Protected: There And Back Again

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E noho ra, Aotearoa

.

I have never been to Cape Reinga, the northwesternmost point at the top of New Zealand. Maori legends say it is the last departure point for spirits on their homeward journey to Hawaiiki, and the home of an ancient pohutukawa tree that aids the spirits in their exit from this world.

I have loved this story since the first time I heard it. It goes like this:

And now the spirit is on his last journey, northwards along the coastline towards the farthest point of all the land, on his way to join the ancestors in distant Hawaiki. At the stream called Kauaeparaoa he comes ashore, shivering. Not far to go now: first across this narrow neck of land to Spirits Bay, then round the clifftops to Te Reinga, the leaping place of ghosts.

At last, the mist around Te Reinga parts and he sees it: the sacred pohutukawa called Akakitereinga. He must clamber down its roots until he stands on that ledge down there. As the ocean swirls around the ledge, it sweeps across those big fronds of seaweed. And there is the hole! Sadly, the spirit dives in. The seaweed sways back to cover him, and he disappears.

At Manawatawi the spirit resurfaces. For one last time he looks back — back to Te Reinga, back to the land, back to the loved ones he has left behind. Then he turns northwards, and is gone. *

Goodbye, New Zealand.  It is time for me to go.

*from The Cross-Leased Chardonnay Cellphone Paradise

 

Then again . . .

I take it back; despite what I said last week, sometimes I still do NOT love it here. One of those times was last Sunday, when the letter below ran in the Weekend Edition of the Press (click to enlarge).

 

Nuts and Bolts

Recently I did an interview for Expat Interviews. If you are curious about the general logistics of moving to New Zealand: visas, finances, broad advantages and disadvantages, etc., then have a look!

 

New Zealand Photo of the Week

After you drive through the tunnel that connects Lyttelton with Christchurch, there is a moment when the Southern Alps dramatically come into view over the city. At this moment, Maurice usually says ecstatically, “Just look at those mountains!”, which has always made me roll my eyes and stare pointedly the other way, especially if I had just lost the “What Music Shall We Play In The Car? (Round 800)” argument and was enduring the dulcet strains of “The Eagle and the Hawk.” Mountains have just never done it for me; I’m sorry.

But I must have inhaled too much fresh alpine air over the past year, because more often than not, when I’m driving to work early in the morning and the sun is just coming up, I see the snow-covered peaks of the Southern Alps and think, “Just look at those mountains.”

 

You’ll Eventually Tire of the Rugby

When that happens, Galleycat has some New Zealand titles to add to your reading list.

 

New Zealand Photo of the Week

One unmitigated, 100% absolutely good thing about New Zealand: excellent coffee. Anywhere you go. Even at some bar in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning, you can get a great latte (although why you would want a latte when you can have a flat white is beyond me).

No matter how bad the caffeine withdrawal gets, you’ll never catch me in Starbucks again.

 

Protected: Why Can’t Helen Keller Drive?*

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Only in New Zealand. . .

. . . where the social welfare net is so widely cast and tightly knit, and where the world’s oldest profession is decriminalized, could a prostitute claim compensation for a work-related injury when the car in which she is servicing her client crashes.

Um, good on her?

 

The Heaphy Track

I have been so remiss in writing about the Heaphy Track, which Maurice and I hiked a little over a month ago. My tardiness mostly stems from the fact that a. I’m lazy and b. my pictures turned out really badly. Lotsa rain + 3.2 megapixel freebie digital camera + zero photography skillz = this slideshow below.

As hard as it is to believe, I have decent tramping experience now — another reason for my relative silence on this pretty amazing hike. I no longer find observations like gee, it is raining really hard and yet I still must walk or oh sweet Jesus I have blisters all over my heels and yet I still must walk or even though it is pissing down and the flesh shreds off my feet with every step, I find myself oddly moved by the solitude and natural beauty of this experience to be compelling reportage. (Perhaps ultimately untrue, since I still feel the need to note that all those observations did in fact occur on this particular trip. Anyways.) Although it’s long — over 50 miles — the Heaphy is classfied as an “easy” tramp in the Tramping Bible. I’ve found out the hard way that the Tramping Bible’s degrees of difficulty (ranging from “easy” up through “demanding” and topping out at “very demanding”) more accurately range from “easy if you’ve been hiking all your life” through “demanding in the sense that childbirth is demanding” and max out at “no, seriously, people die doing that.” However, for the first time, I found myself agreeing with Jim DuFresne. Even with blisters. I guess that means that I am an official badass now. (Seriously, folks, gather round, ‘cuz if I’ve learned anything this past year, it is: tape blisters at the FIRST SIGN of tenderness. Not two hours later. Not even five minutes later! FIRST SIGN. You can thank me at your leisure; donations always accepted.)

This is all to say that the most difficult part of the tramp was not the actual physical exertion but the company we were thrust into. (NB: most New Zealand trails have regularly spaced huts with bunks, a stove, and a water supply, which you pay a small fee to use/share with others.) Despite the fact that June is the middle of the winter in New Zealand, every hut Maurice and I stayed at was crammed — as in, absolutely packed, campers sleeping two to a bunk — with people. And by “people,” I mean “college students.” The first group we encountered was an American study abroad program from St. Benedict’s/St. John’s in rural Minnesota. As it happens, Maurice and I both also went to college in Minnesota, so we were both amused and bemused to find two dozen or so tow-headed teenagers with Fargo-esque accents in the middle of the New Zealand wilderness. One of their professors even knew Maurice’s brother. Crazy, mad, small little world. Then we all were joined by half of the University of Canterbury tramping club, a rowdy and raucous group, and huge fans of some long-winded game that involved repeated variations of loud animal noises.

They shared accomodations with us for the next three days.

To their great credit, they trundled off to bed not long past ten every night. But those five hours between five, when it becomes too dark to cook, read, write, or you know, do anything but attempt to ignore or converse over the din around you, and ten. . . those hours dragged.

The first night Maurice and I huddled in a corner and tried to figure out the rules of their game. “Oh, I see. Each of them has a particular noise. Like, that girl in the blue polypro is a duck. So whenever someone quacks, she has to quack too, and then pick another person and do their sound. So now she is doing the horse-with-toothache sound.”
“And that goes to the guy who’s not wearing pants.”
“Right. So it’s his turn, and he does his noise and someone else’s. I guess you try to keep it going as long as possible. . . I think this is a drinking game, actually.”
“But they’re not drinking.”
“No, they’re not. Weird.”

The second night, we noticed that they were getting a little more creative with their animal noises.
“What the hell goes FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla?” Maurice said.
“Um, I don’t know. . . I remind you that last night one of the selected animal sounds was a donkey with diarrhea.”
“Ugh. Yeah.”

The third night, our curiousity got the better of us. Maurice asked,
“Hey, sorry to barge in, but we’ve been watching you play this game for a few days now, and we just had to find out: what goes ‘FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla?’ Is it a flamingo?”
“No,” we were told. “It’s a gay albatross.”

Of course.

Each night, as I curled up in my sleeping bag, I overheard the whispered plans and secrets of a dozen or so twenty year-olds. It was heartbreaking. I like to think my college days weren’t that long ago, but as I eavesdropped, I felt our age difference pressing down on me from the top bunk. My own secrets, my plans, were so much heavier than my extra five or six years would seem to indicate. I gave up everything to be with this guy sleeping next to me, and now I don’t think we’re in love any more, I wanted to whisper. Every day people ask me if I like it here, and every day I lie. No number of amazing views and gorgeous sunsets can make up for losing what was most important to you.

But I didn’t want to freak out the college kids, so I rolled over and tried to fall asleep.