Travel stories for freedom chasers
The tiny beam of light from my phone bounces and skitters across the pavement as I walk. There’s been no internet or phone signal for 2 days now, some clumsy engineer has cut the cables that connect this West Auckland beach hamlet to the outside world. It’s something you get used to in Muriwai Beach, apparently, according to the locals….
It’s around 8pm and a low, strong wind tugs at the grubby clothes that hang from the line on the opposite roof. There is little sun left, so I pull at the curtains and turn on the light. The atmosphere in the room feels as tender and heavy as the clouds outside the window, trembling with post-storm tension. We have…
As I write this, it’s Boxing Day. I am sitting at the kitchen table of a farmhouse in the Marlborough region of New Zealand, newly showered after completing my farm chores for the day, clean hair dripping over my shoulder. The kitchen smells like coffee and toast and bacon, and there’s a pile of Christmas washing up on the side…
My Mum has told me off twice this week. I just turned 29. Can you even still get told off by your Mum at 29? Apparently so. Anyway, the point isn’t that I got told off, it’s why. She told me off because I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been sharing photos. And she told me she misses not just…
The landscape of Guatemala flashed past the open windows, lush green foliage and sunburnt red earth beneath the distant indigo volcanos on the horizon, as the chicken bus bumped and lurched around tight corners and sparse traffic. I shifted restlessly, my skin sticky against the plastic seat. After a little over a month in Guatemala, we were headed for Guatemala…
I was taken aback. Standing on a sun dappled street corner, the smell of hot fries and the faint reggaeton thump of a distant radio hanging in the air, I peered upwards at the street sign, hand painted in curling script and surrounded by decorative blue wall tiles and a wrought iron balcony. The wide pavement to my left led…
Several things happened when we finally arrived in Mexico City, our bags piled on the pavement outside the hostel in the pale yellow light of 7am as the taxi pulled away from the curb. The first thing that happened was a rush of beautiful, euphoric exhilaration, the kind that only comes from watching the sun come up over a brand…
One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen was a wedding dress in a charity shop window. I was hunting through the piles of discarded shoes and china ornaments, searching for photography props for a piece of University coursework, and as I entered a back room there it was, faded ivory silk with delicate beading that caught the light as it…
