ITINERARY
What's the wildest natural phenomenon you've witnessed?
Kate Gazzard @kate_gazzard
So there I was, deep inside the Waitomo Caves in New Zealand, surrounded by total darkness, when suddenly the walls started sparkling like the world’s most magical disco ball.
Turns out, those glowing dots weren’t fairy dust but thousands of glowworms doing their best impression of a nightlight (they were succeeding).
Honestly, it felt like I’d stumbled into some kind of secret underground rave hosted by very shy, very tiny party animals.
I whispered my excitement to my sister (who was sitting beside me), so I wouldn’t scare the little glow-worm DJs.
Nature’s light show was so impressive, it didn't even bother me that I wasn't allowed to take any photos to prove what I'd seen.
I guess it was each tiny worm's way of telling me to unplug and just glow with the flow.
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Alex Mitcheson @alex_mitcheson_writes
Last year, I had to undertake a painful journey back to where I grew up, the majestic castle-strewn coastline of Northumberland, England.
Diagnosed with brain cancer, my mother was in palliative care, and while I did everything I could, I needed to take quite a lot of time out to clear my mind.
I spent this time rediscovering places I had known in my youth, as well as drinking as much Guinness as my body could physically handle.
Towards the end of my time there, I visited a beach one afternoon and was met with the utterly paralysing sight of a double rainbow, with one end dipping into the ocean just metres from the shoreline.
It was like a glitch in the Matrix. An audible, “EH?!” came from a dog-walking couple as they passed by - it felt like we had shared something extraordinary.
My mum passed away a few days later.
Harley Brown @harleyb.jpg
The day-to-day got weird when hundreds of earthquakes shook Bali every day during the volcano eruptions back in 2017.
I arrived just after the ash column soared 10,000 metres into the air. The villages had been evacuated by that point, and the energy on the streets felt like the worst had passed; aftershocks weren’t the biggest threat…
Nonetheless, all day, all night, everyone was ready to run, whether they were mid-meal or mid-toilet. Bikes stopped in their tracks, conversations halted, pool table games abandoned, and an eerie silence would take over… Followed by laughter directed at the wide-eyed and startled.
The oddity brought people together in a way; we’d see the same flustered smiles dozens of times a day, ‘already many this morning, aduh!’, and heard the same cheeky jokes: ‘too much jiggy-jig next door, ya!’ as the walls shook and the windows rumbled.
get in the know Many of New Caledonia’s plant species are prehistoric. We’re talking a few plant lineages that predates dinosaurs, so the island country is practically a Jurassic Garden.
