Ends of the Earth
Living on opposite ends of the globe was unintentional. When we said our emotional goodbyes at the departures gate of Heathrow airport in July 2003, I fully planned to be back in a year’s time. But life never works out the way you planned and here we are — me in Auckland, Mum in Cambridgeshire, UK — thousands of kilometres and a global pandemic the barriers to being together.
To her credit, she’s never complained about my failure to return. Instead, she used it as an opportunity to broaden her own horizons. In November 2003, she hopped on a plane by herself for 24 hours to come and visit me — before that the furthest she’d ever travelled was Greece.
She still hasn’t quite forgiven me for making her travel like a backpacker for our trip together round the South Island. I wasn’t working at the time, and was still convinced I had to stretch my frugal savings out for a year of travelling the world. We stayed in private rooms in grotty hostels with shared bathrooms and journeyed by very cramped mini-bus through Central Otago’s devilishly winding roads, sandflies feasting on her delicate English flesh. She stood patiently at the top of Queenstown’s Skyline while I dithered over doing a bungy jump, and didn’t judge when I slept my way from Christchurch to Greymouth on the TranzAlpine, apparently one of the world’s most beautiful rail journeys (I still need to go back and do it again . . . with my eyes open this time).
Hopefully I’ve made it up to her since with more luxurious holidays together. Last time we saw each other in the UK, we stayed a night at Cambridge’s University Arms Hotel in a suite bigger than my home; another time we enjoyed a six-star river cruise along the Seine beginning and ending in Paris.
My favourite memories of our travels together though, are the times she’s returned to New Zealand to visit me. It’s nice to show her around my adopted country and see her fall in love with it too. I think she now understands just what it is about the place that has kept me here so long.
Hopefully it won’t be long before she can come back again. There are still so many great travel memories to make together.