Leading the way to antipodes

Having come up with the idea of mounting a modern-day expedition, Mark Price needed something to explore. All the good ideas had long been taken.

It took months of daydreaming but eventually it came to him; he would explore the antipodes of New Zealand.

And knowing now that the other end of the earth was in Spain, he felt the need to create a title for himself that would acknowledge the Spanish connection. He decided he should be El Lider de la Expedicion.

As for his wife, he knew it would be unwise to suggest a title with a lesser status so decided she could be Encargado de la Campana, or campaign manager. Or La Campana, because it sounded better. This is an extract from Antipodes.

His own packing was over almost before it began. One small backpack. One heavy tent. One bulky sleeping bag. One pair of sandals. Six white shirts. Some underpants and socks. Camera. GPS. Notebook. Pencil. Pencil sharpener. And, of course, tickets, money and passports.

In the modern way, El Líder's expedition would travel light living off the land, accepting the hospitality of locals, sleeping under the stars or paying by credit card where necessary.

Departure day and El Líder was ready to leave long before the rest of the expedition had finished breakfast.

La Campana insisted he clean the station wagon while he waited.

He calculated the distance to Christchurch airport against the time available and believed as he watched expedition members gradually fill their backpacks that it might still be possible.

Eventually, the station wagon was full and El Líder rolled down the driveway and out on to the street.

He swung the wheel towards the antipodes and tried to clear his mind of the little things with which it was cluttered, and to see the big picture for a moment.

Here they were, on one side of the globe, the planet, the Earth, about to travel to the other side.

He took a deep breath of the southern atmosphere and exhaled noisily.

In a moment they would be past the turning point and on their way.

The turning point was an intersection where El Líder traditionally turned back for the cat accidentally locked inside, the tap left on, or some item forgotten.

The station wagon passed through the intersection and El Líder began to relax.

An explorer then remembered he had not brought with him the black tie that went with the cherry red suit he had worn at the previous night's school formal and had to return to the suit hire place that morning.

El Líder turned back for the tie, stopped at the suit hire place, and at last began to circle the Earth towards the antipodes, by way of the road to Christchurch.

The Journey to the Ends of the Earth had begun.

Eleven hundred and eighty-seven metres above the Earth and 1166 kilometres beyond Sydney, tea and coffee services were suddenly suspended.

The pilot warned that he was expecting turbulence.

A large man across the aisle from El Líder continued to doze, a crying baby in the distance continued to cry, and on the tiny television screen a few millimetres in front of El Líder's face, Kath continued to model lingerie.

The pilot's name was David. He was American and he was a captain. His co-pilot was Ramesh.

These details El Líder had picked up from the welcome aboard message delivered just before take-off.

El Líder had asked an Emirates public relations person in New Zealand for permission to meet the men and women who would hold the lives of expedition members in their hands from Christchurch to Casablanca.

He had questions that he felt entitled to ask.

His request was referred to Dubai where it was refused.

El Líder could not imagine Magellan setting out to circumnavigate the globe without first meeting his helmsman and the rejection put El Líder's nose quite out of joint.

Now he was left with questions about turbulence but no answers.

For instance, how bad did turbulence have to be before tea and coffee services were suspended? And how bad did turbulence have to be before the wings broke off? Just two questions that came to mind.

Had he been given the chance to ask David and Ramesh about turbulence, he would have also slipped in questions about their level of experience and, for that matter, he would have been able to check them over for nervous tics and signs of recent drug use.

And it would have been comforting to see inside the cockpit to ensure it was free of half-empty gin bottles and fast-food wrappers.

The turbulence amounted to a few brief vibrations and was never mentioned again by either David or Ramesh.

The coffee arrived and El Líder returned his attention to Kath and Kim.

His plan had been for the explorers to assume Spain time from the beginning of the flight so they would suffer less from jet-lag.

This was an idea he had picked up from a television travel show.

But by 11 o'clock in the morning, Spain time and before they'd even begun to cross the Great Sandy Desert beyond Alice Springs, the cabin lights had been turned out and all the expedition was asleep.

El Líder would have joined them but he had a case of the fidgets.

There was nowhere that his feet were comfortable. His ankle hurt. Then his knee. Then his hip. Then his ankle hurt again. And he was hot. He thought of battery hens in cages and pigs in sow crates.

He was tired but he could not sleep.

He listened to a few minutes of Still Air, flicked to Music for Yoga, then Glistening Beach then Gentle Slumber then back to Still Air.

The Great Sandy Desert came and went.

The baby that stopped crying only long enough for its batteries to be changed had finally fallen asleep or been put to death.

El Líder did not care which. He tried a burst of Al Fatina from The Holy Koran, and gazed restlessly about the darkened cabin. The toilets did a steady trade.

David and Ramesh roused sleeping passengers occasionally with announcements about seat belts.

El Líder had 500 movies and video clips at his fingertips.

He laughed through the one episode of Frasier and three episodes of Kath and Kim, and smiled serenely through the opening song from The Sound of Music.

Nothing else really appealed.

He wrote a few notes with Fat Freddy's Drop playing in the background: Ground speed 888kmh. 10.12 hours to Dubai. Altitude 10,363m.

Then, unexpectedly, he fell asleep over the Timor Sea, leaving David and Ramesh to fly the plane alone.

At Dubai the Australian passengers left on connecting flights to Europe and the expedition joined another planeload of Arab and African passengers.

The women were mostly dressed from head to toe in black.

All carried huge suitcases disguised as hand luggage that they struggled to cram into the overhead lockers with the help of cheerful Emirates staff.

El Líder judged the African men to be traders of some sort, moving goods around the world with an eye for a slim profit.

They were young and lean with flashing white teeth and they were busy and confident.

One, El Líder noticed approvingly, wore Globetrotter shoes.

With the change of plane, the explorers had moved from one world into another.

They were now a small, pale Australasian enclave in a colourful, boisterous African world.

There was more leg room but less padding in the seats.

ANTIPODES OF NORTH OF AUCKLAND
They landed at Casablanca a city of three million people, and the commercial powerhouse of Morocco, but irrelevant to El Líder, and the expedition went straight from the plane to the train that would take them to the bus for Larache.

For months, in his worst nightmare, El Líder had seen tired expedition members troop off a dilapidated bus into a dim and menacing desert town, the streets sometimes dusty, sometimes dark and shadowy.

They would trudge between back-street hotels finding nowhere to stay.

He had tried and failed to visualise what happened next.

It did not help that he had read a warning about Larache.

It was a town with little accommodation.

Internet sites referred to decayed elegance and faded hotels, and the Lonely Planet guide said of Larache: Little visited and under appreciated, Larache has an unexpected charm in its tumbledown medina and Spanish flavour.

El Líder was always wary of tumbledown.


Mark Price
Mark Price was born during the 1950s wool boom and regularly through those golden years caught the bus from the family farm in West Otago to the 52-strong Waikoikoi Primary School.

In-between times, he chased sheep, made hay, caught eels, shot rabbits and fought with his siblings.

Employment followed high school, first as a cadet reporter, then mostly working in the daily news media, including TV One, TV3 and, of late, the Otago Daily Times.

Mark lives in Dunedin with La Campana and the expedition members.

He is the author of Getting Away with Murder: The Jennifer Beard Inquiry.

 


Giveaway
The Otago Daily Times has four copies of Mark Price's Antipodes to give away.

To enter the draw for one, write your name, address and daytime phone number on the back of an envelope and send it to Antipodes, Editorial Features, PO Box 181, Dunedin, or email playtime@odt.co.nz with Antipodes in the subject line, to arrive before Monday.


 

 

 

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