Author Archive | Gareth Morgan

The arid environs and extreme climes of the North Mexican desert are tough for us softies from the temperate zone to endure. 46 degrees during the heat of the day and still 34 degrees at 10 pm at night is no norm for us. Setting the air con in the hotel room to 25 degrees […]

Ok so it wasn’t huge but it did bite my finger and it looked like it was going septic, so talk of amputation and gangrene was rather premature. I don’t think you would want to play with a mummy one Jo I think it was a foot long

We are all in shock from the devastation we saw during our tour of New Orleans with a local fireman. 8 months later to have so much damage and wreckage strewn about has to be put in perspective. 250,000 homes (all of Christchurch) are unliveable so 60% of the population has been relocated and many […]

“Down in Louisiana, where the alligators grow … “ – or so the lines from Poke Salad Annie go. We finally found a location to have the night out on a swamp, alligators ‘n all. The hut, on stilts to keep it above the water provides much needed protection from the feisty mosquitoes that take […]

We were following a local on a honda, guiding us along a back road beside the levees of the Mississippi, past sugar cane fields. There plumb in the middle of the road was a big turtle waiting to be saved. I stopped and before long we were all admiring the baggy grandmother who didn’t pull […]

Vicksburg ,where General Grant finally got the Rebels to surrender in 1865, was a parkland of history and memorials to the Civil War. The locals still feel the loss and there are often a few comments that let you know that the wounds are not healed. After the history we had a great steak at […]

We’re on a balcony perched over the Mississippi looking across the river into Louisiana, drinking Bud and watching the barges ply their way up the Great River. Man they’re long – a 100 metres at least. As the sun sets over the Louisianna delta and our Ipod belts out Delta Blues it is hard to […]

We’ve just come off the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 500 mile road that follows the old footpath that runs from Nashville Tennessee all the way down to Natchez, just up from the mouth of the Mississippi. It was initially a track for the Choktow Indian and then became the byway for the traders who’d ride […]

This is a museum for petrol heads. Basicly a private establishment (thanks George Barber) with more than 700 bikes and a Lotus collection to die for as well as Porsches for miles. You could even do a training session in driving the Porsches around the track, where they had a recent “super bike ” meet. […]

It’s difficult to call them anything but play-farms really. The larger ones have silos where they store the cattle food imported from the huge grain farms out West to feed their housed cattle. Imagine the expense of that! No wonder the US farm subsidies are so high, protecting these lifestyle farmers. That the US President […]