Raincheck

I have taken a long enough raincheck.
Memories of New Zealand are fading away and are replaced by the vibrant immediacy of the "Here and Now". Skipping a chapter would be tempting.
I am south of the Queensland border, near Mount Warning, Wollumbin in the native tongue. I drove from Iluka to Uki, through Mullumbimby and Murwillumbah. I need to write those names. I love to mouth them. They are playful on the tongue.
But no, Australia will have to wait. I am one country behind.
Today, alone in a wooden octagonal house in the Australian bush, I am given an introspective incentive by a soft patter on palms, ferns and gum trees. No golden sunlight to draw me like a moth.

There is a water theme...

It's pouring down when Judy fetches me off the ferry in Wellington. She is 80, well travelled, has more energy than anybody I know and sprinkles her tales with a gentle wit.  She used to teach French, Latin and Japanese and we swap stories in "la langue de Molière". The downpour continues through the night and the next day. Cinema going weather. We watch "Green book", up there among the ten best films I have ever seen.
My stay with her is a watershed...well ensconced in her comfortable home, I can peacefully digest my time on South Island and, like a kid in a sweetie shop,  agonise about where to go next.... Roswitha, whom I visit next in Palmerston, concurs with Judy that I shouldn't miss Lake Taupo and Rotorua, in the sulphurous centre of volcanic North island.

They were right.
The fault line crosses North Island diagonally, from the Bay of Plenty in the east, down to Tongariro in the south west.

Over the next few days, I will look wide-eyed in wonderment at nature steaming in the "Craters of the Moon" and, in Wai-O-Tapu, at lakes bubbling and growling like a champagne cauldron from hell and warm waters transformed by algae into an otherworldly fluo green.

Hot springs sprout everywhere. I swim on the banks of the Waikato river that drains lake Taupo. There, water seeps hot in a series of descending rock pools into the cool mountain waters. Don't get carried away by the swift current as the Waikato surges through a narrow gorge further downstream into the frothing, roaring Huka falls.





Kerosene Creek, an innocent-looking mountain stream tumbling its way through lush forest is actually at bath temperature and I revel in the warm massage of the waterfall on my shoulders.
By the end of the day, my fingers are all pruny and it will take days to rid my bathing suit of its sulphurous rotten-egg pong.

In Rotorua, I see Maori furiously paddling under a steady drizzle. On their intricately carved canoes (waka) flickering torches burn the night. The tribe explains their culture. We, from all over the world, watch a fearsome looking Haka and are treated to a "Hangi", meat and vegetable cooked in a ground oven, deliciously smoky and falling off the bone. Yes, I know. Exception to veganism yet again.

Next on my personal map, is the Coromandel, because I like the far-flung, exotic flavour of the name. and because it is just that. A  rugged peninsula jutting north, one or two hours south of Auckland, it is accessible by the usual twisty roads that make any distance at least twice longer and discourage townies.

My first stop there is the seaside village of Hahei, where the owner of the best hostel ever presses a shovel into my hands and tells me to drive to Hot Water Beach, where hot springs filter through the sand. A small crowd is lounging in a succession of sand pools. Big kids with big smiles, covered in sand, playing with advancing waves that will wash away our small walls and invade our hard-won warm tubs. I dig myself into a hole.





I leave early the next day on the coastal path that will take me to Cathedral Cove before the tourist onslaught. And, yes, impressive, beautiful, stunning, it is all that, but I am looking for something else and follow a path to Stingray bay, a gorgeous little cove without a soul in sight, hallelujah!

I float on ripples of translucent jade water. Swallows nesting in the white cliffs swoop down around me in a perfect blue sky. I am in paradise. Suddenly, from underneath, I feel a large flat shape brushing my back, oh ever so smoothly. I leave the sea very fast indeed. Swimming with stingrays. Shudder.

Undaunted, I find another lonely beach, another little paradise, just to myself, Waitete beach, north of the town of Coromandel on the west coast and am very careful entering the water. A very big fish splashes away. I only half relax in the clear blue water.

My friend Andrea in Mangawhai tells me later that she never goes swimming if she is alone on a beach. It is a refreshing thought that there is still some wilderness in this world, something that Europeans are not used to anymore.

North from Colville, there are only gravel roads to the tip of the peninsula. There, I find a general store, a survivor from the 1950s, a quirky café cum art gallery with wonderful brownies and someone with a sense of humour, few houses, a wide bay lined with mangroves and a Tibetan Buddhist temple.

Time to go back to Mangawhai. As I approach the familiar hills, spiky with flax and recognise at last the twist and turns of the road, the clouds part, the day's persistent deluge stops. The sun filters through the trees as I rattle down the gravel drive to Carla's and Ali's. We hug with joy. Lola, the dog, jumps, wriggles and licks my face. The cottage hasn't changed but I will need a duvet at night. The season has turned.



I have a delicious evening meal with Andrea and her boys. She has planted another 20 trees, she announces proudly. And has finished writing her thesis.
I rejoice that the café Eutopia, a work of Art and a work of Heart is completed, in its beautiful wackiness. A Gaudi hippy Moroccan delirium. In Kaiwaka, off the state highway 1.





It is like coming home. A bitter sweet time before flying away.

My last day is a day of showers and rainbows. As I drive to my favourite spot, Forestry Beach at Te Arai, I fervently wish to see a rainbow over the sea. I walk on the deserted expanse of golden sand under a fierce squall of rain.  But my wish is fulfilled. I swim in the reflection of the rainbow in the waves.

Carla was a DJ in Antwerp. She is offering me, us all,  the most lovely parting gift. Mangawhai village hall has been booked, friends have been contacted... In the candle-lit space, we share a free liberating joyful evening of ecstatic dancing. What a way to say goodbye....

Maybe it seems there is nothing negative about New Zealand. But there is. My glasses are not totally rose-tinted. It is incredible that, with such a small population, so much deforestation has been inflected on the land. And why is that rich volcanic soil dedicated to cattle and sheep when there could be more market-gardening? And cheaper fruit and veg in the shops? It is an expensive 1st world country with a 3rd world economy of exporting staples, wine, meat and importing manufactured products.

It is also full of angels who have caught me when I arrived and accompanied me during my journey.

The corridors of Auckland airport are lined with huge posters of stunning coastline, pristine sands, lofty peaks and misty forests. I shed salty tears on my way to my cheap non-delayed, non-cancelled flight to Sydney.