300 Miles to go

I think I have landed in paradise, well, ‘Paradise’ is literally about 20km down (or rather up) the road, so I’m not too far off in my current setting; 300 miles from the nearest traffic light. I get to wake up every moring with a view of (slightly) snow-capped mountains stretching into the horizon in every direction, and the ever changing colors of lake Wakatipu. I don’t think I have seen the lake retain the same color for more than a few hours. Brilliant blue, turquoise, grey, green, brown from river sediment; calm and reflective, fierce and white capped. Such is my view, day in and day out.

I set up a Christmas tree yesterday. It is light until 10pm and Midsummer is little more than a week away, yet Christmas is coming; so strange… Even Orion is in the sky, who’s midnight rising I used to watch on those first cool nights of autumn; becoming a permanent fixture by Midwinter on his yearly circle round the heavens. The rest of the sky remains quite foreign to a northerner’s eyes, yet I’m sure they have their own tales of conquest and tragedy, love and defeat; as we find in the north.

Be weary of reading books about travels while traveling onesself, you may find yourself never looking at home on a map again, much less, occupy your thoughts…