Rocktopus! Diane's visit part 4 (and... the end?)

Hey,

How are you all? I’m fine. I just got back from a vacation (from my vacation) in Gisborne, over on the southeast coast. “What?” you say, “Why?” Well, today marks the fifth week of nearly continuous rain here on the west coast. I wanted to see the goddamn sun. I wanted Herbert to dry out (he has a bad leak; I sop up an inch or so of water from his rapidly-putrefying floor every day). And I wanted to surf.

Gisborne was lovely, everything I wanted. The YHA where I stayed was friendly and cheap. Today in Phil and Bern’s home, I woke up to hail bouncing on the trampoline. I made tea and checked the weather for the coming week- rain, natch. I checked the weather back in Gisborne- dry, sunny, with swell and offshore winds on the forecast- and made a decision. I’m going to spend the rest of my vacation (one month, today) in Gisborne. I’ll leave Raglan, my friends, and my lovely home including Tuna the tabby cat who crawls under the covers with me on cold nights, and the Transition Town meetings. I’m leaving in two days.

Gisborne has sun and surf, and a friendly hostel, but I haven’t found a wireless internet connection. That means that my blogging days may be coming to an end. That’s OK. As you can probably tell, my enthusiasm for sharing my experiences is waning (in step with my enthusiasm for my trip- I didn’t even bother taking photos in Gisborne). I have a premonition, though, that I’ll become nostalgic for the trip once I get home, and perhaps return to writing on the blog with the kind of florid description that came so easily earlier on.

So for now, while I can still get online and post pictures, here’s more of the time with Diane.

The drive from Napier to Wellington is very scenic and very long, about three to four hours. As usual, it was great to be with Diane. She told a particularly good version of her youthful cross-country hitchhiking trip to go to the Rainbow Gathering (!!!), which plays like some unholy collaboration between John Hughes and Gus Van Zant.

We sang. Diane and I are the same age, and have the same cultural reference points (i.e. we’ve seen and listened to a lot of shit). Particular favorites this day were “The Night Chicago Died” and a version of “I Am Woman” as sung by Elvis-

“U- huh-huh-a am strong (strong!)
Uh ham envencipull (invincible!)
Uh ham WOMAN!”

We also began a mean little game. It was a bit like “I Spy”, but with a twist- or rather, a pinch. The first person to spot a given item got to pinch the other person. We started off with one or two things- the Four Square market logo:



And the insipid Cookie Time logo (which really irritates me, for some reason):



Poor Diane was at a slight disadvantage because of her nearsightedness and my familiarity with the look of those signs at a distance. So we added more triggers to even the odds:

A black sheep.
A recumbent cow.
Any roadkill.

Conversation fell away as we craned our heads, squinting ahead intently. A cry of joy- “There-

A dead possum!”

Ouch! And so, the kilometers rolled by…

A final climb up the Rimutaka Range, Herbert straining, Sylvester squealing (“You make me feel…mighty real!”), and we descended to the long Wellington harbor coast, as the late afternoon light turned the city blue.

Downtown Wellington looked like New York, or San Francisco, with dark brick building facades and suited figures rushing down the shadowed sidewalks.

We were booked into the YHA, at my insistence: I wanted to show Diane how nice, fun and cheap these places could be, and the Wellington one is one of my favorites. It’s in a great location, right downtown and near the waterfront. Its big- five stories with god-knows how many rooms- and buzzy; there’s an atmosphere of fun with all those young people going in and out. As I’d written earlier, I was worried that Diane might suffer the same nighttime noise problems you sometimes run into at hostels, but I’d never been bothered at this one- I thought the rooms were pretty well insulated. But still, I felt a bit on the spot with this choice.
We found the place easily, and got a parking spot right in front. We checked in and started the sherpa-like procession of baggage relays up the elevator. The first room was pretty nice- a nice view out onto a grand deco building and some of the surrounding hills (Wellington is like San Francisco that way).



But there was only one bed… Hmm. We went down to reception and got a twin room… which turned out to be in the grottiest part of the building, a place I never even knew existed- small, dark, looking out on an airshaft and adjacent to the back of a restaurant, by the greasy smell of it. We went back to the front desk and found out that those were our choices. So we took the first room, and made do.

Not a great start… but we were here, and both of us were eager to get out and play. After we got all moved in, I took Diane to a good Indian place nearby, as a treat for being such a good sport. Wellington is an exciting city, with lots of activity in the streets, a diversity of places to eat (a bit rare in New Zealand), good bookstores and record stores and just the kind of vibrant energy that good bigger cities with a strong sense of self can have.

A tribute to a mutton-based economic heritage, I reckon:



We walked around a bit, returned to our room to relax- and- Oh No! - heard our next-door neighbors conversing clearly through the walls. Shit. We were booked for three nights here. We prayed that our neighbors were quiet, bookish types.

They weren’t. We were woken up at 2:30 in the morning by their drunken return from the pubs. They actually wrestled- I don’t mean had sex- they loudly said, “OK, two out of three, GO!” followed by laughter, grunts of exertion, and loud thumping to the floor and against the walls. We couldn’t believe it. We banged on the wall, which had no effect. I felt terrible for Diane, and awful for having insisted on a hostel. We didn’t get much sleep.

We were fried the next morning, and to top it off, it was raining hard. Wellington, at the bottommost extreme of the north island, is infamous for wild wind and extreme weather. While Diane tried to grasp at a bit more rest, I moved the car to an unmetered parking spot, running ruefully back in the rain. Diane was up, and we decided to rearrange our furniture (somewhat loudly, I’m sorry to say) so the bed was against the opposite wall.

Breakfast helped revive us, and we decided to go for a walk. Big storm fronts were alternating with cold blue sky as we set out. We were drawn to the hills adjacent to the YHA. Take a second to click on the picture below, which will enlarge it. Note the big brick monastery:



We got pretty well rained on as we made our way up the steep streets. The architecture was really pleasing- a mixture of New Zealand’s takes on wood-constructed Victorian, and Art Deco.



Now it was really raining. We were at the driveway of the palatial monastery we had seen earlier. We ran for the covered entrance, and were cowering there a bit sheepishly when a car pulled up, and a Southeast Asian fellow got out. He took stock of our situation, and invited us inside.

His name was John. He was from Malaysia originally, where he had worked as a banker. He said he had felt unfulfilled by monetary success, decided to devote his life to Catholicism and had been living in this monastery for some years.

He was a very nice guy- he never got close to proselytizing, which is of course the #1 most tedious conversation for a non-believer to get stuck in. He radiated open-heartedness, one of the nicer qualities a spiritually oriented person can have.

He gave us a wonderful tour of the grand, slightly-to-very decayed buildings (obviously this group wasn’t rolling in money), with historical commentary and information of the anti-poverty work the monks were doing. The tour culminating in the library (which, if you look on the photo is the large square window beneath the peak of the outermost wing), a stunning room with two-story bookcases and an incredible view of the entire city and harbor. I just couldn’t bring myself to ask to snap pictures, alas- it felt cheesy and slightly disrespectful.

The sun was out when we left- the rains had left. I, and I think Diane, felt the rarified sensation of having a slightly unpleasant situation flip into a special occurrence. Musings on chance, and complacency versus putting yourself out there, and “what’s behind that door?”, filled my mind.


I’m going to break chronology, and just whip through some of the fun things we did in Wellington. We went to the museums, which are world-class and free, and saw lots of good contemporary New Zealand art. Actually, the best thing I saw was a particularly striking and disturbing computer animation triptych piece that played in a special surround-screen theatre, by a Russian collective called AES+F.

Here’s their description of the piece (Last Riot):

“The virtual world generated by the real world of the past twentieth century as the organism coming from a test-tube, expands, leaving its borders and grasping new zones, absorbs its founders and mutates in something absolutely new. In this new world the real wars look like a game on www.americasarmy.com, and prison tortures appear sadistic exercises of modern valkyrias. Technologies and materials transform the artificial environment and techniques into a fantasy landscape of the new epos. This paradise also is a mutated world with frozen time where all past epoch the neighbor with the future, where inhabitants lose their sex, and become closer to angels. The world, where any most severe, vague or erotic imagination is natural in the fake unsteady 3D perspective. The heroes of new epos have only one identity, the identity of the rebel of last riot. The last riot , where all are fighting against all and against themselves, where no difference exists any more between victim and aggressor, male and female. This world celebrates the end of ideology, history and ethic.”

I’d have to second that.
And here’s a video that someone shot in the theatre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TbvFyabrg

The city gallery square had a nice orb:



And friendly kids, who mugged for the camera:



For some reason I have a feeling their San Francisco counterparts would have been keen for a different kind of mugging… but perhaps I’m being unfair.

We went out to see the Todd Haynes film “I’m Not There”. In one section of the theatre space, a live band was finishing a CD release gig. We caught their last two songs while we waited for our movie, and they were pretty good! Diane bought the CD- “Galloway”, a one-name rocker’s solo project.

We walked up Cuba Street, the “hip” street, and looked in shops. Diane found a “Flight of the Conchords” poster that she carried about in her backpack all day. Have you hung it up yet, Diane?

We took the cable car up to the botanical gardens (both of which were featured in the Peter Jackson film “Heavenly Creatures”):



And took in the view.



The botanical gardens had a great playground. We were joined on this crazy swing (“it’s called the Rocktopus”) by a precocious girl watched by her aunt, and later a Canadian immigrant mother and her daughter. Here’s Diane on the Rocktopus.



No civic domain is complete without a Sundial of Human Involvement:



The second night in the YHA was quiet, thank god. Even young people had their limits, apparently. But the last night was the worst- the bastards got home after three am, waking us up with their loud, drunken voices. Diane got up, walked down to their door and knocked. They didn’t answer (the pussies!) although they did pretty much clam up, but neither of us got much sleep before our six o’clock alarm to make the ferry for the south island.

All right folks- this may be it for a while. I’ll try to find a wireless station in Gisborne, but as I said, my desire to “blog” is winding down. Still, I’d love to share emails, or converse in the comments section. Don’t forget to check out the music blog too, if you haven’t seen it.

Take care- and see you soon!

Buzz! (Diane's Visit, Part 3)

(This is my view from the reception desk at Solscape where I’m finishing this entry).


Hey,

How have you been? I had a few phone calls recently with some of you so I guess I know the answer, in a general sense-

East coasters: hot

Wet coasters: smoky

Parents of teens: harassed

Parents of small children: tired, busy.

Non-parents: tired, busy.

It’s been nice to hear about all the things you’ve been doing. Although I’m doing a bit of work here, and the Transition Town planning is engaging, I’m (believe it or not) getting restless to come home, and get busy myself… even though I’m all too aware that, soon enough, I’ll think back to this time and this place with longing.

Sorry it’s taken so long to write about the trip with Diane. I appear to be a perfectionist about the whole thing, to the predictable conclusion of writing nothing at all. At this rate, I’ll be writing about the events of May when I get home in September!

Diane and I loaded Herbert with what was becoming precision, and we headed off to our next stop- Napier, a short hop (just a few hours drive). Napier is known for two things: In the early 1930s the entire town was leveled by a powerful earthquake, and was rebuilt in high art-deco style, fabulously stylized and perfectly preserved today. Napier is also in prime wine-producing country, so we were poised to do one of Diane’s New Zealand goals: taste wine.



Before we left, we booked a promising sounding place listed in the Rough Guide that appealed to us because it had a “spa bath”, and was by the sea. We were discovering that this time of year it was no problem to arrange lodging on short notice.

The drive was lovely. This part of the country is very isolated and rural, hours away from anywhere. Quick glimpses of the chalk-cliff coastline were visible at unexpected intervals- tantalizingly inaccessible.



One notable town on the way to Napier was sleepy, unassuming Wairoa. I saw later in the news that there had been an anti-gang peace march that mobilized 2,000 of its 5,000 inhabitants! Apparently there was a turf war brewing between two Maori gangs. We passed through, blissfully ignorant.

High, whispy clouds portended rain as we rolled into Napier. We found our hotel, a pretty slick place. We couldn’t believe the lighting- banks of high watt incandescent recessed bulbs, perhaps 30 total, which lit the room like a movie set. There were also towel warmers, a powerful heater idiotically mounted on the ceiling, and the massive Jacuzzi. Pre-eco-consciousness splendor! We promptly trashed the place with our raggle-taggle luggage.



I’m sorry to say that the whole time we were in Napier we took not one photo of the splendid architecture all around us. We went for several enjoyable walks, me following Diane following her nose into the residential neighborhoods. We walked along the pebble beach and took a few pictures of ourselves, and the “Hokusai” waves that reared up vertically from the backwash of the steep beach profile.



It was Queen’s Birthday weekend (how did you celebrate?), and the town was buzzing with visitors, teenagers cruising the streets heckling one another (and us), and residents strolling about between the cafes and pubs. On the waterfront, the municipal skateboard park was having a gala. A chaotic mob of children was rolling about on skateboards, roller skates, bikes and scooters. Some just ran up and down the banked walls on foot. Adult supervision seemed utterly absent, save a disembodied voice on a loudspeaker commenting on the antics of one group of kids on a half-pipe. Very few children wore helmets or other safety gear. We stopped and watched the madness, which had the compelling quality of a car crash (but in this case, a slow-motion car crash in progress), and commented to one another that we were witnessing a much less litigious society at play.

The first morning in our glitzy room, I heard a scream from the bathroom. Diane threw the door open and told me to come look out the window, quick!
I looked out, then down, and gulped:



This creature had his paws on the window frame, and was staring silently up at us. He was completely, almost disquietingly, relaxed and stayed in the same position while I ran and got my camera. Diane said that when she first saw him, the frosted window was mostly closed, so her first glimpse of that werewolf face was this:


When we climbed out the window to play with him, he came to frenzied life. We later found out his name was Buzz, and he was locked in the narrow alley behind the rooms while his owners, the managers, worked. He was a manic love machine- here Diane braces herself for a barrage of unsolicited licking.


Today was a day to visit wineries. We had a glass of Trinity Hills red wine in a restaurant in Waihi beach that was wonderful; they were nearby, so that was one stop. Diane found a few more recommendations in the Rough Guide, so after washing Buzz off our faces, we set out.

A few fat raindrops began to streak our dusty windshield. “Why today?” Diane moaned. But by the time we got to Trinity Hill, the skies had cleared, and the sun spilled onto the vineyards.



We had a fun time talking with the knowledgeable French girl who helped us (the only customers). We then went across the road to Clearwater winery, and Diane sampled their wonderful white wines, which are available nowhere else. Then we drove on to the tiny seaside Te Awanga winery, after checking the surf at the well-known surf break. It was awfully tempting to surf the small, perfect waves, but I restrained myself- Diane had been so looking forward to doing what we were doing, and the afternoon shadows were lengthening… We had a fabulous lunch at Te Awanga in their beautiful restaurant, sitting by an iron fireplace, the late afternoon light pouring in honey-gold. It was my favorite meal of the trip- fruits, cheeses, breads and crackers, and wonderful wine. I fell in love with feijoas, a tart little citrus fruit a bit like kiwifruit, but- er- different. The vineyard owner later took me out to see the trees from which they grew.


Feeling mellow after the day’s activities, we headed back to the surf break. I had just enough time to catch a few waves before dark. The wave was unique, a very long ride that broke parallel to the beach, only a few feet from the sand. The sunset was dramatic and atmospheric.



It was wonderfully satisfying to each get to do what we wanted to do that day! The trip was feeling very rich that evening. What a pleasure it was to be traveling with Diane.



As I said, I’ll step it up with the blog. Actually, from here on out, the photos get a lot better, so I’ll probably up the photo content and hopefully that will push things along more quickly yet still be interesting.

I’d like to alert you to my music blog, which has recordings that I’ve made on this trip:

http://jonathanhess@wordpress.com/

Take care. Miss you all.

Diane's Visit, Part 2

My Friends-

I’ve read that John McCain has been advised not to say “My Friends” so much in his speeches. That’s good news, because I’m running out of salutations and have shied away from using that one, due to him. What a ghoul.

I’m writing this from my favorite backpackers lodge in New Plymouth, the one in a big, old house. It is run by a group of women of a certain age, and their sensibilities permeate the place. Porcelain statuettes of shepherds and maidens share space with cricket trophies in cut-glass cabinets. Knit cozies cover the arms of floral-print couches. When you sit down in the sunroom on a nice afternoon, you raise a soothing cloud of dust motes. The entire setting is permeated by the ever-present music- an ancient tube console hi-fi with the bass-heavy tone of a jukebox, set to an oldies station. It always seems to be playing a song by Roy Orbison… although actually, it runs down the AM top forty from the fifties through the seventies, so the playlist is great:

Get Down (Gilbert O’Sullivan)
Angel of the Morning (Mary McCaslin)
Snowbird (Anne Murray)
Wild One (Cliff Richards)
The Lonely Bull (Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass)
Baby I Need Your Lovin” (The Four Tops)
A Single Girl (Sandy Posey)
I Only Want To Be With You (Dusty Springfield)
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Joan Baez)
We’ll Sing in the Sunshine (Gale Garnett)
In The Ghetto (Elvis Presley)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Gene Pitney)
Young Love (who did this? Help me out here.)

The place is literally “chintzy”, and mildly, pleasantly suffocating, like being over-dressed for the cold by your mother.

When I describe this atmosphere to my friends here, they all say, “That sounds horrible”. I dunno… I guess I see something here that I like. Like Jonathan Richmond, I’m still in love with the old world.


As tranquil as Waihi Beach had been, Diane and I were eager to move on and see more. We performed what was to become our drill- she brought the luggage to the car (an absurd amount of stuff that included two guitars, my surfboard, my box with my computer and field recorder, a box of books, two boxes of food, a cooler ("chilly bin"), her rather large sleeping bag, my smaller one, a tent, her purse and my bag and the always-front-and-central snack bag) which I made fit- a jigsaw puzzle three feet deep. We rolled back onto the highway. Something about the landscape here (the lower Coromandal range) really captivated Diane- she would later say it was the most beautiful of the trip.

Diane had come here dreaming of a few particular things- wine tasting, hot springs, and idyllic vacation cabins (with en suite bathrooms, please). We decided to go to Hawke’s Bay, on the lower east coast next, where we could find all those things. We made reservations in an obscure little place (town? hamlet?) called Morere, halfway between Gisborne and Napier, which, we read in our Rough Guide, had a hot spring. We took a chance it would be a good place, and booked two nights.

The drive was one of the longer ones we made, but fun. We talked and listened to music and ate snacks all down the highway along the placid, shimmering Bay of Plenty. We headed inland to the Raukumara Mountains, the range that separates the two coasts. The drive was beautiful and rural, the day pleasant and sunny. I recall being caught behind a huge truck that was transporting sheep. I chose not to tell Diane that the fine spray that began to obscure the windshield was agitated sheep urine.

I was proud of Herbert for getting up and over the crest of that mountain range! Heading down the far side toward Gisborne, we pulled over to take pictures. Diane took this picture. Note the left-lane driving position, and, if you click on the photo and enlarge it, the herds of sheep grazing into vanishing points…



It’s all beautiful, but the Gisborne side of the drive is particularly stunning.



We got to Gisborne, a charming city (with really good surf, too) but I’m afraid our main impression was that we were ravenously hungry, and nothing was open! We finally found a fish-and-chips place that did the trick (to a fault), and, with night falling, continued on to mysterious Morere.

“This can’t be it”, Diane fretted. We were on a bumpy gravel road, our headlights illuminating a low concrete bridge barely a foot above the black waters of a rushing stream. We had followed the directions properly, we thought, but I wasn’t too sure myself. Braving the bridge, we bumped along until we saw a house across a dark, wet field. As I got out, something low and fast ran toward me- a delightful little friendly dog, jumping up and licking my hands. Wait- Ugh! A foul-smelling, absolutely rank little friendly dog, that ran ahead of me excitedly as I made my way to the house. A note on the door said that yes, this was the place, and after getting the key from the owner, Geoff (a droll Michael Palin look-a-like), we found our cabin. It was wonderful- warm and cozy, with a gleaming kitchen and bathroom and excellent beds. Everything looked brand-new, and was perhaps the nicest place we stayed (a difficult distinction- what do you think, Diane?). Still full (permanently?)from the fish and chips, we settled in to read, and see what the morning would reveal.

The morning revealed this:



Then this:



And this:



It was just the sort of unprepossessing landscape you might speed past- a bend in the road, a café- and miss out on truly seeing.

The little dog’s name was “Socks”, probably after his markings, or his funny, splayed-out front feet- but possibly because of his nasty smell! Diane was extremely loath to pet him, and I don’t blame her. Although it was hard to resist him when he did this-



But I would immediately wash my hands afterwards. Truly a flower of evil.

It was cold! Frost glistened in the grass, and covered the cars windshield. But it was a beautiful day, and a joy to wake up to after such an uncertain arrival.

Diane was ready to use the hot springs. I just wanted a flat white (an sort of unlayered latte) from the café, which, along with our motel and the hot spring, made up the entirety of commercial Morere. She packed her things and we set out.

Morere, in the light of day, turned out to be delightful. The walkway over the stream we had crossed turned out to be a beautiful rope bridge.



The wood was slick with frost! Here Diane is concentrating on not slipping while smiling at the same time.



Pausing at the middle of the bridge we saw this view.



Diane, a bred-in-the-bone-bully, discovered she could make me stumble by bouncing on the bridge as she crossed.

I stopped in the café (which was surprisingly good, and cozy, with a fireplace in the corner) and got my coffee. We crossed the highway to the hot spring facility, where an amiable, gravel-voiced old brute sold Diane her ticket, and off she went.

She later told me the experience was lovely. Diane is an inveterate hot-bath-taker, whose opinion on such matters should be respected. She said that she was alone for the first forty-five minutes, reveling in the slanted morning sunlight in the wooden pool building, in the surrounding forest and in the birdsong. A bit later, a friendly Maori family joined her. The New Zealand accent can be hard to understand, particularly when coupled with exotic place names and slang. Diane, who had told her fellow bathers that she was traveling with a surfer, was initially baffled when told that “Blacks would be pumpin”, and that later it would be “chukka”. She came back to the cabin delighted with the entire experience, and seemed rather proud to have figured out that Blacks (a surf break) had big surf (was “pumpin”, or pumping, as in a steady procession of large swells), wasn’t crowded at the moment, but later, as the word got out, would draw a crowd (become “chukka”, chock-full). Her experience sounded really enjoyable, from the environment itself, to the friendly people.

Hearing that Blacks was pumpin’, I asked if she wouldn’t mind having a look at the surf. Morere was in the Mahia peninsula, a great surfing configuration with two distinct coastal orientations affording good wind exposure in two directions. The area is also isolated and un-crowded (that it is beautiful is a given). I loaded my surfboard and off we went.

It was a perfect sunny day. We drove around and looked at several breaks. I decided not to surf, ultimately. But it was fun to explore the peninsula with Diane, a treat in what can be a rather existentially lonely experience, as well as quintessential, for me, here- driving around looking for surf, looking, looking.



This break looks out onto the Mahia peninsula, to the south. Note the undulating land terminating in chalky-looking limestone (I think) cliffs- typical of the southeast coast. The geography reminds me of that of Point Reyes. I wonder what the earthquake situation is here?



If you want to know what I’m doing a lot of the time here in New Zealand, it’s pictured here- standing on an overlook over some surf break, wondering what to do...

This spot had a great little house next to it. That boat ain’t goin’ nowhere. Mahia is a Maori stronghold (“Whale Rider”, if you saw it, was filmed not too far away). It is very sparsely populated, and the dwellings you do see are humble. You see people doing chores looking back at you, curiously.



Here is a better look at the waves I’m considering in the above photo. There are several surfers out- if you (probably meaning “you”, Keith) click on the picture you can see them, and the wave they’re riding.




We spent another comfortable night in our little cabin. These two days blend together in my memory now, undoubtedly due to repetitious inactivity. Diane was reading a huge hardcover biography of Kate Hepburn, I, an autobiography by the poet Mary Karr (The Liar’s Club, highly recommended!). We finished our books, then switched.

Again, we awoke to frost. I was struck by the tranquil morning light on the fern-covered trail to the footbridge.



And the same soft light reflecting dew on the spider webs…



Geoff’s sheep (which he gleefully told us were raised for food) grazed right up to our cabin- our closest look at these shy animals. I remember Diane remarking that she didn’t like the back-end view of a sheep. She was developing refined criteria of the New Zealand experience.



In the late afternoon we went to the hot springs. We rented a private pool from Geoff, who it turns out, worked there too. A gentle rain started to fall as we settled in the wonderful hot water. The pool was in a beautiful wooden shelter that was open on one side to steeply sloping rainforest and an unseen creek below. The rain on the roof, the deep green forest, rich with oxygen, and the steaming hot mineral water were absolutely heavenly.

Good Choice, Diane.

Blogspot Being Bad

Hell, Oh!

I've been having a devil of a time uploading pictures into Blogspot (this spot). Just want to let you know that the sad fact that there's nothing new here isn't due to lack of effort on my part. I'll keep trying.

Speaking of lack of effort- is anyone out there reading this thing? This is a symbiotic relationship we have here, folks. If no one applauds, I'm going to keep grinding out "Wonderful Tonight" until the joint closes...

One for Keith

It seems to be taking forever to finish part two of Diane’s visit. In the meantime, here’s an entry 'specially for Keith (my surf pal back home), Andrew in Portland and any other surfers that might be reading.

The morning I left Raglan I checked the weather forecast, and made the choice to come back to the Taranaki. I’m so glad I did- I had perfect surfing weather with just the right wind direction and a nice-sized swell for three blissful days.

On Tuesday I made the twenty-minute hike to a magic place. The walk is so long that folks make a day of it; they bring lunches and take long breaks to rest and dry their wetsuits. Here’s a photo taken about a quarter of the way there, just before you descend from cow pastures onto the driftwood-strewn beach.



If you click on the picture, you’ll see surfers.



I walked around trying to capture the beauty of the waves from different angles.





The three shots below are a sequence, and show how the wave peels.





The times I’ve surfed it, the break has had an outside and an inside section. On the right swell, it all becomes one long wave. Not that I’m complaining. The view on this clear day was magnificent. Mt. Taranaki was three-quarters covered with snow, and looms spectacularly over everything. The air was clean and cold. The water even smelled good, like… what is it? Like “Gee, your hair smells terrific”!

Wednesday I met Craig, who took a break from caring from his three-week-old baby (a beauty!) with his partner Suzanne and working on restoring their 1920s-era farmhouse. Craig took me to a secret beach. We had to let ourselves through farm fences and bounce through pastures to reach the surf. It was a beach break (most spots here are volcanic rock reefs), and the waves were good- then as the tide dropped, got very good! It was wonderful fun to go with a friend, and the whole experience was really neat. Thank you, Craig. I didn’t take any pictures- I forgot my camera. I’ll just have to remember.

On Thursday the wind had shifted northeast. The coast wraps 180 degrees around Mt Taranaki- you have a whole range of places that will be offshore in any given wind direction. Today the place to be was around Opunake, which was great, because my Raglan friends were staying there. Maybe we would meet up! I checked the reefs around the town- one good setup after another, and not a soul out at any of them. Finally I went to a spot with a few cars parked in a cow pasture. One was my friends’. They were just getting out as I walked up. We made plans to meet the next day, and went our separate ways. The surf was great- the wave really wrapped and was exciting and steep- a very high-quality wave. Once again, I ‘d forgotten my camera, but a nice surfer was taking pictures, and took some of me! Thanks, Andy.

These three are a sequence:





These three are a sequence too:





Returning to New Plymouth in the late afternoon, the light was beautiful. The smokestack of the abandoned power plant dominates the town. I like it- it has a gothic, haunted quality, not to mention phallic.



The surf was smaller at Back Beach (the good beach break that I had sent you pictures of, Keith, and had in this blog). The waves are bigger down the coast than in town, like Santa Cruz/north county (but reversed south-for-north, as is every weather feature her in the southern hemisphere).

I often think of how fun it would be to explore this coastline with you, Keith. You’d be like a kid in a candy store. I know the environment would suit you, too. It’s a bit like north county Santa Cruz mixed with Big Sur, with Mt. Fuji overlooking it all… and everyone on niceness pills!

I hope we can travel here together someday.

Diane's Visit, Part 1

My patient friends,

I’m sitting in the kitchen at Solscape, in Raglan, savoring the warmth of the woodstove, and enjoying the quiet. What a difference from two months ago! The place is nine-tenths empty. The endless waves of hard-drinking surfers are gone. There are only three other people staying here, all working in one capacity or another for Phil and Bern. The mood is wonderfully subdued. One person is reading by the fire, another is writing on his laptop.

Christ, this is nice,

The nearly perfect run of clear weather Diane and I had enjoyed finally broke on the last days of our trip together. New Zealand’s wild winter rains began in earnest the morning we left Dean and Anj’s place in Tauranga. It rained hard during our short stay in Raglan too. But Diane, I have to say, that was nuthin’ compared to the biblical downpour I experienced on the way home from dropping you off at the airport. The incandescent pearloid skies and cathedral clouds we saw on the way up lowered and became opaque black as I drove back. The rain, when it came, hit Herbert like a brick wall. The view in my headlights looked like a cheap black-and-white soundstage effect of an imperiled ship- stagehands aiming fire hoses at wind machines. But it was real. I gripped the wheel and held on.

Later, bundled in my sleeping bag, listening to the hail spatter against the metal roof of my railcar cabin, I knew I was alone again, and the last phase of my pretty vacation had begun.

But one month ago…



I was happy to leave Dunedin. I had loved it, but anywhere except right by the fireplace was deathly cold, and I was getting lonely.

I made it to the Cook Straight ferry in two days- two shitty nights of sleep interrupted by returning drunken youth. This was worrisome, because I planned to stay in hostels at least some of the time with Diane. I had hoped the party-types would be a summer problem- no dice. Again I slept during the three-hour crossing, but this ship had no passenger cabins. I slept on a bench in a busy passageway in my long wool coat, with my cap pulled over my eyes.

I stayed a few days in New Plymouth at a favorite hostel in a big old house, and surfed beautiful waves at a beach just north of town. The water was far warmer than in Dunedin.

Then at last came the day to drive to Auckland. Diane’s flight arrived at five am the next morning, one of Air New Zealand’s “quirks”. Diane had booked a room right downtown, online. The website had a photo of a charming three-story Edwardian building. After a five-hour drive, I arrived to warm, sunny Auckland- and a brand-new ten-story concrete tower with a charming three-story Edwardian façade at its base. Grubby from the drive, feeling distinctly shabby, I checked in with the uniformed receptionist, guided Herbert between a pair of BMWs in the underground garage, and took the elevator up to our room. The view outside was of a grid of high-rise apartment balconies. It looked like something that might have inspired The Clash back in ’77. A plasma TV received TV1, TV2, a Christian channel and, oddly, a Punjabi channel. After a luxurious shower, I settled in for the night.

I was thrilled to be there, and excited even when the alarm went off at four am. Got to the airport easily- no cars! Being in the arrival area was emotional. The anticipation was sweet, but I was reminded that, homesick as I was at times, I’d be leaving myself in a few months. My resolution to enjoy my remaining time here was renewed.

-And there she was! It was so great to see her. And from then on, there was a delicious incongruity: I was amazed to see my best friend juxtaposed against the places I had only seen in my deepest solitude.





Before I begin, I'd like to say this: in this blog I’ve naturally assumed a tone of the lone traveler, enthused or alienated in turn (or at the same time) as it were, and if it served my story. From this point on, I’m conscious that Diane can read this and say “Bullshit!” or “Well, I didn’t see it that way”. I’ll do my best to convey mutual experiences without too much affectation… a bit of a balancing act… and I invite you, dear Diane, to give your perspective. Anything you want to write I’ll include.

And also: this thing, this blog, has served a function- a way to stay connected with you…a tonic for loneliness. It’s still that, but for a while, it’s sharing Diane’s story too.

I got us off to a great start by getting lost on the way back, and then a bit of driving on the wrong side of the road, near the hotel. Diane, who was giddy after the eleven-hour flight, was quite gracious and forgiving. She was eager to get out and see the city, so after getting settled and re-parking Herbert, out we went.

The weather was lovely, almost balmy. Auckland, at the best of times, is (I think) only just bearable- there’s a reason I don’t have any photos of it. Have you been to San Diego? Auckland is a bit like that. Utilitarian. But Diane was wide open. The very first thing we did was pop into a corner store for a phone card. I was charmed to see her eyeing a rack of meat pies with an expression of intense interest. Everything was new to her, and her enthusiasm renewed mine.

We were in Auckland for two days, and had a great time (we hadn’t started our rampant photo-taking yet, so unfortunately this section doesn’t have any). We walked and bussed around Auckland’s varied neighborhoods- Ponsonby and Karangahape roads (the “hip” streets), Parnell (the “yuppie” one) and Queen Street (the "downtown" one, a bit like an idealized version of Market Street in San Francisco). We began our addiction to kumara chips- sweet-potato-like, pseudo-healthy French fries. Diane liked to get off the shopping streets and into the residential neighborhoods, something she made a point to do in other cities we visited as well. We went to a fairly lame art exhibit (a drab ecologically-themed show), in what was the only open gallery of the closed-for-renovation civic gallery- then lucked into a talk on early Maori abstract-expressionism by Marilyn Webb, an artist who had been in on the scene in the 1950s. She was a delightful, charismatic speaker. Several people in the small, attentive audience were her contemporaries, and she frequently turned to them for their anecdotes.

We also got into watching that plasma TV. Favorite shows included:

“Moneyman”. A bald, mustachioed drill-sergeant arrives at a young couple’s house and pitches his pup tent in their yard. He then harangues them about how to keep a budget and live within their means.

“Mucking In”. Selfless community worker gets nominated by friends to have their garden redone. Said friends do the work (hence the title), in a great flurry of activity, ultimately causing the recipient to cry. Transformations consistently featured an outdoor kitchen. A giant outdoor chess-set was given to a non-chess-player.

“Cambell Live”. News pundit, with a winning chimp-like physiognomy. Impalpable appeal- for me, it might have been the absurdity that lived in the gap between his egotistical delivery and my utter ignorance of his celebrity. Or something.

I should also mention the farting twins (Diane’s favorite), but I don’t know the title of the show they were on.

And because it was all new, all vaguely or overtly absurd, we even got a kick out of the commercials. Our favorite was for a livestock product called “Calf Boost”.

We took a lovely walk along the waterfront one warm evening- the lights of the city reflected in the water of the harbor. People in wharf side cafes were eating and drinking and having fun in that Kiwi way that seems, to me, to be lighter and less maniacal than their American counterparts might be on a Saturday night in, say, North Beach. I had a nice feeling showing Diane around- almost like pride. Diane, maybe you felt that way the first time you showed me around Brookmont, and Bethesda, and D.C.

It began to rain the morning we left Auckland.- “Uh oh”, I thought. I had worried that there might be rain- a lot of rain- maybe the whole time- for Diane’s stay. It was that time of year. But it was nice to see Auckland’s suburbs give was to pastures. “I see sheep!” cried Diane. I smiled. How soon that thrill would wear off!

We left the main highway and rolled through undulating green farmland. Most of New Zealand’s highways are pleasant two-lane roads (though made less so by the way in which people drive- I liked to go the speed limit, about 60 mph, and was hounded by tailgaters who wanted to go faster). We were bound for Waihi Beach, on the east coast, over the Coromandal Mountains. We stopped in Thames, the last “big” town before the drive over the mountains, where I introduced Diane to the joys of Pak-And-Save, a sort of N.Z. Costco. It’s the cheapest place to buy food here.

The Coromandal Mountains are stunning, but a misty rain diminished the effect. But we were in high spirits, listening to Look Blue Go Purple (a jangly Flying Nun band), rolling along. It’s a revelation to leave Auckland, especially the first time. However cool that mediocre city seems, the real magic of New Zealand is revealed in the countryside. Like England, the greens seem extra vibrant, the brush saturated before being applied. Unlike England, the land is young, jagged, and volcanic. We raced around bends, descending to the coast.

Since we were driving past it, we stopped to see Opoutere, the wonderful place I wrote about a few months ago. When we got there, I again felt, acutely, the strange merging of my friend, here and now, with a place of such deeply felt solitude in the past (I won’t bring it up again). The YHA was closed for the winter (if it had been open, I surely would have booked us in there). We parked at the chained entrance to the driveway and hopped the fence. It felt sad to walk around the empty grounds and peek through the windows. We didn’t linger. We walked across the bridge, through the silent pine forest (which was full of bright orange mushrooms), and eventually reached the long, lonely beach. We took a few photos in the rain, and walked back, started Herbert and kept on going.

Thank goodness, the skies started to clear as we continued south! It wasn’t long before we reached the Waihi beach turnoff. On the way we saw this sign:


Something about it reminds me of Deb’s dog, Laika.

Diane had found our wonderful house at Waihi Beach back in San Francisco, after searching online. We were greeted by Alistair, the owner who lived next door. He was a friendly, hulking, sixty-ish gent who wore the same blue wool Pendleton shirt every day. Every day we would see him riding his old-style ten-speed bicycle around the streets of the town. One morning we saw his wife and children peddling behind him, like a family of ducks.

The place was great. I chose one of the three downstairs bedrooms. My guitars had another. Diane had the upstairs loft, which was bathed in light when the sun rose over the sea. There were two couches, perfect for mutual moral support while reading or napping. There was a TV to watch Cambell Live.

We spent four lazy, delicious days taking walks on the beach, cooking or eating out in the tiny town. We did a lot of lying around, reading. We could see that we made good travel partners- we were both on the same page in our lack of ambition- what we called “luffing”.

Waihi beach had a sleepy, off-season feeling. The streets were quiet. A bossy little white terrier patrolled ours. Once we saw him asleep in the middle of the road. Other times he fretted and barked at nothing, his voice echoing off the empty houses.




The beach was empty.




The weather was very mild- the warmest of our whole trip. There still seemed to be a bit of summer holding on, at Waihi beach.

Our most strenuous act was to walk around the headland to Orokawa beach. Climbing the first rise and looking south, we saw this:



In the distance is Matakana island- fairly close to where Dean and Anj live.

The coastline here reminded me of Big Sur. Same clean blue water sparkling, same forested cliffs. In the photo below, I’m getting my first glimpse of Orokawa Beach- one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.



The pathway ascended to sunny lookout points, then dipped into cool, fern-canopied valleys.




After a twenty-minute walk, we reached the beach. It was just lovely.

Pohutakawa trees overhung the white sand. Sitting in the cool shade looking out at the ocean, listening to the murmur of the waves was deeply relaxing.



Out to sea were, I think, the same group of islands I showed you in the Opoutere entry a while back- but from a different angle.



The boughs of the pohutakawa tree hung right down to the sand, inviting one to climb. I did, and took a photo of Diane:



And she took one of me:



I was inspired to climb the rocks on the north end of the shallow crescent bay. Diane impressed me by following along. The pohutakawa roots acted like a ladder.



Around the corner were sheer cliffs and magnificent pohutakawa-covered rock formations rising from the sea. Click on the photo to see the trees in detail.



This beach, like so many in New Zealand, was healthy, full of life. We stopped and watched these red-billed oystercatchers:



And I lay down to capture these fellows. They seemed to all be talking at once.



Gregory said this photo was nice, but evoked negative connotations of Scientology. Do any of you know what the hell he’s talking about? Tell us in the “comments” feature- and I’ll bring you a special souvenir.

In some ways, our time at Waihi Beach was the nicest time of the trip- the most time in one place, the warmest, the laziest… the most relaxing. What do you think, Diane?

We also met our first animal host- Alistair’s fifteen-year old tabby, Xena. She was a battle-scarred old beast with a bobtail and no ears- just two barely-covered holes. Despite or because of that, she was beautiful. She came to see what we were about when we first arrived, walking around sniffing our baggage and taking a bath on the living room floor. Then she teased us for days by sitting on a pillow in the sun by a window in her house, visible but aloof. We called to her as loudly as we dared, beckoning. After a few days, finally, she visited again, to lie in the sun, with the house as her pillow, while we hung the laundry on outside lines- like they do in New Zealand, in the summer.



I’m leaving Raglan tomorrow. Against all odds, I got Herbert through his mandatory six-month Warranty Of Fitness inspection, and am ready to hit the road again. I had planned to head back to New Plymouth, to surf and spend more time at the excellent free public gallery, and explore its massive film archive, but the west coast winter rains have me thinking of sunny, remote Gisborne, on the southeast coast. It’s one in the morning, and I still don’t know which road I’ll choose…

But I promise to pick up the story again soon- and sooner this time.

Hope you all are well.

Still Here...

...bear with me. I'm writing my account of the month travelling with Diane.

Two islands, 1500-plus photos. It's a big job.

All will be explained. Hope you all are well.