spared on the west coast

so bridget and i set off on our thelma-and-louise road trip. i had to quickly remember how to drive, as i've not been in a manual car for a while. there was the same sweaty feeling and rapid checking of mirrors there had been for me ten years ago (is it really that long since i passed my test?!). we suffered a mild disappointment when we realised we couldn't get the attachment thing for the stereo to work so that we could play our ipods. no arctic monkeys for us. but we had glorious weather, open windows, many changing of gears from fourth into third (my favourite gear change) as we rounded the alpine hairpin corners and the like over arthur's pass. top comedy moment was when we were stopped by a herdload of cows in the middle of the road. this is what i love about this country. only in nz would you get a farmer shepherding his flock over a major state highway. we made a day of it and took a picnic which we had in a park that wasn't a park. we arrived in barrytown in time for tea, all sunned and sweaty, sunglasses perched atop our heads. bluddy marvellous day. was soooo good to be driving again. i miss it so much.

a minor disaster nearly occured when we discovered that the bus leaving barrytown the next day was actually all booked up. it was quite funny really. i mean, i've left barrytown five times now and always returned so it seemed almost natural for me not to be able to actually leave barrytown for the final time. of course. i don't know why i didn't expect it. anyway, after much downings of gins we found out that a bigger bus had subsequently been ordered by driver kathy and so we would be able to make it to the ball after all. thank god. it did look dodgy for a while, though, because i took the hire car back to greymouth and stood waiting for the stray bus at the agreed time but it never showed up. i began to thinking that maybe i would be forced to get a lift back to barrytown as i'd missed it. but then, joy after joy, it showed up. two bleeding hours late.

we stopped briefly in franz josef glacier but we weren't allowed to go out anywhere because bridget disgraced herself the last time she was here and she was afraid of being recognised. however, it didn't really matter as we arrived late in the day and we were still knackered from our last night in barrytown. we made a successful tea and retired to bed early, though not much sleep was actually had, thanks to a mattress the width of two centimetres and a bed made of hard wooden slats. it was like being at a chiropodist's all night. bugger.

perhaps i should say a few words now about just why our tea had been so successful. bridget and i are subjecting ourselves to a new health regime. i have already moaned about how fat travelling makes you (and no-one warns you of this - seriously, i'm shocking myself whenever i look in the mirror and i always feel the need to tell new people i meet that actually i'm a lot thinner than this in real life). well, anyway, we're eating lots and lots of fruit and veges. bridget has reintroduced me into the wonders of the orange. and, even though we're both crap cooks, we're actually managing to cobble decent meals together. (rachael, you'll be pleased that i'm eating properly). we're also embarking on daily power walks. bridget read somewhere that you burn 300 calories by walking for 45 minutes so this is the plan. granted, 300 calories isn't that much but it's better than nowt. we're taking this regime to ridiculous lengths now. this morning, we woke ourselves on purpose after having only had six hours sleep in order to go for the power walk, as we knew we wouldn't have time to do it at any other point in the day. well, it was more of a power stumble as we both struggled to wake up but, still, it did wake me up and i felt much the better for it.

after franz josef, we headed to the fox glacier, smugly getting off at a point when most backpackers just stay on the bus on to makarora. this is where the new health regime really kicked in. we hired bicycles - yes, we hired bicycles - to cycle to lake matheson in order that we complete a 1.5 hour walk round the lake. allegedly, you can see the most beautiful view in nz from the other side of the lake as you look back at mount cook and mount tasman and see their reflection in the water. however, the water wasn't calm enough for that to happen, plus there was too much cloud to even be able to see the tops of the mountains, so that didn't happen. still, that's alright. we had a good gossip as we walked round and we'd prepared another excellent picnic involving boiled eggs and everything so all was well. the cycle back (another 6km!) was slightly more of a task but we managed to do it. and i also managed to restrain myself from singing 'doe, a deer', which surprised me.

anyway, after sitting down for half an hour we then decided to embark on another walk. yes. this time it was to be an hour's walk up to the glacier car park, then another hour's return trip to the glacier terminal, and then the hour's walk back to the hostel. this turned out to be a little bit too ambitious and, luckily, a middle aged couple in a hired toyota took pity on us and gave us a lift to the car park. they actually saw us, got to the car park and realised just how far it was and so actually turned round and came looking for us. bless them. we also got a lift back to fox village by another middle aged couple (this time in a campervan) who took pity on us. we're thinking we can really play upon this what-would-i-want-other-people-to-do-if-it-were-my-child sentiment.

that night we hired a dvd from the hostel. we decided upon a film entitled 'once were warriors', seeing as it was a kiwi film and we are in nz, after all. it came highly recommended, being about 'urban maori violence'. we were ready to culturally imbibe. but no. it turned out to be a hackneyed, cliched trip into a dysfunctional family that mostly seemed to be incidentally maori. it was if the writer of the script had written out all the terrible things that can happen in life and got them in his film. suicide? tick. rape? tick. gang violence? tick. domestic abuse? tick. and so on, undsoweiter. but it was actually so bad that it was vaguely amusing. and we all agreed that we'd learned a lot about urban maori violence. so that was good. we also got to sit in old cinema seating in the tv room, which was a thrill.

then yesterday we headed to makarora, just at the tip of lake wanaka. it turned out to be a butlins-type holiday camp in the middle of nowhere, complete with karaoke bar and everything. before we entertained the crowds with 'especially for you' and 'can't smile without you', bridget and i set out for our day's power walk. and, bluddy hell, we only stumbled upon narnia. it was great. we wandered up the road and found a sign for the 'makarora bush walk' so we followed that and we ended up walking through some dense enchanted wood with huge vaulted trees and giant mushrooms and a soft woodland pathway with not a soul in sight. it made us shout loudly and our voices echoed softly through the trees ('spaghetti on toast', 'twice', 'please', 'how much?!'). we came to hearing water and carried on until we came out at a creek. it was beautiful. and it was just as we hit the midway point in the 45 minutes aswell. now don't tell me that's not fate. the sun was about to set so there was a captivating dappled light through the trees. it was just gorgeous. a real find. so beautiful. and so unexpected.

it had been a good day all round. it didn't start off that way, though. we were in danger of thinking that the lovely day in fox would have to be cancelled out with a crappy day on the bus. you see, i realised a little way into the bus journey that i'd forgotten most of my food and left it in the fridge in the hostel at fox. the full extent of the disaster gradually became clear when i went from thinking, oh, i've just lost some milk which i got from a free food shelf anyway and some marg. but then i remembered that i'd left my fruit for my lunch and then, woe upon woe, the pasta sauce for tonight's meal. disaster. bridget tried to console me by saying that we could make do with tomato ketchup and that there may be some food on the free food shelf in this coming hostel (though neither of us really believed it). i couldn't believe my stupidity. i blamed being out of practice on the ways of the backpacker, what with being new out of barrytown. however, in another amazing twist of fate, just when we were facing up to whether we were actually going to eat pasta using tomato ketchup as a sauce, what did we find in the new kitchen but half a jar of dolmio sauce. can you believe that?! un-bluddy-believable. and what a bluddy relief! spared from a shit tea.

if there has been a recurring theme of this trip then it surely has been the notion of fate. i mean, the number of bizarre coincidences written about on this blog would surely be enough to get an A* for any official report into the truth of the phenomenon. i'm more and more convinced every day, though i know that life on the road probably opens you up more to this sort of thing. but it also paradoxically reaffirms you to take a firm control of your destiny because you can rest in the knowledge that whatever crazy decisions you make, it will turn out alright. the key is actually just to do something. anything. hmm. there's definitely an exam question in that proposition somewhere.

ps. bridget's blog is www.diddit.blogspot.com. she has taken photos as she's gone round nz and they're the same places as rachael and i have been. so check 'em out, as they say in barnsley. there may even be some of me an'all now. coolio.