Another reason I extended my time in NZ was to more fully experience autumn. After spending spring and summer prepping, planting, and tending gardens around the country, I felt like I'd be missing out if I left before the harvest. I'd been awaiting ripening fruits, especially feijoas, all spring and summer. Feijoas are a green fruit with a unique flavour and fragrance, originally from South America, and which grow well in NZ. It seems everyone here has a tree or knows someone who does. New Zealanders seem to love the flavour as the supermarkets are full of feijoa-flavoured cereals, tea, juices, and all sorts of other products. So, feijoas were one reason I extended my stay and I've now had a good fill of them since most places I've stayed this autumn have had a tree.
 |
| Feijoas |
Since leaving Rosie and James' place in Collingwood (who had plenty of feijoas), I've spent my time hiking, visiting with people, and WWOOFing.
A week before I was supposed to start the Heaphy Track, while taking a blissful, barefoot walk on the beach after recovering from an awful stomach bug, I kicked a huge piece of driftwood, breaking my left second-to-the-pinky toe. Immediately, I feared I'd have to cancel the hike, but after a few days, walking became less painful. So, a week later, with my broken toe taped to the one beside it, I started on the Heaphy.
The 78km track is famous for its huge variety of snails (some gigantic) and widely varying terrain and plants—from beech forest to alpine tussock to the nikau palm-studded west coast. Each of the five days boasted distinctly different plant life with many plants endemic to NZ. My favourite ones were the aptly nicknamed Dr. Seuss Plants (or mountain nei nei, which is also a pretty cool name). [Thereasa, I thought of you every time I saw these trees.] Since it's past summer now, the track was sparsely populated with no more than six people in any of the huts each night, and one night I had a hut entirely to myself. It was a cool experience to stay in a backcountry hut by myself—although, admittedly, I did feel a tad spooked when the sun went down and I heard something shuffling under the floorboards.
 |
| First day on the Heaphy |
 |
| Dr. Seuss Plant |
 |
| Giant snail |
 |
| Bridge on the downs |
 |
| A drizzly day |
A story I must tell related to the Heaphy Track is about the legendary Derry Kingston—a 70-year old man I was very fortunate to meet. In my last post, I wrote about Helen and Derry, the Servas hosts I stayed with in Golden Bay. (Helen's the one who took me bird watching and Derry's her husband). While staying with them, I learned Derry is well known in the area for being involved with the Heaphy Track and has walked it over 300 times! What's more is he typically walks the 78km is two days whereas most people do it in four to five. For the past 11 years, Derry's run a car and bag relocation service where he takes hikers' cars from one end of the track to the other (a 463km drive) and then walks the track back to the start to retrieve his own car, passing the keys to the customer along the track when he meets them. The biggest challenge with the Heaphy Track is the distance between the track ends due to limited roads in the area. Before staying with H&D, I'd wanted to hike the track but was unsure about logistics. Derry offered to take my extra baggage to the end of the track for me on one of his runs, allowing me a way to meet up with my belongings again. And when I ended up doing the hike, I saw Derry coming speedily along the other way one day. I said thanks and we exchanged a few comments before he needed to carry on his long way. And that's how I crossed paths more than once with the legendary Derry Kingston.
 |
| Last day of the hike |
 |
| Nikau palms on the track |
At the remote end of the trek, I had no ride arranged for my next destination, Westport. Serendipitously, a kind, 48-year old American woman named Heidi, who had been doing a day walk, offered me a lift to Westport which is about two hours from the track end. We enjoyed visiting on the drive and in Westport, I bought her coffee to say thanks. In Westport, I was picked up by my next Servas host, one of the most gracious I've met, a lovely woman named Lee. The weather while I stayed with her was dreadful (the worst storm Lee's ever witnessed in her life in Westport), but it made for a cozy stay with the two of us (and her large German shepherd) sitting by the fire, eating nice foods, and talking about international history, culture, and what it was like for her growing up on the west coast. It was special to stay on the west coast again as I've found the top of the South Island and the South Island's west coast to be my favourite parts of NZ.
After leaving Lee's, I headed back up north to the small town of Mapua to stay with a warm, friendly family who I'd met hitch-hiking a few weeks back and who invited me to come stay with them. Palepa is from the Pacific Island of American Samoa, her husband Miguel is from Portugel, and their six children (aged four to 18) are a beautiful blend of their heritages. They treated me like family immediately. Staying with them over Easter for three days, I had fun helping look after their two youngest daughters and helping Palepa in the kitchen. Given their full house, for sleeping, I shared a small, cozy caravan with their 11-year old daughter, Angel. It was very hard leaving the Rodrigues', especially with all of them urging me to stay longer, but I had prior arrangements made for my next WWOOF job.
 |
| Hanging out with Annie and Sabrina |
 |
| Palepa and her two youngest |
My next WWOOF hosts, Kathy and Gus, live in the Pelorus Sound in the Marlborough Sounds, and their place is accessible only by boat. Kathy and Gus maintain mussel farms and 100+ sheep as well as extensive veggie gardens for themselves. Their sprawling, hilly property hugging the water of the sound was probably the most beautiful I've stayed on in NZ. I was constantly enthralled by the view, which changed from every part of their huge property and was completely different again to experience by kayak in my time off. While there, my jobs included clearing paddocks of small, pesty trees; re-potting native tree saplings; digging potatoes and harvesting veggies; and as always, weeding. During my stay, another WWOOFer from Germany named Jonas was helping out as well, and some of Kathy and Gus' kids and grandkids came for a few of the days I was there. Kathy made a treasure hunt for the kids and they all dressed up like pirates to follow the clues to earn chocolate treasure. It was fun to experience the place both with the high energy of all the visitors and then completely opposite when they left and it was just the four of us in their remote, peaceful corner of the sounds.
 |
| Kaikoura |
While I've loved every stay during my time in NZ, I'm now finally feeling ready to say goodbye to the country. I know because I'm starting to get the travel bug again. Every time I see a Moroccan recipe, hear someone mention Italy, or think about hiking in Nepal, I long to experience those countries as well. NZ has started to feel like a home and so it's time to move on. I'll arrive in Indonesia next week.
Ending the NZ chapter, I've been thinking about two travel quotes, the first from John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, which I read while hiking the Heaphy Track, and the second which I came across a few years ago and carry with me in my notebook.
1. "Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has a personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness...We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it."
2. "The world is immense. [No matter how much you travel,] The best you can do is trace your long, infinitesimally thin line through the dust and extrapolate." ~Ted Simon from Jupiter's Travels
No comments:
Post a Comment