Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

Kicked Out Of Paradise

I thought for the first 20 hours or so that Le Bons Bay Backpackers was not the right place for me but I was so terribly terribly wrong. It was exactly the right place for me. I'll admit to some homesickness, and Gary & Heidi's hospitality was the exact cure for it. I was exhausted and feeling very interior when I got out of the Banks Track, and it took me a while and a good night's sleep to appreciate the slower less electronic, more social pace that is Le Bons. It is about 7km up Le Bons Bay valley from the sea itself, a small place with no internet and the clothes dry on the line in the sun, their own chickens and garden and a grey tom cat who long ago learned the best coping mechanism for a 2-year old boy is civil disobedience and a completely floppy body.

I relaxed there, completely comfortable, ate Gary's good cooking for two of the nights I was there and met a dozen or so Hector's dolphins. Each evening Gary cooks--for up to 24 people--a complete meal from salad to dessert, for only $12 NZ a head. My first night there I was disappointed to see that the main was lamb and all the vegetables & salads contained cheese, so I felt very excluded from the homey atmosphere of the place. But the next night he made an entirely dairy-free vegetarian meal, except for the fish cakes, with me in mind. He called us to this long kitchen table and requested that we all introduce ourselves, name & country of origin, and answer a question put to us: What did we want to be when we grew up? As we went around the table the food arrived in serving dishes on the center of the table. He introduced the food, told us to help ourselves, and that we would be doing all the dishes ourselves before desert would be served to us. A wonderful set up.  Food & conversation ensued.

Each morning about 9am, Gary heads out to sea in his 15-20ft outboard boat, with about 6-8 guests aboard, and introduces them to the volcanic caves dotting the cliffs, the seals sunbathing & frisking in the water, the pied cormorants on the cliff sides, the Hector's dolphins just off the cliffs playing in the wake of the boat, as curious and charmed as we were.

I did not join the boat the first day, I desperately wanted to sleep in, lounge around, read a book, drink lemon & ginger tea, do some writing, visit the chickens, see the flowers in the garden, lounge in front of the fireplace or sit on the porch in the sun.  The next day, however, I went. There were too many people for one trip so he asked the three of us who were staying one more night (my third) if we were willing to hang about until he came back and did a second trip at 10:30 or so? Anna, Katie & I were perfectly content to walk on the sandy beach and sit on driftwood chatting until he came back.

I wandered off into the woods on the trail of a male fantail who kept on darting out of the trees to dance about, tail waving, flirting madly about eye height. "Do a little dance, Sing a little song, Get down tonight...!" Funny birds, fantails, they have a tail just like their name and they almost fly in place waggling back & forth upright in front of their chosen. I'm not sure what I have that attracted this bird, but he kept on flitting out to catch my eye, chirruping at me then darting back into the trees. If I were a female fantail, I'd be easy. No doubt. Any fellow who dances for me so enchantingly would be rewarded handsomely; with a clutch of eggs and genetic continuation, of course.

Gary came back and backed his small tractor down the beach into the surf, pushed the trailor up under the boat & towed it in out of the water. The first load got out and we three got in, put on lifejackets, and he backed the boat back down into the surf then returned the tractor above the water line and dashed back down to push us out & around into the bay.

NZ has plenty of Dolphin Watching Tours, and Dolphin Swimming Tours, all of which cost about $85-130NZ. Twenty+ people get in each large boat and there is barely enough space to lean over the side with all the other tourists there. Gary charged us $25NZ a piece and took us into several bays, describing the volcanic origins of the place & the evidence of it all around, the wildlife and the holes carved deep into the cliffs, one of which we entered with the boat. It was an incredible opportunity to get onto the sea whose cliff-edge I have walked on for 4 days. This was the geology of the place writ large and looming with colourful striations and black vertical stripes galore.

Seals, with the true Disney limpid pools of brown eyes I expected inspected us. Seal pups posed curiously, adults sniffed dismissively as they are wont to do. Giant kelp forests swayed & swirled with the waves against the rocks, alive and dense & rich brown in the aqua pale water, suffused with air bubbles from its constant interaction with the sharp shoreline.

Then the dolphins. Oh, who were more charmed by the presence of the others, we four humans or the dolphins themselves? They came right over to the boat and checked us out and we leaned laughing over the clear pale green glassy waters to watch them skimming in & out of view like flying visitors. They shot sideways up the side, looking us right in the eyes. I shucked my shoes & climbed onto the prow and dangled my feet, one on either side and leaned out over watching them watch us. My feet dipped into the water as we traveled over the swells of the sea, and one dolphin brushed, quite deliberately, against my toes then shot back around to smile hugely at me. As if we were both part of some inside joke.

Hector's dolphins are among the rarest of dolphins, and the smallest in the world. They frequent the bays of the Banks Peninsula  (where they are protected) year round, not travelling too far out to sea where they are vulnerable to their predators the killer whales. They are grey and black like smoke in the water and dissipate as quickly. But they danced with us & leapt out of the water & spread balm upon the charmed humans aboard that boat. It was all I could do not to just strip down right there and dive in amongst them.

It was such an intimate experience to see these beautiful mammals flying like that through the water.  Gary's got the right life, doing what he loves, surrounded by all this. I envy him, and would sacrifice a great deal to be able to do the same. Though evidently he works very, very hard, during the season they open their house up to backpackers.

I feel lucky to have been there and I know in my heart that I will return someday.

Ask to see my dolphin photos. The water was so clear that it looks like they were taken underwater. Unbelievable experience.

I've been so lucky these last few months. So utterly blessed with opportunities and beauty, I cannot fathom that these are my own memories and not some fantasy I made up.

But guess what, I hear y'all have snow up there, and you know me, I can't wait to get back there to see it.

A demain, folks. I fly home.

posted by: coldwish at 04:50 | link | comments (6) |
nz 2005

More Banks Last Banks

Banks Peninsula Day Three Night Four Day Five

This day was a hard hike up & down, up & down fairly steep cliffsides on sheeptracks as narrow as my feet with sheer drops down to the sea below us and sharp rises of hillocky grassy pasture above us. I imagine this landscape is easy with tiny hooves and four legs. A good wind & if not for my pack I would've been over the side in a heartbeat. But no worries, yet again, a perfect, charmingly blue-skied day. Couldn't have had better weather the whole hike, but the first morning truly brought home how fast & sharp a turn the weather can & will take. So be prepared, bring it all with you, even if you want to pack light.

It is most startling to look out these naked cliffsides to the turquoise sea, or to see it boiling & seething at the foot of these cliffs with their fallen calved islands, tiny & tall, laden with seabirds. The landscape is quintessentially Scottish Highlands with a tropical sea that extends to the end of the earth uninterrupted by islands. I saw only two sails out there and perhaps one tanker, the entire 4 days along that sea. Surprising. Not only is the country so geologically young it still quakes & explodes with its adolescence, but the peoples, both Maori & European, are realtive newcomers to the landscape and still populate it lightly.

As young as the human presence is, they have radically transformed the land here, devastating the native forests almost to extinction, not only for the wood but to create the pastoral English countryside of dairy & sheep farms that we see all around us. I imagine this peninsula covered in the trees of which there are only a few tall individuals, straight-backed & charging up into the sky like the Redwoods of California. But still the coutryside is not half so bleak seeming as the California seaside along Highway One south of San Franscisco. That just felt decimated & abandoned to me. But Banks is still radically alive, even when brown in the late summer.

By the end of this day my feet truly hurt; I was missing my socks, and my knees just bitched at me the whole way. But less than an hour off them and some swimming at our last night's destination, Otanerito Bay and I was fine. The bay here was flat sand beach of that silver grey brown so many NZ beaches are. Coming down the last hill, on a stony road washed nearly away in miniature Grand Canyon-esque gullies & ravines, we looked down at this sand and it shone like powdered precious metals, wet & patterned by the sea. Fine silver & gold displays of sand quilted by the retreating water washed around each tiny stone & shell.

Otanerito Bay was a lovely modern English cottage, white shingled with a charming verandah surrounded by roses & large flowering plants. More sleepy bumblebees, wasps in the jampot. Peaceful.

But I, because I had booked to go to a backpackers elsewhere in the Banks Peninsula the next day, our last, had to go charging out of there early the next morning to return to town in order to catch my ride at 12:30. This was an error in scheduling on my part. I should have planned on a night in Akaroa proper before moving out to Le Bons Bay.  But up I got--my first use of an alarm clock in weeks--packed & ready. Doing the goodbyes & the farewell group photo. All good people, and I will keep in touch with them.

Lovely energetic Audrey offered to accompany me in my last charge back to town, and I thank my lucky stars on so many levels she did, because not only was she a wealth of knowledge about the plants & wildlife there but she kept me on my pace right up into the valley to the saddle and down into town, leaving me enough time to arrive & collect the items I'd left in the Info Centre for the hike, look in to the Glassworks on 114 Rue Jolie, and get myself picked up. If not for Audrey, who, packfree for the last leg as was I, RAN down the grassy hillside into town like Julie Andrews in the Swiss Alps, I would have dawdled & slowed the pace. Bloody hell, she made me look aged & decrepit. What a fun woman to hike with. Could NOT have kept up with her for all the days for love nor money.

Part of the uphill hike into the valley was through an old Beech forest that was peacefully entrancing, a wide open space, unlike the bush we had practically had to hack through in other areas. So many unusual plants and Audrey knew not only their names but their history. I finally identified the dense prickly hedgerow hunkered down in the wind of the hills here as gorse, introduced by the Europeans. Now I know what gorse is. Now, retroactively, I really understand the British novels I've read in which the rider is thrown into the gorse. Ouch bloody ouch. That would be a painful landing. But gorse has its spot in this landscape as it is now providing cover for the regrowth of the native bush in many areas, protecting it from the elements, only to be overgrown and defeated in its turn when the brush matures. I like that turn on events.

I rescued a baby bird in the road on our way into town. I don't know what kind, it was just incredibly unhappy and seemed suicidal. It kept on tumbling back into the roadway. We were passed by the first car we had seen in 4 days and were appalled by the stink of it. Truly, both if us entered town hands over our mouths, noses wrinkled and unhappy to return to civilisation. Cars are unpleasant things. Gimme a car that smells like chips any day, to one that burns the oils & gases of the earth. Must look into a diesel car transformed into a vegetable oil burner. Someday.

Got into town and was picked up by someone from Le Bons Bay. I stayed quiet on the ride out of town, slightly sick with the car smell and the speed with which we got there around narrow curves along cliffs in the clouds.

I had had no time to do some more food shopping, so I could feed myself at Le Bons. I was stinky, my feet & knees hurt, my clothes were filthy and I wanted a hot shower desperately. Dropped my backpack on the dorm bed up in the eves of the attic, and went for a shower. I think it was the culture shock after having bonded so tightly with the few people I was with for the hike, with the slow patterns of the days and firelit rhythms of the nights, but when I hit the shower and it was at best lukewarm I cried. I missed Peggy & Colleen & Claire & Audrey & Penny & Lesley and just wanted to go back to them. All I wanted was some comfort and all I got was clean.

It got better, and my reaction was entirely my own and not in any way indicative of anything lacking in Le Bons Bay Backpackers. In fact, they turned out to be the ideal place to ease my way back into strangers and stillness.

What I took away from my hike was the wonderful women I met, the true value of good socks, the value of lightweight easy dry clothing, and the understanding that I am not a Climb Every Mountain To Reach The Top kind of woman. I do not need to seek the hard way in order to challenge myself, and its not a function of laziness as so many of those kind of Super Hikers imply when I describe MY experiences. I seek the beautiful way, in hopes that I will stumble into the myriad of moments that bring tears sharply to my eyes. It may be the patterns of a fern crawling along the underside of the forest, or the sunlight through a new leaf exposing the spine & even the cells in the green, or the solid white cocoon spiderwebs in the gorse & thistles, or the watercress leaves floating tiny & shockingly green, gathered in the corners of the pool at the foot of the mossy waterfall. If I were all about Getting There I wouldn't give myself time to think & value these things even if I saw them. Perhaps other people who do Get There, see these things and they hang with them as they continue on. I will not criticise their style of traveling through the world. I am simply different and need to give myself time to find the words in my mind to share this with people in a way they may value.

posted by: coldwish at 03:49 | link | comments |
nz 2005

Banks Peninsula Swallow Sighting

This may not seem to be that special to most of you, but not having seen any swallows since my childhood in Maine, I have to say I saw a swallow at the Onuku Hostel. Upon recognizing that swallow tail I was completely floored. The birds are a tad different but the tails are the same as I recall. I miss these birds and their yellow beaked hungry babies in mudnests up amongst the eves of the barns. They flit about so riskily with that flap flap glide wings at side type flying. No wide winged albatross floating there, just resting on the wing, quite literally.

At the top of the first climb the wind was so strong that the wires by the road we had to cross sang and moaned with it, slicing the wind like a wire stretched out neck height by farmers to take out smowmobilers on their land. Or a cheese wire, your choice. I realize the bloody metaphor doesn't suit everyone.

As dusk fell in the first valley hideaway I found somnolent bumblebees sleeping undisturbably under flowers at dusk. I poked gently at them & they shifted, buzzing sleepily, a small buzz mumble. I'll also admit on this trip to a minor childhood cruelty of mine, in which the charming fat bumblebee climbs deep inside a lupine flower and I reach out and gently squeeze the bee in its flowery cape to feel it buzz on my fingertips. No damage done, slightly angry bee. They always go on to the next flower after that.

Heard a cicada that sounded like a film shutter. Funny bugs, those, quite beautiful and raucous, but completely individual in their choice of noises. Thumping & rattling & buzzing & clicking & whirring. All together it is a wall of sound, but when you listen & locate the individuals, you hear the single instruments in the orchestra.

Banks Peninsula Track Day One, Night Two

The 2nd night was spent at an old farmhouse in the bottom of a valley with a sandy/stone beach. This place is famous for its tiny blue dolphins, of which I only saw one: A corpse, dead on the beach. Very rare dolphin, in moult at the time so we were asked not to bother them if we found their nests.

There were shags in all the trees at the beach, white-fronted standing tall shags. In the trees. Weird. I believe they are called Pied Cormorants, not King Shag (which I discover are incredibly rare). Watched a NZ Kingfisher diving for food in the bay. Went swimming, nearly lost my nipples to the cold. That really shouldn't oughta happen. They ached for hours.

We had all spread our damp swimsuits & towels & stinky socks & hiking boots outside in the sun to dry when round about 6pm the wind picked up. Perhaps the wind gods had taken umbrage at the ease of our escape from their battery on the other side of the hill, and our relaxed windless sunny state of sprawl forced them to take action agin us.  Because "picked up" doesn't quite explain it. There was a mild breeze going on over our heads and then the house shook, the windows rattled and the wind roared like an invisible tidal bore into the valley from the sea in the complete opposite direction, blowing furniture & clothing up onto the roof and into the trees. Just...kapow!! and we were all running outside to rescue things. I lost a pair of socks. I lost my best pair of hiking socks, Smartwool. Despite all the hiking I'd done, my feet had felt fine upon arrival the first day. I cannot stress highly enough the importance of really bloody good hiking socks, because I spent the next three days in regular old wool socks (still Smartwool but not magical, supportive, cushioning, hiking socks) and my feet bloody hurt at the end of each day. And those three days were EASIER than the first day. We looked and looked for my socks...the odd thing being that they both disappeared. I suspected that it had not quite been a real sacrifice to the wind gods but they had been grabbed in the mad scramble to collect our belongings and were nestled safely at the bottom of someone else's pack, innocently. I also suspected the sheep. In NZ you always suspect the sheep.

Spent that night on the couch in front of the dying fire in the living room after everyone else went to bed. I had initially been bedded down in a top bunk with 3 other women (those of the whippet variety who had bucketed on ahead and claimed a room & saved me a bed) but someone in the room had applied some kind of perfumey chemical thing to herself and I was forced out of there practically at knifepoint by the scent. It stuffed me up completely, so I fled to the couch. Saved from a snorer I heard later. Poor Audrey felt terrible the next day when we finally figured out who the guilty party was.

There were supposed to be kayaks available in the first valley, but we saw none and no one came and offered them to us. It wasn't until the next morning when the landowner popped around, as we were packed up & heading out, to say she had kayaks if we wanted them. It would have been nice, but... we were all packed and the valley was in shadow & we were chilled. So we headed off.

We walked on up the edge of the cliff leading out to sea, in a windless warm sun, walking off our morning chill. The trails were all glorified sheep trails that wound around the edges of the cliff-ending pastures looking out to sea. I looked out and I knew the next thing on the horizon, if I kept on going, was Antarctica. Nothing between me & my beloved Ice. The weather couldn't have been more cooperative, classic fluffy clouds, blue sky, cool breeze, warm sun.

This time though we hiked with our packs. Oof. Big difference. I could feel it in my thighs as we climbed the gradual hill over to the next valley. Took pictures like mad, went through even more batteries. I swear, half my pack's weight was in batteries. I've easily spent $150 NZ on batteries, and I'm talking simple AAs, nothing fancy. At $20 a pop for the lithiums when it failed within 10 days and 300 pictures (without a flash) I nearly gave up on my camera.

We passed a seal-filled cove that we, the slower hikers--the strollers, really--missed due to a significant distraction when Colleen (funny redhead with a sharp line of humour in her 40s) dropped her good camera and it rolled down the hill into a stream where it started floating away. Completely soaked through & ruined. We headed back up the trail but we could hear the seals like sirens, shrieking children, hotel neighbours at 3am, and rugby players in a scrum, but saw nothing.  A great mystery to us, imagining what we were hearing echoing out of this overhung cavern over which we had just walked. Apparently there were HUNDREDS of them and if we had peaked over the top we would have seen seal pups & seal bulls & seal cows looking like Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.

Just past the seal cove inlet and up over one more easy hill/cliff we came upon the outhouse, the bog, the dunny, the loo with a view. Set there for us to use in our pampered hiking way. It was great. No door, just a great red slab of wood 8 inches thick & polished by countless bums, with a hole in it about the size of my bum (need I count the reasons at this point why my bum could be bigger and I'd be a happier woman?) and a view out to sea down the little valley with sheep looking back.

Banks Peninsula Track Night Three

We arrived at the valley of our third night's "hut", Stony Bay, and descending into this place was like entering a French valley, I expected stone houses & stone walls, slate roofs, vineyards & vintners and much gestured, frenzied-looking communication. Instead, as we threaded our way down the hill in a tunnel of native & non-native bush & flowers & odd fern trees, scaring the odd sheep here and there as we came around a corner, we discovered ourselves in a true faerie land built adult-size with huge swings dropping from old stumps leaning out over trees & stream & outdoor showers built around a tree stump where the tree had sprouted once more inside the shower and pool table with sticks for cues, enameled white cast-iron bathtubs heated by a woodfire underneath, paddle ball and broken pottery placed on the sticks of a wood fence covered over with climbing flowers & roses of unimaginable variety & colour. Each little house had its own fireplace and tiny gas stoves, no electricity, just candles for light. It was protected & nestled deep into this labyrinth of greenery like a hidden valley. It was what I imagined, growing up, with my fantasies of secret hideaways to play and heal in. It was magical, mystical and the most difficult place to leave the next morning.

All of us tried the swing, a wide canvas hammock seat tied by chain & rope to the tip of a long silver tree trunk that had outlived itself only to reincarnate as the solid base to our shrieking, swinging, flying fun. We climbed up and seated outselves and took off into the trees and the air. Each of us, no matter our age, tried it and you could see decades drop away as they chuckled & hummed & shrieked & laughed & bent their faces back into the sunshine, eyes closed and flying. In particular, I recall Peggy, 51 (mother of 5 boys, grandmother of 8) dressed in her sarong, bare-legged, white hair flowing behind her, sunkissed face raised in ageless bliss to the sky. She was beautiful and carefree on that swing. We were all transformed when we flew.

There were so many details: stained glass windows, cast iron scroll work rusted & dug up from time in the earth, driftwood drying racks and cow horns bearing toilet paper rolls in the wooden outhouse/loo. The wooden basin, hidden under the fence overhung with roses, as you exited the flush outhouses, was worn with the water of countless hikers washing their hands. So many details I would have to go back again and again to see them all and recount them. Suffice to say, I would climb the Banks Peninsula Track again to reach there.

I slept in the loft with Peggy. We ate breakfast, packed up again, and left our reverie, our retreat from the burdens of carrying a pack up & down dale. We exited via the bridge, one wide & deep strong slab of wood rescued from an old barn, placed over the babbling stream.

I am shamefaced that the one "Americanism" picked up by Colleen (she of the camera loss) was "sucks to be me". I should be much more careful about the slang I use as I go traipsing around this wonderful world of ours.

 

posted by: coldwish at 04:43 | link | comments (1) |
nz 2005

Off-Leash Tramping

Gosh. Sorry I've been away folks. Not. Haven't thought of you once. At least not with the amount of guilt a good blogger should have. I left my particulars with my mother and just took off. Had the time of my life, not least because it was a beautiful place to tramp, but because I hooked up with the most marvellous bunch of Kiwi women. I cannot say enough about Kiwi women, suffice to say in all the travels I have done in my life, Kiwi women have always impressed & charmed me. No matter where I have met them, they have been boon companions.

Banks Peninsula Track Day One

Caught a bus from the Akaroa Info Center at 5:45pm along with about 16 people all headed for the same trek. The track can be done as a 2-day or a 4-day hike. There were 5-6 people doing the 2-day, the rest of us were 4-day. We were driven to the Onuku Farm Hostel just outside of town, then did the last 1/2 km or so on foot with our packs STRAIGHT up hill. Now, I was a bit hesitant upon discovering our first night's accommadations were to be at Onuku, since in Chalie B's where I stayed the night before, in my efforts to sleep under that heaving, snoring man, I discovered some writing on the boards under his backside. I was staring at it for a while before I got out my torch and lit it up enough to read clearly. "DO NOT STAY AT ONUKU FARM HOSTEL.!! HE IS A RAPIST!!"

Errr....

Damn. Too late. I'd like to believe the young woman who wrote that however long ago. For it is often in these ways women report on these things, because we don't often take it to the police to handle.

The Banks Peninsula folks were segregated entirely, however, from the remainder of the hostel, in a special cabin. Even within the cabins the 2-day & 4-day Banks Peninsulas were segregated. Or at least they were supposed to be. A trio of young Israeli boys, straight out of their military service & doing the requisite travel around the world post-service, claimed the loft over the kitchen in the 4-day hut. I claimed a stargazer hut with another woman, Audrey.

Smart move on our part. The Israeli trio were up all night thumping about like elephants, talking, yelling, laughing, cooking meals, showering etc. All night long. They kept everyone in the main hut up. Whereas Audrey & I ended up staying up talking until 1 am or so, watching the night sky through the glassed-in roof. The conversation was wonderful, like you imagine a pajama party/best friend conversation, wandering about through life & ideas & dreams. Very easy company. But the view: The southern sky astounded me, and we were away from the light pollution enough so that the shooting stars were right in front of us trailing green & yellow tails that glowed for seconds afterwards like night photography. It was impossible to close our eyes in this little tent-like platformed wood structure with half the roof in glass. What a view. What an idea, too.

Got up the next morning and the 2-dayers all took off, packs full & mighty, to never be seen by we 4-dayers again. Thankfully, in some cases, but I failed to get the email addresses of two very nice folks: Sam, 22, male, Swiss and Mikett (?), 41, Dutch, female. Regrets. Neat people.

We decided, en group, to spend the money to have our packs carried for us (by car) to the next hut, because we had all caught a glimpse of the first day's climb and were not looking forward to doing it with packs, let alone sans packs. Thank goodness we did so. The first half of the first day's hike was straight bloody up hill through a sheep pasture. Not much zigzagging up the hill, but straight up. We had a tailwind, mighty & gusty, for much of it, but mostly it contributed to earaches until we got our hoods up.

But as we ascended, bitching & moaning, Akaroa's main harbour revealed itself beneath us and the volcanic origins became patently clear. The hills were green and golden brown, unexpectedly lush after a long long cold winter in which they had hail & sleet & snow. In the equivalent of our June & July they had this. Reached the tallest point of the trek 2+ hours later, having stopped, oft agog, at the constantly improving & changing view. I was astounded by the dead trees that abounded in the new bush & grass. These were silvered dead bones of a forest destroyed for lumber by the European settlers of the area in the late 1800s. What I was seeing were tree trunks from BACK THEN. The wood of these native trees, Totara, is amazingly strong and a house built of that, or a ship built with it, could withstand the worst of weathering. The weathered bones of these almost extinct trees had been hanging onto the hillsides there for such a long time that the wood looked like none other I had seen. I can barely describe it. I took pictures. It was the wood grains you normally see fleshed out in wooden objects, varnished & beautiful. But this wood was made 3D by the weathering between the grain so you could see through it. It almost created its own shingled effect, sometimes at the end of a branch or root it was like the hair carved on a ship's figurehead, solid & flowing into the air. But this was nothing carved by hand, this was carved by sun & wind, following the grain of the wood. So many bleak reaching silver tree remains silhouetted the distant views that a painter could spend years capturing it. This pathetic photographer tried her best to stand still enough in the blows from the wind to get this on pixels.

When I reached the peak, with its gorse bent over flat with the constant winds, my ears ringing in the cold ache of the pounding air, lichen-covered rocks exposed through the tussocks of grass, I cried. What a beautiful place to have climbed. What a challenging climb for me in my state of sedentary stasis. What a lot of snot got ripped out of my nostrils on the way up by the unending grasp of the wind. I couldn't even sniffle it back into me fast enough or strong enough. I wouldn't have wanted to be downwind of me.

The straggling group of us had stretched out according to ability and comfort level, and the 3 whippet-slim women had marched on ahead by an hour or more already. Among that group was Audrey, 68, my stargazer companion of the previous night. About here I found my second breath and parted from the second trio of women to head down the other side on my own. They stopped to eat. I walked on & ate on the hoof.

Downhill was actually rougher than uphill. Harder on the ankles, feet & knees. By separating myself from the other trampers I also found myself in a lovely valley with waterfalls you could climb behind, without the knowledge of the flora & fauna the Kiwi women offered me. Downhill tramping is rough on the toes as your feet slide forward in your boots, then the uneven steps are hard on your knees as you gallumph down onto them tiredly. I found myself going sideways down the tracks like a cross-country skier usually goes uphill. This was an easy track, too. Well, average to moderate, is the way it is described. So I would say I am average to moderately fit.

And by the time I arrived at our 2nd night's accommadations in Flea Bay I was average to moderately exhausted. But I got there about 1:30pm, after having set out about 9am. Not a bad day's walk. Worth every penny so far.

posted by: coldwish at 00:15 | link | comments |
nz 2005

Akaroa Afternoon

Took the scenic bus (the only choice) in to Akaroa from Chch and got a nice guided tour on the way in, spotted a beach I'd love to visit, reknowned among rock hounds for the semi-precious stones they can find there. Must Go Back.

Just had the most divine fish 'n' chips (the fish was a locally caught fish: hoki, quite delish) and as usual, unless I'm on the Ice, I shared with the birds fronting the harbour. Silverback gulls again, worse than pigeons, shit less though. Bolder than the Chch gulls in Cathedral Square, they flew right up to my chip-clutching fingers & plucked the chip right out. It got so's when a chip was headed from the paper on my lap to my own mouth they'd all fly toward me in anticipation, then swoop away with some rather disgruntled complaints & shrieks.

It is interesting to watch the inter-gull behaviour, as some gulls spend all their time creating a no go circle of territory around my feet & get so preoccupied chasing off offenders that they miss all the chips, then they come back to me and bellow angrily in a slightly basso profundo roar.

I finished, or we finished, MY chips and I sat there watching the gulls realize this and start interacting again with each other, eyes no longer beadily fixed on my hands (I'm sure you could train them to play catch like a dog). I saw a few latecomer ducks joining the crowd. One duck was being followed by a fairly young gull, being stalked in fact, quite inappropriately. The gull kept on sidling up to this duck (male, nice plumage) and trying to steal a tail feather.  Imagine that. Either that gull has a duck fetish or feather envy. When the duck managed to shed the gull, through the intervention of another more sensible adult gull saying, "Stick to your own, bloke," the stalker gull then started casually side-stepping over to the ubiquitous tiny brown birds who are just as chip-savvy. Brave little buggers, entering in by stealth beneath the gulls legs & stealing chips away before the gulls can get 'em. The birds or the chips. Stalker gull started doing the same thing to the tiny brown bird as the duck.

Odd gull. Odd fetish.

posted by: coldwish at 02:30 | link | comments (1) |
nz 2005

Missionary Position: Man on Top

I slept with a man last night. He rocked the bed, made it squeak & groan all night. I got not a wink of sleep.

He was in the top bunk. Really, what did you think? My mother is reading this blog...have some decency folks.

Very polite, tired, handsome Aryan Nation perfection young man with a surfboard & a small rucksack. It was 11:30pm at night, all three women in the room had turned in for the night, 2 Brits & moi in my own bunkbed in a women's share room. Key in the lock, I roll over & peer at the body silhouetted quite fetchingly in the light from the doorway, register the gender (scanning twice for good measure) and say to him: "This is the women's dorm room." Fully apologetic he explains that Charlie B's Backpackers fucked up his reservation on him, so they placed him in the last remaining bed in the building. I wasn't terribly surprised since I'd arrived the day after supplying my credit card # & exp date & time of arrival & name to the woman on the reservations line only to find according to them I didn't exist. They had no idea who I was.

He promised not to snore. He snored. Quelle shock! Big fellow on the top bunk of a thin metal bunk bed who tossed & turned in between his digital watch beeping on the hour every hour (waking me up, perhaps he turned over & stopped snoring in response?)

I was miffed, I'd actually called another BPers previously, Stonehurst, about which I had heard glowing reviews, and I chose not to book with them because they did not provide single sex dorms. Only to go to Charlie B's and end up sleeping under a man.

Have I mentioned I am pathologically incapable of sleeping with anyone in the bed with me? Apparently it doesn't matter if it's a damn bunk bed either.

posted by: coldwish at 02:16 | link | comments (1) |
nz 2005

Encore Il Pleut

Yesterday was gorgeous; windy, poofy clouds scudding along a bright blue classic sky. The sea still rampant with the previous day's storm, most aggressively at the river mouth, where the wind had changed direction and was pushing the waves of the sea directly into the narrowed-by-jetties mouth of the tidal river as the tide went out. The currents were swollen by brown rainwater seething & surging out to sea, where they met the famous Tasman Sea surf and roiled fiercely with much bellowing & billowing. Very dramatic. I had headed back out there in hopes I could visit the driftwood landscape that had appealed to me so much the day before that I had chosen to attempt the beach, despite the great winds and the start of some sideways spitting rain. I cannot resist the sea in a bad mood, hers, not mine. It called my name and like the lunatic wet-loving creature I am, I heeded its call.

For it was on that stormy day that I learned the true revealed beauty of the silver & grey stone beaches. In the rain, in the wet, they gave up their colours to my sodden sight. It was then I saw the greens, the blues, the purples, pinks, reds, golds, rusts, oranges, yellows & whites. The patterns in these subtle, silvered stones, when dampened, were stripey, leopard-spotted, penguin-like in their stark black & whites, plaid even. I know, you think, plaid stones? But really the lucky stones with their single stripes piercing through them go absolutely crackhouse crazy & often the greenish stones look easily plaid, loco with stripes. There is a famous green stone here, called pounamou (sp?) that is nephrite jade, and the Maori carve wonderful swirly sea-like items from it. Lesser quality stones of this type can be found on the beach, or so I believe, because some of the greens are very similar to the jade pieces I have seen in shop windows.

I sheltered in the lee of an enormous tree root, yellowed like varnished pine, from the rain, roots wide & solid under which I knelt dry & windless to eat my PB&J sandwich. This generous giant kept me dry, and a circle of stones at my feet silver & grey.

I walked back, at a good 55 degree angle, to Global Village, to a warm fire in the lounge. Two minutes after I got in the skies opened up and the wind INCREASED and the world was drenched.

Yesterday, returning to the same scene, I thanked that tree trunk and collected stones. Green ones, then striped ones, then white ones. The white stones are not like the quartz of Maine, they are pure white like snow, or like frozen milk; barely an impurity to be found.  I resisted the impulse to take away more stones, and created small crazy quilt like collections of perfect ovals, circles, or white stones and photographed them. Tried to be satisfied with that. I built small cairns on the beach with the flat oval ones, left collections of random white stones here & there, pulled together all the lucky stones of various colours within my hand's reach as I sat there and arranged them casually on other larger lucky stones. Tried to resist the Must Take Home impulse that would cause my Quantas flight to sink into the Paciific on the way home.

I am off to Chch today, for one night at Charlie B's Backpackers, then on to Akaroa the next day. I am slimming down on my backpack in preparation for the trek. An easy one, really, but I am out of shape for this and need to start off easy. I am also having some issues with my LLBean hiking boots. I didn't notice the issue in Antarctica because I was always wearing great thick Smartwool socks. But now, with slimmer socks, I am noticing on my right foot that there is a hard corner that juts into my ankle and the only way I can comfortably wear my boot is to leave it unlaced the top two layers and tie my laces around the tongue, pulling it away from my ankle. I have actually bruised myself simply walking about town in this shoe. I am disappointed. The last 5 days I have not worn the boots, going about in trainers that Marsha left behind in Greymouth & told me to pick up if I wanted them. Thank goodness for that. My foot was really in pain. So I'm worried a bit about the hike, and will have to wear one boot loose and go carefully. I will take them back to Bean when I get back to Maine.

I expect to experience discomfort paired with awe at the views and will take every excuse to pause and admire the view, drink water and take photographs. For what other reason am I going really, but to be agog. Here's hoping it is not rainy the entire time, but perhaps one day in four is ok. I have the proper defenses for rain, at least.

I am nervous, most other backpackers I have met are in their taut, tanned, thoughtlessly healthy twenties. I am not. I feel the aches in my back when I sleep wrong, I fart a lot, I feel the pain in my hips & knees & feet. I don't have to keep up with the group that is booked with me, but do I want to be the straggler? There is such a thing as pride. Then again, there is such a thing as privacy and in dawdling I will find that, at least. I am in no rush to be there faster, but to be there better. To notice more, to pause & think about the words I need to capture what I see.

Yesterday I was on my knees on the beach, on my back, on my front, capturing the small fascinations of the stones & driftwood. I was in the details that the other backpackers have missed each time they say it is not much of a beach, you can't go swimming there, and it's all made of stones. Well, that sounds like the best kind of beach. What is there to look at on a sandy beach? Sand? Oh, maybe shells & driftwood, dead seaweed, other sunbathers, surfers, swimmers, sailboarders, etc. No thanks. Too many people too busy doing too many things.

Yesterday I fell asleep fully clothed against the sun & wind in the lee of another great silvered trunk. The warmth of the sun on my bones was a boon and I drifted off with my hat on my face, stones supporting my back in a very comfortable way. The sun is a powerful thing here, even now in the fall. Though it'll be overcast & rainy, or even cloudy most of a day, I find the sun gives me colours I have never achieved before. It is also aging me. The lack of ozone layer here makes it a dangerous place, and what with my Ice months and the time spent here, I have gotten more sun damage than ever before in my life. I am, despite a wide-brimmed hat and several applications of sunscreen daily (upon waking, upon reaching the beach, before biking back), I arrive back to a reflection of myself in the mirror bright as a berry, not quite lobster-like but more colour than I have ever seen on my face, and always between the freckles & the brown is the undercoulour of red so becoming a redhead.

I finally look 40. To my eyes.

I prefer myself paler, though I do glow with vivid health now.

Kiwis are a red-tinged nation of pale-skinned people spending too much time out in the sun. Even with protection there is no real protection. Perhaps next time I will invest in a wide-brimmed burqa for the beach.

posted by: coldwish at 21:30 | link | comments |
nz 2005

Greymouth Continued

 I finally saw a close up of a few of those black birds with the red head or crown. I saw them fly, too. I had seen them all over the sides of the roads here and had never seen them fly, so assumed they were one of NZ's flightless birds. Nope. I can understand why they had not wanted to show me before, they are an ungainly flier, much like chickens who've had a lot of practice. Their landing skills leave a lot to be desired, with a landing like that it is no wonder they rarely get airborne, they just drop lopsidedly straight out of the air from a few feet up, landing with a gullumph of feathers askew.

I am booked on the 9th for the Banks Peninsula trek, then I have a week before flying home on the 21st. It is going to be hard to leave NZ, only because it represents my last gasp of freedom & an attempt to come to grips with my Ice experience. I have led such a life as I could never have imagined for myself, these last 3 months. But reality harkens. Taxes come due.  I return to work, & must find a place to live in Portland.

Woke up to wind & grey lowering clouds whipping by the gorge over town, so fast I expected sparks. Birds were flying backwards and the telephone wires sang low & moaning, metal road pipes hooted like owls as the wind breathed over the open tops. Windy, gusty, dramatic, house-rattling weather. Just the kind I like. After several leisurely hours in a wonderful 50s-60s inspired cafe downtown reading the NZ weekend papers (Prince Charles visiting Oz & NZ, brothels legal in NZ having prostitutes lured by better wages to Oz, 1st female Speaker, all top roles in governmentt now held by women, men panicking, rugby is a huge & sexy sport All Blacks Rule, NZ is exporting too many heifers to China, leaving their own dairy herds short of stock) then updated the blog as much as $9 NZ would buy me. Thus my lack of blogging lately. Not willing to pay so much for internet access.

Then I walked to the sea. I chose my feet as today's mode of transport due largely to the wind, but the twinges in my ass confirmed it as a good choice. I'm glad I did. I walked along the breakwater (dike) from deep inside town that winds along protecting the harbour. The wind direction was pretty much straight off the sea so as I rounded corners I staggered left & tilted right & braced myself two-legged against the threat of being blown down or off the dike. Sometimes got a pretty good tailwind, other times had to fight a headwind, but mostly it was side on.

There are 2 piers built directly out into the ocean here, to protect ships past the worst of the surf at shore. The wind had tremendous spray whipping the tops of the breakwaters from surf hitting this point. I walked right out there and sheltered against a few buildings & took a few shots, but mostly it was too windy to stand still enough to get good pics & I did not exactly feel secure with only 120lbs (54kg) of my own weight holding me down.

posted by: coldwish at 21:12 | link | comments (3) |
nz 2005

Bits & Bobs From NZ: Random Observations

Chch departing by TranzAlpine showed, though fog-draped and damp, the extensive work that has been done on that flat alluvial plain, with windbreaks tall & glorious or hedges severe & boxy but 2 storeys tall protecting stacks of strawbales. Quite lovely. But then fog always makes things look better to me. The diffusion factor, the limitation of view and the addition of privacy to any walk on the beach or through the woods tops the privations of damp & cold.

**

It was an error to come straight off the Ice and immediately hook up with someone else to travel for a week. I needed my alone time and we were not perhaps the best suited of travelling companions, in that I was all about impulses and random strayings from the path and my companion was all about military precision & previously arranged engagements & being on time at the right place. But I have it now, I am alone and glory be it is what I needed.

**

There is a coniferous tree, not so common, here that blows my mind each time I see it. The profile alone, tall & straight to the sky with symmetrical balanced branches at a very slight upward angle, is very regimental. The needles grow only on the upper side of the branches, arrayed like schoolchildren according to size, taller ones to the outside of the branch. It surprises and pleases me each time I see one.

**

Spiders are such amazing architects, rebuilding their webs as often as daily, angles precise & measured yet flexible with the circumstances, depending on where they can place their guywires (? sp ?). And such patience in the face of buglessness, for days & weeks on end.

**

Travelled by Atomic Shuttle with a ginger-haired busdriver by name of Adrian, with his tales of Al Gore and NZ knowledge, from Chch to Greymouth. Much better, cheaper & more beautiful than the train trip last week, partly because on my own I could engage in this conversation with Adrian. I was enchanted by the views again, in particular the area of Castle Rock Village, named thusly for the broken bones of the earth jutting out through the brown grassy skin, rock slides grey & shallow peeling away small areas of the slopes, darker pitch green scrub taking some kind of advantage and gathering like puddled alluvial evidence of the slides at the bottom.

As we were driving up into the clouds, the sun was still low in the sky, so we were in shadow on the road but the clouds breaking on the peaks were illuminated like the sun itself too bright to look at.

Sheep shape the landscape here, shearing the steepest land to the nub & leaving narrow horizontal paths along the slopes like topographical map lines made flesh, every foot or so uphill.

NZ does things with clouds that are unbearably alive & magical, they almost make Antarctica's cloud seem anemic in comparison if it weren't for the utter disparity between them. Each place needs a different word for cloud to adequately evoke what I've seen. The clouds in NZ are moist, and move so. Antarctic clouds are ice, they present themselves differently.

**

This morning I watched the clouds scud by in the gusty wind we are having in Greymouth, rattling the doors & roofs here. They travelled so fast past the mountains I expected them to leave skidmarks on the peaks.

**

I bumped into my Ice roomie Marsha on her last night in Chch before flying home, under a sky that had us both outside & wandering about the city necks craned upwards in marvel. The rare, spectacular evening sky over Chch was pale yellow setting sunlight illuminating the undersides of the hovering clouds, different layers glowing diffusely peach or sharp fluffy sun, blue sky on the horizon, darker sky behind me shooting rainbows down to the building roofs. The whole city paused to look up, every where I walked in this, chasing the view, people were stopped & gazing up. I saw road crews paused, skateboarding adolescents flipping a U-y & standing stock still, restaurant patrons piling out slightly tipsy on wine reaching their cars and quieting as they noticed. After the sky calmed down a bit Marsha & I were, both of us, wide-eyed & chattering like magpies about NZ. We neither of us had a camera on us.

**

Speaking of magpies...NZ has some, more piebald and less sleekly formally dressed than those I met in Colorado, but about twice the size. Not as cheeky either. I listened to a pair in a tree across the road as I stood by the side of the road leading into Akarao watching the sun come up. They sounded like strangled adolescent saxaphone players.  Not exactly sunrise music, but it'll do.

We had left Chch in darkness and chased the occasional illuminating flashes of lightening in the distance, exposing great triple threat thunderheads each time. Akaroa was magical leprechaun, rainbows & fog shrouded hidden valleys, bays sheltered deep into the land & arms of land loping gently & greenly down to the cliffs from which old whalers stood & watched their prey come in before launching their ships to sea.

I took the Akaroa Mail Bus Run & would recommend it to anyone. Who doesn't easily get carsick. Wonderfully hosted by Jerry & Anita, both retired from England. They bemoaned the rain & clouds obscuring the views but for me the weather was part of the otherworldly feel of the place--like Scottish highlands & odd faerie encounters, or expectations of handsome kilted men & bagpipes. Add tropical coloured waters, turquoise & teal & white-capped in the storm we'd followed in that morning.

**

Ogden Beach, Greymouth, NZ, West Coast, South Island, Tasman Sea

The driftwood here is prodigious, like the immense & worn bones of lost trees. There are red trunks that crumble in squares like coal to the touch, statuesque silver tree roots through which I could easily crawl if I so wished, small pieces of featherlight silvery wood, bored through with holes by insects, that look like sponge or coral, with small stones trapped in the holes by the rollicking it got on its way up the beach in the surf.

I love this seashore. The Tasman Sea endlessly rages along it, surf rolling in relentlessly, smoothing & finishing the stones. One kilometre up the beach from where I was yesterday & the stones have changed their shapes. The stones yesterday were worn to various sizes & shapes, with no one shape predominating. Today's stretch of beach sports an abundance of flat rounded saucers like focaccia bread: from tiny 1/4 inch pebbles blended into the grey sand down beach where the surf never fails, with the same shapes increasing in sizes up beach where the ocean has less less frequent impact.

The sky is grey, overcast unto the horizon. meeting the pale gunmental green of the sea. There are very few seabirds of any type along this beach, the sea being perhaps too vigorous a neighbour for the usual sand-dwelling shellfish that I have seen so many birds pursuing & squabbling over on the gentler sandier coasts.

The backpackers (hostel) I am staying in here is a balm to my soul and I find myself extending my stay two days at a time despite convictions to move on. Global Village Backpackers on Cowper St in Greymouth, run by Russell (Kiwi) & Yuri (Japanese). It is a magnificent place, the best one I've yet found. It is colourful (with a pan-African design), bright, clean, quiet (mostly), friendly & well-organized.

In NZ there is a web of hundreds upon hundreds of these “backpackers” in nearly every town & city & often out in the rural areas as well. The average price is about $20NZ for a room in a 4-6 person dorm room. Most have single sex dorms, a boon for the solo woman traveler, not least because women don’t snore as much.

The amenities, at minimum, you have access to at a BPer are a fully-equipped kitchen, a common bathroom (men’s & women’s) and a TV/lounge area. Most places supply you with a pillow case (for their pillow) and a sheet (for their mattress) and you sleep on top in a sleeping bag, charging about  $3NZ extra for a duvet, per night.

The worst place I have stayed was in Chch: Occidental Backpackers on Hereford St. It was dirty (filthy really), noisy & badly kept. The kitchen was tiny, ill-equipped, and they had a pub on the premises. Mostly I saw young men lazing about on sprung sofas in front of the TV for hours at a clip watching The Simpsons & suchlike. Only one sink in the women’s loo, a floor to which my shoes stuck, and nothing to say for it except a few UK women I met in my room before I moved on.

The best thus far is the current one, Global Village. Having come straight from the Occidental in Chch I was overwhelmed with gratitude at the hospitality and homeliness of the place. I cooked my first meal since well before leaving Maine in November and it was divine: garlic & butter sautéed zucchini with noodles & peas on the side. Then for breakfast 2 real eggs, fried in butter, with toast. You provide your own food & they provide the stove, the fridges, the utensils, and even in this place, the spices. Cook how & when you want. Even with 8 other people cooking at once there was plenty of room: 4 stove tops, 2 ovens, 4 sinks, plenty of counter top. Not everyone cleans up after themselves to the same degree or with the same speed after cooking, but it works out fine.

There is a lounge with a fireplace they have had going the last 3 nights, where people read, play cards, and talk to strangers about their travels. I am starting to can my Antarctic stories into manageable anecdotes that do not make me cry, so much.

Global Village is on a river and offers free kayaks & free mountain bikes. I have used the latter 2 days running now and my bottom region is screaming in agony. It is not my neglected muscles so much as the personal place the bike seat hits me. I spoke with a woman who is biking around NZ, mentioned this, and she said, “Don’t worry, it goes numb.” !!  Do I want this area (who knew there were bones there?) going numb? Next bike I get on will have the equivalent of a tractor seat with down pillows on it. Yowza. Yet, still, I got back on the next day & biked the 7-8 kms back to this divine beach. Pedal, pedal, pedal, stand on pedals & glide, pedal, pedal, pedal, stand on pedals & glide, adjust ass for the hundredth time, find there’s just no comfy position short of side saddle (don’t let me tell you I didn’t at least TRY it). Whose ass, I ask you, was the model for these seats? And what kind of calluses did it have? And was it really necessary for a bike seat to be aerodynamic when it is always under your least aerodynamic body part? Can I tell if I’m bruised? I did some Chinese acrobatics in front of the mirror in the shower room & couldn’t tell. Feels bruised though. I didn’t get caught naked trying to kiss my own ass, small blessings. =)

I recommend traveling in NZ to anyone of any level fitness & comfort needs. I think I used up all my superlatives on Antarctica, but this place is spectacular. No other place could have been the setting for Middle Earth. It is such a raw & youthful gealogical beauty here, as if you have stepped back into the world still forming itself, only just past a raging adolescence.

posted by: coldwish at 01:20 | link | comments (2) |
nz 2005