And so it draws to a close: the great New Zealand tour of '07 comes to an end. We rise early on Saturday morning, begin our journey in Auckland airport and eventually arrive at Cork airport some 27 hours later, probably without any intervening sleep.
I dropped the rental car back to Hertz a couple of hours ago. We covered just over 3,000 km in about three weeks. Not bad going, considering the longish stop-overs in Wellington, Kaiteriteri and Franz-Joseph.
I have just spent a most pleasant morning touring the vineyard of largest wine producer in New Zealand: Montana Brancott. They are in the middle of the grape-picking season, so the entire complex is a hive of activity and the heady smells of fermenting grapes, as those wondrous little yeast creatures perform their magic and produce/generate/excrete alcohol. Such is the volume of fermentation that we couldn't even get into the main distillery complex; the carbon dioxide levels are apparently dangerously high.
Another day spent looking at glaciers: this time it was the Fox glacier, which lies a number of kilometres south of Franz-Joseph. While Fox is the smaller of the two, it is far easier to walk to, and it has more character -- if a glacier can be said to have character. Dawdled there for a while, but not too long as the weather is rather variable at the moment, though the south island has not experienced any of the terrible flooding the north island has.
A few words to keep you updated on the state of the podcast. While things have been on hold while I indulge in a few weeks of travel, Regina has been busily re-recording The Voyage and is in the middle of her finishing touches to it. So as soon as I get back home, I'll edit, process, splice and dice -- with luck, the second Worlds Abound poscast will hit the ether the week after next.
Fingers crossed ...
As with anything enjoyable, there is always a dark lining hanging around the silver cloud. In this trip's case, it has been sandflies. Sandflies ... evil. Evil, evil, evil little buggers that they are! Evil, unrelenting and insidious. And I have been their principle victim. Whereas Ian is unscathed and Aidan lightly dined upon, I'm covered in bites and welts. I look like a plague carrier in a pair of shorts, and trying to resist the urge to scratch myself all over is becoming increasingly difficult, not to mention embarrrassing in public.
