Day 86: The Paths of the Dead

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The Great Sights bus picked me up at 7:25 a.m., and I was off to Cape Reinga.

To my surprise, the bus was completely full. I was very lucky in my seatmate, a petite Japanese woman who was very nice about the fact that I was taking up part of her seat. It meant that I had to hold the pizza bag on my lap, but that helped to brace my shoulder, which turned out to be a very good thing.

Our driver was Maori, and he sang us a song of welcome as we began our trip. It was odd; occasionally, as when he sang and talked about Maori culture and legends, he was very interesting and well worth listening to, but in between the interesting bits there was a non-stop stream of annoying jokes. A couple of his jokes, both featuring blind people, offended me; the others just weren't funny.

Our first stop, around 9 a.m., was at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom. It was a workshop, store and restaurant -- rather a tourist trap, but interesting. They dig kauri logs out of a nearby swamp and carve them into furniture. The stairs up to their mezzanine had been carved inside a single giant kauri log.

I didn't get to see all of that on the morning stop, though, because the driver had told us that we wouldn't get to eat lunch till 2, so everyone spent most of the time standing in line at the restaurant to buy food to take with us for a mid-morning snack. I bought a "bacon and egg pie," which turned out to be Canadian bacon, with a healthy admixture of onions. It tasted weird, but I could eat it.

The road was a bit rough to begin with -- not terribly so, but obviously a "country road" quality of asphalt. Bits of it were under construction, and they were worse still. When we turned onto the Ninety Mile Beach, it became construction-level all the time, as we were off-road and driving on the sand, though I was pleased to find that I could still stand it with maximum painkillers. The whitecaps of the Tasman were beautiful to see, though unfortunately the beach drive brought out some of the driver's worst jokes.

We stopped for a photo op with a rock with a hole in it -- not a natural bridge, like the Hole in the Rock, but a complete, 360-degree hole. Then we turned into a stream bed, even bouncier than the beach, and drove a short distance to some towering sand dunes. Passengers were encouraged to climb the dune and slide down it on a sandboard, but my knee obviously wouldn't have stood it so I didn't try.

We got back onto the country road, which was a relief, and drove without further incident to Cape Reinga. Unfortunately, another slope awaited me. The road to Cape Reinga from the parking lot was a winding downhill footpath.

I made it, with difficulty, as far as the point where the Tasman and the Pacific meet, and then I had to turn back to be back at the bus in time. To my dismay, I found that climbing the hill again was far harder than I had bargained for. I was gasping for breath almost at once, and I was terrified that the bus would go off and leave me if I couldn't make the climb in a reasonable time.

I took my afternoon crash stuff and used the new inhaler, and between the two I was able to get back up the hill. I was even on time. It was really rather scary, for my chest hurt and I couldn't get my breath. Evidently I haven't fully recovered from Rotorua.

We stopped for lunch -- once again, a single prepaid entree with side buffet. I'd chosen the fish because I'd worried that the barbecued beef might have MSG. It turned out to be a good choice; they gave the five of us choosing fish a lot more entree for our money than the 17 choosing beef got for theirs. I also had a salad from the buffet, a corn cobbette, some chilled beets and two slices of watermelon.

After lunch we returned to the Ancient Kauri Kingdom, and this time I had time to look around. There were some interesting carvings. The store was mostly tourist-trap junk, with a few quality items, none of which I could afford.

Up until this point, I'd been maxed on painkillers, but I'd really been doing very well, considering I'd been travelling for ten hours (over my usual maximum) and on unusually rough roads.

Then we turned off the country road onto gravel to go see a kauri forest. 15 minutes, at least, of gravel road, and another five minutes' getting out. It may have been twenty. I just couldn't stand it. It hurt so much I began to wail uncontrollably. As with my incontinence problems back in December, I would have been embarrassed, except that I simply could not help it. The most I could do was to hold it down to a wail instead of a full-throated scream.

Up until this point, I had liked the two women in front of me better than the Japanese woman next to me. They had been chatty and seemed friendly, exchanging comments about the trip. But my wailing evidently either embarrassed or offended them so much that they were only able or willing to handle it by ignoring me completely from then on. (Well, to be fair, they did say goodbye to me at the very end of the trip.)

The Japanese woman, on the other hand, who had been largely silent in response to my earlier attempts to chat, flew into action. She tried to get the driver to stop (he wouldn't, but she did try). She patted my arm and told me we were almost there. She patted my arm again a young eternity later and told me we *were* there. And she talked to me normally after it was over and I had stopped wailing, instead of acting as though I weren't there.

The kauri forest was Not Worth It. The trees were 300 to 400 years old and somewhat impressive. I could barely focus on them because my collarbone hurt so much. We spent 15 minutes there, bounced back to the country road, and drove back to Paihia.

My collarbone has been hurt. I don't think it's a doctor-level hurt, but it's very painful right now, and that's alarming because I'm still maxed on painkillers.
I've cancelled my third excursion, previously scheduled for Saturday, because Great Sights told me that it too involved a gravel road. So I will not get to see the 2000-year-old kauri tree in Hokianga.

I still need to throw myself against the door frame a few more times to reset the collarbone; I've been trying but it hasn't worked yet. After that it'll be a matter of TENS unit and capiscum rub and more painkillers until it heals. I do wish Paihia didn't have so much traffic.

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