TRAVEL BREAKS

ROSS THORBY: WE LIVE IN A LAND OF PLENTY

It had all started innocently enough. I was booked on the Queen Mary 2 for her inaugural cruise through Fiordland, and Martin (good friend and publisher of our favourite magazine The Ponsonby News) was having a weak moment over dinner.

“Why don’t you write about it for the magazine?” he asked.

What followed that fateful night in 2013 were 91 columns about cruising and my introduction into the thorny world of journalism. It was a whole new game, grammar, constructive verbs, adjectives, paragraph building, spellcheck and editing... a lot of editing. Thank you mother for all those hours you spent slaving over a hot desktop.

All this combined with trying to formulate something that might pique the interest of a reader - any reader. I was only looking for one, but one that might be encouraged to throw off the shackles of landlocked confinement and try a bit of cruising. If I could convert just one - it would all be worthwhile.

So what followed were stories about divas and dames, pirates and security officers, canals and bridges, missing islands and forgotten tribes and mountains, icebergs, glaciers and volcanoes, shipwrecks and disasters, parties and celebrations. Highlights included close calls with the ship’s brig, an actual jail confinement in Egypt, being left behind in Guatemala and a game of dominoes with a dictator’s chef in Panama.

It’s been quite a journey and it all nearly ended permanently for me and the column when a vicious microbe chased our ship clear across the Atlantic.

There have been a few laughs along the way, with film stars and celebrities, commodores and stewards, holocaust survivors and footballers wives. I got to write stories about them all and I hope you have enjoyed at least a few of them.

But now dear reader - I’m about all done, the world is a changed place, my favourite mode of transport is scattered, moored, berthed and some of them even dismantled. But there is still hope. A small smattering of cruise lines are awakening and stirring, crews are being shaken from their slumbers and gathered from their homes around the globe and bookings are again being reopened, calculated and tabulated.

Governments and tourism sectors of an industry that will rise once again like a phoenix out of the ashes of this Covid nightmare are beginning to stir and stretch their wings. Internal cruising has started once again in Britain, the Caribbean has reopened its doors and just started accepting foreign tagged ships, and the American CDC is arguing over the legality of cruise-lines demanding inoculation certificates from its passengers. It will be a new world, a brave world and one that will inevitably return, haltingly at first, but stronger with each new ship taking back to the seas.

Yes, there will be new protocols; testing will be mandatory, masks probably, social distancing and ships not being filled to capacity. Who knows what will happen to the midnight buffet and the free-for-all champagne cocktails?

I’ve said it before and I will say it again - we are the lucky generation. We could travel freely around the world with just a flash of a New Zealand passport and a piece of number 8 wire in our back packs. How the new world will seem, time will tell, but there is definitely hope on the horizon; hope that when cruising is finally reborn, I’ll have more tales to tell.

Fortunately for us in the meantime, we live in the land of plenty. Plenty of scenery, that is. Although still tethered to Aotearoa and landlocked, I’ve hired a motorhome - fully equipped with ensuite bathroom, full size fridge for the gin and a comfortable bed. It may not be a ship of the seas, but it’s a ship of the tarmac and I’m happy to try it. I’m off to discover more of New Zealand and join the world of the trailer-park-boys.

From Aruba to Africa, Argentina to Ascension, my upcoming ports will now be full of the wonders of Taupo and Rotorua, Hanua and Hamilton, Tutakaka and Piha. New Zealand has never looked so good.

So the time has come. COVID-19 has not only killed the video star but my travel column as well, and until our borders are open, our vaccinations complete, and my passport revalidated, we are dry-docked and temporarily in suspension, awaiting a refit on indefinite furlough.

Thanks Martin, and thank you readers for coming along. It’s been a blast.