Antipodes

By Mark Price (Longacre Press, RRP $34.99)

 

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Mark Price set out on a personal journey and turned it into an amusing story of misdirections, sore feet and numerous scratches throughout New Zealand and an equal-sized chunk western Europe.

A journalist raised in the West Otago-Eastern Southland region, Price bought himself one of those wee GPS gadgets that use satellites to tell you where you are on the globe.

Taking a Kiwi approach to what antipodes means, he used his new gadget to mark and photograph points – "perfect places" – throughout the country north of Christchurch so he could compare the exact opposite point on the other side of the world. (There was no use starting any further south, he had worked out, or he would have been searching for the antipodean point somewhere in the North Atlantic.)

Price then led an expedition from Morocco, through Spain and Portugal to photograph the northern hemisphere equivalents of those points.

Sound dull?

Happily, it's not. He writes in a chatty style that creates an amusing tale of the adventures of El Lider (himself) and La Campana (herself). In perfect third-person style, ill-fortune simply falls on and about them rather than being the result of some actions by expedition members.

Antipodes is an entertaining, down-to-earth, easy-to-read travelogue; Michael Palin meets Wal Footrot. Perfect holiday reading.

It has been noted that, since the expedition for this book, Price and Le Campana have explored more of Europe aboard bicycles. Perhaps a sequel is being prepared.

- © Fairfax NZ News