Afflicted with a severe form of nostalgia, we longingly looked at our pictures from the trip of our lifetimes, and noticed a lot of them which were worthy of publishing but did not have that luck. Here they are, in our third episode of Unpublished, spanning seven months of our life, from New Zealand to the USA to Central America.
To me and probably the whole Westernized world — minus the Māoris — Mount Ngauruhoe will only be remembered as Mount Doom, just like Nemo is the new name of the clownfish.
Difficult, then, not to imagine Frodo and Sam clambering up the rocky slopes of this volcano as I am peering at it. And where is the cave they entered to throw the Ring into the lava? I can’t see it. What? It was only a movie?
After one whole year of traveling, I had the first real blow of homesickness when we arrived in Wellington. I longed for my own room, my family and friends, for Swiss German, known places and European food. Constantly being on the move, meeting unknown people, discovering new places and cultures — I was fed up with all those realities that are the traveler’s day-to-day life. I needed a break, time to breathe and recover. Cooking my favourite dishes, drinking coffee and chatting with beloved ones on the other side of the globe helped a lot to ease my sadness and to start thinking forward again.
The last two weeks on New Zealand’s South Island consisted in a lot of driving and stopping on the way at famous sights. From the alpine scenery in Mount Cook National Park, we crossed the Alps to reach the West Coast with its famous Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers that are partly embedded in rainforest; only to arrive, a few hundred kilometers further north, at the marvelous beaches of Abel Tasman National Park. At the end of this road trip, I felt very tired for we changed our campsite every night and did not have time to relax properly. In this sense, I was relieved when we finally boarded the ferry to cross the Cook Strait and reach the North Island. But it also meant leaving this marvelous, diversified part of the world behind us…
Only a few hours drive away from Te Anau, we knocked at another door: Leanne and Richard, the parents of my friend Ben, had once hosted me after Ben and I had flown away from the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake; and, coming back to Queenstown, it was a pleasure to see them again. They warmly welcomed us at their new house, and, being true born and bred Kiwis, enlightened us with a lot of opinions about life in New Zealand, a country so far away from the rest of the world, at once isolated and protected by its distance.
Rummaging in our travel photos, we decided that it was time for yet another Unpublished episode. Again, just random pictures that are worth publishing but did not fit into our posts… A short travel through time and space, back to Asia — it already seems so far away — and beyond!
“Are you vegetarian?”
I goggled at the woman until it came to me it was a serious question.
“Um, no, why?”
“Oh Andrew couldn’t remember if you were vegetarian or not. You’re having tea at his place aren’t you? He’s cooking mussels.”
That is how, after having vainly looked for Andrew at his work, we ended up knowing we were having mussels for dinner before his colleague actually gave us the directions to his new house. The Hills had moved since my last visit, and apparently, they now lived a bit out of town.
We drove and turned back a few times before finding the house, set amidst meadows and pastures — and a golf course. As we went up the driveway, we had to pull over to let a 4WD pass the other way. Andrew was at the wheel.
“Hey guys! We’re just going sailing with Arlo — they’re in the back, in the garden! See you this evening!”
And he drove on.
