The Chapter Endeth

The Headaches of Travel

Now I'm in Sydney, Australia and the journey to New Zealand has ended. Last night was a nightmare! Because I had a 6am flight this morning, I took the bus to the airport the night before because paying for a few hours in a hostel would have been pointless, right? Besides, that's what I get for jumping at the cheapo-ticket deals. Unfortunately for me, the airport closes at midnight, leaving me in a bad position all loaded down with my bags, in need of a shower and feeling extremely grumpy. I had a feeling that this could have happened but a person can hope, right? Finally one of the guards accosted me by the bathrooms. Apparently they'd been watching me on the cameras the last few hours wandering aimlessly about the small airport. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. My eyes were glazed over. God, I just wanted to go to bed.
"So, uh, where do I go?" I asked the guard.
"Ah, there's nowhere to go. You just have to wait outside," he told me, pity pouring uselessly out of his Kiwi eyeballs.
What the hell? Wellington is known as the Windy City and it was damn cold out there.
At this point, I was mad and tired and felt like throwing a fit. A grown woman, throwing a tantrum in the airport? I'd been wearing the same clothes for three days in a row and just looked like another backpacking bum. A little dignity was needed here, so I just took my dejected self outside and sat on the concrete, wrapping my flimsy little red Longs Drugs blanket around my legs.
But yay! After a half hour of wretched attempts at sleep, a different guard spied my pathetic huddled figure and took pity on me.
" Oh jeez," she tsked. "Look at you. I'm gonna put you in the emergency room."
She shuttled me off to this little windowless steel hut in the middle of the parking garage. Looked like a torture chamber but it was HEAVEN because it was so warm! Feeling happy again, I took out my burning contact lenses and slept fitfully for the next couple of hours. When I woke up, it was 5:45. Check- in was supposed to be 2 hours ahead. NOOOO!!!!! I stuffed the red blanket into my apple-and-carrot-filled overstuffed pack and ran my poor self to the ticket counter. I was late. Plus, I was blind because my contacts were still out (my vision is, like, 300-20. I'm not kidding.) I couldn't read the signs. I looked like a lunatic chicken. But hey, it all worked out and I finally made it to Sydney and I have to admit it. I'm a little tired of moving around!!!

Final Thoughts
Life creates strange desires and nothing is more satisfying when an old dream becomes a reality and a circle is closed.
When anyone first arrives anywhere there is "confrontation" with the place: the culture, the song on the wind, the subtley beautiful things. But slowly you get a vision of a country and everything starts to change. You not only focus with your eyes but with your brain and I don't believe that I will stop focusing on New Zealand. I wasn't here long enough, but then again, how long enough is "enough"?
Why again did I come to New Zealand? Everyone has a longing for the simple because in our time the very simple is really the most difficult to attain. New Zealand is a country where everything is still the way it used to be. Despite the fact that most of the north island was converted into pasture with the arrival of the Europeans, much of the land's reputation as being virginal is a reality, not myth. This is not a romantic idealization. Even the old timing Kiwis agree. I just hope that by "discovering" this we -- the travelers, myself included, from the overdeveloped nations -- don't destroy it. So often this happens, that when milllions of people come to a country, it is changed.
So, Kia Ora, New Zealand, to your green vegetation, varieties of ferns and mosses, majestic mountains and glaciers with their eternal snow and ice.

A Beautiful Poem
This may seem random, but I saw the most profound words written about young soldiers off to war engraved in a World War II memorial statue in Wellington. Written for the New Zealanders who died fighting on behalf of England in WWII, it expressed so eloquently the thoughts I have had about war and death. Wish I had written it:

These laid the world away
Poured out the red sweet wine of
youth, Gave up the years to
be of work and joy and that
uhoped serene
that men call age. And those
who would have been their sons
they gave their immortality.


P.S.
Stay tuned, folks. When I get back home, I'm gonna put many more pictures up!

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