Last Chance to See

the place, and had their own very special way, as T. E. Lawrence discovered at the end of his life, of going around corners. That was what motorbikes did, and if you wanted a motorbike, that was what you got. End of story. And, of course, it very nearly was the end of the story for the British industry when the Japanese suddenly got the idea that motorbikes didn’t have to be that way. They could be sleek, they could be clean, they could be reliable and well-behaved. Maybe then a whole new world of people would buy them, not just those whose idea of fun was spending Sunday afternoon in the shed with an oily rag, or marching on ’Aqaba.
    These highly competitive machines arrived in the British Isles (again, it’s island species that have never learned to compete hard. I know that Japan is a bunch of islands too, but for the purposes of this analogy, I’m cheerfully going to ignore the fact) and British motorbikes almost died out overnight.
    Almost, but not quite. They were kept alive by a bunch of enthusiasts who felt that though the Nortons and Triumphs might be difficult and curmudgeonly beasts, they had guts and immense character and the world would be a much poorer place without them. They have been through a lot of difficult changes in the last decade or so, but have now reemerged, reengineered as highly prized, bike-lovers’ bikes. I think this analogy is now in serious danger of breaking down, so perhaps I had better abandon it.
    A few days earlier than all this, before we ventured out into Fiordland, I had had a dream.
    I dreamt that I awoke to find myself lying on a remote beach spread-eagled on huge, round, pink and pale blue boulders and unable to move, my head filled with the slow roar of the sea. I awoke from this dream to find myself lying spread-eagled on huge, round, pink and pale blue boulders on a beach and dazed with confusion. I couldn’t move becausemy camera bag was slung around my neck and jammed behind a boulder.
    I struggled to my feet and looked out to sea, trying to work out where on earth I was and if I was still embroiled in a recursion of dreams. Perhaps I was still on a plane going somewhere and was just watching an inflight movie. I looked around for a stewardess, but there was no one coming along the beach with a tray of drinks. I looked down at my boots and that seemed to trigger something in my head. The last clear memory that came to mind of looking closely at my boots was after emerging from a bog in Zaïre when they were sodden with African mud. I looked around nervously. There were no rhinoceroses on the beach either. The beach was clearly not in Zaïre because Zaïre is landlocked and doesn’t have them. I looked at my boots again. They seemed oddly clean. How had that happened? I remembered someone taking my boots away from me and cleaning them. Why would anyone do that? And who? An airport came swimming back to me and I remembered being questioned about my boots and where I had been with them. Zaïre, I said. They took my boots away and returned them to me a few minutes later spotlessly clean and glistening with disinfectant. I remembered thinking at the time that any time I wanted to have my boots really cleaned properly I should remember to fly to New Zealand again. New Zealand. They were quite naturally paranoid about any foreign bacteria being imported into one of the most isolated and unspoiled countries in the world. I tried to remember flying out of New Zealand and couldn’t. Therefore, I must still be in New Zealand. Good. I’d narrowed it down a bit. But where?
    I stumbled a little woozily up the beach, clambering over the boulders of quietly hallucinatory colours, and then from my new vantage point saw Mark away in the distance on his knees and peering into an old log.
    “Moulting little blue penguin,” he said when at last I reached him.
    “What?” I said. “Where?”
    “In the log,” he said. “Look.”
    I peered into the log. A small pair of black eyes peered anxiously back at me from out of a dark ball of ruffled blue fluff.
    I sat back heavily on a rock.
    “Very nice,” I said. “Where are we?”
    Mark grinned. “I thought you seemed a bit jet-lagged,” he said. “You’ve been asleep for about twenty minutes.”
    “Okay,” I said irritably, “but where are we? I think I’ve narrowed it down to New Zealand.”
    “Little Barrier Island,” he said. “Remember? We came here this morning by helicopter.”
    “Ah,” I said, “so that