Road tripping with Andy Waterman and co.
Andy’s niece flew in from England and before we knew it, Sarah and I were invited along for their road tour of the Northland region. Melanie, 30-years old, was very serious in declaring her preference of
Marmite over
Vegemite. I suppose this stuff is popular in Europe and elsewhere, but I had never heard of it before Fiji:
Starving after a long flight on the way out here I turned to airport cafeteria food with high hopes. It was some form of morning, I think. Or at least it felt like it. I was just getting over a bad head cold and really wanted some eggs and toast, maybe some tea. I ordered the special "brekky" option from a bar roofed with a fluorescent awning serving everything from Chinese take-away and pudding to kebabs and fruit smoothies. That was my first mistake. The second? ...ordering a side of "bacon" with my dish. Slimy, discolored, marbled slices of elderly-body-odor flesh came out resting next to my eggs and wonderfluff "toast." The ham made me sick, so I thought I would reward myself with a sure failsafe: Peanut-butter on toast.
I looked around the basket of jellies and tomato sauce for a small packet of peanut butter to spread on my toasty wondersponge. None. But I came across something unique: "Vegimite." Naturally I wondered, "What is this?" and proceeded to open and smell it. It's always on the agenda to try new things whilst traveling, so I thought it'd be a good start. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of loading it onto the piece of wondertoast the way I normally like my peanut butter.
It was like a mouth-full of grandmas old socks soaked in soy sauce...
Thankfully the food has been better and better since then...
Along Andy's road tour I was well equipped with a jar of PB for rampant consumption. Thank God. Breakfast, lunch and dinner often involved peanut butter spread on something- bananas, apples, bread, sausages, my face. Eating with our little surrogate family was a just like home.
Father Andy hated noodles, doesn’t eat fish and dislikes sausages or wurst of any form, but he usually gobbled up any of it if you presented it to him. Eating was not the highlight, though, I think i'm just hungry right now...
What we got to see (for free and without hitch-hiking I might add) was amazing. He took us to beach after beach, each one more infinite, colorful and impeccably desolate than the last. Major landmarks, loads of environmental biology and odd encounters with strange people and places were a daily experience. A handful of waterfalls, small towns with “Wild West” carnivals, and tons of sarcastic moments and witty banter also flavored the trip nicely...
[I'm up there]
Sarah and I slept in the tent we acquired for free from an English couple we met near the beginning of our trip.
Thanks, English couple from the Bunkdown Lodge. A rainy night or two left us sleeping among puddles, but we were usually tired enough at the end of the day to care less.
[Beached Jelly Fish]
A few brief off-shoots from the mini-vacation (They call vacation time "Holiday" outside of the States):
Puzzle WorldWhile visiting Andy’s old friend/ex-wife, Barbara, we went to a little place called puzzle world in the middle of nowhere. The owner, who's name escapes me, greeted us with gigantic hands full of traditional puzzles and mind-toys. ...You know, those little metal puzzles where you have to pull apart the shapes... It looked like he had just placed a handful of little steel bars in his hand and mashed it up into individual forms. He might have been a wizard, but was an oaf for sure. The good kind, of course.
While looking around the shop, he invited a few volunteers to do a trick on. I sat in a chair, while four people attempted to lift me using only their index fingers…two people poking me in the armpits, two others in my leg-pits. ...No luck. They proceded to put their hands on top of my head and counted down from 20. I felt the weight on my spine and my lungs filled more fully with air. They tried again and lifted me a few feet off the chair, effortlessly.
Magic.
We also attempted the backyard hedge labirynth. It was a maze/puzzle combination where the objective was to find all 15 letters that would make a three 5-letter word solution. The answer ended up being “Dying Brain Cells” which was one letter off from what I thought would have been a better riddle: “Leave Candy Lines.”
Ancient Kauri ForestIn our travels with Andy, we visited an ancient Kauri forest where Tane Mahuta, "God of the Forest" lived. This Tane (man) is also the worlds largest known Kauri Tree, at least 2000 years old. That puts him reaching up for sun on the same earth, at the same time, that Jesus walked it. The life-force and presence of Tane Mahuta was so massive and vibrant you could feel it in your bones, similar to the bass spectrum in your chest at a good concert. The eerie, rainy day only added to the ambiance of the super-massive tree, girth measuring in at at least 45 feet. Can you imagine that?
[That's us down there]
More on:
Tane Mahuta. We paid for a one-day bus tour up to the most northern point of New Zealand, Cape Reinga. Here, the lighthouse marks a point where the Tasman sea meets the Pacific Ocean. It was a pretty misty day, so we couldn’t see much, but the weather offered us a more peaceful, tourist-less experience of a highly popular area. The lack of sunshine and consistent gray misting sky made for a peaceful, contemplative experience looking out at the point. One solitary Manuka tea-tree stood erect in an epic thrust sky-bound, determined to fight the crashing tides and rocks below for just a bit of sweet sunshine and eroding soil.
On the way we up “dune boarded.” It was reassuring seeing a few 60/70-year-olds flying down the side of a sand dune headfirst, yelping and sometimes wiping out, but always finishing with a big smile on their face.
This was all only a taste of the freedom we were about to earn...
More soon...
