What's Ahead

My time in New Zealand is coming to an end. Although it has begun to feel like home in some ways, I have avoided settling in too much because I have always known that I would be here temporarily. It has been a difficult balance. I am happy to be leaving to begin new adventures, but I will be leaving behind a unique location and group of people that have become special to me. Now, about those new adventures...

I have spent the majority of my time in New Zealand on the South Island, and the majority of that time in Arthur's Pass. My visa expires at the beginning of June, so I have arranged for May to be a month of travel. For the first two weeks, I am planning a whirlwind tour of the North Island in a rental vehicle. I haven't seen much of the North Island and having my own vehicle will allow me to see what I want quickly. In my time here, I have also enjoyed the generosity of many people willing to pick up hitchhikers, so I intend to return that favour. I haven't driven a vehicle since June 2011, and I've never driven on the left, so watch out if you're nearby!

On the 17th of May, I will fly from Wellington to Christchurch, where my parents will have arrived 30 minutes before me. When I extended my stay in this country, Mom and Dad said they would aim to come visit before I left, and now they are. Because New Zealand is so far away for most of my friends and family, it feels a bit like I've dropped off the planet. Living overseas is a difficult experience to share with someone who has never been where you have, so being able to show my parents what's so great about this country will be a privilege. We are intending to spend most of our time on the South Island before passing back through Wellington on our way out of the country.

When I finally do leave New Zealand for the foreseeable future, I will not be going home immediately. My father was once a Peace Corps volunteer on the island of Saipan in Micronesia, and has not returned for over 40 years. As the planning for my parents' visit to New Zealand developed, it became obvious that this was the best chance he would get to return, and I to see it for the first time. So when I leave Auckland, it will be for Sydney, Tokyo, or Seoul...I can't remember. I'm letting Dad organize that part of the trip. We're just hoping Kim Jong-Un's recent bluster doesn't cause any problems.

On the way back to North America, we will briefly stop in Honolulu to adjust to the time change (great excuse, isn't it?) and add Hawaii to my list of states visited, which already includes Alaska, if you were wondering. Then we will return to Toronto and from there to North Bay, where I expect the exhaustion of all this travel to keep me comfortably in bed for a while.

But wait, there's more! Once I've recovered from crossing the Pacific and North America, I am intending to make a visit to my hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts for the first time in three and a half years. Even more ambitiously, I intend to fly over to Europe to visit friends I haven't seen in almost as long. After a family reunion in August, I think I will have been able to catch up with almost anyone I've ever known. Which is good, because in September I will be upping sticks and moving again. But that's for the next post to describe.

Thanks for reading this far - here's some photos I didn't include in the last post.

 

Saving, Shooting, and Sleeping Away

The past month and a half have seen several staff changes at work and two especially busy weekends - Easter and the Wild Foods Festival in Hokitika, which some may recall I attended last year. It brings plenty of business through Arthur's Pass, as we are directly on the way from Christchurch to Hokitika and the Wild Foods Festival draws tons of people. I've been picking up plenty of extra hours for various reasons, and when I leave New Zealand in two months, I will have a significant amount of money saved.

There have also been several adventures of note lately. Although Arthur's Pass has a squash court which doubles as a basketball court, there is rarely anyone else with whom to shoot around, and I haven't played on a full team since 2011. As soon as I realized that I would be in Arthur's Pass for a while, I sent an email to the Greymouth Basketball Club to see about playing with them. Almost a year after I sent that first email, and several aborted attempts to participate, I finally did it. I took the bus down from the mountains, stayed the night at a hostel, and played basketball for two hours. Despite being either a league or a club (or maybe both), it really felt like a big pickup session. I played in two games, and as usual, found myself in the middle of the pack in terms of talent. Teams are required to be mixed, and plenty of people clearly played very casually, but there were several formidable talents as well. I think I saw more mullets on a basketball court than I've ever seen before (two), and several people used rugby-style passes - a reversal of when I learned to play rugby and adapted my basketball skills for the same purpose. It's unlikely I'll be able to return because of my work schedule and the hassle of spending a night in Greymouth for a couple hours of basketball, but it was gratifying to follow through on an idea I'd had for a long time.

It also took me a long time to spend a night in one of the many tramping huts in this area, which are a frequent topic of conversation that I bluff my way through. A friend from the Department of Conservation was heading off on a 4-night walk, and the first leg happened to be the beginning of a one-night walk that I'd been hoping to do. So the two of us hopped the bus down to Kelly's Creek and walked up to Carroll Hut. We rested for lunch, then continued over the Kelly Range and down into the Taipo River valley to Dillons Hut for the night. Hiking is a way of life in Arthur's Pass village, but my work schedule and limited transportation options mean I rarely get beyond day hikes. Furthermore, longer hikes require equipment that I don't have and am unwilling to buy, and my lack of experience means I have to rely on other people's advice to plan. So it was serendipitous that I could go along with someone who knew what she was doing to get my feet wet (which literally happened on top of the Kelly Range). Much more so than playing basketball in Greymouth, I needed to spend at least a night out in the wilderness that surrounds me here. Check.

I am now in my last month of work here, and it is flying by. Plans are beginning to develop for the next two months, five months, and two years of my life, but they deserve at least a post to themselves.

The best view I've ever seen from a toilet seat.

Looking down at the Taipo river.

Looking along the Taipo.

Hitching back to Arthur's Pass through Monteith's country.