August 5th to 9th - Coming Home Before Going Home

As much fun as it was to squeeze myself through exceptionally tight spaces 30m below the Swiss cheese hills of the Waitomo area I wasn’t keen to dish out another $150 to relive the experience. It was, however, something I couldn’t let Jaclyn miss out on so we made the slight detour northwest and while she was being frightened to death on a caving expedition I stayed back at the farmhouse hostel and did absolutely nothing. It was heavenly. My body was screaming at me after that full day of skiing and my face was threatening to fall off from the vast sunburn so I soaked up every last second of nap time I had afforded myself. There’s nothing like a double bed with an electric blanket to one’s self after weeks in a cramped van. I had considered doing a nature hike to kill some time before Jaclyn returned but then I discovered that the television had more than the standard four channels and so I glued myself to the recliner with a mug of tea, shut the blinds and had a fantastic time watching Letterman reruns. Just as Simon had stayed back and cooked us a gourmet feast upon our return from the caves, I whipped together a massive dinner of ribs, bruschetta and salad for Jaclyn and I. It was also my first foray into the use of dukkah, the heavenly concoction of spices I bought from the winery in the Bay of Plenty. Jaclyn thought I was joking when I said I liked it so much that I intended to use it on everything; I wasn’t. From sandwiches to zucchini to pasta, I slather my food in dukkah because everything tastes better with it. Naturally I will be ordering an industrial sized box of the stuff upon my return to Canada. A solid 11 hour sleep later and we were off on the road to New Plymouth. The particular highway we took was my old nemesis; the ill-fated site of my flat tire. This time through I drove like a grandma, avoided all the rocks and managed to cut my travel time in half (not stopping at the brewery along the way also helped). Having healed my weary bones I was excited to get back out to nature and enjoy some hikes up and around Mt. Taranaki though, as luck would have it, the entire mountain was obscured by cloud and rain the entire time we were in the area. We had to improvise something else to do but that’s surprisingly easy in New Plymouth. The city of 70,000 does remarkably well for itself and has the luxury of many amenities you wouldn’t expect for a city of its size. Since we’d been apart from a proper city for a little while we opted to head into the city center for a little night life. We found a classy tapas bar and found the All Blacks test match against the Wallabies playing on the big screen. We arrived just in time to see New Zealand do the haka, a pre-game dance ritual that is both a welcome and a challenge to the opposing team (though I can’t imagine anyone feeling very welcomed after a haka). Even watching it on TV gave me the shivers; if I were an Aussie at that time I would’ve been soiling my undergarments. The slow motion panning of the camera across the players’ faces reveals such intensity that it’s hard not to be moved. The kiwis dominated the first half and after 80 minutes they ended up with a solid 20 point victory over their rivals from across the ditch. The following day we laughed off the rain and did what was advertised as a 3 hour walk by the Department of Conservation at the foot of the mountain. I think we are seasoned vets by now because we breezed through it in an hour and a half. With so much time left in the day we went to the city gardens and played guitar in the sun. By some strange twist of fate, the 3 hour parking pass we bought managed to flip itself upside down on our dashboard and so we found a $40 parking violation between our wipers upon our return. I asked for advice on how to handle the situation at the visitor information center and they recommended that since we were leaving the next morning that we just not pay it (which was fine by us). I’m going to take the sensible route and write a letter along with our pass and violation as evidence to clear our good names. That last evening in New Plymouth we realized that we had arrived in the middle of their International Arts Festival so we booked front row seats for the local production of ‘C’mon Blacks!’, a one man act about a rural kiwi going on his first trip abroad to the Rugby World Cup in South Africa where the Springboks famously beat the kiwis in overtime. It amounted to nearly two hours of watching an overweight kiwi sweat, swear and drink beer while throwing around rugby terminology that made our heads spin but sweet merciful crap was it ever entertaining. The natural cheek and charisma of New Zealand was masterfully displayed and I thoroughly enjoyed myself despite not understanding half of what was said. The plan for the following day was to freedom camp somewhere around Palmerston North, the location of the New Zealand’s rugby museum. Upon arrival in the city we found out it was closed for renovations; we also found out that Palmerston North is frightfully lacking in things to do. Upon my recommendation we pushed forward to Wellington and it turned out to be an excellent decision. Little did we know but the arty side of Wellington was in full swing for this period we find ourselves here. The International Film Festival is in town; we have already seen The Trip and have tickets for two more films including the one on closing night. There is a food festival going on and we bought tickets for the exhibition devoted exclusively to chocolate. We have tickets to ITM cup rugby tonight with Wellington taking on Northland and we’ll have the opportunity to catch a couple former All Blacks in action. Tomorrow night we have tickets for MacHomer, a one man act from a Canadian guy who loosely does Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the voices of the Simpson’s characters. It really summed up Wellington nicely for Jaclyn and reaffirmed that maybe at some point in the future I could ditch the Edmon for the Welling, keep the ‘ton’ and still fit in nicely. It has been an especially nice homecoming after going out with all the flatmates last night and getting 2nd place (out of 13) at a big pub quiz. Admittedly Brendan did use his Iphone for 2 questions but I still say we earned our $30 bar tab prize.