Ohau do I love it here
November 26, 2005
Franz Josef, New Zealand
8:28pm
Just when you thought you heard enough about glaciers, we go to a town named after a glacier, or was the glacier named after the town? Who knows? And really. Who cares?
The last day on Lake Ohau was spent walking, or at least trying to do a walk with a boy that quite simply didn’t want to walk anywhere.
So we sat, over looking a river on a picnic table at ate raw carrots. Oh earlier in the day Steph yelled at me for eating the fourth last Ryvita. The fourth last. She was having a bad day. We now refer to it as the “Ryvita incident”. Everything is funnier when you are immersed in a giant land of fantasy.
Yesterday was travel day, and what a travel day it was. We had to cross the Southern Alps through the Haast Pass, one of only three roads that go through the Alps, opening up the gateway to the West Coast, which they affectionately call the “Coast” in NZ, even though the whole freaking country is coastline. It feels weird to being this close to our next eight weeklong stay in Nelson. I am a little bit anxious, mostly because I want the accommodation to be really nice, partially because we spent so much money on it, partially because we are staying so long, and partially because we will be hosting people for Christmas. I want it to feel like the home Onemana felt like. I want it to feel like, well, like a home. I think I am ready though, seven different locations in five weeks were hectic, and not something I could have done for the entire time away. So, while anxious, I am still eager to lay my bed on the same pillow for longer than seven days.
Back to the Haast Pass. It was stunning. Surrounded by mountains, we stopped and visited a waterfall.
We just able to get to the falls before the tour buses arrived. It is weird being in the middle of nowhere when suddenly a crowd of people is standing around you, staring into their digital camera viewers, talking in many different languages. We just smile and nod, meandering back to our 15-year old car that smells like burning plastic.
We ate lunch in the town of Haast. I had a chicken pie and a bag of green onion potato chips. My food regime takes a break on travel days. In fact, it has taken a break today as well as I sip my Montieth’s lively hopped pilsner beer, brewed just north of here in Greymouth. It’s very tasty.
Speaking of beer, last night, after we unloaded our gear in our little cottage in the middle of a trailer park, I drank too many beers. First I will rewind a little and tell you about where we are staying, because I know most of you reading got stuck on the words trailer and park. Holiday parks, as they are called here, are not the shabby redneck tornado tempting places like I original thought when Nicki, in Fiji, mentioned them as a possible option for our November journeys. They are actually quite nice, and as we are millionaires, we decided to forgo the many different holiday park accommodation options, which range from backpacker dorms to tree lodges, and priced accordingly. We of course took the most expensive option, which is the tree lodge, which is basically like a big hotel room with a single and a double in one room, with two hot plates, no oven, a mini fridge and a private deck. Needless to say, while not completely bummed out about our room, we definitely think it is overpriced.
But. And this is a fairly big but. As big as Ouisy Jefferson. There are people here. We are surrounded by people. People of all ages. We can hear them and see them and actually talk to them. And they talk back! And there is a bar on site. With pints and everything! So after a pasta dinner, we all went over to the patio so Steph and I could actually have a couple of drinks on a patio with all these strange people and Hudson.
One of the great things about traveling with a child is his ability to make friends with other kids, allowing us to make friends with the parents. Last night, before our first drinks were downed, Hud made friends with a boy the same age. Within minutes we had pulled up a couple of chairs and talking to Alex and Alex, I kid you not, a British couple that were touring NZ for a month with their two children Boris, a seven month old and Cosmo, a three year old. Boris and Cosmo. I should have a joke there, but it kind of stands alone. We drank and drank for about three hours, until all of us realized that our kids were up way too late and passed the overtired phase and now entering manic freak out stage. It was fun. I even smoked a cigar. I inhaled. Tobacco, I missed you. It’s time to miss you again. Al and Al were nice, but probably not the type we would hang with back home. Their edges were rougher than ours.
I continued my little adventure after, leaving Steph to deal with Hud, making my way to the one street in the small village of Franz Josef. I hit two bars in two hours and drank probably five pints. Putting my total at around 12 for the evening. I was drunk, but I did not fall down or go to some random party and almost break my nose. I did manage to be mean to Steph and she slapped me across the face. Something I do not remember. I regret that, but not the drinks. The pints were ice cold. And I did not have any cigarettes. Yay me.
Today, after a couple of Tylenols, perused the shops and Dept. of Conservation to decide on the walks we want to do. We also met a woman at the playground who did the exact same thing as us. Her and her husband quit their jobs in London, and our traveling the world with their two-year-old Martha. The only difference is they are renting their house. Chickens. It was odd how similar our lives and our stories were. Her father and stepmother are even coming here to visit.
We made our walk decision and drove to the car park of the Franz Josef Glacier, one of the two glaciers in NZ (the other is Fox Glacier, about 30km from here) to descend a mountain to sea level. This happens only here in NZ and in Argentina.
The walk was 90 minutes return, just about Hud’s maximum. A path weaves through a small forest until it opens to the glacial moraine and the glacier itself. This glacier looks like the mountain is sticking it’s tongue at you. From the distance where we first could see it, it did not look impressive, but as we approached we began to realize how big this frigid fucker really was.
At the face it stood at least 100 metres high. And it either descends or recedes (depending on the temperature) a least a metre a day. It was bizarre and interesting and fun to watch the people climbing it. Climbing it is something I debated doing, but decided it just wouldn’t be the same without the wonder and magic of my wife and son standing next to me. I love them both so much.
Half of my enjoyment is seeing what I see through their eyes.
Love to all,
J.
Eating icebergs and other diet tips
November 23, 2005
Lake Ohau, New Zealand
8:57am
This morning I met a truck on the other side of a one-way bridge. He had the right of way. He tipped his hat as he passed. I promise to be brief today.
Yesterday was our foray into the mountains to boat on the lake created by the ever-receding Tasman Glacier. The lake was a balmy one degree Celsius. We stuck our hands in for ten seconds upon instruction from our guide who looked very much like the impossible offspring of Coburn and Aaron.
He pronounced Glacier “Glassy are”.
After walking about 2km along a path created in the middle of the glacial moraine, we were outfitted with life jackets and led down to our boat. Three other couples signed up for the journey, including a preppy Netherland couple in their late forties (guessing), an interracial couple from just outside of Sydney (she was Asian and all blinged out in diamonds, he was meek, perhaps an accountant or actuary, working sixty hours a week to provide for his wife who bosses him around in broken English. He did not look happy) and the requisite Japanese couple whose fashions were just on the outside of hip, her hat so fauxburry it almost looked cool, until I realized it was attached to her lapel with a potato chip clip.
We were surrounded by the many peaks in the Southern Alps exceeding 3000 metres, including Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman, the first and second highest mountains in New Zealand. Our small yellow dinghy felt like a palm in a touch football huddle.
It was almost smothering. The lake itself was not the crystal clear blue water you would expect from a glacial lake. It was grey, because of the constant rock and silt falling off the glacier as it recedes and melts. The glacier itself was also covered in rocks and dirt, at least the bottom third of it was, the accessible part. Ben, our guide explained that the top two thirds were that snowy shiny icy part, but the glacier we could boat up to was still impressive. It is a glacier after all. Can I say glacier one more time? Glacier. Thank you.
The best part for me, and I think for Hud, was driving right up to the floating pieces of ice, and grabbing a hunk and eating it. Yes, Hud has now touched and eaten a piece of an iceberg.
Swam the Great Barrier Reef. Ate an iceberg. Oh, and driven a boat.
Three years, 84 days old. Nice.
The whole tour took about three hours, including the walk and the drive in the small bus. The whole Aoraki/Mt. Cook region is a giant National park. You could spend weeks here doing all the walks and tramps. They also have helicopters and planes that land directly on the upper two thirds of the Tasman Glacier. A little out of our price range though. Ok, we thought about it. The once in a lifetime theory is a tough one to argue. Poverty does not win all the time.
I have decided to give serious thought to tramping. I am enjoying walking so much, both visually and how my body feels, that I want to push it a little. I am going to start extending my daily walks gradually past five kilometers and hopefully get to 8-10-12 in the next month or so. Sometime in mid-January I will hook onto a two-three day tramp in one of the two National Parks up in Nelson. Steph thinks it’s a good idea, so everything is a go.
You, of course, will get to read about it.
Or read about bags of peanuts and diet coke farts and the return of the stomach.
You just never know.
Love to all,
J.
November 21, 2005
Lake Ohau, New Zealand
9:05pm
I undo my shoes before I take them off now. I never used to. A sign saying ‘cattle stop’ does not confuse me. Shitty wool around a sheep’s bum no longer causes me to wipe more. Walking 5km before seven in the morning is not just something other people do. Lower back pain is frustrating. Mountains and streams are difficult to get used to. Reading 15 books in 6.5 months may be life’s greatest luxury. Sitting by a fire in a million dollar home writing in a journal may be a close second. Head shaking happens often. Head scratching again, a close second.
Hud sounds at least six years old. If I only really knew what a six-year-old sounds like.
“Are you done your walk Dad?” He says, holding the door open for me.
“Yes my boy I am done,” I reply, peeling off the hood, sweat droplets fall from my temple, land on his perfect foot.
“Was it a good walk?” Still holding the doorknob, shutting it behind me as I lean down gingerly to untie my shoes.
“It was great Hud,” I say, toe removing my sock. “I saw a dead bird”
“Come with me Dad, I made a fort.” Off around the corner, same pink feet smacking the concrete.
I guess I am over my angst and frustration with this place. The views are too nice to walk around with a scowl all the time. It may be the isolation. All three of the weeklong stays we booked during November were very isolated. The shorter stays were in cities or at least near civilization. Places I felt happier. Again, this all may be indicators for future settling locations.
Yesterday we went to Twizel, the small town 40kms to the north of us. Omarama is the small town 40km to the south of us. Lake Ohau Road literally is in the middle of the two towns. I forgot to ask if there were any feuds. Twizel was built for the tourist, as it is the last town before Mt. Cook, the mountain that hovers in the distance looking out from our deck. We visited their information centre and decided quickly to book a trip to take a small boat on a glacial lake on Mt. Cook to drink water directly off icebergs. And to think I came all this way to skip a Canadian winter. With the trip booked for Tuesday, we piddled about the town, visiting playgrounds, drinking flat whites (espresso with not as much milk as a latte), and picking up some produce from their very limited grocery store. We did not talk to anyone, so there are no colourful anecdotes about the locals. I think I miss writing about people. I seemed to be better at capturing the humour with human interaction. Steph and I are great, wonderful even, and it is amazing our routine of making each other laugh has kept us afloat this long, but sometimes I miss people, and it is apparent when I corner someone and talk their ear off. Something I never really did before.
I am changing. Evolving hopefully. But I can feel it, the wrinkles in the corners of my eyes, a new one almost every morning, aging, my mind big picturing, caring less about less and more about more. My baldness remains unchanged. My belly smaller. Hey. I have a penis. Imagine that.
On the way back from Twizel we stopped at a salmon farm to feed the fish and to purchase a nice fillet for the bbq. The bbq we have to bring inside every night. It was trippy, for Hud and I, tossing pellets into the netted tank and the salmon leaping and thrashing in the water trying to score the free meal. After, the gloved lady retrieved a nice $12 fillet and put it in an iced bag for us. I like salmon now. Another change for the better.
Last night was quiet. Hud sleeps right through the night here. It’s been a treat.
This morning I saw the sunrise from my sessile position. I pushed myself up from the bed, testing the new pain in my back. It was manageable so I peed and weighed myself like I do now. The great room revealed a storm in the distant mountains, whipping across the water and dusting the peaks with new snow. You could see the line between rain and snow. I debated rushing out and trying to beat the storm, but was glad I did not as within five minutes rain started pelting the deck. The news was my next best option.
Steph and Hud woke soon after and the storm disappeared as quickly as it started. I rushed out the door, IPOD locked on shuffle and began my walk. It is a road walk, but the road follows the edge of the lake, so I am missing nothing by walking on comfortable terrain. The walk starts from the deck, through a field of purple lupines, down a rocky unsealed road, to the main road, to a bridge 2.6km away. I cross the bridge, touch both sides with my wet shoe, and walk home. It takes 40 minutes. It is brisk but not breakneck. I can talk while walking but I could not sing. Sweat finds my back and head easily. It is a nice daily workout.
After my return, we chilled for a bit, Steph and Hud painting and me putting together our lunch for our planned picnic. I made a bean salad with carrots, celery and feta and locally grown lettuce, a wee bit of oil and balsamic and dill. I made two pb and j’s, more carrots and celery, a fruit cup for Hud, two slices of leftover oven pizza, two red apples, a green apple and two plums, a plastic container of watered down orange juice for Hud, litre of water for Steph and I to share. A feast for kings. Or wayward jesters.
We drove further up Lake Ohau road to Round Bush Reserve, a small camping/picnic area right on the shore of Ohau. We had to shoo a herd of cows and I backed the car down near the water. We ate in the back as the wind was quite cold.
The car sat beneath the red blanket of Beech mistletoe, which grow wild here in the Ohau forest. Steph posed for the appropriate picture.
After lunch we drove further up the road, passed the most isolated motel in the world, most isolated with the nicest view. Weatherall Motel.
If you murdered someone and needed a couple of nights to get your shit together, this is where you should come. It is on the edge of the lake, at the beginning of a sheep station, at the base of a mountain. I almost wanted to get a room just to see what it cost. Steph said $50, I thought more.
Up the road still, through at least two mobs of sheep, over four cattle stops and one ford we found the turn off we were looking for, Temple Valley Reserve. We wanted a short walk to end our day. A small board listed three walks, two over two hours, the last, a one-hour return walk. Perfect. We set out up the mountain. It weaved slowly up, through forests and fields, across waterfalls and through felled trees.
It was marked by orange triangles, a perfect game for a three year old, who overcame his weariness to race ahead to try and find the next marker. He was a trooper and will sleep well tonight. The walk was perfect length and even though the rain returned to soak us all, it still felt great to be in such clean, open, big air. My lungs get pinker by the minute.
After we came home Steph built a fire, while I napped, resting my back after a day full of activity. We ate the salmon, which I coated in lemon, coriander, teriyaki sauce, lemon pepper and sea salt, letting the bbq do the rest. Steph made nice jasmine rice with cashews and mango chutney. Broccoli and cauliflower accompanied. It was delicious.
It’s almost ten now and I can feel myself slipping off, the fire cracking and spitting beside me.
Tomorrow its icebergs and glaciers. Today was waterfalls and mountains.
I look forward to the morning walk now.
I look forward to the new lines at the corners of my eyes now.
Love to all,
J.
November 19, 2005
Lake Ohau, New Zealand
9:05pm
Irritability creeps into me at the oddest times. It maybe the bouncing around the country. It maybe the fact I am back on the new age Jason regime. It maybe my big toenail growing sideways into my calloused skin. It maybe the combination of all three. The fact remains my fuse was short today. Today being the first full day in what could be one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Staring into Steph’s eyes excluded.
Who the hell do we think we are? We are staying in about a two thousand square foot home looking directly at one of the biggest mountains in NZ, windy Lake Oahu thrashing about beneath our huge deck. It’s a rock star’s home in the middle of nowhere. And when I mean nowhere I mean at least 40km from a town with perhaps 500 people living full time. It feels like we were dropped from a space ship and told to populate this bountiful location. I am Adam. I think. I hope. Where’s my rib?
Travel day from Queenstown was highlighted by stopping first in Arrowtown so my little Georgia O’Keefe could pick up supplies to satisfy another goal of hers on this trip; painting. The other stop we made was at the first bungee jump site ever.
It was not the biggest drop, and I mentioned this was one of things I wanted to try on this trip and what better place to try it then at the original bungee location.
I didn’t jump. I barely even contemplated it. I am fat fucking chicken. I think Hud was even disappointed in me. It did not exceed my own sorrowful chagrin though. Maybe with Tony when he arrives in December.
The drive was quite tame until entering the Southern Range and its Mars-like terrain. It was only about 200km away, but with the winding roads, the pee stops and the groceries in Omarama, we turned off highway on the Lake Ohau side road around 2. It was 19km from the turnoff and very quickly we were able to see the mountains in the background, snow crested and ominous, begging us to come closer. We wondered where the lake was and with 5km to go we rounded a corner and were met by the placid lake, welcoming us with a smooth blue hand. We stopped to take a picture.
We caught our breath. We continued on.
Lake Ohau Village is not really a village, more a pretty darn new real estate development in a location not used to humans. Sheep yes. Possums probably. Humans no. We pulled into the carport of our ultra modern looking house. There was firewood stacked waist high, driftwood piled on top for kindling. Yes Heather. Driftwood for kindling.
We found the under the rock key and entered.
It is difficult to describe the feeling when I walked in. I liked the size of the place right off. The last two locations we all shared a bedroom and that is just cramped. This was a two-bedroom house with a large (34ft by 21ft) great room. Now when I say great room, the image of hardwood and big rugs and roaring fires comes to mind. Not here.
It is stark and modern. Clean lines, smooth wood paneled fireplace, stainless steel appliances. The floor is smooth concrete, with individual rocks pressed into it. It feels like the floor of a high school. In fact, with the 15 ft high ceilings, it almost feels like we are living in a high school. I want to drain a jump shot off one of the walls. And I would drain it. The net wouldn’t move.
The best part of the place is the view and the deck. One entire wall of the great room is glass. All in panels you can open in entirety. This walks onto a deck about half the size of the great room. And looks out over Lake Ohau with its mountain range backdrop. It is a legendary view and by far the most dramatic piece of scenery I have ever witnessed.
So why do I sound disappointed? Maybe I expected less modern and warmer accommodation. It is so white. Not one piece of art hangs on the walls. The furniture is ok, its cheap, it does not match the grandeur of the house. I guess I feel out of place in such wannabe Feng Shui surroundings. There is not a clean line on my coke bottle body anywhere.
The other thing irking me about this place was the list of rules and dos and don’ts that accompanied the e-mail with the key location. It also highlighted satellite television on the website. So far I have been able to get the two local NZ channels you can get anywhere in the country and 8 different religious channels. I get a Kurd channel. I get a Chinese channel. ESPN? Nope. If I did my mood would be much brighter. But that is not really a big deal; I did not come halfway across the world to see the NBA. It just would have been nice to read a sports ticker or one fucking game that does not involve a try or a wicket. I am whining I know.
The owner of this place lives in Melbourne and my guess is she spends maybe 4 weeks here a year, the rest of the time renting it out to rock stars and pretend writers and artists like us. All the magazines are marked with an identifying tag, in case we really wanted to steal a 2004 Air New Zealand magazine. With such fierce winds, all outdoor furniture including the bbq must be brought in every night, and there is such a vacuum created with the wind, that all open doors must be latched or they may shatter on return impact. It’s almost scary.
I think I am just complaining to complain. And because this is sometimes an actual journal and not just a desperate plea for attention, I get to write what I want, even if there are a thousand tiny violins out there playing just for me.
Today the highlight was skipping rocks.
It actually cheered me up more than anyone would understand.
Tomorrow we are going to Twizel. If it’s nice, we may go for a swim in Lake Middleton, the smaller, warmer, less violent next-door neighbour to Lake Ohau.
The lake where I skipped rocks. This last three weeks I feel like one of those rocks.
Sinking will not be tolerated.
Love to all,
J.
November 17, 2005
Tussock Cottage, between Arrowtown and Queenstown, New Zealand
9:33pm
I am not really serious about writing tonight. I am just watching Steph bend over and pack our dry goods in our green environmental bags. These bags have replaced our dog poo plastic grocery bags. We are so earthy. Especially as we peel away in our oil coughing 1991 Subaru wagon, chica in the front seat cackling as she shines up her Gucci sunglasses, me eating personal Dairy Milk chocolates, secretly wishing my son could be old enough for a Gameboy so he would stop pressing his bored yellow sandals into the small of my back.
We are leaving tomorrow. Away from Arrowtown and Queenstown. Away from civilization and into the mountain range, onto the secret lake, into the plush home we dreamed about six weeks ago. Lake Oahu near Mt. Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak at over 3700 metres. It looks like the mountain range lakes you see on postcards, reflecting off each other, not knowing which is real, which is rippled fake. I just want it to be bigger.
The last two days were mildly jammed packed with Asian type hysteria. We slammed Arrowtown in five hours, whipping in and out of the tourist stores until finally settling into a great Thai food restaurant for a cheap lunch. This was after visiting the Chinese Settlement, the New Zealand tribute to the Chinese that bravely ventured here to find gold during the rushes back in the 19th century. The settlement was boring and ridiculous and almost insulting as it felt like a bone being tossed to the Chinese for their limited input to the gold rush back in the day. They actually had a sign put up in front of basically five bricks saying it was the ruins of sum yung guys home. Whatever. It was old. It was gone. Why am I here?
Next up, watching grade school chicks and low rider undies bend over and fake pan for gold in the river as their isle of lesbos teacher watched. It was a gold country field trip. Funny thing about watching all these wee girls get together to listen to their teacher explain the gold panning history, was the random tour bus Asians sticking their noses into the huddle to listen and take pictures like these poor girls were part of some giant show. The girls were so polite. I would have been less so.
Steph and I watched the whole scene and giggled. Hud threw rocks. It was nice especially because the sun kept getting our eyes.
That was yesterday. I am at today and barely can remember yesterday, beyond the pubescent crack flashes and Pad Thai burps. Today started with a drive to Queenstown and poking and muttering about until the bus picked us up to take us to the jet boat. We signed up for jetboating the first day we arrived. It was the extreme adventure thing we decided to do.
It was awesome.
The boat sits 14 people. The boat goes over 80kms an hour. The boat weaves in and out of Shotover River canyon, within inches of the cliffs. The boat can ride in under 8 inches of water. The boat does 360 degree spins over and over again.
It was awesome.
Beyond its awesomability, was the fact that our stoic, sometimes serious son Hud, rode this boat like a bad mule, never once showing an ounce of fear or a smidge of hesitation. He tackled the adventure like an end around sweep. He is the king, always making me feel guilty for doubting his fearlessness.
After jet boating we sucked drinks at a pub looking at mountains. It was all Irish and tasty and cut too short by responsibility. Luckily when we got home, Lee took us in and fed us curry and wine and we talked until our kids’ bedtime.
We talked about the variety of our lives, the comfort of our choices and the laughter in our stupidity. She is just a wee bit older than us, but just as young in spirit. We all held the mike intermittently, without me once thinking someone dominated.
Although I did ask Steph later on if I talked too much. She said I didn’t. But I think I did.
Love to all,
J.
On the right track
November 16, 2005
Tussock Cottage, between Arrowtown and Queenstown, New Zealand
5:40am
Hud is the greatest child that ever escaped the mellow moist confines of a womb.
Just as he gets used to a location, we leave, and he just asks: “Will there be toys at our next home?” He then gets all swaddled up in his booster seat, surrounded by all his toys, a blanket we force on him, our transferable cold food in a soft cooler in the seat next to him, and falls asleep. When he wakes, we are at a new location, and he runs around, grin goofy and large like a thirsty puppy, asking again where the toys are. If there is none, which there is not, he asks to go on the trampoline that does exist on the lawn near the firewood. At night he sleeps in a bed conconcted from a cot mattress and lots of pillows. He truly thinks this kind of life is the life of every three-year-old. Little does he know how lucky or unlucky he is. And we are even luckier to have him. What a golden egg.
Animals highlighted the last two days in Parukanui. A couple of mornings ago, after my walk, I was hanging my blue wool socks out to dry near the perfect spider webs, and heard a rustle in the water larger then the occasional surface breaking fish. I looked over and saw the familiar wet brown sheen and whiskered nose of a seal. A seal mere feet from where I stood. It was twirling and hunting the bountiful fish in the inlet. It almost looked like he was toying with the fish, as his twirls and leaps out of the water were Sea World worthy.
I yelled out to Steph and Hud and they came running, Steph admittedly thinking I was playing a prank. We all watched as the seal leapt and spun and got his fill before moving back out the inlet and on to the wet sand to sun himself. After a good drying off, he waddled along the sand, very Chapinlesque, before plunging back into the inlet to swim out to open water.
Another wild kingdom moment here in New Zealand.
The other highlight, and this is not mine to talk about, but I will summarize, was Steph’s horse riding adventure. It was one of the things Steph said early on she wanted to do. She had never been on a horse so she diligently found a suitable company to satisfy her mild dream. I made the appropriate jokes about her excitement was due to anticipating something that big between her legs and she of course shook her head wondering who was older, her son or her husband. Hud and I came with her to the small farm up the coast, near the entrance to Otago Harbour. Two women were grooming and saddling the six horses due to ride that afternoon.
Steph was latching on to a group of five that were booked at the same time. The two horse woman were exactly that, horsewomen. They were dusty, stinky, broad shouldered, sun wrinkled, decked out in riding pants and black boots. They talked to each horse like they were humans, scratching their asses and checking their tails for poo like it was normal, which I suppose it was to them.
Hud and I left Steph and had a little father/son adventure time of our own. We went to a park and then to McDonalds, where Hud met another boy named Brooklyn. They played in the giant play land while I read the paper and ate Hud’s meal and then mine. We drove back to pick up Steph and she was sore, but beaming, explaining her initial fear of horse back riding was quickly replaced by her fear of heights as the horses climbed and then descended very large hills on very thin paths. She was happy though for satisfying one of her goals on this trip.
We drove home and began packing up. The week in Parukanui turned out to be great, especially after my initial hesitation about the rustic nature and size of the place.
The scenery surrounding the cottage has to be close to the best we have seen so far. Such raw, beautiful views that I never even conjured before arriving here. I had no idea I would be watching a tide go in and out as coastal birds of all kinds picked and mewed over the many shellfish left exposed. All with giant golden green hills in the background. And a rumbling multi-coloured train running twice a day, like the tides, to boot. All in all pretty awesome.
And now here I am. Immersed in the awesome once again. Queenstown is New Zealand’s answer to Whistler, although less like a village and more like a mini-city. It is very close to a number of ski fields for winter fun, and also serves as the adventure capital of New Zealand. Queenstown boasts you can ski dive, bungee jump from the world’s first bungee jump, and jet boat down the Shotover River all in one day. The town itself is way too busy for my liking. Too many cars and not enough stoplights. It felt dangerous as all the Range Rovers and hippy vans sped through roundabouts. We did end up booking a trip on a Jet Boat this Thursday. It’s a jet-propelled boat that speeds down the Shotover River in six inches of water doing speeds of 50 miles an hour. It comes within inches of the chasm walls and can go through level 3 rapids. It takes 25 minutes and cost a lot of money, although less because Hud turned out to be free. Our hosts here have done it and Lee, the wonderfully charming woman, told us “It feels like your going to die”
They call it Thrill Therapy. Should be interesting.
Our cottage for the next three nights is quite plush. It’s a one bedroom but not to small. All the finishing’s are beautiful including the artwork and silverware. Our hosts, Lee and Jaap, a kiwi and a Dutch, are a little bit older than us, with kids nine and 11, are very nice. We talked for a while before dinner as Hud jumped on the trampoline. After 20 years in Australia and a year in France where they ended up staying in Peter Mayle’s house while he wrote Bon Appetite, they settled here beneath the mountains in Queenstown. They run a small shuttle service company to keep them afloat. It’s nice life.
So we are here until Friday, before disappearing into our own mountain oasis on Lake Ohau.
I am already stoked about the jet boat.
Love to all,
J.
November 12, 2005
Purakanui Inlet, 20 kms outside of Dunedin, New Zealand
8:59pm
Nighttime writing. Sky is still quite bright. Wisps of grey clouds echoed with pink lay on the top the valley surrounding the inlet. The tide is on its way back, covering all the muck, the cockles, the pipi, the mussels, bringing them all back to life. I wonder if there is a difference; in eloquence, or joviality, or basic tone from writing in the morning or in the evening. I wonder even if objectivity would be available to me, or would I just cede that I am specifically an asshole at any hour of the day.
Tonight we met a woman and her son on an after dinner walk. Dinner was steak and broccoli and French fries. No beer. No wine. The woman was large beneath the equator, so big the fat looked fake, and her son’s head was very round, the perfect compass circle. She did have beautifully clear blue eyes. She was American, from Denver, moved here a year and half ago with her musician husband. Never been here before, just up and left, could not afford the reconnaissance visit. Now, as she put it, they have found the perfect spot here on Parukanui Inlet. Her son is seven and goes to a semiprivate school. They invited us over tomorrow so Hud could play with some new toys. He was into it, so we will go after breakfast.
“I went on a train,” Hud randomly boasted to the woman from his swing made from an old car tire.
Which we all did, yesterday, and all had a good time doing so. The train is a tourist train traveling 48 kilometers from Dunedin to Parangaki on tracks and trains the Dunedin city council purchased years ago after the line was shut down. Tauri Gorge Railway was reasonably priced for a four hour round trip which made our son very very happy.
Every kid at every different age goes through stages of what they truly dig in regards to toys and life periphery. For a long time now, Hud’s really been into trains. It started with Thomas and his set back home, and has not faded since, tracks and trains being the first things he picks up in Duplo, or Lego, or any cheap rip off in dollar stores that work for four or five seconds before snapping in half. He also points out all the train tracks on our extended road trips, and if we are lucky enough to see an actual train, like we do on occasion here at the cottage, it’s basically a manic medley of announcements of he saw a train, a train, there’s a train, did you see the train, I can see a train,..etc. So when we confirmed our little journey, he was needless to say, a little excited. The anticipation itself was wonderful.
The actual journey was stunning as well. Following a river at the bottom of a gorge basically the entire time, crossing it on viaducts built 150 years ago, by Chinese and New Zealand men on horses. The engineering behind it all was mind-boggling. The pictures only do it mild justice. What we were able to capture pretty well was Hud’s happiness and wonder for at least the journey out to Parangaki. Two hours is about the maximum time on one subject for a three year old. On the way back, flirting with random blue haired women was the subject of choice. For him, not me.
Again, in our specific car, we had to be the youngest by at least 25 years. We did manage to come away basically unscathed by idle chatter, although Hud managed to woo a couple of comments from some of the elderly patrons and their flesh coloured hearing aids. There was a loud woman from somewhere in the US south who kept us all up to date on her sleeping patterns and her general laziness about her trip to New Zealand. It seems like a long way to come to be lazy, although I question myself about the same subject on occasion. I just do it in the mirror or silently in my brain like normal people.
After the train pulled into the station and we disembarked, Hud remarked immediately and politely that he would like to go on another train. I tussled his hair and admired his insatiability. We drove home. That was yesterday.
I just remembered that I am missing a day. The day we went to Dunedin to investigate tourist options, including the train. Steph and I ended up not getting along to well again, probably travel day residue. The only real highlight was the creepy transsexual in the second hand bookstore where I purchased two new books. The fact that she (I use that pronoun loosely) was a transsexual was not creepy, although I will admit to some mild shivers, it was the fact she was sitting there, not sifting through titles or browsing in any way. Steph and I concluded she was there staring out the window in defiance, as the other half of the bookstore was a Christian library/book store. It was like she was waiting to be kicked out, so she could play the blasphemic martyr card and run screaming into traffic.
I kept on waiting for her to sneak up behind me and whisper in my ear with painted lips covering stubble:
“I can smell your testicles.”
Thus leaving me with the only option of pulling a tall bookshelf on top of my welcoming, cringing body.
So. Today. Today was a farmer’s market in the morning in a steady downpour of rain. We bought a chewy stick of bread, really creamy brie cheese, fresh tomatoes the size of well, testicles, a brownie, homemade hummus and a small a bag of organic carrots. This was the lunch we were going to eat after visiting New Zealand’s only castle, Larnach Castle, located on the Otago Peninsula, a mere 15 minutes outside of Dunedin.
William Lonarch, a British descendant born in Australia, built the castle in 1867 after falling in love with land easy to fall in love with. After years of troubled times and troubled marriages, the Barker Family purchased the castle in 1967 and began restoring it to its former glory. The castle itself was not huge, but still interesting, especially since they roped off none of the rooms, and all the furniture and accouterments remain alive and available in their opulence. They only drag was the request not to take photos for restoration and security reasons. The first I understand, the latter I do not.
The grounds and gardens of the castle was what I enjoyed, furthering my theory that this trip has aged me about thirty years. I even started wearing my pants just below my nipples. It’s just more comfortable.
We ate our picnic in the car as rain still fell quite heavy. Our next goal was to drive to the end of the peninsula, not far really, and geographically the right thing to do. Hud fell asleep quickly and we reached the end, and found two sleeping sea lions. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.
We drove to the other side of the Peninsula, now actually seeking out sea lions, and took our groggy son on shoulders to Allan’s Beach, a secluded spot ten minutes from a parking area in the middle of a forest smack dab in the middle of nowhere.
No luck. No seals or sea lions and it was pissing and windy but for some reason it still was a cool place to be. Probably the closest to the Antarctic I will ever get in my life. Especially since we are skipping Invercargill.
So an interesting couple of days. Three more sleeps until we are on the road again to Queenstown.
Wow. It’s almost ten o’ clock. Way past my bedtime.
Love to all,
J.
Any new listings?
November 10, 2005
Purakanui Inlet, 20 kms outside of Dunedin, New Zealand
8:43am
Many tribulations are bound to occur when traveling with someone, for this long, this intimately, no matter how much love is involved. Travel days are the worst for Steph and I, because both of us suffer anxieties regarding the drive and what the next accommodation has in store. Steph’s anxieties are generally milder and more internalized, where mine are severe and bouncing all over the place for the whole world to see. This causes strife between us and can explode in quite nasty bursts of vitriol and venom, sadly not always hidden from our son. But like most things that burn so hot, it does not last and before one of us has a chance to grab the big butcher knife, we are cajoling and power hugging once again.
I love her. She is my best friend. I hate her. She is my best friend.
Such was the case on our drive from the spectacular city of Christchurch, down Highway 1; to the exit for the cottage we are presently staying for a week. I loved Christchurch. My favourite city so far. It had everything you could want in a city. Massive downtown park, with a gentle, thin river running through it. A huge square, about three city blocks, serving as a meeting place, with a giant chess game you could sit and watch, various greasy food trailers, cafés, jugglers, information centre, internet hot spots, with all the cool streets branching out from all sides. If I were to design a city, this is where I would begin. It was clean, hip and historic.
Our last day in the city, I got my hair cut and we did some banking for our glam stay coming up in a week or so. In the afternoon we drove to the Christchurch beaches, about ten minutes from the square I just described, another boon for this great city. The tide was out, so all the rocks and caves were exposed, with thousands of mussels attached to them, in various stages of growth.
We drove around for a long time, just checking out the supporting suburbs of Christchurch, which look nothing like the cookie cutter jobs back home. But we don’t have the sprawling vista of the aquamarine ocean, or the gigantic hills where all the houses sit either. That night we had a coconut, chili and lime chicken stir fry with accompanying full glasses of pinot. We packed as much as we could and all went to sleep in one room, leaving the other full queen bedroom barely touched. There is something nice about Hud having his own bed in the room with us, and maybe portent of the studio apartment we’ll have to get back home.
The next morning, after both Steph and I’s 5k walk, I tetrised the luggage in the car and we were off at around 10am. This drive meandered along the coast and through the hinterland and was neither spectacular, nor that boring. Steph was at the wheel, giving me a chance to soak in the sights, and take pictures of various road signs.
Including this real estate gem
Location, location, location. Yes I am 36 years old.
We stopped a couple of times for gas and leg stretches, and eventually made it to our exit around 4pm. This is when Steph and I start the little bickers and jabs because we know we are close to our destination.
This cottage was booked online, just like all the others, but we took a chance by not seeing any pictures of the inside. In fact, the only picture on the website, was one of people in a rowboat, rowing away from the cottage. They were smiling in the picture and we were unsure if they were happy, or happy to be rowing away from the place. We also read some of the comments of previous renters and they all glowed and raved about what a little oasis the cottage was, so comfy and quiet, it was basically what sold us, even though we are perfectly aware it could be the owners writing the comments or eliminating all the bad ones. Whatever, the price was totally right for a week, and we wanted to be right on the water, which this place boasted.
(I know it sounds like I am setting this place up to be a disaster, but in fact, it is pretty delightful. It just took me awhile to get used to it, so I am going with my first mood.)
It was about 20 minutes off the main highway, with various twists and turns until finally we drive along water’s edge and reach the mailbox described in the e-mail. We have to park the car here and carry our luggage down a path. The owner’s e-mail actually said, “if you have a lot of luggage, you may want to use the pull cart”. If we have a lot of luggage. I feel like Jennifer Lopez we have so much luggage. They probably do not get yearlong travelers so let the unpacking begin. The cottage is about 400 metres from the road, along a narrow, but too narrow path. After thirty or forty trips we finally got all our stuff to the property. Steph located the hidden key after we originally thought to be locked out, causing us to yell at each other for very little reason. It was time to investigate the cottage.
First thing you notice, obviously, is the water. The cottage sits on Parukanui Inlet, off of Parukanui Bay, off of the South Pacific Ocean, very close to Otago Harbour, which leads to Dunedin, the South Island’s second biggest city. The Inlet is tidal, so when we arrived at low tide, it was three quarters wet sand. Behind the sand is a mountain; with yellow goldenrod mixed with coniferous trees and the familiar New Zealand green we already take for granted. Very beautiful, and even more spectacular was the howling train that began snaking across the mountain within moments after we arrived. Hud thought this was pretty damn cool. Steph and I thought it was pretty damn beautiful. I love the sound of the occasional train. No matter the hour.
The cottage itself is old, but refurbished. It has one bedroom attached to the kitchen attached to the living/dining area. It is all told about 700 square feet, so pretty small compared to huge Christchurch apartment. This turned me off at first, because my grand novel writing plan needs alternative quiet space. I have since decided to put the novel on hold until December 1st, when we are in one place for 8 weeks. It’s just simpler and I will have more time to focus. There are two other bedrooms, but they are not attached to the cottage, bunkies basically, and not something we can put Hud in overnight. The bathroom is also not attached to the main cottage, but it is a full bathroom, with a smart heater and a shower. All in all, it is rustic, but very quant and cute.
Steph of course loves it. It has all the little country home knick-knacks, including a wallpaper history book dating back to 1870. It also has a fully operating iron stove. It’s not the only stove, but one they bought and had inserted into the fireplace. I made a black pepper beef stir fry with broccoli, red pepper and carrots in the cast iron pot on the stove last night, which I have to admit, was pretty cool.
There is also a small rowboat available for use, so Hud and I went for a quick row yesterday morning, at high tide, when the almost the entire inlet fills with water. I also had to retrieve a neighbour’s boat that came unhooked yesterday afternoon. The tide was going out so it took me awhile to row back to the boathouse, against the surprisingly strong tidal current.
I have now saved a cow and a rowboat on this trip. Karma dude, karma.
Yesterday we just drove around, checking out the area, visiting more playgrounds, seeing more beauty. Today we are driving to Dunedin, poke around, and take care of some business.
Steph and I are still questioning our future and remain perplexed with what we want to do with the rest of our lives. It is difficult to always focus on the present and appreciate what you are experiencing. It sometimes it gets clouded with the darkness of future uncertainty.
We have 18 weeks left of this trip, so much left to see and do.
Love to all,
J.
When or if?
November 7, 2005,
Christchurch, New Zealand
7:39am.
Odd dreams last night.
Dreams of movie star siblings on sheep farms, one of them snobbish, the other quite affable, one correcting my pronunciation of the author Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex, the book I just finished, top five, if not top three), the other sibling touching my knee and smiling, causing stirring in places that should not stir. Woke up to Hud’s face, smushed full of grog, asking for a cuddle. He climbed in; I peed, came back and moved him to his own single bed beside ours. I lay there, hands behind my head, thinking about all the things I shouldn’t be thinking about until it was time for my walk.
Now, after 52 minutes and 6km, I sip coffee amidst the musky pong of my own morning body, and write because television has lost its appeal.
Christchurch is a great city. Although we have yet to see it full weekday buzz, the pace and lush malaise of the weekend was definitely appealing. There are many clock towers and old (by NZ standards) churches and cathedrals.
We walked through their massive city park, which is split many times by the Avon River. It is much more British here, in architecture and people. There is less of a Maori influence, and strangely, way more Asians. Punting boats can take you, for a fee, along the shallow water of the Avon, the punters wearing the traditional circular hats and striped shirts, pushing the giant stick off the river bed, offering a tour if you let him, or silence if you prefer.
We thought it was a little too expensive so we watched another couple enjoy the forced romanticism of it all.
We stopped at the playground of course, continuing Australasian Playground Tour 2005, and Steph and I drank bad coffee and watched our son run around on spongy fake grass, smiling like a jester and demanding we push him on the swing. After the park we walked through the rose portion of the Botanical Gardens, and while internally I am struggling with it, I did enjoy the roses at their absolute peak of bloom, where the vivid petals seem to be begging for a hug.
At the end of the park, a Saturday market began, mostly crafts, with nothing too impressive. Hud ate a trailer bought tomato and chicken panini as we watched, waiting for any scraps to fall on his jacket for us to gobble on. Later Steph had the best looking chicken soulvlaki on a pita (a tribute to the Danforth she admitted) while I watched and then snapped at her because of my returned exile from food.
We fought a little bit after that, mostly me being an idiot, being hungry and confused about my manhood because I enjoyed the Botanical Gardens. I was able to turn it back to light and fluffy, but not before suffering the aggressive chin of my beautiful wife. Those who know her will be picturing her bugged eyes, and jutted jawbone right now. Aggro-chin we call it, because we name everything for easy humour reference.
Today we have no real plans. Some internet maintenance, including the posting of this, and maybe take a drive to see the outskirts of the city. Tomorrow’s destination is 300km south of here, just north of Dunedin. We did not see any pictures of the inside of the cottage, so it should be interesting.
It did have a little rowboat, so I am hoping my morning walks can be trading in for morning rows for a week. My legs feel fit, my ass taut, but my arms still feel drunk, wobbly, like hocus pocus grade school number two pencils.
Love to all,
J.
November 5, 2005
Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand
9:04pm
Feel a little guilty for not writing in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, but with only two nights and one day, it was difficult to find the time, or the space, to write with the concentration this journal deserves.
Travel day went fine. Both today and the trip from sheep farm to Wellington. Talk about sensory overload. Went from nothing but sheep and vast green farmland, to high rises and suits and bar scenes in just under five hours. It was a little much at first and then felt perfectly comfortable as the latter was much more familiar than the former.
The hotel/apartment I booked online turned out to be perfect. A one and a half bedroom with full kitchen facilities we did not use once. It was right downtown so we were able to park our car and leave it there until this morning. I say this as a partial foreshadow.
A long time ago we planned to spend our one full day in Wellington, visiting their national museum, Te Papa. We read it was one of the best museums in the world and we were not disappointed. From covering all the geological wonders of New Zealand to all the odd fauna that live here, to its origins both from a Maori POV and from the European, we-want-to rule-the-world settlement POV. All done with interactive touch screen technology and voice activated displays. It even had a house you could enter with a reenactment of the 1931 Napier earthquake. Very cool.
Steph, being the supermom she is, called in the morning and signed us up for the 1:30 story reading in the preschool section of the museum. Being quite ignorant of preschool shenanigans, I was partially interested to see how Hud playing with kids he did not know. Well, he continues to shine, now one of the more confident children, answering questions, trying on the costumes, and racing around showing all the other kids how to work stuff.
Steph is in awe of the dramatic difference from when we first set foot here in NZ and she joined all the playgroups. It may sound repetitive, but it is so nice to witness your child’s mushrooming confidence. You can feel him starting to rule the world.
After the museum we walked the Wellington harbourfront, and I was impressed by the set up and the cleanliness of the city.
They take such pride in their cities here. I love Toronto, but I do not get the same kind of sense of civic responsibility and pride as I do from the people here. I keep on looking for ways to bring it back home, make it commercial even, I think cynically, but then I stop, sluice back to reality and join Hud and Steph playing at the pristine park.
Now this may be shallow, but my favourite part of our day in Wellington was after the museum, after the park. We flippantly decided to have a drink at one of the many bars right down on the water. Hud seemed up for it, so we found a nice table with an umbrella with glass wall preventing our son from leaping into the ocean. So we sat, at around 4pm on a beautifully sunny Friday afternoon, as all the suits tore off their ties finding there own perfect tables, and drank three beers for me and two Chardonnays for Steph. Hud stuck to cranberry juice. Maybe it was because we were so isolated so recently, but I was digging the vibe and the beautiful people filtering in and out of the patio, some locals, some tourists like us, all sunglassy and happy to be thirsty and alive and out among the living. So many of the guys reminded me of me just six months ago, some even reminded me of six years ago, sans the responsibility of son or dog to immediately go home to. The times where I would call Steph to meet up with us and she would say sure, or tell me she already had plans and maybe we would hook up later to take a cab home together. So young, so foxy, sitting on patios and chatting up not really that pretty waitresses or joking around with the table of guys or girls or both behind us. I got caught up in nostalgia and made me think maybe city life isn’t all that bad. Then Steph mistakenly insulted me and I just wanted to go back to the room to sulk. I only sulk when insults ring true. This one did. So it was more an accurate observation than an insult. Still made me feel bad though.
The night held nothing more than sleep and organization for the morning’s ferry trip to the south island. I woke up just before six to start the last minute fridge packing and other random anxieties I needed to quell before my mini travel day panic attacks begin. Steph and Hud woke up shortly after, so I decided to dump the first load of overnight bags at the car. It was parked behind the hotel so I lugged the four bags down the elevator into the lot and tossed them in the trunk.
Checked the watch. 6:30am. Money. We had to be at the ferry terminal at the latest 7:45 and it was only five minutes away, part of the plan when I booked the hotel. I tossed the keys in the air and caught them and began walking back to our room. Two steps later, I thought to myself, why not just turn the ignition, check to make sure every thing is kosher. Why I thought this, why it even occurred to me to pack my large body into the driver seat and slide the long key into the ignition, something I never do, is beyond me. I find quite baffling now. But when I did, and turned the key to hear the heart stopping sound of absolutely nothing, my panic began escalating. The car was dead, the battery was dead, a light was left on, for two days, no sound at all when I turned the key, not a click, not a hum, not even an evil laugh. The ferry was my first thought, 130 bucks down the drain as we bought the most affordable ticket 6 weeks ago. Why was it the most affordable? Non-refundable, non-transferable. The next thought was the room in Christchurch. Another hundred and a half down the tubes, and then to find another room in Wellington for the night was another outlay of cash. Mostly I just used the money excuse as a reason to worry. Mostly I was just bothered by the potential inconvenience of it all.
It all turned out, obviously, as AA (their CAA) came at 7:10am, boosted me and we were idling in line at the ferry terminal by 7:40am, giving the battery ample time to recharge and leaving us five minutes to spare before last boarding.
The ferry was fine, not as visually spectacular as I hoped, or maybe it was but we spent 90 minutes in the basement of the boat to let Hud play on the giant pillowed playground with all the other kids.
We did manage to catch the sight entering Marlborough Sound and approaching the Picton Port on the south island.
The drive from Picton to Christchurch took just over four hours, with Hud sleeping for the first half, and generally content the second half. So far what we noticed about the south island is the land is not as green, more the colour of wheat, but still grassy, and the water is way more turquoise. Why for either we have no idea. Still wicked to see turquoise water and snow capped mountains within the frame of one camera click.
The place we are in now is a two-bedroom ground floor apartment we found online back when we were in Onemana. It is just under the size of our house on Harcourt and way nicer. Why anyone would pay the equitable amount for a hotel room I have no idea.. It’s amazing.
A place like this in Toronto would go for about $2000 a month.
I wish we could find a place this nice when/if we come home.
Like that if?
Love to all,
J.
Scary Gary and bloody lamb's tails
November 2, 2005
Annie’s Cottage, 43 kms northwest of Napier, New Zealand.
7:48pm
Woke up it’s a Chelsea morning.
My father will be happy to know I finally gained an appreciation for Joni Mitchell beyond her semi-nude album covers. It is her I listen to now as I try to muster up a couple hundred words to summarize my time spent here on the sheep farm.
Help me I am think I am falling.
A half bottle of Marlborough Pinot in, I am teetering on the edge of poetic waxing about livestock and the farmer and the living off the land, and how pets can sometimes be food and wading in sheep dip in rubber boots surrounded by green mountains and hydro poles hovering like scolding parents. But I won’t. I will just typically blather on about what happened in the last couple of days.
I was a free man in Paris.
Monday was chock full of nothing. The weather sucked. Hud ‘s cold hit its pinnacle, leaving Stephanie and I sleepless and a little bored. We are surrounded by nothing remember. So book reading (Middlesex by Jeffrey Eudnides, my new favourite book) and puzzle piecing and tea drinking and general frustration by a boy who lashes out at his forced nomadism by utter disregarding unremarkable parental authority. We did manage to feed lazy eyed sheep and a beautiful pony named Honey. Poor pony. Talk about a life of envy. Ugly horses must laugh and high five horse shoes, neighing to each other, “least I’m not a pony”. I guess ponies do the same thing about donkeys. That’ll do donkey.
River.
After feeding, the sun broke, so Hud and I swam in the algae-filled pool and Steph checked e-mail via the satellite wireless internet connection at the main house about 500 metres from our pad. Gary showed up and I said hi. He barked hello, scaring me again with his natural testosterone presence. The dogs and I cowered and went about our business. I could have posted from there, but why bother, the lack of connection to the real world was a little refreshing. It is different from when it was mere months after I left. I still miss everyone, but the level of emotion has dulled. I am sure come holiday season, the familiar bell of the sharpener will echo in my mind.
My father, Mir, and even Tony will be a welcome respite from the wonderful strangers. They will represent not just themselves, but everyone from back home.
Coming in from the cold.
Yesterday was spent in Napier, Art Deco capital of the world. An odd title, but apt, as in 1931, a massive earthquake literally decimated the entire city, leaving them with the decision of what style to rebuild their city. They chose Art Deco, and the downtown is built in such a style.
They also are very proud of this title, and very keen to preserve it as a tourist destination, because we knew about it very quickly after landing in Auckland. It was interesting, but not breathtaking. It was very clean though, and had a playground that should win awards. The playground tour continues. We ate our picnic lunch and watched our booger filled boy enjoy every ladder and steering wheel and slide in the whole multi-coloured joint.
Both sides now.
After Napier we drove to Cape Kidnappers, home of the largest gannet colony in the world. What’s a gannet? I haven’t a fucking clue. Lack of preliminary investigation made us unaware the only way to get to the Cape was a five hour walk or take our car on the beach at low tide. It was almost impossible, and I questioned taking the mighty all wheel drive Suburu onto the beach, but Steph quickly made it apparent I would be doing it alone, and do to the same fear I have for my wife as I do for the sheep farmer Gary, I let it go and got back in the car.
Urge for Going. End of Joni.
We were frustrated and a little tired, and Hud was in full whine mode, coughing snot, asking every five minutes when we would be home. I lost it a little at the fruit market and ended up using the f-word in front of him for the first time. I was depressed about all the way home. He did not even hear it, but I hate losing that much control in front of his liquid face.
We reached the farm without further profanity or incident and all of us went our separate ways as sometimes, we all just get sick of each other. Funny thing happened though, as dinner time approached, I grabbed on one of our cd’s we burned and popped it in the portable stereo. I flicked on the bbq and Steph unscrewed the plain skin Chardonnay we bought for eight bucks the other day in Havelock North. We pulled up a couple of chairs and watched our son dance and play in the sand as we sipped and talked and laughed and casually touched each others arms and faces, and fell in love for the thousandth time on this trip, wondering how we dare get uptight and upset at each other considering our lives and lifestyle.
This drinking and eating and then dancing
continued until the sun turned bloody
and we took pictures
and we knew it was time to be responsible again but we were okay now so we put Hud to bed about an hour later than normal. We talked a little more and then slipped into bed for reading four or five words before kissing. Really kissing.
Today we did laundry and organized tomorrow’s road trip. Its about 300km to Wellington from here, and on these windy roads that could take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours. We did take a drive later on with the idea of doing a hike in the bush, but Hud fell asleep almost right way, car like valium and all, so we just drove and sucked in the scenery of the Hawke’s Bay farmland.
After dinner we went to the main house to settle or bill and have a glass of wine with Kirsty from the bottle we brought the night of the lamb tail cooking. She sat us down in the kitchen and Hud played with 10 year old Amanda on the trampoline outside next to the dead mouse. Kirsty told us good south island tales and a bit about her giant house which used to be a hotel one hundred years ago. She is in her mid forties, with sun wrinkles around thin lips and a burly British way about her. And after a glass and a half of red, amidst the wonderful scent of her leg of lamb and the kumara she was cooking for the Belgians and Brits staying in her house, we felt connected, and left, putting another notch in our friendly NZ people belt.
So what’s to summarize? It was a great farm experience for all. People were great, sheep are dumb, and I am not becoming a vegetarian.
Big city Wellington tomorrow. Capital of NZ and home to one of the world’s best museums.
Oh, I like flowers now as well, maybe I will get into gardening when I get home.
So gardening and Joni Mitchell, and I already liked Scotch and evil tobacco.
Flyfishing and alimony may be next.
Love you dad.
Love to all,
J.
October 30, 2005
Annie’s Cottage, 43 kms northwest of Napier, New Zealand.
9:36am
Started my walks here on Saturday. It’s Monday here and after skipping the first morning here due to geographical ignorance, I took a chance and went out at sunrise to walk to a sheep water container at the top of a giant green hill in the middle of a paddock. It was stunning, of course, with views to the mountain range to the west of us, where snow sits on top, reminding me of home.
A lot and a little has happened in the last couple of days. This place is beautiful, but too isolated, making Steph and I realize a life this bucolic is not for us. We still have no idea what we want. Actually, we probably know what we want, it’s where we want it that often causes scratches of the head. It’s difficult to compare locations here to locations back home. Locations here are unique to the world. So the small beach town we drove through with pretty almost affordable houses, or the city with the beautiful harbourfront where everyone seemed friendly without pretension, they just don’t exist near the circle of family of friends we hold so dear. So everything else would be settling. That is frustrating.
Being this close to my wife has allowed me to become susceptible to her disease. The desperate virus of wanting it all.
After my walk, after a miniature breakfast, after writing 1,500 words of the novel, we packed a lunch and drove down to the river Kirsty showed during the farm tour on the day we arrived. I wore flip flops, not thinking this was going to be a long hike. As we descended the three-foot hill to reach the rocky river’s edge, I hit a slippery patch of mud and went down hard. Hard enough for me to take stock and ensure no limbs or bones were snapped. They were not, it was more the shock of someone of my size falling quickly on my ass. Steph immediately asked if I was ok. I told her I was, and she replied. “Good because that was really funny.” At least she asked first.
During the last month, the Hawke’s Bay region where we are currently located, received a lot of rain. There was mild flooding and the river we were standing next to was running high and brown, still ridding itself of the flood water. Oh and it was cold as well. Nice and river cold, not like that easy ocean cold I dunked my head in three days before.
So we sat, on the smallest rocks, the ones less anally intrusive, and ate a big lunch which included a salami and cheese, a ham and cheese, a bean salad with carrots, celery, red onions, feta and yellow pepper. We forgot to buy vinegar, so the dressing was a little oil, a little sweet chili sauce and a squeezed orange third to add some liquid.
Turned out pretty tasty. I cut up some other cucumber, carrots and celery and brought the last of the hummus. Three apples, two green and one red for Hud, and lots of bottled water made for the perfect picnic. Oh, and one Oreo each to cleanse the palate with chocolaty goodness.
The sun was high and hot, so we all lathered on sunscreen and made our way up the bank to further investigate this fast moving river. The bank we were on became a cliff, and I wanted to at least dunk my head anyway, so we crossed at safe point, me carrying Hud and then going back to hold Steph’s hand. Made me feel like a husband and a father and a man all at once. These are rare feelings for someone who sometimes cries at sunsets.
We walked about a kilometre further, all of us doddling along really, in 20 foot intervals, Hud finding a random bone, me throwing big logs in the rapids to watch them disappear, and Steph up ahead, trying to see where the sheep we thought were lost went, until we decided to make our way back to the car, but not before searching for crayfish in a smaller creek near the river. No luck. No eels either. Bummer. Then we drove back up the hill towards the farm, we had to make it back in time for the docking.
One of the things I find interesting about life on a farm, and not rub my chin beard, mock intellectual interesting, is how emotionally detached it is to the people that work it. Docking is a great example. Docking is the process of removing the tail of a lamb with propane-heated snips so when the lamb ages, shit does not gather and lump, making shearing more difficult. Now remember where I am, in New Zealand, on a 1000 acre farm, with 1600 sheep churning out wool for our sweaters, and lambs for our lamb chops, so when they herded the 110 lamb and their mothers, through a line of narrow stalls, where Gary, the patriarch of the farm, stood at a gateway, while his entire family (not really, will explain later) and his three dogs terrified the animals through alternating chutes, to separate the lambs from their mothers, the lambs were squeezed into such a small pen, that a number of them were trampled and gouged on the wire fence that it looked like a bizarre wrestling cage match, except with this, all the blood was real.
This is not a good day to be a lamb.
Next up, the tagging of the ears and cutting off the tails. The two sons, age 14 and 12 respectively, had the task of picking up each lamb and shoving them into a machine that resembles something out of a Marilyn Manson video, ass first, legs spread, rendering them helpless while Kirsty tags the lamb’s ear. It’s basically a hole punch with their farm logo. Ouch number one. Then Gary, pulls the lamb by the tail down to where he snips it off with a what looks like a staple gun, but it’s actually a big pair of white hot snips that cuts and cauterizes at the same time. He proceeds to pull the lamb through the machine and drops it to the ground. The lamb, stunned, ass on fire, ear searing, brays until it hears the familiar response bray of its mother somewhere in the pen.
This happens to 110 lamb.
I know the number because Gary ordered one of the boys to count them. Did I dock?
Yes. I grabbed the snips and cut two lamb’s tails off. Why? Because I needed to feel nothing about it. Did I feel nothing? I felt as much as I did when eating a delicious leg drizzled in mint sauce. It did feel like what I imagine cutting a finger off would feel like. So it had that going for it.
As we were leaving Kirsty invited us up later to eat the lamb tails. Yep. We went. Steph and I both tried one. I tried two actually. They cook them on an open fire, in a net, wool still on them, until they are charred black. You pick one up, peel off the char, revealing a fatty meaty muscley bone. It tasted what I imagine a finger would taste like.
But this Gary is a great character. He is not the father of the kids. The father died five years ago. He was his best friend. He stepped in somewhere to be with Kirsty and the kids, and also run the farm. He probably bought into it as well. He is a chauvinist, probably a racist, and growls and barks at the dogs as if speaking their language. He is a hard man with a full salt and pepper head of hair and a tired, wired face that’s seen too much sun and not enough love. He ate at least 20 lamb’s tails and guzzled a bottle of white wine (beer gives him the gaut) before we left for the evening. The dogs cower around him. So do I.
Yesterday we drove to Hastings, a city back on the coast, to go to a farmer’s market.
We bought chicken meatballs, a flat white(coffee with milk) a long black (espresso), lime and chili dressing for the chicken, a hunk of caraway cheese, a gingerbread man, a baguette, a quart of strawberries, and fresh juice. We sat and ate it all (not the meatballs, we had those last night) right in the middle of the open market. It was actually nice to be around people (country chic people at that) again for a while.
The rest of the day was spent touring around Havelock North to stock up on liquor and then up a mountain to see the whole of Hawke’s Bay.
There was a paraglider in the air, and I overheard one of his mates say a world record was broken there last week. 140 kilometeres a guy traveled on a paraglider. Amazing.
Hud has a little cold, but he is fighting it and it seems he is enjoying the time with us again, without the silly distraction of his friends. He seems to be on a dad kick lately and that is fine with me. He wavers between the two of us all the time.
Take your time with dad time little man.
Love to all,
J.
October 28, 2005
Annie’s Cottage, 43 kms northwest of Napier, New Zealand.
8:13pm
We all make choices. Choices affect lives. Sometimes these choices are right, sometimes wrong. Lives are made more interesting because of these choices. My choice to leave Canada on this year-long journey was embarked upon not to add interesting to my life curriculum vitae. I thought, with my past, I was pretty interesting already. Besides, I had other reasons for going on this trip, reasons with depth, with meaning, a life defining adventure with wife and son in tow, seeking answers to all the questions I had yet to ask. That sort of thing. But today, as I watched a rough guy on a four wheel ATV, with three dogs listening to his every whistle and holler, try to corral about 500 sheep into a new paddock,
I
knew, just as a by-product of my choice, my life had infinitely become more interesting.
I am on the front porch of a three-bedroom bungalow style converted farmhouse. There are over 1600 sheep, 800 deer, and 700 heads of cattle surrounding me as I write this. They are not within the confines of this house’s fenced yard, but stretched across many hundreds of acres of the farm we are staying on for the next six days. It is presently dark, so the vista I know is there, waiting for the morning sun to return, to once again steal every breath lucky enough to glance its way.
It may get boring to read about my ramblings about the wickedly green patina this country seems to have, but imagine drowning in grass, as if every blade was short and perfect, as if you were standing in the centre of the Greek guy’s lawn down the street from you, just amplified in square footage by ten thousand. It so green you forget what regular green looks like. Add dots of sheep and cattle and deer and miles and miles of fences, some dangerously electric, some barbed and equally terrifying. Add a couple of rocks, some tall straight pines, and a river running through it all, and there you have where I sit right now.
Last night, our first night here, was oppressively quiet. This after the sheep stopped braying, the pig hunting dogs down the road stopped barking and the constant clicking of the electric fence battery became lost in its own consistency. The quiet was thick, like an invisible blanket over your head, and it made for a tough first night’s sleep. But I should backtrack a little before I start with what happened today.
A night at the Germans. That is how we spent our last night in Onemana. It was their oldest son’s 5th birthday party. Now I like kids, but there is always little things about some kids that I find annoying and often quite disturbing. The birthday boy is one of those kids. He constantly tests boundaries, which is fine if the boundaries are don’t climb on that ottoman, or keep your hands away from the bonfire. But, because his parents do nothing to stop their two kids from doing anything, his limits become, please don’t juggle those flaming chainsaws, or keep your recently salivad tongue out of the electric socket, or, and this is scarily no exaggeration, please don’t wonder off from the party, up a hill, and into a neighbour’s yard a kilometere away right next to a river. Now this only disturbs me, and I write this with every ounce of selfishness in my body, because Hud idolizes this little devil of a child. So when Steph relayed this tale to me after I returned from getting beer (because of the six pack they bought for the 20 people ran out within seconds, (I had three)), I was terrified and wanted to grab a piece of the steak I brought and get the fuck out of dodge or dodgekopf as it were.
Thankfully, there were a number of parents at this party able to buffer my rage with equally disturbing tales of the German’s three and five year old kids found miles away, or paddling in their dingy up the river, or driving their stick shift van to the store. We all laughed and cheers the beer I just bought, but sadly, the accident jump is big enough to be tragic, and it I hope it is just less tragic enough to scare them into setting some rules for these kids. It makes me dislike the Germans on a different level then just making fun of the breastfeeding or the fact that dishes from a week ago were piled in the sink when I arrived. This was a party of at least 10 adults and 13 kids. Other things were surreal as well. They served the cake first. Before dinner. One kid was bragging he ate 5 pieces. One kid left a log the size of Florida in the toilet then ran away, sans wipe. Another time, another kid was taking a loud dump, and his mother handed me her five-month old daughter as she went to wipe. She never met me before. She handed me her child like she was a glass of sweet white wine. It was all very insane.
I have to admit, there were two other couples at this party that were funny and as befuddled as I about this wickedly weird scene. One guy even lamented how upset he was we did not meet earlier as we could have hit the links together, something I was looking to do from day one. We left just after eight. Hud strung out on sugar and evil.
That was how we spent our last night in Onemana. Made leaving the next morning that much easier.
Travel day was cool. We stopped halfway in Taupo for a soak at their large heated pool complex. We stopped in Napier for groceries and then drove the hour to the farm where I am now.
Today, Kirsty, the owner of the farm took us on a tour of the farm, which included watching the shearing of about 500 sheep. Very neat. She took us to feed a pony and the crazy ewe with a wayward eye. She also drove us through her old orchard (a loss leader, being converted into a fattening paddock for the sheep, different grass), she took us down the river with a swimming hole and a place to have a picnic. She dropped us off at around 11:30, us now less ignorant of the workings of a sheep, deer and cattle farm.
At around 4 we tried to go for a walk, but the puppies from next door kept following us. I love dogs as most of you know, but I had to scare a blue streak and give them a little foot nudge to stop them from following us. That didn’t even work so we just went to main house to see 10-year old Amanda, who was to show us a lamb and calve they keep as pets. She was there, eating a grapefruit and watching Sky TV. We have one channel and it’s fuzzy. She took us out back to meet Snow White, the lamb and Rex, the calve. Hud pet them both and Amanda told us about the boys she liked, and said she was mad at one of her friends because she dissed her, so she bitchslapped her. Ahhh hip hop, thank you for such wonderful additions to childhood jargon around the world. We told her we hoped to see her tomorrow at the “docking” which is where the lambs tails are chopped off and then cooked over an open fire. The last words she said to us as she disappeared to watch another hour of the Disney channel on her flat screen was…
“See you tomorrow,” her small hand covered in sheep shit. “I’ll be the one with blood all over me.”
On the way back, we were walking up the road and noticed to our left that Jason, the farm hand, was herding the recently shorn sheep into another paddock across the road. Well, it wasn’t going well, and the sheep started stampeding directly toward us. Jason screamed “Get back!” So we immediately scrambled up the bank to get away from the sheep. Little did we realize that he was talking to his dogs, screaming at his dogs actually, to get in front of the herd and direct them back up the road. This went on for a while as he cursed out his dogs, and even one time, witnessed by Steph, picked up one of the dogs and punched her repeatedly in the head. Bitch slapped indeed. We had to keep telling ourselves we are in a different world and these are working dogs, not pets. It’s easy to judge as us city punks looked on, as he eventually managed to corral the herd into the correct paddock.
It was an awesome thing to watch, these dogs work this herd. One is a barker and one just stares. Their sole purpose in life is to ensure these sheep go where their owner is telling them. Telling them with a series of whistles and random barked out instructions. It was remarkable and made the whole week staying here worth it on the second day.
The rest of the week will be very low key. We will go to the docking tomorrow, Hastings market on Sunday, Napier one day, wine tasting another (total Chardonnay region) and hikes in between.
My novel writing, diet vacation is over tomorrow, the goal is 2000 words a day which should leave me very close to done by Dec 1. It’s a lofty goal, but should be attainable.
If I could just stay away from this damn journal.
Love to all,
J.
