Hallie and Kathleen's Excellent Adventure (Part I)

Alas another mid-semester break has passed, and after 10 months of being in NZ I still thoroughly revel in life on the road and all the scenery and random escapades that are thrown my way as a result, both remarkable and otherwise. The roadtrip I just got back from was no exception, perhaps with the adventure level even cranked up a couple notches. Well, that’s probably because my mate Kathleen and I decided to test ourselves and face the unknown by hitchhiking around for the entire two weeks. For the American crowd reading this, don’t freak out, it’s safer than it sounds. New Zealand is different, especially on south island, and I’m back at Lincoln writing this blog so obviously I’m not kidnapped or dead. In fact, it made for some interesting conversations and times, allowing us to actually dig deeper into the Kiwi people and culture rather than doing a touristy sight-see, all the while challenging ourselves physically and psychologically as well. So for now I’ll go through the days and try to somehow express our excellent experiences into some good ole writing.

Day 1:
So I left Lincoln Uni with Kathleen and a girl I didn’t know too well named Justine (who would travel with us for a few days before leaving for a fieldtrip). Instead of awkwardly hitchhiking out of campus, we all cramped in for a ride with a random friend of Justine who lives 5 hours up north in Nelson and was heading back there for break. She dropped the three of us off in a place called Richmond, which is right by Nelson, with the intention of us hitching a couple hours west to Abel Tasman National Park. We called around and found a hostel that was as close as we could get to Abel Tasman, in a place called Marahua. So our goal was to hitch to Marahua before dark. Our first hitching attempt was really weird. Justine was hyped, fearless and stuck out her thumb smiling and dancing away while Kathleen and I stood kind of behind her and tentatively budged our arms toward the traffic. We were worried about getting picked up at all considering all the room that three girls and huge 50 lb bags (among other smaller ones) would impose. We would give it an hour, and if no luck we were going to split up, which is something we obviously didn’t want to do. After about half an hour a woman picked us up who was eating ice-cream and eye-balling us the whole time from her car. She came up to our group and said she felt bad because no one was picking us up, and it’ll be good to repay all the times she hitchhiked back in the day.

We piled in her small car, and I of course got stuck in the front seat with my huge pack smashing me on top and her little dog sitting on my neck/chest, knawing my hand for the next 1.5 hrs. Aside from the uncomfortable situation, this lady seemed like she just wanted somebody to talk to, because almost immediately and without introduction she started pouring out her life story to us. She grew up on a reservation in the US up near Canada and moved to NZ when she was two. Apparently she was a child prodigy that went to Cornell University at the age of 14 as a pre-med student. The National Security Agency of the US wanted her to be a code-breaker for them, but she turned it down and instead went to America to be a truck driver, and she exclaimed it to be one of the best choices she’s ever made. She loved to travel and meet interesting people while making a good buck, so it was the job for her. Then she got to the sad part of her history, where her husband left her for an older woman, all this after having a miscarriage, etc. That got a little awkward as we barely spoke a word during her life-purge session, but we did make it to the hostel at last! It was up on a hill in middle of nowhere, the driveway being the steepest I think I’ve ever seen. It even had a sign that said “Do not walk up driveway”, but of course we had to anyways not by choice.

Day 2:
The most gorgeous sunny warm day started us off for a good day hike. We got flat-tired bikes from the hostel and did about a half-hours ride to get to Abel Tasman. We left the bikes outside a café without any locks no problem; actually we did so by recommendation of the hostel staff. Only in NZ could you leave unlocked bikes at a café and have them be there unharmed 8 hours later…Anyways, we looked at a map to pick out a hike, and instead of going along the main track which ran along a flat coast, we decided to go inland, which was great until the angle suddenly did an extreme turn upwards for a few hours, and I quickly found out I should have hit the gym a bit more before this trip. But it was no problem, as we took frequent breaks and caught some AMAZING views that made it all worthwhile, and finished it with that cheesy sense of accomplishment that can’t be beat. Well actually Kathleen and I did the frequent breaks, because Justine turned out to be this absolute machine that smoked past us without even breathing hard, and shamed us as she almost halved our walking time to the peak. Along the way I brushed my hand against a plant and got a bunch of little black spikes stuck in my hand, and my hand started to swell a little bit and I got bumps where all the spikes went into my hand. We had brought along books about the native flora here (nerds I know), and quickly discovered how many plants here are poisonous. I turned out to be okay, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the plants here are more dangerous than the animals. Seriously, NZ has no naturally occurring predators (sheep anyone?) so you’d think there’d be nothing to watch out for in the bush, but lo and behold you’re more likely to die from falling on the wrong plant.

So we climbed down the mountain, hung out on a beach for lunch, and took a water taxi back to our bikes because we were too exhausted and sore to do four more hours back to the start. To give yourselves an indication of our exhaustion, we got home for big carb binge and passed out in bed at 8pm; now I haven’t gone to bed that early since I was 12.


Day 3:
It was Easter Sunday today and our good fortune continued with the weather being sunny, clear and calm. Unfortunately, I could barely manoeuvre out of bed, as the bottom half of my body felt detached. Luckily today we’d work our upper bodies, because we booked a full day of kayaking! After some safety training we hit the sea and for the 5-6 hrs we went along the coast of the national park, out and around Adele Island to check out a seal colony and over to the small random place called Fisherman’s Island, where we stopped for lunch on the beach. Mind you, this is a tiny island in the middle of nowhere in the Tasman Sea, but somehow I managed to run into a girl who’s in my Wildlife Biology class. She and some family came by boat and were having some sort of Easter get together. I thought “whoa, what a random coincidence!”, then realized wait a minute this always happens to me, because NZ is so damn small; I go to the far extremes of the country and still run into people I know.

Other highlights of the trip: purple-pink jellyfish swimming below us managed to freak us out and keep us from going in for a dip. We also saw Split Apple Rock, which is this crazy looking (but self-explanatory) spherical rock that looks like someone perfectly chopped it in half with a knife.

It was a fantastic trip, and now if someone asks what I did last Easter, I can say I was kayaking on the Tasman Sea. My arms and shoulders certainly became sore, so I could promptly say that my entire body was in pain. Oh, Kathleen and I also realized through many experiences and talks with locals that Americans complain an awful lot. Kiwis will just tramp uphill for 6 days straight with smile on their face, but you’ll always find an American huffin and puffin and bitching the whole way up. We made a point for the rest of the trip of telling each other to shut up anytime one of us started complaining.

A fun little side bit was that after kayaking we were walking in Marahua and came across this strange hippie commune/art gallery. We went in and asked where the nearest cheap grocery store was because two of the three people in our group were vegetarians and were dying for some green sustenance…they then proceeded to show us to the back of place where they had a massive organic vegetable garden growing and simply said “Help yourself, we have too much.” Wow, freaking vegetarian heaven right there.

Well, we couldn’t rest that night, as our next goal was to make it about 3 hours back east to the Marlborough Sounds where we planned on staying with Justine’s friend Adam, who had a holiday house around there. By the time the kayaking was over, however, it was getting dark so hitchhiking that night wouldn’t be feasible. We needed to get as far east as possible that night so it wouldn’t take all day to hitch tomorrow. Justine, as the un-shy fearless girl as she is, talked to the kayak reception about buses and somehow (‘cause seriously I don’t know how) managed to get us on a FREE bus to Nelson (a good midway point) that was included with some kind of guided group kayak trip, even though we did an unguided trip. Ah, NZ hospitality has yet to fail me, going above and beyond for tourists…the bus even dropped us off at the front door of a hostel in Nelson. What with the free fresh veggies and this random bus, we’ve definitely learned (and continued to learn throughout the trip) that you just need to ask and life will provide.

Now this hostel the bus left us at was easily the best one I’ve ever stayed in. After we checked in we got handed a packet of laundry powder and 2-minute noodles, so that was a good start. Then there’s free breakfast and veggie soup at dinner, a sauna, spa, pool, and planned free day trips like hikes, beach and cave visits, wildlife sanctuaries, etc. It looks like an old mansion, but inside it was like a playroom; there were all these random corridors and rooms, and barely any stairs, just these tree-house-ish-type ladders going up to arbitrary computer and TV rooms and lounging lofts. The only problem was that in our room I was on the top bed of one of the sets of bunk bends, and mine oddly didn’t have a ladder going up, so I had to climb on the ladder of another bunk bed and jump across to my bed. I kind of felt bad for the girl trying to sleep under me…whoops :/
Nonetheless, I so wished we could’ve stayed another night, or rather just get it over with and live there.


Day 4:
The next day we headed off nice and early, lugging our backpacks around the uniquely large city (for the south island at least) on errands and eventually to the right motorway to try our hitching skills once more. Again, we freaked that we might have to split up. Once, we saw a car pulling over and got super stoked, and then we saw the cop lights behind it... bust. Hitchhiking is legal here, although it still felt peculiar to keep our thumbs out while a cop was right there, but they didn’t even pass us a second glance.

After maybe a half hour again of waiting a guy pulls over. He’s 25 years old or so and tells us he’s got the day off of work, is bored, and just wants to go for a drive. Kind of weird, but we’ll take it. We nicknamed him “boy-racer”, because he was going WAY too fast around the tight cliff-hugging curves in the mountains. He says that he and his mates go racing on this road all the time, and he knows some people that have gone straight off the cliff that somehow managed to survive after a however-long drop into the bush…in which we then proceed to shift uncomfortably in our seats. Boy-racer tells us about his car, because he builds cars and sells them apparently. He says the one we’re in right now would never pass an inspection because he’s altered pretty much anything you can alter on a car, most of it being illegal alterations, like the enormous engine. He then randomly switches the topic to his work as a chef for the mayor of Nelson. So this boy-racer-chef decides to make a stop at a wildlife reserve where he fills up his water bottle straight from the river and claims he won’t die of some gastrointestinal poisoning. Then he takes out a screwdriver and begins fixing something on the side of his car that was coming off, as if we didn’t feel safe enough already…We then get onto this long scenic drive that will take us into the Marlborough area to some gas station where Justine’s friend will pick us up from. We made it the gas station which was in the middle of nowhere, but by this point in my study abroad experience I’ve realized that while travelling in NZ, about 80% of the time you’ll be in the middle of nowhere, so I suppose it was all good. The stage set up of cattle, a gas station and no cell phone service made me feel right again :)

Justine’s friend Adam did eventually pick us up to go to his secluded holiday home. If the road went perfectly straight, his house would be maybe a 20 min drive away, but because it had the most unrelenting curves one right after another, the drive took almost an hour and we all felt nauseous and dizzy by the end. We made it to the Marlborough Sounds to a place called Broughton Bay, where there were only a couple houses to be seen, far away from the real world. Shortly after we got there we took a leisurely hike around the bush, where we ate delicious banana passionfruits and lemonades off trees. The lemonades are these awesome fruits that look like a big lemon, and taste like a mix of lemons and oranges, but without the sourness to them. He actually knew a lot of useful things about the native flora, as many Kiwis do, like for instance knowing the best leaves to wipe your bum with when you’re on a tramp.

We walked down to the beach at low tide, and there we saw dozens of dead clear jellyfish scattered about the beach. They were harmless so of course we had to touch them and played around for a bit. We also saw tons more starfish, some in clusters clinging to the dead jellies. Starfish eating jellyfish?? So I pick one of the starfish off the jelly and looked at the underside, and I actually saw chunks of the jelly being sucked into the middle of the starfish. So yes, starfish do eat dead jellyfish.

Adam’s parents were there, and they made us an awesome dinner, including some very delicious blue cod they had caught earlier that day. When it got plenty dark we took a midnight stroll to check out the Milky Way and always-gorgeous stars. Adam then showed us colonies of glow-worms. It was so cool; they looked like little blue dots, resembling tiny Christmas lights, scattered across a pitch black wall like the night sky, only it was right in front of you…beautiful.

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Well, I didn’t mean for only 4 days of my trip to take up almost 3000 words, so I think it’s pretty obvious that this will have to be another multi-section blog topic…so stay tuned, there’s 13 more days to go through.

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