Shelley and the Steps of Doom

In 2003 I travelled with my wife Michele (aka Shelley) to South America. The whole trip deserves a blog elsewhere at a later time, but it's fair to say that it was punctuated by several incidents which stand out very firmly in our minds.

One such incident was the case of Shelley and the Steps of Doom.

We were in Peru.

Peru is a remarkable country, and we would go there again tomorrow if we could. During our trip there we travelled to Cuzco, and like all tourists there we visited Machu Picchu, as well as taking a city tour, and travelling through the Sacred Valley of the Incas.


The Sacred valley trip was in a private car, and took us through some awesome countryside, and to several notable Inca sites. One of those was Olayantambo, which is a series of ruins and terraces, accessed by an enormous stone staircase.


Another notable site was Pisaq, and it was here that our incident occurred.

Our driver was not a qualified site guide, and so when we got to the ruins at Pisaq, way, way up a steep hillside overlooking the town of Pisaq, he had to stop at a certain point, and let us go on by ourselves. He indicated that he would wait in a car park some way below, and that we could walk around the mountainside and the ruins, and find a path back to him quite easily.

Before we could get onto the path we were accosted by one of the ubiquitous hawkers that we encountered everywhere in our travels. This man was a vendor of wind chimes, and he was intent on selling us at least one, if not more. We shook him off firmly but politely, saying words to the effect of *perhaps later*, which are not, it turns out, wise words to use on a vendor of wind chimes.

We set off... but not knowing much about the place, we were walking blind. I ventured up a ladder for a look at one higher part, but Michele stayed on the main path, which at the start was very good to walk on. Now I should mention here that Michele doesn't like heights, and has a poor sense of balance - a little short of vertigo sometimes.

Imagine then our dismay when we rounded a corner, and found that the broad footpath suddenly gave way to a set of stone steps up the side of a cliff!! The Incas were evidently like mountain goats, and did this kind of thing quite a lot (as we found out). But this was the path to another part of the Pisaq site, and logically we had to continue.

The drop on the left was not terribly far, (it looks worse in the picture), but far enough and steep enough to do a lot of damage, and Michele baulked at going up the steps at first.
After some prompting she climbed 2/3 of the way up, which impressed me very much, and sat well away from the edge for the photo . Then we tried to complete the climb, and Michele made it to the top, just behind me.

It was at this point that the Inca appeared. With a tootling of a flute, a real live Inca shaman appeared at the top of the stairs, and things began to fall apart rapidly....

For a start, the Inca was taking up space on the path. And for another, the path was now incredibly narrow. At the top of the stairs the path had turned into a narrow ledge, made worse by the fact that the rock wall to the right bulged outwards. To go past required a certain amount of nerve, and a clear run, which we didn't have.

If the Inca hadn't been there, perhaps I could have got Michele through that part, and the rest would have been much easier. (In fact, as we paused, an Austrian walker came from the same direction as the Inca, and assured us that the going was much better after this).

But then it got worse!! The Inca offered to help Michele, and was trying to help her to her feet. Michele was very disturbed, to say the least, by the fact that the Inca's heels were over the edge of the path as he was trying to assist her, and it was beginning to get to me too. I could easily see him taking us all over the edge if he wasn't careful.

After a couple of minutes, Michele decided that she would abandon the steps, and go back the way we had come, to find our driver, and I would go on to the other part of the site with the Inca.

The ledge was indeed the worst part of the path, although other parts were still precipitous, but after a few minutes we rounded a corner and were treated to the site of more excellent ruins.


The Inca gave me a running commentary about the buildings and their nature, and made appropriate gestures inside the small temple structure. He also sold coca leaves to a couple of passing walkers, from his colourful blanket.

Eventually it was time for me to leave him, and head back to the car park. As I got closer I saw Michele sitting near a wall, with, I assumed, our driver. But no! - this was the vendor of wind chimes, who had literally followed Michele halfway around a mountain to make a sale. He was very polite, yet insistent, and indeed it was a nice ornament, but before we could decide, yet another vendor appeared, and tried to sell us exactly the same thing!

In the end, and in the confusion, we bought our chime from the second vendor, leaving the first a little miffed, so I bought from him a small pottery ocarina (flute thing), which I vowed never ever to put to my lips, regardless of how much I might boil it in disinfectant first.

We finally made it home to Cusco after a wondeful day out, and two cameras full of pictures, complete with wind chime and ocarina.


The chime hangs outside out lounge window now, and although it is not as shiny as when we first saw it, and is a home for spiders, it rings beautifully in the breeze and reminds us of our encounter with The Steps of Doom.

I have no idea where the ocarina is.

NEWSFLASH!! The ocarina has reappeared!! - See this blog

Garden Madness - the Succulent Story!!

When we moved into our new house, just before Easter 2005, we didn't really have a garden. Out the front was a planted area, with a few little shrubby things, which were eventually to grow to be large shrubby things, which we then pulled out, but we had no nice flowers or plants of note. We did manage to plant some roses and other things in a strip along the driveway, but that was about it.

At the back of the house was a paved area, which we dignify by calling it a patio, and an area of grass which we like to call a lawn.

We pondered over what kind of plants might suit us, and one day we discovered the answer almost entirely by accident: Succulents!!!

Succulents are a large range of plants which usually thrive in arid areas, and the class also includes Cacti, although we were not so keen on the prickly cousins of the standard succulent.

Very rapidly we found ourselves obsessed, buying succulents wherever we went, and stashing their little (and not-so-little) plantpots on our patio. We were forever discovering new varieties, new colours, and new places to buy.

My wife and her mother could not be trusted near a garden centre, and we even found a market stall selling plants in the hospital, when we went to visit or collect mother in law on one of here occasional admissions.

Once the madness had completely gripped us, we found our best supplier, at Coromandel Cacti.

Succulents tend to grow rapidly, and I found it very therapeutic to sit outside on fine days, re-potting plants into larger (and yet larger) pots.

The great attraction of succulents is their variety. Along with the basic types like Sedums, Echevarias, Sempervivums, Aloes and Agaves comes sub-types with amazing differences in form and colour. Not only are the plants nice to look at in their varieties, but when they flower another dimension appears.

These Lithops *rock plants*, from South Africa, produce large and delicate daisy-like flowers

This fine yellow ground-cover plant has very intricate and delicate flowers which seem to appear suddenly, and from nowhere.

These purple flowers belong to a rapidly spreading ground cover plant, and track the sun across the sky until late afternoon, when they close up for the night. And the red and yellow flowers in the second picture look like little aliens, seen from ground level, looking upwards.


The little white flower head on the left is only about 2 cm high, and is the flower of the *String of Pearls*, which can be seen behind. This makes a good hanging plant, and it looks like chains of green peas threaded onto string. The garden plot in the right hand picture is my pride and joy, and shows the pinnacle of my gardening ability to date. It improved a lot once we filled in the vacant spaces and other plants grew larger, which discouraged our two cats.

This picture shows the extent of the planting project that faces us over Christmas. Here are all the plants we have acquired, potted and repotted over the last year, and waiting for the front garden to be prepared and ready to recieve them.

Hopefully we'll have some nice pictures to show in the early new year - stay tuned.....

A Flying Visit

This Sunday I was offered, and sensibly took, a great opportunity. My pilot friend David had to fly to Tauranga, a city in the Bay of Plenty, about 90 miles Southeast of Auckland, and invited me along for a ride in his Cessna 150. Sunday morning dawned bright and clear, and I was ready for takeoff at 7 am...

The Cessna 150 is only a small plane, and David and I are both tall, with long legs, and getting in (and out again for that matter) was interesting, to say the least...

I got the left hand seat, because en route David wanted to practice some instructional techniques, and I was his tame student pilot for the morning.

We took off from David's private airstrip, set in beautiful farmland south of where I live.

Here's the view after takeoff, in the early morning light.The trip went well, except for air turbulence, which knocked us around quite a bit at times. we were only flying at around 2500 feet, and the strong Southerly wind rolling over the hills below us made the air quite rough.

Despite this I received my trial flying lesson. I practiced the effects of control on the aircraft, and gentle turns, which went very well . Comically we left the first lesson to last, and finally went through the principles of straight and level flight. I was able to recover from an unusual attitude quite readily after my practice, and i felt very confident

It was a very good experience for me, but even better, after our practice lesson, I took the controls and flew the plane for the second half of the flight.

The final stages of the flight to Tauranga took us along the coast, and unfortunately back into the bumpy air, which made me a little nauseous.

Here we're approaching Tauranga, and David has the airport in sight, at the top of the screens.

The reason for our visit was aviation-related. David owns the Hawker Hunter jet fighter ZK-JIL which I wrote about in a previous blog, and presently the Hunter *lives* in the aircraft museum at the airport, between flights.
The Hunter is due for some servicing; she needs the ejection seat overhauled, and the parachute repacked, and some cockpit work doing, before she flies again. So David was there to pick up some items from the plane, and to see how things were going. One of the items was the parachute, which I'll repack shortly back at home...

We parked across from the museum hangar (that's our little Cessna in the background in the left-hand picture), and went over to see what was happening. Very soon my armourer friend Glen appeared, and began his seat servicing work. in the right-hand picture Glen has had the cockpit canopy removed, and he's explaining the workings of the seat to the airport fire officer, just in case a rescue is ever required.

The museum, I should mention, is only small, and a little crowded, but has a fine range of aircraft on display, as well as lots of smaller items, models and pictures, etc..
One notable addition to the museum is David's SECOND Hunter, a 2-seater, which will probably not fly again. She's been re-assembled in the museum, and steps have been provided so that visitors can climb in the cockpit and play at pilots....

All too soon it was time to go again, and we taxied out to the runway and took off back to Auckland.

Here are a couple of views of Tauranga as we climbed out. The city is almost surrounded by harbours and inlets, and is a great place for boating and fishing. In the second picture, the brown hole in the middle of the view is the site of a major landslide that claimed several houses in a severe storm some months ago.

We climbed to 5500 feet for a smoother return flight, but on the way up we encountered considerably more turbulence, and we were knocked around quite a lot - it was like a roller-coaster ride! The cause of the turbulence was the Kaimai Mountains, to the south of us, which made the airflow of the southerly wind very rough indeed. Here is the highest mountain in the range, Te Aroha.We got back to South Auckland just after 11, a great morning out and a fine flying experience for me.

The last two pictures show the final approach back into David's strip - with those trees on the right it looks MUCH more like the Valley of Death than it did on take-off....