Thursday, January 09, 2004

Time Travel

Even though the world scientific community won't admit it, it's definitely possible to travel through time. Take the trip from Australia to New Zealand which we undertook today. For a start you cross two time zones, as Sydney is 11 hours ahead of GMT, and Christchurch is 13 hours ahead. And a three hour flight means you arrive 5 hours later.

But that's not what I was really meaning. What I really mean by time travel is leaving Australia in the 21st Century, and arriving in New Zealand back in the 20th! It is just like stepping back in time when you hit the ground in New Zealand. Its not the airport - that looks pretty modern. Its not even the transport - their buses are up there with the best of them, and are a million years ahead of the London Buses.

Its the rest of it - its the fact that when you walk down any street in New Zealand you see things which have just completely disappeared at home. Old, faded shop fronts, with window displays protected by yellow film; shop signs that look like they were painted 30 years ago, although you know they were only done last year. At first its a shock and surprise, but after a while it starts to become quite charming - the fact that you don't feel afraid to cross the road because of the traffic, and the way that everybody seems so polite (crikey, am I showing my age or what?). I'm sure it'll be different in other parts of New Zealand, but for the moment we feel like we've landed in 80's England.

We tend not to book our accommodation in advance wherever we go, but that might be a problem in New Zealand. We phoned heaps of hostels from the airport, and they were all full. In the end we went to the accommodation booking office at the airport, who booked us into a motel near the centre of town. The airport bus dropped us about 1km away, and we walked the rest. Halfway there we had to stop to let the girls cool off (and get their first Hokey Pokey ice-cream!) This picture tells the story - Emily's sitting amongst our luggage - the big black one contains the car seat and the uncompressed sleeping bags, so doesn't weigh a huge amount, but the big green and black rucksack weighs about 27 kilos (yes, it's getting heavier!) and so is a pain to even get on, let alone carry. Before we hit Asia we're definitely going to have to lighten our load significantly (Car seat - gone! Sleeping bags - gone! Fleeces - gone!), but for the next month we'll probably hire a car, so it won't be a big problem.

Anyway, we got to our motel, and found that it had 76 rooms, and only two that were occupied - and when we looked around we realised why. It was grimmer than anywhere we'd stayed before, especially the 'themed' restaurant, which was completely done out to resemble a cowboy saloon, complete with bar men wearing chaps and guns in holsters. When we saw the 'Howdy Partner. How d'you fancy a Fast Draw competition?' poster, we decided that enough was enough, and we'd eat in our room. At least the weather was sunny, and perhaps tomorrow we can get into a hostel!

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Deja Vu all over again

This is a spooky place - not only do we feel like we're in the past, in a city themed on the mid-20th century, but we also feel that its been created to make you feel as if you're somewhere else. Today, on our way to the art gallery and museum, we passed chaps providing rides on punts up the river. We could easily have been in Oxford! We had to do a double-take - 13,000 miles round the world to see what's on your doorstep.

After 4 days of lots of walking, the girls are starting to tire a little - Charlotte has pulled a muscle in her leg, so we're moving slowly and only for short distances today. It is amazing that the girls have as much energy as they do, because at the moment we're still trying to re-programme their bed times to earlier than 10pm! But they love getting out of the hostel and exploring, and they equally love getting back to the hostel and being able to play or help with the cooking. (Yes, we managed to get into the New Excelsion Hostel, which is possible the best run hostel we've stayed in for a long time. It's a bit curious that everybody seems to be around our age - there's another family on an 8-week holiday in Oz/NZ, as well as lots of couples. Normally we feel a bit out of it in a hostel, because there's a generation gap between us and most of the others. But in this hostel it seems okay - perhaps that will be repeated throughout New Zealand?)

But the girls love any hostel - lots to see and explore, and different people to talk to (they must be sick of hearing our conversations all of the time!). In fact, they seem to find it easier to settle down in a new hostel than we do, as they just dump their bags and go off to find everything. Its a definite eye opener into how independent children can be when they get the chance (hmmm, something to be watched too!).

An Evening at the Ballet

While wandering Christchurch today we passed the Court Theatre, and saw that they had a show on called 'Ballet Briefs', and about half an hour before curtain up, sitting eating dinner, we decided we'd go. After all, what's a trip around the world without a bit of local culture? So we dashed across town, frantically grabbed tickets and hopped into our seats as the lights began to dim.

It was the ballet equivalent of the Reduced Shakespeare Company – 6 ballets in one and a half hours. As they described it in the introduction, it's "ballet without the boring bits". Its difficult to describe how side-splittingly funny it is to see two guys in tutus/fairy costumes/tights/whatever performing all the parts in a classic opera like Swan Lake. There was definitely some interpretation needed, but the girls loved it, and we were relieved that the 'adult' jokes went straight over their heads. I've never been to ballet before, although Sarah and Charlotte go to the ballet in Oxford every Christmas, but I've saved myself loads of time – instead of sitting for 9 hours through all of these ballets, I've had the works in an evening! Mind you, I don't suppose I've had the full story, but then if you can see one ballerina (male, bald and overweight) doing the classic Swan Lake pas de deux then I'm sure that its possible to imagine the whole chorus line of 30 beautiful ballerinas doing the same thing (but in time, not out of breath and not gasping for a cigarette!).

If you get the chance, see it – there's enough classical ballet manoeuvres to satisfy that it is 'proper ballet', and enough jokes to make a philistine, like me, laugh.

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Life in the freezer!

One of the key attractions in Christchurch is the International Antarctica Visitor Centre, a cross between an amusement park and a museum. Christchurch is the home base to the New Zealand, American and Italian Antarctica teams, and houses all of the special aircraft used to fly people and stuff to the ice bases. The Visitor Centre gives an insight into what goes on down there, as well as some of the history of ice exploration.

The highlight for the girls was the freezer room – a huge room re-creating the Antarctic landscape and temperature. The walls were covered in a huge mural of the scenery, and the sides and floor were covered in snow and ice. The temperature was kept at a brisk -5 C and there were various Antarctic items strewn around – a ski-doo, an ice cave and a polar explorer's tent. Coming into the room from outside, at a balmy +24 C, was brilliant – an immediate cooling off chance. But the girls loved it too much – every half hour the room simulated a polar storm, with the temperature dropping to -24 C. Charlotte loved this so much she stayed in for three of them. After just over an hour in the room, wearing shorts, I'd begun to wonder if it was possible to get frostbite on a sunny day!


Charlotte, of course, didn't feel the cold at all – but she was obviously getting cold, because her nose started to turn red, followed by her cheeks, and then her fingers. It was only when she started to gather snow and throw snowballs that she began to realise that it was pretty cold. Soon, her hands were freezing, and finally we were allowed to leave. Sarah, of course, hadn't been silly enough to enter the room, so she had plenty of time to explore the rest of the centre, and read all of the material on the walls – something that is often quite difficult to do if you're visiting somewhere with children.

The rest of the centre was interesting too, with conventional displays of all things Antarctic, and lots of short films and models to show how things work. We even found a photograph of one of our distant New Zealand relatives in one of the displays! We eventually left the centre four hours after we'd entered. Although it wasn't cheap (about £8 each) it turned out to be well worth it for all the time that we could spend there.

Monday, January 12, 2004

Onuku Farm Hostel

We're now in Akaroa, a small town on the Banks Peninsula, a two hour drive from Christchurch. It's a weird place, because it’s a 'french' town – there are French flags flying from the church and town hall, and a very French feel to the town. I guess that a while ago it became the place to live if you were a French immigrant to New Zealand. We're here because of a lovely farm hostel that we stayed at last time we travelled, which we've now come back to. It's called Onuku Farm Hostel, and its set on 1,000 acres of grazing hillside, and we've got the company of 2,000 sheep. It's pretty basic (imagine the words 'farm' and 'hostel' and you've got a good idea of what it is like), but the girls love it. Everybody is very friendly, and the girls have spent the day playing volleyball, feeding the pigs, and repainting the stones that mark out the campsites. We even got to go into town without them, so as well as picking up the bread and milk, we lounged on the shoreline reading a paper (aah, a few moments of adult behaviour in a children-dominated year).

Mind you, it is pretty basic – the cottage, which was once the farmhouse, has four bedrooms with 16 beds, one toilet and two small kitchens. So as a result things have been built outside – like the two showers in corrugated irons shacks, and the toilet up the hill in another shed. Oh, and the kitchen, built into a lean-to on the decking. But it all works – it's charming rather than basic, and the kind of people attracted to stay at the hostel make it a very special place to stay. There are a couple of children staying here, who are from New Zealand families, so the girls have somebody else to play with, and many of the guests delight in teaching the children to paint, play volleyball or make necklaces.

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Life at the hostel...

The spookiest thing happened today. Tom, the hostel manager, turned up with the old Visitors Books from the hostel, and we found our original comment in the book from February 1994. That in itself would have been fantastic (hey, I got it right when I said "the night in the huts will be a memory for sure!", because that's what made us come back, even though we're now in the farmhouse, rather than one of the corrugated and wood garden sheds), but what made it spooky, and hilarious, was the photo of us signing it. I'd completely forgotten that we'd had our photo taken, so it was a bit of shock to see our faces staring out of the pages, ten years on.

The conclusion was that Sarah hadn’t really aged, and I had - well, let me put into words that everybody else was too polite to say, I'm fatter. Last time we travelled I'd lost four stones by the time we arrived in New Zealand (oh yeah, I was really fat when we left England!), and that meant that we were a lot fitter – when we stayed here we strolled up to the Lookout point up the hill with ease, which is definitely not an easy walk. This time, with so much use of cars, and the girls' limited walking ability, we haven’t had the same regime, and the result is we feel less fit, and fatter.

Fortunately, we don't have to walk up the hillside to get fantastic views – the view from the deck is pretty impressive too – when you're sitting here eating pasta and Dolmio sauce it tastes pretty terrific! We only planned to stay for two nights, because we're on a pretty tight schedule here in New Zealand, but decided to stay an extra night because its so relaxing. But we must leave eventually, and when we do we know that there will be tears from the girls. Some hostels work like that – the minute you walk in the door, you feel instantly at home. Yesterday somebody baked muffins for everybody in the hostel, today we baked scones (and old New Zealand habit of ours), tomorrow I'm sure somebody will bake a cake!

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Moving on, leaving in tears...

Well, despite the rustic nature of the hostel, the girls were torn to leave. We all started the day with breakfast and a shower – you can see the shower cubicle on your left, which isn't exactly luxurious, but out of the window (well, hole in the wall the size of a window) you can see all the way down to the bay, and if you're lucky you'll see dolphins cruising the harbour. Then Charlotte had her last Japanese lesson. She's really enjoyed talking to, and playing with, the Japanese in the hostel - learning their language and making Origami. She definitely enjoys it more than her daily Maths lesson! Then the morning dragged as the girls took their time packing, and then Emily got the chance to help Anna change the beds, and sort out the toilets in the campsite. By the time we eventually left it was 1 o'clock, and the girls cried, and begged not to leave. But we have to move on – we've got a month to see the sights, and for once, have deadlines to meet!

Our journey took us inland, south towards Mount Cook. It took us five and a half hours to reach Lake Tekapo, where we checked into the Tailormade hostel. On the way we'd stopped for ice-creams, email and tea at McDonalds (a great medicine for tearful children), so we arrived at sunset, and was it glorious. The lake was a cobalt blue colour, with the mountains rising in the background. The hostel is in an old wooden house, on the edge of the village). I've tried to capture it with the photograph, but I'm not sure if it does it justice – you don't get the relaxed feel of an alpine town in a photo. The scenery is magnificent, and as we drove over the high meadows we passed through fields plastered with rainbow-coloured lupins.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

A day in the mountains


From our hostel we drove across to Mount Cook. We'd been expecting to see snow-capped mountains, as we'd had a peek of them on our drive yesterday. But we hadn't expected to get this view – a stunning blue lake, a cloudless sky, and in the distance Mount Cook dropping down to lake level. The girls hadn't been keen to sightsee today, but when we stopped for a photo, they both piled out of the car and ran down to the lake shore, and spent the rest of the day running around at every opportunity – must be mountain air!


The closer we drove, the more magnificent the views became. The weather forecast had been for a dreary, overcast day (exactly the weather wished on us by our 'friend' Caroline) but like so many forecasts it was wrong. And the air was warm, without being hot. It was the kind of weather that makes you feel as if you'd like to emigrate tomorrow!

We drove to the town of Mount Cook, and walked through the Hermitage Hotel. According to the brochure it's "the most famous hotel in New Zealand", which I can't comment on, but I can report that its got very nice toilets! We decided to blow our luxury money on a cup of coffee in the town's coffee shop, which overlooked the mountains and the glaciers, through a huge window.


And then it was time for a walk – along a trail, across a very bouncy suspension bridge, and to a viewpoint overlooking the foot of a glacier. In winter the landscape must surely be completely covered in snow, but it seems more dramatic in summer, as you can see the huge stream flowing from the glacier melt-water, and the walls of ice slipping down the rock slopes on the mountains. Although it was windy and in the mountains, it wasn't cold, so it was real t-shirt weather. This is an area of New Zealand that we'd not visited before, and the bright blue lakes made it evocative of our trip in Canada – although we didn't get the crystal clear air there, because of rain and the forest fires. We've definitely seen things today that we'll remember for a very long time.

Friday, January 16, 2004

Arthur's Pass

Having left Australia behind, we thought we'd waved goodbye to the long car journeys. But no - we've discovered that New Zealand is bigger than it looks on a map (its amazing isn't it, I studied Geography at school, I even got an O-level, but I still seem totally incapable of looking at the scale of a map!). Anyway, today we learnt that Arthurs Pass is a long way from Mount Cook – or at least, it is when you travel by road. By air it wouldn't be more than a couple of hundred kilometers, but by car it took us hours, and those hours were spent driving along roads which were often steep and windy. The scenery that comes with the landscape is quite something – wide river valleys strewn with rocks and boulders, and steep sided mountains, capped with snow and scree.


New Zealand has about 64 million inhabitants, but 60.2 million of these are sheep and cattle - which leaves 3.8m to live in a country about the size of the UK. The result is a landscape that is pretty barren of human habitation – lots of grassland and forest – and few villages or towns. On the map it looks like there are more, but I've been caught out twice now thinking that a 'town' on the map will have a petrol station or shop, when it turns out to be a single house (and in the case of Kaikopo Junction, the house looked like it hadn't been lived in for a century or two).

Arthurs Pass town, which is a big dot on the map, turned out to have a shop and a petrol station (well, a shop with a petrol pump), so it was quite big. All of the houses were tiny, but built for an alpine environment. This cottage was typical – wooden walls, corrugated iron roof and little else. The Kiwis build almost everything with corrugated iron – even when building a brick house, they normally use corrugated iron on the roof. Our hostel, which is a YHA one, is a bit bigger than this cottage, but still very rustic, and - importantly because we're 800m up in the mountains – warm.

Saturday, January 17, 2004

Long distances…

After breakfast we all piled back in the car and drove down the other side of the Southern Alps. Arthurs Pass is the key pass through the middle of the range, and connects the East coast (where we've been) to the West coast. At the sea we turned right, and headed up north, towards the top of the South Island. It was a great drive. Having driven some roads which have been labeled as "the best drive in the world" (chronologically - the road through the Rockies; the Big Sur in California and the Great Ocean Road in Australia), we're pretty sure that the road between Greymouth and Westport should be included somewhere in the 'Top 10 Drives' list. The road is sandwiched between the coast and the mountains, with the coastline alternating between beaches and cliffs, with huge rocks sitting in the sea offshore. And because it was a New Zealand road, it had very little traffic on it. Every now and again we'd pass the most beautiful beach houses (or bachs as they are known here), with views to die for.


At Punakiki we stopped to look at the rock formations, but what really took our interest was the signpost. We're 16,000km from home – almost 10,000 miles. It reminded us of all the things we've left behind for the moment, and led us all to think about the things we miss most from home. We've been travelling for 6 months and one day now, and tomorrow is exactly half-way on our year's trip. When we got back in the car to continue our journey we were all a bit quieter than normal, as we thought about what we'd done so far, and what lay ahead - what will Asia be like?

We finished our driving around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, having driven for 4 hours, and stopped for 3 hours at sights and supermarkets along the way.

Sunday, January 18, 2004

The Old Slaughterhouse Hostel, Hector

We're now in our 5th hostel in New Zealand – the Old Slaughterhouse, in Hector. It's almost as far up the West Coast as you can go, just above Westport, where everybody turns off to reach the rest of the island. Its much quieter up here than elsewhere, because the only reason to drive past is to reach the end of Heaphy Walking Track, a 70km walk that starts just north of here.

The Old Slaughterhouse has to be one of the most unusual hostels we've found anywhere – its perched on a hillside, about 250 metres above the road, and there's no road running to it. Instead, you walk up through the bush, for about 10 minutes, before emerging at the front door of the wooden building. (If you look at the larger version of the photo below, you'll see Charlotte and Sarah making their way up the track to the hostel – it helps give an idea of scale!Fortunately the owner has a four-wheel motorbike, which he whizzes up and down a separate dirt track, carrying our rucksacks.


The accommodation is a huge house, which is the home of David the owner as well as being the hostel lounge, kitchen and toilets. The bedrooms are in two separate buildings, set above on the hillside, with views across the Tasman Sea to Cape Foulwind and Karamea. At least, there would be views if the weather had allowed it. But today was grey, and tremendously windy, so we spent the day inside, reading, writing and playing. Everybody in the hostel was in the same mood, so the room looked as if it was full of human pillows, just resting on the sofas in the same place all day.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Blowing out the cobwebs

After yesterday's quiet day, we woke to find the weather sunny, and great to be outside in. After walking down to the car, we drove to Charming Creek, which is only two miles away. This is a river valley, with an old coal mine railway running up it. For the first mile it was good walking – a pretty wide, easy sloping path, with the river on one side and the mountains on the other. The path had been filled in between the rails of the old railway, and every now and again we'd come across a relic of the old coal mine railway – things like coal trucks, old engine cabs etc. The information boards, telling stories of dead miners and runaway trains notched up the excitement a bit too.

Then we turned the corner of the creek, and came across a railway tunnel going straight into the mountains. The girls went apoplectic - "Do you think there's a ghost in there?" – "Will they be wearing a white sheet?" – "Can you go first?". We all walked slowly through the tunnel, trying to avoid the water puddles, and Charlotte screamed when a drip of water dropped onto her face! It was great, and the girls hadn't even noticed that they'd already walked two miles.

We walked on further, across the river on a tiny suspension bridge (well, it was 50m long, and about 30m above the river, but when you looked at it afterwards, it seemed as if it was made up of tiny ropes). Eventually after the second tunnel, and walking past two waterfalls, and through one waterfall, we turned around, and walked back down the creek. In all it had taken us two hours, and we'd walked five miles, but the girls enjoyed it immensely and found the energy to keep going.

After the walk we rewarded ourselves with an ice-cream. We're all agreed that ice-cream is New Zealand's best thing. The glaciers and mountains are cool, the whales, dolphins and seals are nice, but the ice-cream is terrific - there's simply no other word. And just south of Hector is a shop which sells cones like these for 50 centres (Umm, about 20 pence), so they're even within our budget! The problem is choosing the flavour from the freezer cabinet – Boysenberry? Cookies and Cream? Chocolate Éclair? Orange Chocolate Chip? Hokey Pokey? For me there's no contest – Hokey Pokey wins every time. It's a vanilla ice-cream, with little pea-sized balls of honeycomb stolen from the middle of Crunchie bars. The bad thing about New Zealand ice-cream is that we've only got three more weeks to eat them!

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Hydro-electric power, Sandflies and Sunsets.

As a result of being set in the bush, the Old Slaughterhouse is a bit different. For a start, it's entirely constructed of wood, which was carried up the hill by helicopter. The water comes from the stream behind the hostel, rather than from a water pipe. And there's no mains electricity, because the cost of running it up to the hostel would have been huge. So instead, David has a small hydro-electric generator on the creek, which generates 24 volt electricity to charge a bank of car batteries under the hostel. This electricity is used to run the lights (using special 24V/60W bulbs – they look just like normal ones, but run on 24V power instead of normal 240V), and powers the only other electrical device in the house – a small hi-fi. Everything else that needs electricity is missing – no washing machine, no television, no dishwasher etc. It meant that when we arrived with a flat laptop battery, two flat camera batteries and a desperate need to charge them, we were stuck. We ended up going into town yesterday for a coffee, and asking if we could plug them in while we sat there and drank our coffee (slowly). The hydro-generator is the size of a fish tank, and inside there's little flywheel which is spun round by the water flowing through a pipe the size of a drainpipe. Its an amazing bit of technology, and it seems to provide all the power that's needed to power the lights, at no cost.

When we took a trip out of the hostel today we went 40km up the road, to where it ends and the Heaphy track begins, and went down onto the beach for about 10 minutes. But we'd arrived at peak sandfly time, and they are both annoying and persistent. Although New Zealand doesn't have any dangerous animals – no snakes, no poisonous spiders, no horrible monsters – but the humble sandfly makes up for it. They gather in clouds early and late in the day, and bite anything in sight. We'd prepared – we all had repellent on – but they attacked in droves, and crawled through our hair to bite our heads. It was nasty, and we were soon itching everywhere. So we beat a retreat to the car, abandoned plans to walk the first hour of the Heaphy Track, and headed back to the hostel. According to the Lonely Planet, "sandflies hunt in pairs – one to lift the sheets while the other one bites you."

When we got back to the hostel, it was all forgotten. For three days now we've been looking at poor sunsets – just as the sun dips the clouds get in the way, and the sky turns black and grey. But tonight was different – the daytime's clear blue sky stayed clear, and when the sun dropped it turned orange, then red and lit up the coast. We'd even splashed out on a bottle of red wine. Can you imagine how we felt – watching the sun drop over the Tasman Sea, with a glass of wine in our hand, lazing on a wooden bench on the decking? We could almost imagine we didn't have children!

I don't want to rub it in, but I had to share this photo too – it was the last gasp of the sun, burning up the clouds as it went. We took these photos with our new digital camera, a Canon EOS 300D. It’s an SLR camera, and means that we have a bit more control over our shots, and can take some more adventurous pictures (it'll be especially useful when we start seeing more wildlife, if we get to Africa). Although it is a bit of extra weight to carry, and bulkier than our other camera (a digital Canon Ixus) we don't think we'd have been able to get a shot like this with the small one. We bought it in Sydney, and now all we have to do is get it through Asia safely!

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

To Golden Bay

As always, it was time to leave. After four nights we'd become very attached to the hostel, it's owner David, and had made great friends with Linda and Brigitte, a couple of German-speakers staying there. But all good things come to an end, and we had to move up the coast towards our ferry connection to the North Island. Everything was packed up into our rucksacks again, and carried down the hill by David – and to Charlotte's glee she was carried down too!

Then it was all-into-the-car for another epic journey – six hours driving to Golden Bay, to a small hostel called the Innlet in Pakawau. The drive, as ever, was spectacular, and the best bit was finding that the hostel had an outdoors bath in the woods. So after the drive I soaked myself in the bush, enjoying the fresh air and no engine noise. (Our hire car is cheap, but sadly the radio only makes a sort of 'tinny thrashing' noise, so we don't get to drown out the engine with our CD collection!)

Thursday, January 22, 2004

The Innlet Hostel

I have to be honest – we're not in love with our latest hostel. After the high of the Old Slaughterhouse, we had high expectations of this new hostel, because of the high rating it has in the guide book. But sadly our expectations were dashed when we got here. It’s a lovely house, with a flower-filled cottage garden, and lovely wooden cottages dotted around (Sadly we're in the dormitory inside the house). But there's a jarring note with the toilets – they are 'dry' toilets, and they're across the car park. (A 'dry' toilet is a euphemism for a hole with a big pile of poo at the bottom!) So although everything is very nice and clean, the toilets aren't great to use. We don't mind this when we're in the bush – in fact, if you're in the middle of a national park, it's what you expect. But when you're in a house, with a flushing toilet that you're not allowed to use except at night (we're not sure why...), it's not great. It doesn't seem to fit quite correctly with a hostel that's costing us £32 a night, and that's got a dishwasher, washing machine, and all mod cons etc. (The owner has just gone off to a Green Party conference, so I guess there's some ecologically sound reason for it).

Anyway, after ignoring the toilets, there's some great features – like the outdoor baths – that are great. It's very close to the beach, and we spent the day out and exploring the local area. And in the evening we went down to the local beach at low tide to collect shellfish. It was really easy – just wander out to the beach to the wide sandbanks, and dig through the wet sand with fingers to locate the shells.


Emily got bored by the end, but Charlotte was captivated by the whole thing – that she was getting her own dinner, and because clams are one of her favourite foods, she didn't want to stop. We sorted them out by size (we'd decided that small ones were young ones, so we decided to bed them all back in the sand), and then brought the rest back to the hostel to clean and rinse. We cooked them up, and put them into a creamy pasta sauce, and that was it – home caught dinner! It appealed to the inner 'hunter-gatherer' in me, and I'm sure Charlotte had a 'Cave Girl' moment – it kind of shows on the photo!

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