBN 978-0-473-23794-3), which states that “The author chronologically identifies each seaman and the cause for discipline in the context of the voyage. The log or journal entry for each instance is identified. Examples of floggings during August 1771 serve as cases in point. On 4 August, AB John Marra received his second punishment of twelve lashes for “behaving insolent to his Superior Officer.” This was right at the end of Cook’s 1st voyage to New Zealand so this leads me to believe that John may have been the 1st of our family to visit New Zealand, and I think my father inherited his temperament.
On my wife’s side, her mother was a water colour artist, and traveled by cruise ship to England every second year and based herself out of the London Youth Hostel – she still had a youth hostel card at the age of 76. My wife still talks of cruises around the Pacific with her mother and also of the trip she did to Vancouver (via Hawaii) to spend some time with her brother who was doing post graduate study at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and how she and her mother did a 99 day for $99 Greyhound tour across Canada and back across the US while her brother was doing his final study and sitting exams. They did not actually travel for 99 days, but that was how the ticket was advertised, and this will be a subject of a story later.
So please enjoy our adventures from the past 45+ years.