The Catlins to Dunedin

Of course, this blog is now ludicrously behind schedule, and will surely have to be rounded up once we get back to the U.K.

But back to South Island. After the diversion to Bluff, we drove back though Invercargill and then east. First across low-lying farm country, with big crowds of sheep and cattle in  wire-fenced grassy paddocks (delightful though our Devon hedge-banks are, it is nice to  see across the landscape from the roads, like the open-field farmlands of mainland Europe). Distinctive modern markers of pastoral New Zealand are the strings of baled silage (or hay?) that line the edges of many fields. If you could romanticise plastic, the bales are like huge round beads in jade green or blue. Quite how they use the animal feed they contain is not clear.

But then into the Catliins – a superb quiet rural district in the far southeast corner of South Island, where the Foveaux Strait becomes the Pacific. It is a remote land of deep forest or bush and wild coast. Now that the highway through has been paved, the Catlins attracts a fair number of visitors, although it is still well off the main tourist trails.

Some come for the surfing – including at Porpoise Bay / Curio Bay, where Mike Higson’s friend was attacked – very seriously – by a rogue shark not so long ago. Not a common event (it made the news) and the chap survived after being airlifted to Dunedin. So we were not tempted into the waves. But we had a good look at a very striking array of fossilised trees and tree stumps on the beach here. Luckily, it was low tide, so we could get close – while taking care not to do any damage to the amazing survivals from forests that thrived millions of years ago.Examining fossilised tree stumps and trunks at Curio Bay, Catlins

The road winds up and down and round and round, through forested hills and occasional isolated patches of farmland. We eventually arrive at Papatowai, a small rural resort overlooking the estuary of the Takahopa river where it enters the sea over a foaming bar. We’re booked into the Southern Secret Motel, which offers a mere four rooms. As per the email from owner Craig, our room number is beside our names on the office door and the room door is open. We have a balcony that looks out onto luxuriant green bush, alive with exotic bird song. The fluteing calls of tui and bellbirds are the sound signature of Papatowai.Balcony at Southern Secret Motel, Papatowai

As it’s a motel, we have a basic kitchen – which is a godsend as the nearest cafe is miles back down the road. But nearly opposite there’s a small petrol station and store. Although the business is for sale, and the owner has a weary end-of-season air, there are some survival rations on offer on the sparsely-stocked shelves – enough to let us cook up a pasta meal.
It’s a lovely sunny evening, so we find our way down past a straggle of appealing holiday homes and a back-to-the-land enterprise that bids passers by: ‘help yourself to veg’. The road goes down to the beach fringing the mouth of the estuary. We walk along serenaded by birdsong from the thick bush above the beach.  as far as a rocky headland. On the far side of the gleaming river, lies thick low forest that lets us imagine pristine jungle. Close by as we walk along the tideline, there are black oystercatchers as well as the usual red- and black-billed gulls. It is a delightful spot – a fair attempt at paradise. We go back down the next day for a superb morning jog.Jogging on Papatowai BeachTahakopa river estuary, Catlins
It’s hard to judge how well the Catlins is faring. It should be able to attract many Kiwis and visitors who want some solitide amid convincingly pristine nature (although the area was in fact intensively logged in the earlier 20th century. But it could be a challenging, isolated place to live unless the quasi-hermit lifestyle appeals.

Towards the eastern end of the Catlins, things liven up a bit – it is closer there to Dunedin. We bump up the gravel road to Nugget Point, for dramatic views down onto stark, steep cliffs, where seals and sealions loll or paddle in the inaccessible seas below. Down on a fragment of flat land there are several spoonbills on nests.Spoonbills on nests, Nugget Point, Catlins

A little closer to civilisation llies Kaka Point. Some more conventional visitors here, camper vans and cars – but the beach still seems absurdly empty.Ruth on Kaka Point beach, Otago
We join the main highway to Dunedin. Can’t resist that fine piece of roadside heritage, the Old Sod Cottage outside Milton. The little place was used as a kind of hostel by miners en route to the Otago gold rush. Most callers probably stop for surreptitious corny poses by the sign…

Not for us the straight run into Dunedin… Instead we dive off over a steep range of coastal hills to find the coast road. The there’s ‘Brighton’, Otago version – big crowds  on the beach on a sunny Sunday! Brighton beach – actually just past Brighton en route to Dunedin

Next: Dunedin and the nature paradise on the Otago Peninsula

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still at the Edge of the World…

The chirpy receptionist in the Homestead Villa Motel in Invercargill assured us we really should take a side trip down to Bluff, the port right at the southern end of South Island, and about 15 miles from Invercargill – but in the wrong direction from our intended drive east into the Catlins area (more to come on that wonderful area…).

So we couldn’t resist. We drove over the flat land  between Invercargill and its port, which sits on an estuary overlooked by ‘the Bluff’ itself = a prominent rocky hill. Sunny weather gave the place bit of a leg up that, objectively, it needs. It is still a port (timber out, buxite fro the aluminium smelter in). But the glory days are past. In the days of regular passenger shipping, Bluff was the nearest port to Australia and the long run from Europe via Suez. In its heyday all the mil for Souh Island arrived there. Old shipping warehouses, offices and hotels linger on the main street, where fitful businesses scratch a living from local residents and the trickle of tourists, fortified in places by bright paint. The visitors are probably a mix of the curious who can’t resist the lure of the end of the road, and more intrepid travellers taking the ferry to and from Stewart Island, across the (often stormy) Foveaux Strait. This crossing has a reputation to match the trip to Scilly for dire warnings about lethal sea conditions.

We follow the shore road round to Stirling Point, with its finger post photo-op showing distances to far flung places. London is expecially far flung – just short of 19,000 km away. There’s also a ‘Lands End guesthouse’.  So a double dose of the signpost here:

Then up the spiralling road to the Bluff lookout for gorgeous views along the coast  and out across the sea to the alluring mystery of Stewart Island , which is largely a  remote wildlife paradise, complete with real uncaged kiwis. But it could have been wet and windy = which is probably the normal fare in Bluff.View east along coast from hill above BluffWelcome to Bluff…who needs a Hilton?
An Irish-style dependence on paint? And art deco glory.

Rather sadly in a way, we retrace our route back to Invercargill nd head east towards the beckoning Catlins, which deserves its own post ASAP.

 

 

Down to the Edge of the World and birds…

We’re actually on North Island, but I’ll try to dredge up some memories of the far south. We spent to nights in the Te Anau Youth Hostel for the trip to Milford Sound. A nice enough hostel and a generally pleasant lakeside resort.

On the way out of town, we called in at the bird sanctuary near the lake, which we reached via a good tramp through low woodland. We got there ust in time to join the little group on the ‘feeding the takahe’ tour. Takahe are striking flightless birds, a bit like blue-green chickens with ostentatiously stout red beaks. But they are seriously endangered in the wild – indeed extinct from most of New Zealand. Like so many native birds, they have been decimated by intruders – especially rats and stoats, which plunder their eggs. They were actually thought to be extinct until rediscovered in the very remote Murchison Mountains on the far side of Lake Te Anau in the late 1940s. Since then there has been a careful breeding programme with releases back into remote wild places, especially offshore islands. But there are some in centres like the one at Te Anau. So we got a good close-up gt them, looking happy enough in their enclosure. And omnivorous enough to like sweet corn.

Takahe eating its sweetcorn breakfast, Te AnauThere’s wild takahe somewhere over there…

Then on south, along wonderfully empty roads, through farmland and forest. A quick stop to see a bit of local heritage – the late 19th century bridge over the River Waiau at Clifden. Whoever built it must surely have seen the Clifton Suspension Bridge…Clifden Suspension Bridge, Southland NZ
We’re heading into the far southwestern inhabited corner of New Zealand (witht he wild and inaccessible Fiordland further west. We stop at Riverton, on a tidal inlet. It’s still a small fishing port, but had a vigorous heyday in the early 20th Century when it milled and exported huge amounts of timber. It’s only a small town now, but has a really great modern little museum. They’re obviously very proud of their identity down on the edge. Riverton is no bigger now than Bere Alston. Does Bere Alston have a museum…???Surely everybody’s excited to see this Johnson Type A geared logging locomotive – pride and joy of Riverton Museum? Must be one of the southernmost steam engines in the World.

The on to Invercargill, New Zealand’s city in the far south. Doesn’t often get high praise in tourist books. But I thought it was great, with its sprawling main street, and that cheerful disregard for order and coherence that is rather an NZ speciality. I didn’t get the chance to take photos of the town centre – big regret. Or of the absolutely superb Queen;s Park, with masses of trees, open space, beautifully tended gardens (loads of perfect roses) – and performance of Twelfth Night (which we also couldn’t see, sadly).
We stayed in the brilliant Homestead Villa Motel – a huge living room with kitchen and separate bedroom. We’d have been tempted to stay for longer of we had known what motels offer in NZ.At home in Homestead Villa Motel, Invercargill

 

 

 

 

Milford Sound

Another very hasty and even more delayed trawl through memory – battling against the hiost of other images and impressions. Typed in the Base Hostel, Auckland. The only things that this location and Milford Sound have in common are: a) both definitely in New Zealand and b) both definitely on the global tourism circuit.

But we made the inevitable pilgrimage to Milford Sound from our YHA hostel in Te Anau. A memorable drive, up a forested river valley into the gathering mountains. These get increasingly stark and dramatic as we climb, with steep dark slopes of hard rock and glimpses of snow higher up. Then we reach the portal of the Homer Tunnel, which is overlooked by a vast, textbook example of a glacial ‘cirque’ (i.e huge bowl in the face of the mountain, where a glacier once sat, slowly grinding out the rock faces.

Glacial Cirque by entrance to Homer Tunnel

The tunnel is quite narrow, and therefore one way only, so we wait at the traffic light for a few minutes. Then we join the convoy down the sloping road through the mountain, with occassional ominous drips form the roof. Not a place for the imaginatively claustrophobic. We emerge into what seems to be fog. But in fact it’s just a band of cloud and we spiral down into clear air for the final drive to Milford..

We are lucky to get a space in a car park fairly near the boat terminal – but already there are big crowds of visitors and a long line of camper vans. The boat terminal is just like an airport, with brightly lit check-in desks for the various boat operators. We are not ashamed that ours is the ‘Jucy’ boat, with lime green advertising and a jaunty party air. But it is a lot cheaper than some – and turns out to be respectably sober. The various boats load up with hundreds of eager visitors and glide out to be dwarved by the vast scale of the fjord.

We escape both of Milford’s infamous features: we get no rain and viirtually no sandflies (aka midges). Although Milford Sound has been ‘familiar’ for many years in travel magazines and also other travellers’ photos (lots of good shots by Nic!), and is firmly on the global tourism trail, there is definitely no anticlimax . Our visit to the Taj Mahal so long ago also had that magical power that it soared above pre-conceptions. So a waste of time trying to find words to do the place justice. OK, then what about ‘awesome’? It will ahve to do. That near sheer slope plunging down from the just invisible sharp top of Mitre Peak is a over a mile long. You’re looking up a mile of vertical rock…

After many days of fairly dry weather only the two permanent waterfalls are hanging their white streamers down the walls of the fjord. We pass Lady Bowen’s Falls, then do the traditional thrill-seeking bit of edging right to the foot of the Striling Falls, with its rings of hissing spray. The after a glimpse of a grey but steady Tasman Sea, we turn for the return up the Sound to the distant boat dock – so tiny and frail against the huge scale of the mountains
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Mitre Peak – top not quite out of the cloud!

 

 

 

Back to Glenorchy

Another fairly quick post. Should have come before the rambling stuff on the trains at Kingston.
The day before, with our newly-acquired Nissan heels, we drove west then north from Queenstown’s crowds, following the wonderful shoreline of Lake Wakitipu to its northern head. With mountains looming over what could be the head of a sea loch in Scotland, it’s fair enough that some pioneer settler named the area ‘Glenorchy’. Up ahead, dark peaks slide in and out of cloud. There are glimpses of permanent snow up there, especially on the imposing Mt. Earnslaw, which gave its name to the celebrated lake steamer. Until about 50 years ago, Glenorchy was entirely dependent on the old lake steamers for contact with the outside world. Most of the time they were on their own in their mountain fastness. Even a visit to Queenstown would have been a long day’s boat trip.

Glenorchy is a loosely laid-out, laid back sort of place.A scatter of holiday homes, lodges and residences – and a few shops. It’s a setting=off place for some of the long-distance ‘tramps’ such as the Routeburn Track over to Milford Sound. But our trekking is less  ambitious. But still delightful – a circuit of the wetlands  at the head of the lake, where the rivers (including an NZ ‘Dart’) have formed a kind of delta, now full of lagoons, marshes and low woodlands. The reserve and its path is superbly managed, with sturdy boardwalks between willows and over the wetter bits. The small lakes are flecked with birds. The star residents are the many black swans and paradise shelducks (the females have striking white heads).

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The clouds thin and fade, to give us a warm afternoon, with the lake water rippling in bright sunlight. Now free of cloud cover, we can see the small glacier plunging down its distant flank.  But Earnslaw looks remote and forbidding, even in sunlight.
Glenorchy: mountains beyong the head of Lake Wakitipu with Mount Earnslaw to the right (glacier just visible!)

Ruth is brave enough to go for a swim. After the inevitable chilly water shock, the glorious surroundings make it a seriously glorious dip.

 

 

 

 

 

Running behind time: a quick encounter with the Kingston Flyer

This blog is already almost fatally retarded, due to a combination of spending too much time processing the ridiculous number of images already in the camera, other distractions and (especially) a constant battle between the Toshiba laptop and frail internet connections. Given I’m currently on one of those frail links, here’s a shortish contribution. It will not enthrall unless you are a steam railway enthusiast. And it will be a bit out of sequence. Better stuff to come – eventually.

We caught the rather expensive local Connectabus from Queenstown along to Frankton, the cheerfully functional outlyer of Queenstown around the airport. We quickly find the Ace Car Rentals office on arrival at the airport. Formalities were over swiftly and we get our keys. Our vehicle for the South Island trip is not the expected Nissan Tiida, but an altogether plumper sedan – a Nissan Bluebird, with wooden trim to the dashboard and ample space inside. But the old thing has been around. The Ace rep points out a series of bodywork blemishes and scrapes. If I had not booked the extravagance of the extra insurance, I’d have been carefully photographing all the scratches to prove we had not inflicted them. There are  over 240,000 km on the Bluebird’s clock. But she glides along in a very stately fashion – once I have recalled to the basics of automatic transmission – such as the parking brake.

This tale is now seriously disjointed. We jump a day (may come back if time allows…). Where are those trains? Silent….

Kingston Flyer loco Kingston

Before the development of modern motor roads, people used to travel around New Zealand by train and boat. So to a standard way to reach Queenstown and other places on Lake Wakitipu, travellers came by train to Kingston at the southern end of the lake, then went the rest of the way on a steamer. The regular train link from Invercargill closed down many years ago, unable to withstand road competition, as throughout the country. But a short stretch became a heritage tourist attraction – as the ‘Kingston Flyer’. But it flies no more, for the line has closed and the rahter fine locomotives and carriages lie silent, surrounded by tall grass. Kingston itself seems a near-ghost town. The tourism that took over for a time from the vanished bustle of the steamer quay and station has evaporated. Only a few curious enthusiasts bother to turn off the main road south. I read later of a plan to take the trains down to Invercargill as a new steam railway venture. But the cost of transporting the big black engines and various old coaches would be huge. Mybe Kiwi ingenuity will make it happen.  Otherwise the decay of the Kingston Flyer would be a grievous blow to world rail heritage.
The quiet shore at the Kingston on the southern end of Lake Wakitipu

 

More Queenstown: up Ben Lomond

I’ve given up trying to keep to a neat time sequence. Also given up trying to do proper justice to the place. So just a few fragments only.

Back on Sunday, we set out to climb Ben Lomond, which rises behind Queenstown and is a lot higher than its namesake by the famous loch in Scotland (which we have already climbed several years ago). We started up the Tiki Track that clambers up through the steep pine forests overlooking the town. The path brochure we bring along is unusually useless, for the track is not shown on its map, so we are not at all confident we are going in the right direction.

As we rise through the forest, we pass some of Mike’s ziplines that we dared a couple of days earlier.After an hour or so grinding uphill we are slightly surprised to emerge at the Skyline gondola station amid crowds of regular tourists who have ridden up on the cable car. Groups of Asian visitors browse the gift shop or board the chair lift to take them up to the ‘luge’, the relatively tame gravity-fuelled concrete racetrack that meanders around the Skyline centre. So this is a bizarre interlude in our otherwise stern trek up the mountain.

We stepped off this platform when we went on Mike’s zipline

We find the way to Ben Lomond (scarcely broadcasted among the luge and coffee pleasure grounds) – and set off back into deep forest, climbing all the way.  After a while the track emerges into increasingly hot sunlight as we pass the tree line. In fact, the upper fringe of trees is being ‘managed’ – i.e. the tress killed off for being alien Dougals Fir. The dead trunks and branches could be a bit of a fire hazard.

Lake Wakitipu from Skyline Gondola station with luge track and shepherd sculpture

The climb up to ‘The Saddle’ is rugged, stony – and hot. The silence is broken by the regular buzz of pairs of sightseeing helicopters heading back down over the ridge to their airport base. But most of the time, it is just stedy beathing as we tramp upwards, with the dark rocky heights fo Ben Lomond looking forbidding ahead and left.

The Saddle is where a path goes off right around to Arthur’s Point. Then lunch on a rock,  with huge views looking over to deep valleys and ridgeon ridge of mountains beyond. A decision: to be timid and turn back from here or press on up in the heat. Cowardice gets defeated and we set off, climbing steeply. There are, as so often, several ‘false summits’ to pass. A scatter of earlier climbers come past us on the way down, including somebody who looks like a Tamil – carrying absolutely nothing, not even a water bottle….

Eventually one of the helpful ‘not far now’ greetings sounds convincing.  The gradient softens a little as the track curls up  to the very welcome summit. Even up at 5400 ft it’s still hot. But we get there, to join a small gaggle of other victorious adventurers. Absolutely sublime, expansive views. What a wild rugged corner of the world. Brilliant.
View north from the Saddle on Ben Lomond track before the summit

Ruth on Ben Lomond summit – view to The Remarkables beyond Lake Wakitipu

A friendly girl from West Virginia offers to take our photograph. Joint portraits are rare, so it’s nice to get one up on Ben Lomond. And after a while, it’s time to set off back down the rocme, the descent is far more taxing than the climb up – largely becasue of my ill-chosen new walking shoes. My feet get seriously painful.  We try an althernative route down as promised by our footpath brochure. For  most of the way it is pretty reliable as we wind down back into forest. There is a moment of paradise as we reach a water tap  at the crossroads of several of the hairy downhill mountain bike trails that thread the woods. Refill  of bottles and another much-needed litre of refreshment.

After that, the path gets horribly indistinct and treacherous. And my feet are performing very badly. This is now NOT my favourite mountain walk – to the extent that when the first suburban concrete greets us it seems a blessing. Only two miles to go – curse these shoes…

Back into the boisterous, heaving streets of Queenstown, past the crowds shuffling in the Fergburger queue, and a brief visit to the Four Square supermarket along with all the other self-caterers. Then the final hot heave up steep suburban streets to rest, refreshment and shower.

But this is quite enough for this post…

 

 

 

 

 

Queenstown, NZ – part 1

We’ve been in Queenstown for five days, I think (time gets very ragged). So – far more to tell than my memory or endurance can manage. The stunning views from the picture windows and balcony of our luxury pad are becoming dangerously normal. Again, the last of the day’s sunshine has risen to the jagged crests of the Remarkables and finally faded as the evening falls. (The Remarkables is the chain of mountains that loom over the eastern side of Lake Wakitipu – ‘remarkable’ because they run almost precisely north to south). To the west, the waters of the lake have darkened from blue to silver to late evening grey. But beyond, on the western horizon, there is still final cream and orange light above the dark switchback of the mountains.

Below in evening Queenstown, the scene will be lively, with many a tawny hand grasping a bottle or two of Speights beer or Monteith lager, or queuing for the legendary ‘Fergburger’ http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/12/travel/fergburger-new-zealand/.

This is the hedonism capital of New Zealand, where the world comes to have a very good time. There is a vast array of options for the tourist dollar, by day or night. Of course, the top note is adventure tourism. The streets jostle with offices seeking to lure the daring or foolhardy to bungy jumping, canyoning, jet boat rides and more. And of course, Mike’s Ziptrek operation. The streets also flow, at a laid back pace, with youth that ranges from golden to downright nut brown.

But there has been a dramatic addition in the past few years. The Chinese are here in force. We’re in the Chinese New Year period, so maybe there are more than normal. But it’s clear that China has become a lucrative mass market for Queenstown’s tourist industry. Most tour offices now feature copious advertising in Mandarin script, and every corner bustles with a surprising variety of folk from China, including many families. Most chatter enthusiastically and most wield expensive phones – a constant capture of selfies. Although many are probably on organised packages, you also get the sense that many Chinese visitors are at least as curious and interested in discovering their surroundings as their Western predecessors – more so than many other nationalities, I suspect. There’s no doubt this new tourist tide is making an impact.

Today we took the very splendid steamer the TSS Earnslaw across the lake to Walters Peak high country (sheep) station. 80% of the passengers were Chinese. Having mentioned the Earnslaw, a brief eulogy. The ship was built in 1912 in Dunedin in NZ, taken to pieces, then transported up to the lake to be put back together. It has been working ever since – now superbly preserved as the only working coal-fired steamship in the southern hemisphere. It earns its keep handsomely, at least at this time of year, as it trundles 500 people at a time across the blue waters, with occasional wonderful if environmentally incorrect emissions of brown smoke from its tall red and black funnel. You can peer down to see the great twin steam engines rumbling up and down, as well as the stokers flinging coal into the furnaces that raise the steam. It gives an awesome hint of how really grim it must have been in the sea-going steam vessels of the past, where the coaling and tending of the valves and levers took place as the ships rolled and tossed across the oceans.
TSS Earnslaw under way!

The Walters Peak visit is now full-on mass tourism, with well-crafted choreography of the hordes of visitors who shuffle ashore on this farm complex on the remote southern side of the lake. Signs direct to the various routines on offer – the farm tour, the tea, coffee and cake (very good!), the sheep-shearing show. There are alpacas, wonderfully woolly Merino sheep and shaggy Highland cattle with outrageous horns (any hint of aggression long assuaged by the titbits offered by visitors, as supplied by the hosts). But it is all actually entertaining and pleasant – and the purpose-built complex by the jetty is surrounded by magnificent ranks of flowers – roses, dahlias, rich-scented lavender, all in tip-top condition. The sheep-shearing is fascinating, with a friendly and informative commentary. In the stiff heat of the summer, the demonstration ‘volunteer’ sheep is probably mighty relieved to lose that heavy fleece. We are told that the transition to feeling cooler encourages sheep to graze more vigorously, so they grow faster – and add more wool for next time.

Lake Wakitipu from Walters Peak

But more to come when time allows – it’s getting late, at ;east among the respectable suburban villas, if not down there in the bars and clubs.

Briefly, Australia and at last, New Zealand

After the previous over-wordy post – a shorter effort. But still not much New Zealand yet.

We flew overnight from Singapore’s magnificent Changi airport on a Singapore Airlines Airbus A330 (you needed to know that, surely…). Things got rather rough somewhere over northern Australia, probably due to a belt of thunderstorms around the Gulf of Carpentaria. So sleep = a bit disturbed. But the last hour towards Brisbane was smoother – and we had a fine morning to welcome us to Oz as we landed.

Our Australia experience was confined to the transit lounge. But light, airy, nicely informal. Then on board a Virgin Australia Boeing 737 across the Tasman Sea. The Tasman lived up to its reputation (‘…the Tasman is a stormy sea, as everybody knows’). We had one of the roughest rides I’ve had – with all the cabin crew confined to their seats for well over an hour. But at last the lurching ceased and we began to anticipate New Zealand. The west coast was in cloud (as usual?), but then came breaks in the cloud as we descended, and startling views down to inaccessible mountains. And then across to inaccessible mountains. We found a gap for the final sweep round down towards Queenstown. A really thrilling approach (not scary, given fair weather). We came down below mountain ridges on either side, flying down the valley just above a turquoise river before slipping smartly onto Queenstown’s fairly short runway and a roar of reverse thrust to brake us before the runway end.

Arrival procedures fairly formal, if friendly. Their main concern is ‘biosecurity’ rather than any hint of terrorism. Fruit, plant products and indeed any non-processed foods are strictly unwelcome. As are boots that have been into wilderness environments. You’d probably get them  into the country, but they might need a chemical shower first. And no wood either…

Out Superhuttle minibus transfer is waiting as booked and off we go from the airport to the wonderfully spacious Alfresco House with its massive views out over lake Wakitipu and the mountains beyond.  More to come….

 

 

 

 

Singapore 2 – and before

Clive and Ruth are definitely in New Zealand. But already being overwhelmed by sensations and impressions. So a retreat back to earlier points in the journey.

No images to show for this one, other than those burned into memory. The long flight from London is deep into its artificial night, with comatose passengers swathed in their grey Singapore Airlines blankets. All the window blinds are pulled down, but I dare to raise mine a little, to find daylight. The flight-progress map flickers confirmation that we are high above western Asia. It is Afghanistan, and utterly sensational. A vast, fractured, contorted land of stark dry mountains and deeply etched valleys – sweeping lines of eroded sedimentary rocks. All so alien, hostile, profoundly inaccessible. As we drift east, there’s glimpses of human presence, but tiny, fragile. I see a series of what appear to be clusters of walled compounds, dun brown on dun brown. Those places look so remote, with only the faintest of tracks wandering out into the wilderness. Do people still live there? Have they been scorched by the decades of turmoil? But then, a gentle persuasion form one of the elegant hostesses, keen to maintain the rigid impression of night within the cabin, so I reluctantly pull down my blind and struggle back to fitful sleep.

A meagre two days in Singapore. No – not ‘meagre’ days, for the city was such a vivid, absorbing place. Possibly ‘too good to be true’ (and faint hints of the Trueman Show in its apparent exemplary qualities)? But there is so much to impress. It works – in several senses. The urban mechanisms are so functional, be it the super-efficient MRT rail system or the remarkable cleanliness of the streets. And the place also works with much energy, enterprise and inventiveness, as celebrated in the glittering clusters of skyscraper towers or the myriad small businesses in Chinatown. And there seems to be hugely admirable social harmony. Singapore’s multicultural, multi-ethnic society is very consciously celebrated (for example in the excellent National Museum). As far as the superficial visitor can tell, the peoples that have come together here at the tip of the Malayan Peninsula have turned their diversity into vigorous strength – ‘e pluribus unum’, as the Drake family motto proclaims. They appear to live in day to day harmony without losing identities. We see just one policeman in two days – and he was simply overseeing a car that had been in a collision near our hotel. The city is famously ‘safe’ – yet appears to manage this without hordes of ‘police on the streets’.

At risk of sounding like a colonial apologist, I’m happy that the British role in Singapore is not downplayed or denigrated. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles still keeps watch from his podium outside the Victoria Concert Hall, and of course his gleaming namesake hotel still offers its flow of tourist visitors a taste of elegant colonial decadence. You can walk in past the luxuriant-uniformed doorman without any hassle, ‘security’ or indeed, a charge. We ramble the courtyards and balustraded staircases and sneak into the legendary Long Bar, but are too mean to order Singapore Sling cocktails like the more self-indulgent inmates.

Elsewhere, there has been no nationalistic renaming of streets, so it’s still Somerset’, ‘Exeter’, ‘Victoria’, ‘Cecil’… In Chinatown, Smith St is where you find the busy hawker food court. In the fine National Museum, the British role is presented without rancour – or gloss. There is a sense that residents’ perceptions of British imperial might were shaken by the easy conquest by the Japanese in 1942. Then the post-war period saw the inevitable move to independence. The end of British control seems to have been smooth enough. Perhaps more passion was spent on the brief merger with Malaysia before the towering figure of Lee Kwan Yew took Singapore to separate city statehood – and the road to today’s prosperity.

Among the many surprises – and be ready for a mundane one – few food shops and places to buy fruit and vegetable in the centre. Maybe because the heart of the city is full of high-rise living young professionals who prefer to eat out in a hawkers’ centre or one of the myriad of cafes and restaurants. But the five a day desert changes in Little India, a somewhat sanitised version of the real thing, but with enough differences to make it feel pleasantly exotic. Here on Campbell St, Dalhousie Lane and Dunlop Lane there are shopfronts piled with veg – baby aubergines, peppers, onions, gourds.

So Singapore was real treat, not least because of our delightful evening with Nooky and Shin Jie, who gave us such an interesting and entertaining intro to their city.

Keong Saik Hotel – on left! Hindu temple on right…

Ruth at Marina Bay, Singapore

Clive in Little India, Singapore

Marina Bay Sands building and Gardens by the Bay

Chefs working in Raffles Hotel, Singapore

Raffles Hotel, Singapore