On the Road

At Hot Water Beach, on the Coromandel Peninsula, you dig about a foot down and hot water boils up. At low and high tides, dozens of people with shovels congregate between the onshore rock clusters and a small rocky island offshore, digging shallow pools with mud fortifications, then soak carefully in the mix of boiling thermal and sea waters. Such a place would never be open to the public in the states. There, you’d find people who would dig just deep enough to scald themselves, and then sue whoever they could for pain and suffering. But thankfully New Zealand still retains an independent spirit, and this was evident throughout my ten day road trip with my old friend and Veal Rifles band mate, Alan Price (check Youtube; Alan is on bass).

We rented an older-model Toyota from Ace, and on our first day out took our time along the five hour drive to Napier, the largest collection of art deco architecture in the world. In February 1931, a massive 7.9 earthquake struck the region, destroying the city center. From the rubble sprung an entire downtown of low-rise art deco buildings. We stayed in a five-storied former bank building, and the next morning, paid a visit to the eerie Opossum World. As I think I mentioned earlier, New Zealand has no native mammals, and because they have decimated the bird population, the lowly opossum has become NZ public enemy #1. But these furry marsupials look nothing like their fangy, rat-tailed brethren in the U.S. In an attempt to exterminate the egg-eaters, Kiwis have set out trapping, poisoning and committing vehicular homicide on the pests. Their soft fur is woven with sheep wool to create warms gloves, hats and scarves. Opossum World attempts to inculcate fear of these creatures. Step into the “museum,” and you’ll see taxidermied opossums on their hind legs in demonic attack poses, and at their “feet,” jars of fetuses, as though warning: “Destroy these zombie pests, afore they snatch your sweet unborn!” Only upon closer inspection do you see the fetuses are opossum, not human.

Leaving Napier, we meandered up around the East Cape, seeking out the small village where Whale Rider was filmed, the carved figure straddling a whale atop the Maori meeting house or Marae, stopped for macadamia ice cream at Macadamia World, and finally arrived at the small town of Tolaga Bay, where we camped at the beach. Alan has studied astronomy, and, sitting round the bonfire, he pointed out Southern Hemisphere constellations. Another bonfire glowed nearby, and at one point two teenage girls stepped out of the darkness and, seemingly on a dare, the drunkest of the two confessed to us her most embarrassing sex with a stranger moment. We nodded and told her thank you, while her mates down the beach howled with laughter.

From Tolaga Bay, we made our way to the beachside town of Ohope, where we stayed in a small roadside motel, and then inland toward Rotorua, where we visited a thermal Maori village nature walk of bubbling mud pools and geysers, stopped at a roadside maze made of wood planks that took over an hour to navigate, and that night joined a bunch of other tourists at a Maori feast, or hangi, where we were welcomed by tattooed warriors, entertained by songs and dances, and then feasted on meats and vegetables that had been cooked for hours in the ground.

At the turn off for Hot Water Beach is a small, hand painted sign reading “Auntie Dawn’s B&B (+Joe).” Forgoing the expansive downstairs apartment, we chose a backyard contraption that Dawn called “the backpackers,” a 1960s camper trailer and a storage shed with windows, joined together by a roof and wooden deck where that evening we sat and watched Jacque, the frisky Fox Terrier, hunt rabbits. If you ever find yourself at Hot Water Beach, seek this place out. A path leads from the yard to the beach, close enough that the sound of waves lulls you to sleep, and Joe told us about a nearby trail where that night we had our first glowworm encounter.

Found throughout New Zealand in any dark cave or bush where dark and dank conditions persist, the glowworm is a tiny fly larvae that attaches itself to overhangs and produces twenty to thirty mucus coated silk threads, a couple of inches long, and then lies in wait, attracting tiny gnats and such with its bioluminescent glow. It feeds like that for six to nine months, then morphs into a mouthless adult gnat when it lives a few days, seeking to breed before it starves to death or is eaten by other glowworm larvae. I’d been told about them before, and will, now summer has arrived, hike up to the Wellington Botanical Gardens some night soon and search them out, but nothing could compare to the glowworm experience at Waitomo Caves.

A few days after leaving Hot Water Beach, we joined a tour group and descended down into one of the gorgeous limestone caverns at Waitomo. Introduced to an English surveyor by Maori chief Tane Tinorau in 1887, the duo explored the caves together and opened them to the public soon after. Winding along illuminated, wet stalagmites and stalactites, down through echoing cathedrals, we came to an underground stream where we stepped into a boat and our Maori guide, great-granddaughter of Tane, turned out the lights and pulled us through the darkness by an overhead guide rope. Above our heads, glowworms like turquoise constellations hushed us to silence and I wiped at tears, reminded once again at the gifts this miraculous world offers.

Between the Coromandel and Waitomo, we spent a day snorkeling at Cathedral Cove, then zoomed through Auckland up into Northland, staying the night in Whangarei, then adventuring up to Ninety-Mile Beach, and the northernmost tip of New Zealand, the lighthouse at Cape Reinga. According to Maori legend, New Zealand’s north island, Aotearoa, is actually an enormous fish, and its tip, Te Rerenga Wairua, is “the leaping place of the spirits.” In order to move into the next world, every spirit must travel to this point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. On the day we visited, our sunny weather had been socked in by a lumbering dense fog, and as we walked back from the lighthouse, visiting tourists stepped out from the mist, on their way to the tip, like spirits venturing into the beyond.

Leaving the cape, we stopped and rented boogie boards and went sledding down giant sand dunes before heading south again. After crossing the Hokianga Harbor on a vehicle ferry, we stopped at the seaside town of Omapere, where we spent an evening partying along a seawall with the local Maoris, listening to stories that stretched back generations. The next morning we snaked the car through the Waipoua Kauri Forest. The second largest tree in the world beside the giant sequoia, the kauri once covered the north part of the island, before it was felled for its building material. Under misting skies, we hiked along a short walkway and stood in awe in front of Tane Mahuta, “Lord of the Forest,” a 2000 year old majestic granddaddy.

And then to Raglan, where we rented surfboards and wetsuits, and I finally stood up and rode a couple of waves, in the light rain, with a friend I’ve known since we were teens, before heading to the glowworm caves and then back to Wellington. Alan left on the 20th. His visit reminded me of how much I miss my friends and family, how I long for home. On Christmas Eve, I went over to Kevin and Karine’s for a lovely international feast, after which I joined two German girls and an Iranian Muslim at a candlelit midnight Anglican Church service. Christmas Day, I rode a bus out to Houghton Bay, had a cookout with friends, dove into the cold rough waves, and came home sunburned and contented.

I’ve learned that my primary supervisor has taken a job teaching at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. My secondary supervisor is retiring in June. I’ve met with the head of the school, who apologized, suggesting that I can either change my dissertation or perhaps transfer to Deakin or elsewhere. I will explore my options. The past six months have been a roller coaster, and though I am grateful for these amazing opportunities, I long for a home, for family and stability. Happy holidays. I hope that this new year brings love and grace. To all of us.