Swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura
Moth and I fell in love with the little town of Kaikoura on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Until very recently it was just another sleepy coastal settlement, with a bit of a crayfishing going on, but mainly it was a hub on the main road south for the livestock farmers in [...]
I love keas
The one place you don’t expect to see parrots is in cold mountains. But such is the evolutionary weirdness of New Zealand’s fauna, this is exactly where the kea(Nestor notabilis) ma…
I love penguins
I find it impossible to look at penguins and not smile. So I was happy to discover that New Zealand is home to a number of species of penguins, some of which I hoped to see when we visited that extraordinarily beautiful country last month.
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California wildlife: elephant seals
A week before we went to California, my Californian friend Karen tipped me off about a rookery of elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) at Point Piedras Blancas seven miles north of San…
California wildlife: ground squirrels and sea otters
We found a motel at Morro Bay and as we checked in, the bloke running the place noticed me pick up a postcard of a …
California wildlife: monarch butterflies
Moth and I broke our journey down to New Zealand in California, stepping off the plane in Los Angeles in January. After staying one night with Karen, a friend just north of LA who made us so very welcome in her beautiful home, we drove up the Pacific …
Paul Gauguin’s grave
On the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa artist Paul Gauguin is buried. I’ve had a strange relationship with Gauguin over the years; I’ve admired his single-minded vision, his bold compositions loaded with meaning and his dazzling use of colour. But I’ve always been uncomfortable with his abandoning his family and taking teenage Tahitian brides, and [...]
Jacques Brel’s grave
Jacques who? Like you, I knew nothing of Jacques Brel until I kept bumping into him during my research into the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa. In the French-speaking world singer-songwriter Brel is as famous, as legendary and revered as perhaps Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen is in the anglophone world. Such is his popularity [...]
Tikis at the edge of the world
The French Polynesian islands of the Marquesas, make up the archipelago farthest from any continent in the world, lying more than 3000 miles from Mexico. Being so remote and isolated for so long, the islands are home to rare flora and fauna. The archi…
