To the end of the world

As hinted in my last article, I have a great announcement to make: I’m going to New-Zealand for a year!

Wait… what?

I am leaving with a Working Holiday Visa (WHV) that allows me to stay there for a year, to work and travel, however I want it. That means that on August 19, I’m flying to Auckland! My main plan is not to have a plan, but after staying in kiwiland, I imagine myself traveling to Australia, Vanuatu, Hawai… possibilities are endless, and that’s a worry for later anyway.

In New-Zealand, I may work in farms and orchards, do some wwoofing, hitch-hike… I will of course continue writing here at Eiwawar and sharing my pictures with you, so make sure to tune in from time to time 😉
I will also remain a RELEX employee, working part-time with our technical support, so it’s likely I’ll settle down for some relaxed period, in between extensive traveling stints.

The reasons behind my departure are manifold, but the most important is maybe that, simply put, office life is not for me. I spend hours in front of a computer, then spend some more at home. When comes the weekend, I feel completely drained and empty, when I should be pumped up to go on adventures. I miss the days of freedom I enjoyed while writing my thesis; with this journey, I hope to find a more sustainable way of life. We’ll see.

I said I had no plan… that’s not exactly true. On November 11, I will embark on a cruise-expedition with Heritage Expeditions to the Subantarctic Islands, uninhabited archipelagoes where albatrosses and penguins nest.
More than a plan, this will be my first photographic project, which I called SubAntarctica (original, isn’t it?). I want to document this trip to render the solitude and the rough beauty of these islands, to touch my viewers and make them realize how gorgeous, but fragile, our nature is. The final product, as I imagine it, would be a photo exhibition coupled to a 30-minute talk, to bring this work to live audiences and interact with them first-hand.

I’m interested in what you think of this idea (exhibition + talk). When I was a kid, I attended to such talks at the House of Nature and Environment (MNEI) in Grenoble. People talked about their trip to Kazakhstan or the Himalaya, with a slideshow of pictures. Does it sound as exciting to you as it did to me back then?
Would you know someone, a local association maybe, interested in such a project, such a talk? Wherever you are on the planet, I’m sure we can arrange something. I promise you a voyage of the mind to an exotic location, with wildlife and stunning sceneries!

Below is the project pitch; feel free to share it and contact me for more information.

That said, this expedition is only a couple of weeks out of one whole year, and there will be more to discover on the “mainland”. I hope to meet local people, especially birdwatchers and photographers, who could welcome me and show me a bit of their land. If you know someone interested in sheltering a traveler for a night or two, I would love to know about it 😉

Finally, I make this blog for you, and I would like to ask you a question: what would you like to see here during this trip? I’m very open to suggestions, so let yourself be heard! In addition to the usual posts, I have in mind “diary-like” entries, to update you about my most recent endeavours. One of the things I often hear is that my articles come too late after the fact (hell, I’ve just released two articles about last October), so that would be a way to remedy this flaw. What do you think?

See you at the end of the world!

All pictures under a public domain license (I don’t have pictures from there… yet) by Bernard Spragg.

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