Exotic Story Competition Winners:
On 3 February 2008 I boarded the Marina Svetaeva at Bluff bound for Antarctica with Aurora Expedetions.
I expected to find adventure, but I also found like minded travelling companions, a sense of walking in the footsteps of the brave explorers of the early 1900’s, and, at Scott Base, a touch of identity with the hut that Sir Edmund Hillary first established to mark NZ’s territory.
The first sight of Antarctica is always an iceberg and our trip was no exception.It was a beautiful opaque blue - old ice. The first crabeater seal was a star for eager photographers, and it just got better and better.Walking on pack ice and seeing a minke whale diving straight under you and the pack ice you are standing on, magic! Watching the daily struggle of life with the adelie penguins and ever attendant skuas waiting for an easy meal..or the orcas patrolling the ice floes for lone seals, a sole emperor penguin, exquisite, dignified and not at all camera shy! amazing.
The huts, lovingly preserved by meticulous caretakers, so that they are as exactly as they were left all those years ago - they even smell as though the extraordinary individuals who built and lived in them just stepped out a few minutes before - living history.Century old chaff for the horses in the stables at Scott’s hut still there.
We even got to join the polar plunge club at 72 S 171E, and enjoy the salty and surreal experience of jumping into freezing Antarctic waters - exhilarating.The fabulous hot toddies and muffins at the deck party afterwards topped off one of life’s special moments.
Antarctica gets into your soul - a beautiful, cold, terrible place that, one day, I will definitely be drawn to return to. A sense of loss when we dock at Hobart on 27 February, and back to cellphones, traffic and busyness.
Pip Buckton of Auckland Region
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Tuvalu – three and a half hours north of Suva in a 27 seater plane that flies twice a week into Funafuti, the only one of the nine atolls that has an airstrip that takes up most of the atoll. When flights are due a hooter is sounded to clear children, dogs and pigs off the strip. At night people spread their mats and sleep on it to catch some sea breeze. It’s a country with 26 square k of land and 1.3 million square k of ocean within its boundaries. None of the atolls are more than two metres above sea level, but people have lived there peacefully for 3,000 years. The current population is around 10,000 and income comes from fishing licences, stamps and remittances to families from the many the young men who work on German merchant ships. I travelled to three of the outer atolls on the government ship, to be man handled over the side to a barge which took me across the lagoon to wade ashore for meetings with village officials.
J Williams of Wellington Region
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It has to be the medina (market place) in Marrakesh. I can still hear the cry “donkey coming through” as we pressed our bodies against the stalls and held our stomachs in so as not to snag our clothes on the brightly decorated coarse jute covers on the donkeys’ backs.
L Kendall of Auckland Region
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Special Daydream Story Winner
The most exotic place I have been to is on a little excluded island in the middle of the pacific with beautiful white sand and palm trees with hammocks. A waiter was there answering to my every whim - a pina colada in one hand and exotic fresh fruit platter in the other. The water was as warm as the sun and as blue as crisp clean water could be. It was just me …… and only me …… until I woke up to the alarm! Time to get up and tend to my 3 year old and 5 year old and let my husband snooze for another hour!!!!
Couldn’t resist sending my thoughts in as I really haven’t been anywhere exotic but dream……dream…..dream - one day!!!
S Whipp of Otago Region