We caught the first bus to Arrowtown, a little town about 20 minutes from Queenstown. Arrowtown first developed during New Zealand’s gold rush in the 1860s as the Arrow River nearby was rich in gold deposits. Today, Arrowtown is better known for the golden hues of its mountains in the autumn. ST and I decided to hike Tobin’s Track, which was a “quick 35 minute walk up to beautiful panoramic ... Read More »
A quick 2-hour flight took us from Auckland to Queenstown. Folks, if you ever take an Air New Zealand flight, do yourself a favor and watch the inflight safety videos – they are hands down THE most entertaining safety videos of any airline I’ve taken to date. In fact, I find myself looking for their past safety videos on YouTube and watching them from beginning to end even when I’m ... Read More »
We almost missed our Auckland flight after going a little crazy with our last minute shopping back in Hong Kong, but thanks to the power of the world’s most efficient transport system, we made it just in time. Once onboard, I was absolutely enthralled by the BBC Planet Earth series about the Kalahari Desert they had on the in-flight entertainment. If you ever get the chance, watch it. The BBC has completely outdone itself in this ... Read More »
Whoever knew a casual lunch at The Square back in Hong Kong would lead to a New Zealand trip? (Love that restaurant, by the way.) Stranger stories have happened, and as some of you might have heard, I did indeed win the grand prize in a recent Air New Zealand competition. That meant getting a pair of round trip tickets to New Zealand, a $1,000 shopping voucher and a tour ... Read More »
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.” -Ayn Rand It is December 2009. I am on the train with a friend, packed in the weekend sardine crowd heading to town. “So I just found out about this race in the Sahara Desert. You carry everything you need and you get to climb sand dunes. ... Read More »
So they said the race will end at the Great Pyramids. Thanks to my hyper-active imagination, I had this vision of a surging 100+ man contingent charging towards the Pyramids from afar, raising dust from the horizon like Lawrence of Arabia on his horse. Oh, it would be a very grand affair indeed. That was the dream. Now the reality: we decamp, get on a bus and go on a ... Read More »
People often ask how it had felt in that moment of reaching the 94km finish line. Was I overjoyed, was I relieved, was I emotional? The truth is, I was none of those things. The wonders and rigours of the last 20-odd hours had drained every ounce of energy such that the actual crossing of the finish line hardly caused a ripple in the mind. The early moments of crossing ... Read More »
The darkness of what once seemed to be an endless night was fading fast. It was the 83rd kilometre and circa 5:45am. The air was still stubbornly cold but the sky was blushing pink; it was a matter of time before the sun found its way up the sky and roasted the land again. We were soon reaching the 24-hour mark since the start of Stage 5 of the race and I ... Read More »
We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” – Chuck Palahniuk Checkpoint 2, a.k.a. civilsation and the mirage of a mirage At the 20km mark we entered the much-anticipated Wadi el-Hitan (Valley of the Whales), a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We were told that there would be million year old whale fossils here, a marquee point of the entire race. It was here where I ... Read More »
The morning we were to embark on the 94km Stage 5 of the Sahara Race, the sun rose punctually, without any sympathy for a handful of sleep-deprived runners stuck in a desert. At this point, you would expect everyone to be scrambling around, planning the last of our provisions and double and triple-checking our gear before the start. After all, on such a long stage every mistake is magnified and every gram on your back weighs that much ... Read More »
J.J. Pedersen let’s go see the world