Home Thoughts From Abroad

This was the theme for our Asia Pacific Regional CHE Conference held his past week in Cambodia. Around fifty of us gathered from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Canada and Australia for our annual working group meetings.

Poster presentations, because we have all had enough of powerpoints, from each country and some individual organizations gave us an overview of the CHE projects underway and created opportunities for great discussions and strategizing. The guest speaker was a psychologist from Canada who lead us through six sessions on “Healing Life’s Hurts-Dealing with Anger and Forgiveness”. Others spoke on human trafficking and the problem of “orphanages” which are a very common way of dealing with poverty and lack of access to healthcare and education, even in situations where there are parents in the picture.

On Wednesday afternoon, we drove about two hours out to visit in a number of villages which have used CHE for the past few years. It was good to hear villagers tell us of the improvements in their family lives, health, income, water and sanitation, vegetable gardens and crops since CHE was introduced to them. The last two days there were simultaneous workshops on Women’s and Children’s CHE.

What I appreciated most was the opportunity to exchange ideas with others who share my passion for community development and fully understand the challenges involved. The structure of my work and home life means that I rarely get time to sit down and talk with my co-workers. This week allowed me to meet with many key people from various countries and do some very specific planning for future projects and I needed it very badly.

The banner that graced the front of the conference room included this picture of the “Cambodia dream” that the head of Public Health for the organization we have trained in Moral Values had painted on his wall. The before issues are pictured on the left and after are on the right. Please pray for us as we continue to build relationships with our Cambodian colleagues, for this doctor who is carefully considering the lessons he has heard, and for the reality of this vision for Cambodia.

This is obviously a very idiosyncratic compilation and not meant to be a ‘best book’ list. I’ve done one of those before, and none of the books below are on it. This is more a look at what influenced me, decade by decade. I’ll start the tour with Superman comics. Silly I know, but given I was just 7 or 8 when I came across them, you’ll forgive my naïveté. This of course was the pre-Spiderman, Silver Surfer, ad nauseum craze, which I was just either too broke or too busy to get into. No, this was more out and out childish hero-worship. I read Batman as well, and England’s Dan Dare. But Superman with his corny idealism struck a chord that no other superhero could match. I traded him in on Captain Kirk when I got a little older, but I still have a soft spot for the Man of Steel.

In the Sixties my favourite book wasn’t a book either; it was the songs of Bob Dylan. It may seem like a long leap from one to other, but at heart they were both idealists. Superman hauled the bad guys off to jail on his invincible shoulders; Dylan expanded my understanding of who the bad guys were. He didn’t jail anyone, but his acidic jibes cut to the heart of a system I was already beginning to sicken of and nailed its hypocrisy to the wall. When he became a Christian towards the end of the decade, it sent shock waves through my cynical little world and woke me up to the logical consequences of my thinking. Yes, the world was sick with sin; but there was in fact a Saviour, and like Dylan I went off in search of Him.

The Seventies were full of philosophers and dreamers, and I read my way through many of them: Zen, Buddhism, Taoism, Bhagavad Gita, Khalil Gibram. But one writer towered above all the rest: C.S. Lewis. His Mere Christianity was powerfully convincing and irrefutably sound. I understood instantly why his radio broadcasts were more faithfully listened to than those Churchill during the war years. I dare anyone to read him and not have your atheism undermined by logic and reason. Reading Lewis was for me a pre-gospel experience.

In the Eighties I read Daktar: Diplomat in Bangladesh. This was the book that started me thinking seriously about missions. When author Vic Olsen came to St. Thomas to present his work, the Lord turned a key in my heart. I knew I had to go to Bangladesh, whatever it cost me to get there. Our kids were barely more than babies at the time. Pam wasn’t working and we were not only flat broke, we were so far in mortgage debt we couldn’t put drapes on all the windows. We went anyway. The mission hosed us for money we didn’t have and Canada Revenue taxed us for money we didn’t earn. But the experience changed our lives, and many years later brought us back to Asia again. That’s a powerful book.

In the Nineties there were a clutch of books that grabbed my attention: Stephen Hawking’s  A Brief History of Time and Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box went a long way towards demolishing any lingering authority that science held in my thinking about existence/creation/evolution. But it was Rare Earth, a book written by two atheists that weren’t even interested in these issues that was truly liberating. Authors Ward and Browlee argued that for at least two dozen reasons – that they painstakingly explore in their tour de force – complex life on earth is not only extremely rare in the universe, but quite probably unique (they use the word ‘uncommon’ in their subtitle so as not to scare off the timid; the book’s argument is far more powerful). Having suffered for years under the odious and depressing Copernican Mediocrity Principle (we are an unimportant planet attached to an unimportant star in an unimportant part of the galaxy, yada, yada), it was like someone just opened all the doors and windows and let the fresh air of scientific validity come howling in. What a rush!

In the 20-oughts there have been any number of books clamouring for my attention. But it was a little book that I just stumbled on that has had the greatest impact. It is called Sacred Marriage and reading it has been a paradigm shift for an understanding of my relational universe in the same way that Rare Earth was a paradigm shift in my understanding of the physical universe.

The central thesis of author Gary Thomas’ book is disarmingly simple. He asks, “What if God’s purpose in marriage is not to make you happy, but to make you holy?” This simple question, and its obvious, “Duh, of course, why didn’t I think of that” answer overturns centuries of social conditioning. This is especially true in the West, where we are nurtured in ideology, songs and stories that teach us that the proper ending to the marriage narrative is ‘they lived happily ever after.’ Of course they didn’t. They fought, stayed up late to look after sick kids, went without holidays so their children could make up in summer school what they were too disinterested to learn during the year, invested thousands in sports equipment, piano lessons and computers so that their kids could have a chance at life and watched their marriage slowly dissolve under the weight of too much responsibility and not enough resources; most especially time for each other.

The antidote to all that is Sacred Marriage. In it Thomas argues for a loving God who lets all of this come through His careful hands in order to make us into His image. All that stress has a purpose. All that stretching is leading somewhere. We just have to trust that He does in fact know what He is doing and He will accomplish His purpose in us if we give Him a chance. Our proper response to our own inadequacies is to patiently learn what He wants to teach us through the other we have married. I wish I had read it thirty years ago; I urge you to read it now.

There you have it; the most influential books of my life by the decade. I would be interested to know what yours are, by any measure and method you chose to share.

It has been almost five years since I was introduced to the concepts of CHE at a TOT1 in Thailand and I can still remember how excited I was with the changes the material made in the way I thought about communities.  This week I had the joy of working through the lessons with our TWR Philippines staff and watching the shifts in their thinking about their own passion for transformation in the lives of their listeners.

The core concepts of CHE are designed to shift from organizationally owned to community owned projects, from cure to prevention, from expensive donor dependent outreach to small acts of love, from delivering information to learner centered, self discovery of problems and solutions.  This team are very gifted and committed and easily grasped the changes and instantly were able to see how these could be applied in the work of TWR as a well as in their person ministries as Pastors. Youth leaders and outreach to women and children.

Two of our Co-facilitators, Carlos and Rebecca are very experienced staff of Holistic Community Development and Initiatives (HCDI) a Philippino organization that has been using CHE extensively here for more than twenty years. As Tagalog speakers they were able to allow those who were less comfortable speaking in English to freely express their hearts.  By the final session these two groups  were very animatedly discussing plans to work together with other exisiting partners to utilize media more effectively in communities and to integrate the existing knowledge of HCDI into programming.

Baguio City, once the summer capital of the Philippines is located high up in the mountains in Lauzon where the weather is very much like early summer in Ontario, pine trees and all.  The road up is pretty treacherous with ridiculous numbers of vehicles but once there, It is a fabulously beautiful part of the world with lots of life going on in the streets.  We enjoyed plenty of good food with the staff during the workshops and then sampled a number of really excellent restaurants each evening.

I am so happy to have had the opportunity to work with this amazing team and very grateful for faithful friends who made it financially possible for the training to happen.  I count it a privilege to be able to  have an experience such as this at this point in my life and look forward to what lies ahead.

One of the most amazing aspects of the lives that we live has always been the friends that we have made along the way.  We have many fond memories of our shared experiences with our friends Ken and Nancy and their four children.  We arrived in Germany at the same time for one year of ministry at Black Forest Academy and shared many of the joys and struggles that are an inevitable part of the experience.

Their oldest, Dan was a classmate of Dave with Steve for their Grade 8 teacher and Rachel was in Grade 6 with Liz.  Rebekah was just seven years old and Anna a very delightful little four year old. At the end of the year they headed on back to their rice ranch in California and we back to Ontario. Their family visited with us the following summer and Liz and I had a wonderful visit in February of 1997 with them in California.

Although we have not had a lot of contact since that time, they are people who very much share our love for family, missions and travel and we recently reconnected through their involvement in missions as Ken and Nancy also head into their “retirement” years.  It was a real delight to hear that Rebekah and Anna would be travelling in this area and would like to visit for a few days.

They arrived Thursday evening and had to fly out again Sunday morning so it was short but so much fun to have young people hanging out in our place for a few days. We spent one day touring outside the city to Batu Caves and took a drive up to Genting for a ride on the cable car over the rainforests.  They even got to experience what it is like to drive in a Malaysian downpour.  Rebekah is a nurse in Seattle and Anna an English teacher so we had lots to talk about and even watched Les Mis long in to the night trying desperately not to giggle at the subtitles.

We pretty much have the city tour down to a science now and Saturday was a beautiful day for seeing the sights. We were able to time it perfectly so that we covered Chinatown and Little India, the malls and the aquarium, found a Mexican restaurant for Anna (who has been living in China since August and was having some cravings), and arrived at sunset to sit in the park at KLCC and watch the lights and water show at the Towers.

It is fun to see not only our own children but our neices and nephews and the children of our friends all grown up. What lovely young ladies these girls have become.  It was great to catch up on all the family news but tI have to admit the place pretty empty with them gone.

Suppose two really gorgeous, happy little babies should grow up and get married.  I wonder what their baby would look like?

I guess we will have to wait until August to find out.

Congratulations Greg and Liz!  We are so excited to add baby Epp to our family.

Musicals did not start in the year of my birth, although 1949 did begin the golden age with the edgy and amorous South Pacific touching on issues of racial romance and indoctrinated bigotry (“You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught”). But it was the soaring lyricism of “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Younger Than Springtime” that embedded this musical into my young psyche. Mom wore the grooves off the LP to such an extent that even now I could sing most of the score from memory. The same is true for the lighter, but no less racially edgy romance on view in The King and I, another musical with a songs that seem to cling to your memory like dear friends.

Probably my favourite from those early days was Porgy and Bess, a musical that was originally staged in 1935 and again in 1942. But it wasn’t until the 1953 revival in London’s West End that all of Gershwin’s glorious music was performed. What a score that was! There isn’t a song in that musical that doesn’t grab you, from the sly suggestiveness of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” to the plaintive “Summertime.” But all of these early successes pale beside the enormous success of the last half of that decade. One year after the other there was My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Gigi, The Sound of Music and Oliver, each with at least half a dozen well crafted, powerful and memorable songs and lyrics.

But with the start of the 60s came the start of rock and roll, and while jazz and swing were admirably suited to the stage, rock was far less so. There was still the occasional gem of a show: Fiddler on the Roof in the 60s; Chicago in the 70s; Phantom of the Opera in the 80s; Rent in the 90s; and Wicked in 2000. However, the musical has never returned to the force it was in the twelve years between 1949 and 1960.

Which brings me to Les Mis, which we went to see last night. (The sweet little attendant wanted to know if we meant Less Miserable!). Pam loves musicals as much as I. For years at Christmas we would sit around the telly with our children in our laps and sing along with The Sound of Music.We took our children to see Phantom in Toronto, enjoyed the film version of Chicago and loved the stage production of Wicked, which we were fortunate enough to catch in Singapore. We had heard nothing but rave reviews about this film, so we were both looking forward to seeing it last night. I am sorry to say it was a disappointment.

There is nothing wrong with the story; it is a little convoluted, but that was the style in the days of Charles Dickens and his literary doppelganger across the Channel, Victor Hugo. Nothing wrong with the acting either. Russell Crowe was a little wooden, but then so was Javert, whose role he plays. It is nice to see that Hugh Jackman has some range beyond his Wolverine rage, and Anne Hathaway is transformational as Fantine. Once she dies – far too early in the treatment for my liking – the film loses half its radiance.

But it is the music that disappoints. Oh yes, “I Dreamed a Dream” is a song as lovely as any from the ‘classic’ era, and “Master of the House” as catchy as “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two,” from which it obviously derives. “On My Own” is sweet as well, and nicely sung. Now name me another. Stuck? No wonder. There is really nothing else that you can even call a tune. Instead you have atonal ramblings: words set to notes, but not tunes. I can name you ten songs from West Side Story without breaking a sweat. And sing them for you as well. Why? Because songs are powerful instruments that stir the heart and mind for decades; because in a musical the score is everything. And aside from two or three songs, Les Mis was a musical looking for its music.

If I had not grown up in the 50s and heard all these glorious showtunes played over and over again by my frustrated songstress and fangirl of a mother, I might have enjoyed the show. But I am cursed with an awful knowledge: I know what a good musical sounds like. And Les Mis, unfortunately, ain’t!

Here are the just the songs I know and love from the musicals I mentioned. I bet you know a dozen or more of these yourself. At the end of the list I have provided a link to the reviewer at The New Yorker magazine who agrees with my assessment, but is far funnier than I in doing so!

South Pacific (1949):

• Bali Hai
• You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught
• I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of my Hair
• Happy Talk
• Younger than Springtime
• I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy
• Some Enchanted Evening

The King and I (1951)

• I Whistle a Happy Tune
• Hello Young Lovers
• Getting to Know You
• Something Wonderful
• We Kiss in a Shadow

Porgy and Bess (1953)

• I Loves You Porgy
• Bess You Is My Woman Now
• There’s a Boat That’s Leaving
• Summertime
• I Got Plenty of Nothing
• It Ain’t Necessarily So

My Fair Lady (1956)

• I Could Have Danced all Night
• Wouldn’t it be Loverly?
• Get Me to the Church on Time
• I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face
• With a Little Bit of Luck
• On the Street Where you Live

West Side Story (1957)

• Maria
• I Feel Pretty
• America
• A Boy Like That
• Gee, Officer Krupke
• Here Come the Jets
• Tonight
• Something’s Coming
• One Hand, One Heart
• I Have a Love

Gigi (1958)

• Thank Heaven for Little Girls
• She’s Not Thinking of Me
• It’s a Bore!
• Gigi
• I Remember it Well
• I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore
• The Night They Invented Champagne

The Sound of Music (1959)

• The Hills are Alive
• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
• Do-Re-Mi
• My Favourite Things
• Sixteen Going on Seventeen
• Edelweiss
• So Long, Farewell
• Climb Every Mountain

Oliver (1960)

• Food, Glorious Food
• Oliver
• Where is Love?
• You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two
• Consider Yourself One of Us
• As Long as He Needs Me
• Who Will Buy?
• As Long As He Needs Me

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/01/07/130107crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=1

Bondi, Sydney’s claim to world beach fame, is a three dollar bus ride from the center of town. The walk from there to Coogee Beach is six kilometers of nature’s finest, laid out for geriatric codgers to negotiate. I didn’t make it all the way to Coogee, but I made it to Clovelly in moderate walking pace stopping often to take pictures of the views in about three hours. It was time well wasted.

You can take the train to Bondi Junction, but then you would miss walking through Hyde Park in downtown Sydney; not as famous as its namesake in London, but just as nice and certainly no less Victorian with its obligatory statue of the Missus, and her Consort guarding the entrance, and fountains with heroic figures taming the sea serpents to be had along with the Aussie’s favourite explorer, Captain Cook, and a very touching Anzac memorial to the soldiers of Gallipoli and other conflicts. Don’t miss St. Mary’s Cathedral on the east side of the park. The outside is deceptively plain, but the inside is bathed in a golden light that illuminates the graceful arches of its nave and seems to breathe a reverence that is often missing from more popular cathedrals in Europe.

The bus to Bondi starts at the appropriately named Victoria Street and the driver will be looking for exact fare so buy the bottle of water you are going to need at the beach and get some change. Buses in Sydney are clean and fast and I enjoyed the ride. The bus will go right down to the beach itself, but the nicer stop is the one at the top of the hill so you can take in the view. I went early on a cool day before the crowds and the heat built up. Pam and Shelley had gone a day earlier in the middle of a scorcher of a day – 43 degrees Celsius – and the beach and the water were wall to wall with people. I am glad I chose a cooler day for my walk!

I only stayed ten minutes at Bondi itself, as the walk itself was my goal, but I did wade for a bit and the sand was a golden granular tan and the water clean and relatively warm. South of the beach at the beginning of the walk is the Polar Bear Swimming Club that has a pool overlooking the ocean. Beyond that the path starts to climb, but never gets too high above the water at any point and often comes right down to the beach. The views of the cliffs dropping off to the restless sea are ever changing, and each new bay has its own particular character.

My favourite was Bronte Beach, named not for the writer, but for Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte. Despite that literary disappointment, the beach was very nice. It is scorned by surfers as its narrowness and embankment of shale rocks make it unsuitable with better beaches at Bondi and Clovelly nearby. It is therefore free from the aggravating surfer dude culture that characterizes the larger beaches, making it not only safer for swimmers, but quieter, more relaxed and more civil. I had a very nice fried fish for lunch at a little spot overlooking the beach at a reasonable price without having to listen to a single misogynistic word before pushing on.

At Clovelly the cliffscape levels out and there is a flat 1.2 kilometer stretch through beach and town around to where the walk starts to get interesting again. My feet decided by that point that they had had enough, and besides there was one of those clean and fast buses waiting to take me back to Bondi Junction. This time I did opt for the train as I wanted off at King’s Cross and our hotel so I could freshen up for the afternoon’s activities. Our time in Sydney is limited, but there were plenty of backpacker hostels all along the coast, and this is a spot that you could easily spend a week in, running into town for the evenings if you were so inclined. From KL you can get an eight hour flight with Air Asia to Sydney for around $500.

As Pam noted in an earlier post, Sydney is a lovely city, and would be a joy to study, live and work there. But all around Sydney there are signs of Australia’s tenuous grip on civilization. The nation is a vast desert, as large as the Sahara, bordered by a thin coastal strip of habitable land that is barely a kilometer wide in some places. Global warming is a looming threat to a country constantly on the edge of drought. Recently entire subdivisions have had to be scrapped for lack of available water.

On the two short days we were there 140 bush fires were raging in New South Wales alone. There were a hundred more in Victoria and Tasmania has suffered a devastating fire season with thousands stranded and hundreds of homes destroyed. The meteorological service had to add new colours to their maps to record temperatures well above the 50s in the interior. We flew north from Sydney and have rarely seen such a barren, arid wasteland. The heat builds up over this area and then pushes south. If the monsoon rains don’t come soon, it is going to be a long hot summer Down Under.

Our itinerary for this trip called for us to transit through Sydney, Australia so it made sense for us to see the city on our way through.  We arrived at noon on Tuesday and flew out Thursday morning so we needed to make the best possible use of the limited time we had.  Our friend Shelley was also there so she and I bought tickets for the Hop On/Hop Off City Tour and headed out as soon as we had checked in to our hotel.

The open topped, double decked bus provided some great views but the blazing midday sun and 43 degree temperatures quickly drove us back into the air-conditioned lower level.  A stop at Bondi Beach sounded very inviting and it was indeed a very beautiful beach, but most of Sydney was there before us and it was pretty much standing room only.  We did manage to find a quiet little restaurant for a salad and cool drink before we continued on our “guided” tour of the city.

The Sydney Opera House is designed to represent a ship in full sail and is really quite a magnificent building, placed on a very prominent peninsula at the end of the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Across the harbour is the massive steel arched Harbour Bridge and beautiful sailboats and yachts glide continuously through the waterways.

Unwilling to pay the exorbitant prices for a harbour tour, we opted for a $5.00 evening ferry ride from the Circular Quay to Darling Harbour where there was plenty of night life and a gigantic five storey Rubber Ducky, brought in for the Sydney Festival.  Sydney is really a lovely, lively city with a great mix of well preserved historical buildings and modern architecture.

In the center of the business district you find the Queen Victoria Building. Originally built as market, it was scheduled for demolition in the 50s but fortunately was preserved and is now billed as the most beautiful shopping center in the world.  While the building was modernized with the installation of escalators and air conditioning, its historical restoration is amazing. The tiled floors, stained glass windows, balustrades and arches are all carefully restored, creating a marvelous people place, not your average shopping mall.

Sydney may be a beautiful city, but the temperature peaked at 43.4 degrees around 4 pm and we are just not used to that kind of heat in Malaysia. In Fahrenheit for our American friends that is 110 degrees. It felt very nice when the sun went down and even nicer to put the aircon on high for a few minutes back at the hotel. Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler, thank goodness!

It seems like there are no straight roads in this part of the world, and the road from Queenstown to Dunedin was no exception. However, Pam had the good sense to book us into a small cabin at the campsite at the end of our drive that gave us a chance to drop our stuff and get into town for a bite to eat before sunset. The centre of Dunedin – the octagon – was a bowl surrounded by steep hills, scattered with fine examples of Scottish stonemasonry. We explored a few of the historic buildings before we settled into a little café for some blue cod and salad. In the morning we hit the road again for the long drive to Christchurch.

Pam has a high school friend in New Zealand that she has kept in touch with over the years and she and her husband were kind enough to put us up for a couple of days. I even got in a chess game with their son Jack, who I barely beat at chess before he clobbered me in Go. On New Year’s we met up with Shelley, a colleague from the school where I teach who happened to be in New Zealand for the holidays as well. The following day we drove out to the end of the Banks Peninsula to have a look around. Again the drive and the views were dramatic and scenic. We had the good fortune to pass a classic car show on the way out and stopped to have a look at the old MGs and Austin Healeys. There were even a couple of three-wheeled Morgans, a rare car that Dad owned after the war.

Pam’s friends gave us a lift to the airport in the morning, and we made the short hop to Auckland where we planned to spend a few days. We left most of our camping gear in the south, as it will be city touring from here on out and checked into a serviced apartment down by the quay. It is cheap and allows us to cook, which saves us money in a very expensive city. On our first day here we walked through some of the city’s many parks and checked out the Pacific Heritage Museum.

Yesterday we took a ferry out to Devonport for a view of the harbor and a walking tour of the old navy settlement. Today we got in a visit with Barbara-Anne, a cousin of Pam’s who is in Auckland on a working holiday. She knew a little place that did nice crepes for breakfast. It was nice to chat about family so far from home. While Pam did a little shopping for gifts for the grandkids, I got in another walk through Auckland’s fabulous parks and trees.

Aside from a nice meal and visit with Shelley, New Year’s seemed to have just slipped by us. We hope you had a nice one, and that this year is filled with joy and adventure for you.

England’s Lake District is justifiably renowned. For those who have not had the privilege of touring through its gentle slopes and pristine waters, the recent biopic on Beatrix Potter has some gorgeous backdrops from the region. I first visited the area when I was eleven and have been back many times since. It features prominently as the subject of two lovely wedding gifts from my sister.

I have also had the good fortune to see Lake Titicaca in Guatemala, with its sole volcanic mountain as guardian silhouetted against the setting sun. Pam and I have driven around Lake Como and Lago Magiori in northern Italy, and Loch Lomond and Loch Ness in southern Scotland. We have camped beside the Thuner Sea at Interlaken and swam in the oceanic waters of Lake Huron. Great lakes, all of them, and a joy to see. But the ones we have seen in the last two days have been perhaps the most beautiful  in our experience.

We had driven from Punakaiki to Haast on Boxing Day, covering most of the West Coast that has a highway. Our target was Queenstown in the heart of the South Island’s Lake District. We were prepared for a stiff drive, having seen what some of these roads are like. What we were not prepared for was the knockout beauty of the trip. The pictures here do not do the views justice. The roads were not a problem. Traffic was light and the roads are well constructed and maintained. Given how tight the space was between mountain and lake there were few safe places to pull over, but we took advantage of the ones that offered a few feet of gravel with a view of the surroundings. The amazing thing to us was how few people are in this part of the world. Villages were non-existent and even farmhouses were extremely rare.

The next day we headed up from Queenstown to Glenorchy, reputed to be one of the ten most scenic drives in the world. We wouldn’t dispute that, having driven both there and back; the vistas were breathtaking. At Glenorchy we took a gravel drive past the hamlet called Paradise to as far as we could go before timidity and the depth of water in the fords we had been crossing caused us to pull over. And there, right where we stopped, was the forest of Lothlorien! I recognized it immediately, without the aid of the guide book; but again, pictures don’t do it justice. We also caught a glimpse of the Misty Mountains used by Peter Jackson in his film.

In has been a fun couple of days in the South Island. Tomorrow we make for the coast at Dunedin before heading up to Christchurch for New Year’s. The weather has held the entire time so far; warm and dry during the day, cool at night. The size of the river beds we crossed over indicate this is not the case during the rainy season; some river gorges are a kilometer wide. That would be a terrifying amount of water crashing down off the mountains!