The attentive amongst you will know that I’m way behind with this blog. Something to do with enjoying myself too much to sit down and write. Either that or laziness. When I do something though, I do like to do it properly, and for my sake as much as yours I am trying to make this blog as complete as I can and that includes trying to keep it in chronological order. That said, something happened to me a few days ago that I just have to share with you ahead of time, so bear with me as we jump from Melbourne, Australia to Queenstown, New Zealand.

Retiring to bed in our camper van after a night of fantastic jazz as part of the annual Queenstown Jazzfest I fell asleep rapidly, assisted no doubt by the few tasty beverages I enjoyed at the concert. An hour and a half later I awoke to great confusion (again assisted by the earlier beers). With the van rocking Espe asked “what’s that?”. At first I assumed that there were strong winds rocking the van, but in the wind you get all the usual howling and whining as the air forces its way around the van. At this moment there was silence outside and the rocking was far too regular and much stronger than what the wind could do. The rocking was so strong in fact that the cupboard door was banging and the glasses rattling.

I really couldn’t figure it out, but then my mind started working and I figured it had to be some youths playing a practical joke by rocking the van. Yet shouting and turning on the lights did nothing to perturb them. Just a tad frightened to confront them I sat there, still confused only for the rocking to subside… Silence. No footsteps, no voices. There was no-one outside.

So what the hell was it? I remember being so confused. Nothing that my brain could present would explain what had just happened. Then Espe commented “podría haber sido un terremoto?” Of course! An Earthquake. With the unknown that was eating away at me combined with the thought of an axe wielding psychopath rocking our van I was immensely relieved to have everything fall into place. Relieved to know that it was only an earthquake.

Only an Earthquake! Some of the worlds biggest natural disasters can be attributed to earthquakes. This is nature at its most dangerous. Tectonic plates jostling for position. The stuff that mountains are made from. Our quake measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, which although small compared to the quakes that hit the headlines, believe me was certainly strong enough. Very few people slept through this, close to the epicentre huge boulders were dislodged from mountains and according to insurance claims over $100,000 worth of damage was done.

Of course I didn’t know this at the time. So, there I was content that the world made sense again (holding Espe who was, quite rationally and the opposite of me, more afraid for knowing what it was) when the ground started shaking again. Not as strongly this time and for much less time. Our first aftershock. Apparently aftershocks can continue for weeks. We’ve already had four but I slept through two of them and I was on a mountain bike hurtling down a mountain during another. Getting back to sleep was pretty tough. I was dumbstruck by what had happened, going over and over it in my head, in absolute awe of it all.

Just writing this post has me excited, on edge, in awe… No I can’t actually find the words to describe how I feel. One thing I can say is I feel very lucky to have experienced this, and without wanting to be melodramatic, lucky to be unscathed. Certainly another story for the grand children.

As a kid I loved the earthquake simulator in London’s Geological museum. That had given me an idea what it might be like but I must say it was nothing compared to the real thing which was, erm, quite unreal. It is such a bizarre sensation, the violent shaking of the one thing that you know to be solid and unmoving (28 years on this planet had shown me that), yet those few long seconds turned that around completely. Terra Firma? Yeah, right.