Study leave

On Thursdays Denise volunteers at the Cantor Art Gallery at Stanford University. The campus has a lot of public art and buildings of interest so as it's a lovely hot day I go along to have a look around. I start with the casts of Rodin sculptures decorating the approach to the gallery, where Denise drops me off. It's exciting to be able to get so close. 

The first building I tackle is the Hoover Tower, named after Hoover the former president, and it's a good place to get the measure of the campus, much of which is built in the Mission style with shaded cloisters and leafy squares. It seems to stretch as far as the distant hills. These students are privileged indeed. On the ground floor of the tower is a small museum that fills me in on the lives of Herbert and Lou Hoover.


Near the Tower is an art gallery that changes its exhibitions regularly in order to show off its extensive collection. I'm most absorbed by a documentary on Frida Kahlo and end up chatting with the woman on the desk about the craziness of how inferior Kahlo felt as an artist next to Rivera, and yet, whose art has endured? I wander about in the sun and while there are plenty of youngsters marching past purposefully clutching papers, or cheerleaders riding by on bicycles, or kids who are barely shaving being shown around, I do find the occasional student taking time out, like this one snoozing in the shade of the palm fronds.
I take a lunch break at a table in front of the law school and eavesdrop on students discussing internships, subjects, holidays… It's a real international crowd, the world's elite.
In the university's memorial chapel there's an organ recital providing a most musical backdrop to my visit. The chapel's toilet wins the most artistic window award. How weird am I, I think, as I take a photo from my seated vantage point (not that weird, I discover later, when Denise's colleague confesses to doing exactly the same).

Denise shows me round the Cantor collection, with Japanese kimonos and Chinese slippers, American art, older European stuff and large-scale outdoor pieces by Richard Long on the balcony (the stone circle is not my favourite of his pieces), Richard Serra down in the courtyard and Anthony Gormley's snake wall in the trees beside the gallery.





We drive to Palo Alto town centre, swinging by the garage where William R Hewlett and David Packard began developing their first product, the audio oscillator, in 1938. This spot is generally recognised as the birthplace of Silicon Valley and is now a historic landmark.

We meet up with Bill at the Stanford cinema, which is hosting a Fifties film festival, and watch 20 Million Miles to Earth. Following a musical introduction on the organ, the movie delights with makeshift monsters, clunky dialogue and even a romance shoehorned into the science fiction, presumably to keep the ladies happy.



We eat at the latest trendy taco spot, Tacolicious, packed out with kids from the campus drinking tequila, or at least the ones who have fake ID. 

I know the way to San Jose

From departing Auckland at 6.15am to landing in San Francisco at 11.30am I've changed planes twice and been on the go a total of 17 hours, much of it spent watching movies – Milk, The Artist, The King's Speech, My Week With Marilyn, Hitchcock, Silver Linings Playbook. Perhaps unsurprisingly I've been hit by jetlag for the first time since late February (all the travelling I've done since then has involved no more than a couple of hours' time difference). On the NZ to US leg, I almost arrived before I set off!

I'm staying with old Scottish friends Bill and Denise in Sunnyvale, a town not far from San Jose. Denise picks me up and on arrival at their apartment I just have to nap – my eyelids are dropping like lead weights. Later, we go out for mojitos and quesadillas. 

The following day I'm out for the count until Denise knocks on the door saying it's 10.15am. It's a scorching day so we zoom off in Denise's little sports car with the top down, headscarves and sunglasses on like something out of a Fifties movie. 

We take the freeway south. The traffic is a bit of a shock to the system after New Zealand – six lanes on each side and each one busy. We park at a state reserve on the coastline north of Santa Cruz and walk along the cliffs.

We see three young guys standing on the very edge of the cliff being lashed by waves crashing up and over the rocks. A little risky. They're just laughing, though.

We eat sandwiches in a sandy cove and I discover a fern grotto when I go off looking for a secluded spot to have a pee. We see seals basking on one of the flat outcrops, like plump sausages on a grill. Talking of grills, back in Sunnyvale it's barbecue time. I've tried to find halloumi to grill but something called 'grilled cheese' is the best I can do. It's not a huge success so thank goodness for the zucchini, the eggplant and the mushrooms. Not to mention the rosé!

One morning Denise takes me to her aqua aerobics class in the local outdoor pool. The claim to fame here is that Teri Hatcher went to school next door. We are the youngest by decades and as we do the underwater bicycle up and down the lanes in the sunshine, with our flotation belts pulled in tight, I am quizzed about my travels, given tips, asked about Scotland, filled in on the ancestors. All the while Lisa, the instructor, blows her whistle and shouts out the next exercise – jumping jacks, jogging, squats and the flamingo, quite a tricky manoeuvre involving balancing on a noodle with one foot and back-peddling with the other. 

Bill has a half day holiday so we set off for Santa Cruz, stopping off at Burrell School Vineyards, a gorgeous spot near Los Gatos with views over the sun-drenched vines. The cellar door is in an old school building and the lady on duty, the owner I think, reminds me of Stifler's mom from American Pie. Denise volunteers for the tasting as Bill is designated driver and it's far too early for me. 

Then we drive down to Capitola, south of Santa Cruz, and walk the esplanade. 

The beach is packed with mums and kids just out of school and the smallish waves are perfect for the dozens of junior surfers practising their moves. There are fun tiles along the low wall at the back of the beach and a terrace of candy coloured Adobe style houses right on the beachfront. I like it. It feels unpretentious, the sort of place you'd feel comfortable saying, 'Oh sod the muffin top' and letting it all hang out in a bikini. 

After lunch we drive inland to walk the Redwood circuit in Henry Cowell Park. I didn't realise Redwoods are so community minded. They grow in clumps and end up sharing the root system, evolving into one multi-trunked tree and shaking off branches that are surplus to requirements. We see warning signs about mountain lions...eek.

A little further up the road there's a sign pointing to a covered bridge. I've never been on one and have no idea why some bridges came to be covered. Protection from the weather, maybe? There is something mysterious about the dark interior while the lofty proportions give the structure a solid majesty. A shame it's no longer in use.

Bill and Denise have cleverly organised a night out on our way home, at a venue called the Don Quixote, in Felton in the Santa Cruz hills. On the bill tonight is a Prince tribute band called The Purple Ones and they're on stage soon after we arrive to do the longest sound check ever, with most of the audience already gathered. 
The gig is not well attended. It's been such a hot day that everyone is probably flopping at home or having barbecues. However, the minute the band come on dressed in their performance finery, the dancefloor starts jumping with Santa Cruz's cookiest crew – the woman doing full ballet moves, á pointe; the Downs Syndrome lady who is up first, joyful and jumping; another girl who spins her arms in circles, all the time; some grizzled old hippy geezers who drift on and off from manning the ticket desk; three young blondes in black who look so cool I can't help thinking they've come to the wrong place; and me and Denise. It's people-watching par excellence. We all have a really great night.

Having a blast

Driving down from Rotorua to the Tongariro National Park, Amanda, Anouk and I take a break by the Huka Falls in Taupo. Taupo is another of those enormous calderas. The impact of its eruption was felt as far away as Ancient Rome where a change in the weather was documented. On a lesser scale today we see a jet boat motor right up to the falls then speed away with the life-jacketed passengers waving at us up on the viewing terraces.

We skirt Lake Taupo in the sunshine and drive towards the clouds of the national park. As we approach Tongariro we notice wisps of white around the sides and debate whether these are clouds or active vents in the sides of the mountain. We find out later it is activity of a non-cloudy nature.

It's properly clagged in when we get to Whakapapa (Wh is pronounced f by the way...really) and the Chateau Tongariro, where we are told our cabin isn't ready. Amanda kicks up a stink and we're shown to a cabin that is most likely nicer than the one they were trying to get ready quickly for us. God bless the fuss-makers.

We call in at the excellent visitor centre and watch a 15-minute film about volcanics, and a 25-minute film featuring the Maori legends behind the mountains and the story of how they came to be in the hands of the Department of Conservation (DOC). There's a lovely line about how volcanoes create and destroy in one explosion.

Keen to get some exercise, I go for a a quick walk to Taranaki Falls, a real surprise at around 20m high. The trail features open hillside, narrow gorges and glades of trees with so much lichen it's as if the trunks have puffa jackets on. It's that thick.

We have dinner at the Skotel, a Seventies style ski lodge complete with retro skier panels on the sliding glass doors at the entrance.

The next morning Anouk wakes me up at 7am saying, 'Auntie Cate, you have to come and look at the view.' Something makes me shake myself out of bed and walk through to the living room window. Before me is a pink sunrise and blue skies all around us on the mountain. Anouk later tells Amanda, 'I just had to get her up Mum, it's a tourist day.' I quickly dress, put on my walking boots, grab my camera and step outside. There it is, Ngauruhoe in all its cone-like splendour. 

I walk along the Taranaki Falls track as far as the first bridge and see all three of the volcanoes, Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. I meet people coming out on the track as I head back to the cabin and can't help grinning at one and all. It is indeed a tourist day. 

We breakfast quickly and are up at the Iwakau Village at the 'Top of the Bruce' road – the car park and base station for the Ruapehu ski area – by 9am. The chairlift is on hold due to high winds so we decide to wait it out for a bit in the cafe over fruit pie and flat whites. We check back in and it's still on hold, so we decide to do a little walk over to a ridge. It's called Meads Wall route and is a dramatic rocky outcrop that was used as a location for Lord of the Rings.
I scramble up to the top of the little peak here. The views are outstanding, all the peaks, the valley cloaked in cloud and far in the distance Taranaki poking through.

Back at base the chairlift still isn't open but there's a strong chance it will so we decide to have lunch here and hope for the best, spending a bit of time messing around in the sun and the store, where we find these outsize Uggs.


In the meantime, I get chatting to a group of walkers who are talking about walking the Skyline Route, which departs from the top of the chairlift. So I ask if I can tag along if the lift gets going. Fortunately it does. Up at the top there's a brand new top station cafe, like a cathedral in wood with windows soaring up to take in as much of the view as is possible.

Then my new tramping buddies, Chris and Calli, and I set off on the track. I've never walked in such recent volcanic terrain before and the scoria underfoot is like treading on Rice Krispies.
It's a steep climb up a winding track, following way marker poles to the ridge you'd walk up if you were going to the summit. That's the snow line and it really wouldn't be a great idea to walk any further, ill equipped as I am. Chris is from Taupo and Calli is from Rotorua. I think they might be dating. Whatever, I'm just glad they're cool about me joining them. They're excellent walking company and when we get to the top Calli obliges with a photo or two of me with the stupendous Ngauruhoe behind. It's quite breezy. 

We are higher than Mount Tongariro and most definitely higher than anyone doing the Crossing. All that's missing is an emerald lake. Next time… for the moment I feel incredibly blessed to have had this miracle day of sunshine and views.

We do a bit of a jogging descent as the scoria scree is so soft. Chris and Calli drop me off at the Chateau, which is where we head for a sauna and swim in a pool that looks like it's in the bowels of a ship, with a low ceiling and marine-style rivets around the metal panels. 

We have dinner in Pihangi, the cafe under the Chateau and later I sit by the fire with a Baileys. Anouk has made friends with a girl called Brenna. She gravitates towards Brenna and her parents' table at dinner and weaves them all sorts of yarns about the horses she has at home.

I keep forgetting Anouk is only six. She is so articulate and picks things up so quickly, plus she's tall (second tallest in her class). I've taught her the Woolie Boogie Bee song from my choir's Lullaby album and she is not only word perfect, but has improvised some extra verses of her own. But I would expect no less than for the daughter of my clever, expressive and passionate friend to be a clever, expressive and passionate child. I love the way she says 'Oh man…' and the way she catches her mum out by remembering everything that has ever been said and throwing it back. At six! I'm well and truly smitten.

On my last full day in New Zealand we have coffee in the Fergusson cafe, once a ski club hut, where there's a display of archive photographs, and information on how the workers who built the Chateau, pictured below, were accommodated.

As we're leaving the mountains Ngaurahoe seems to have a UFO flying above it, framed in the panoramic window inside the Chateau.

It's so strange that the weather forecast was appalling and yet, for my stay here in this volcano theatre, it's as if the curtains opened and the performers played their parts to perfection. There's one last show to see, Tawhai Falls just south of the Chateau, where Anouk takes a paddle in the ice-cold waters.

On our drive back north we stop for lunch in Te Kuiti, a town at the heart of rural King Country, that celebrates its famous rugby-playing sons, the Meads, but doesn't seem too bothered about its kids playing on the railway tracks unsupervised. 

After a bit of a drive our next stop is the Waitomo glowworm caves where I take Anouk on a tour while Amanda rests up. Our guide is a Maori girl who tells us she is descended from the man who discovered the caves all those years ago. She leads us along passages, down stairways and into the 'cathedral' a space some 30m high where all the lights go out and she asks her brother to sing a Maori song. Listening to him in the dark is moving and magical. Then, still in the dark and in complete silence, we descend to an underground river where we all squash into a boat that is then pulled along on a cable. Clinging to the roof of the cave just above our heads are thousands of glowworms, like a canopy of sparkling diamonds. Anouk and I are at the rear of the boat and all we can do is lie back in absolute wonder.

Once we've given the swish visitor centre our dues we are back on the road to Auckland, via Amanda's mum's place for a barbecue with mum, brother Jean-Paul and his gorgeous daughter Stephania. 
Now I'm off to San Francisco. Leaving is hard. Anouk is very upset and I have to stand by her bed singing until she falls asleep and lets go of my hand. I manage a few hours but am up at five to wake Amanda for our drive to the airport. What a friend. As good as family to me. Hard to top New Zealand, too... until I'm back in Scotland this summer, of course!

A real tasty geyser

So the car is packed for our girls roadie and I could be off on tour with Ivana and Ivanka Trump there's so much luggage in the boot. My friend Amanda, her daughter Anouk and I are going to Rotorua, home to New Zealand's finest hot springs and spouting geysers. It's quite a drive across the central plains of the North Island so we stop off at the newly nicknamed town of Hobbiton for lunch. It's where much of The Hobbit was filmed and has a hobbit's house for its tourist information centre.

I smell Rotorua before I see it. When we get out of the car to look at the lake the all-pervading sulphurous aroma hits home. Amanda and Anouk chill out at our little apartment but I'm itching to be moving so I drive up to the nearby Redwood forest to walk a few of the trails there.

In the morning we drive to Waiotapu, a hot springs park about 30 miles south of Rotorua. There's a geyser show scheduled for 10.15am and we manage to bag front row seats. Of course, the 'eruption' is artificially controlled by a man called Garth, who empties a packet of soap suds or some such catalyst down the geyser's gullet and stands well back. It's not the highest geyser ever – the water table being quite low – but from our vantage point it's a fine show.

Then we spend an hour or so walking trails around the geothermal park we've paid $30 to enter. There is every type of geothermal wonder here and it is surrounded by forested hills, a more natural setting than some of the big parks in town that have earned the town the nickname Rotovegas. Here are silica terraces, not that big yet but give them a thousand years.
The champagne pool bubbles away contentedly, fringed with orange and swirling with steam.



The vibrant yellow of this sulphur pond is like something out of a paint pot, and everywhere there is steam, steam and more steam. We learn about the birds who build nests in nooks in the walls of the springs. The hot air literally babysits the eggs while the birds go out on the town.



For lunch Amanda has booked a cruise on Lake Rotorua but I decide I'd rather be walking so I set off around its shore. Beautiful black swans paddle towards me hoping for nibbles.

I pass a building sheltering an enormous Maori canoe with this fearsome figurehead and a little further on I see top tribal graffiti decorating the lakeside park's public loos.


I reach Sulphur Bay, an inlet of the lake, where the hot springs emerge and spill out into a huge pale blue lagoon. Hidden in the bushes nearby there are bubbling cauldrons of brown sludge – one is called the Coffee Pot – in which men used to dunk themselves for the cure. They had to tie themselves to the surrounding Manuka bushes so they didn't go under.
We all meet up again to drive to some pools you can have a soak and a swim in, at Waikite. Anouk is ready first.

Waikite pools overlook rolling farmland and feel like the sort of place the locals go. There's a short eco trek, which leads through the gully and up to the spring discharging all the hot water for the pools. It's a primeval scene, like how you'd imagine the dawn of time. Anouk is into alliteration and calls it steamy, swampy and spluttering.

The pools vary in temperature from 36 to 40 degrees and we decide that 38 degrees is just about perfect. Great care has been taken to create as natural setting as possible, particularly around the outer pools.We're joined by quite a few Maori families who have come for a soak in the sunset.

On the way home the pink setting sun shines onto this lone cloud and turns it into an alien spaceship. It follows us all the way home.
That night we eat at Rotorua's top family restaurant, Fat Dogs, much to Anouk's delight. Amanda meets an old school friend from Pukekohe who is now a grandmother. 

The next day we pop over to the Saturday morning market. It is held in the town park, which also features the town's free geothermal attractions. Right behind this food stall, for example, is a bubbling, scalding-hot pool.

Before we leave there is one last attraction we have to visit – the mud pools. We're transfixed by the sights and sounds of the mud spouts plip-plopping in conversation with each other. Every so often there's a spurt, like a great fountain of gunge. 

This kind of geothermal activity makes me feel vaguely uneasy, the boiling and bubbling reminding me just what the earth's crust is covering up, quite thinly in places like this. Now we're off somewhere even more unpredictable, the Tongariro National Park, where one volcano erupted as recently as 2007. Gulp.