Tag Archives: disaster

Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand

by jose

A gigantic washing machine.

That is what got through my mind when I got down from the couch to the floor, just to ensure I would have maximum stability, while looking apprehensively at the shaking ceiling and the clinking photography frame on the wall. “I am sitting on a freaking gigantic washing machine.” No, there was not any table near me and anyway, I was too incredulous to move much more.

It turned out I was lucky. Again. I was CouchSurfing at the right place, in the Riccarton suburb.

In the city center, two kilometers east from me, people were dieing.

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Marlo & Orbost, Victoria, Australia

by jose

In the midst of countless unexpected complications (bad schedules, stuff to do, personal problems, journey delays), one thing from my stay in Marlo remained: I saw Bailey again, after our amazing trip in the Middle-East, and before going on around the world.

To be honest, I would have never heard of Marlo, a small village of 340 inhabitants – they call that a town in Australia – lost on the South Coast of Victoria, if not for her. We had agreed on meeting again when we parted in Cairo airport, almost six months ago now (God time flies) – and despite the lack of communication means, despite the vague schedule of my hitch-hiking, we did.

And thus I ended up there – where the Snowy meets the sea.

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Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

by jose

My last post about Malaysia was silent. I thought silence was a good way to express my grief about the hundreds of people dieing a few kilometers from me, trapped in the rubble of the Christchurch earthquake.

And then I thought I could do that as well for the next posts to save me the trouble and time of writing and laying out the page. I found myself choosing pictures.

And I told myself I had so much to say about them, about my travel, that pictures cannot express alone.

Words cannot either, but they help.

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