The Lakes of the South Island

 I love water. I do. Big bits of water. And some are more gorgeous than others.

 there are purposes for them all.

The English Channel is dark and choppy and 21 miles wide.

The straits of Gibraltar are blue and strategic.

The Irish Sea is turbulent and political.

The Lakes of the South Island of New Zealand are just there. Left over from some volcanic something. You drive over a mountain and there they lie, lie some haphazard reminder that we may wear cashmere but they need nothing other to have a shaft of light to wake them up.

Lake Pukaki. Let’s start there. Under the Southern Alps. Looked over by Mount Cook.

Lake Tekapo. let’s pause there. Same Southern Alps. 

They take the turquoise I have never seen in nature and coat themselves in it, like it is easy.

So on a totally colorless note; I went on a dark sky experience whilst I was staying in Lake Tekapo. Wearing an arctic jacket loaned to me because it was very late and very cold.

 It was conducted by an astronomer from France who had made New Zealand his home. Lake Tekapo is a dark sky reserve. One of a few in the world. There is almost no ambient light. The French guy says that the Southern Hemisphere is far better than the North for access to the dark skies. 

I have no photos of Jupiter or Saturn. Or the Southern Cross. or the Milky Way. or Billions of star constellations that are billions of light years away that I looked at through a telescope.

But if I close my eyes now, I can still see them. And maybe that is how it should be.

Queenstown

 I didn’t know I had a problem with heights. Or maybe I am fooling myself. 

It started to creep in when I had to cross a gorge on a rope bridge when I was working on a film in Belize. The first few steps were fine and then I crumpled and went the rest of the waving way on my hands and knees. Since then I have stayed away from the edge of high balconies. Turned down the chance to skydive. Stood at the bottom of ladders. 

I remember now, as I think about it, that I never climbed a tree as a child. I never swung across a river on a rope. It may be that I was always a height coward.

So, I was in Queenstown. The sporting capitol of the South Island of New Zealand.

 There were centers offering zip lining and snow boarding and, oh, I don’t know. All these things that require proper muscles and flinging yourself off heights with less than an umbrella to help you.

None of that for me…. 

Crazy activities available on every street corner

I wandered the town. Oddly filled with young people that I suspect were on an elongated gap year. Working in coffee shops or clothing stores. Not New Zealanders. Travelers, still traveling.

It wasn’t warm. They were wearing shorts. In restaurants they were making a pot of tea last for hours. 

It was too busy for me. Lots of visitors getting togged up in life jackets and whizzing around the lake in speed boats. Or carrying shopping bags from clothing stores that would not make any sense whatsoever when they got home to their home which had a temperate climate and a village pond.

Not the worst view before going to sleep

But I did go up the Gondola. I got into a little car thing on my own and only remembered a few minutes up that I had voluntarily chosen to do something that scared me sideways.

I managed it. I breathed. I sang to myself.  I wandered around at the top and wondered if I could come down or just stay up there forever.

 I came down. Backwards. So I couldn’t see how high I was. 

Honestly. How ridiculous is this story? 

Or is it like the one I always remember about Cleo Laine, the jazz singer, who said that she didn’t like olives but if someone offered her one, she would always try it, just in case she had changed her mind.

Coromandel

 There is this peninsula on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. Called Coromandel. It sounds like a dance you should do to bell like music.

 

I had heard it was exceptional. I had heard it was where the people with money bought houses. Or had had houses for generations back. I had imagined it like Point Dume, or Cape Cod. Large houses with lawns.

 I was wrong.

The Coromandel is a mountain range with a road that has been carved out on it’s outer edges and an occasional little pocket of flat where a small river drops down from high.

 

There are farms with fields high up on the slopes. There are bays full of boats.  and fields full of cars and empty boat trailers waiting for the fishermen to return with their catch. When you get to Coromandel Town there is the bake shop with sausage rolls, mince pies and cheese and onion sandwiches where all the locals go. Then there are cafes serving poached eggs and Rosti potatoes for the visitors.  Myself I had a cheese and onion sandwich and a cup of tea. There are laundromats, bait shops, hardware shops, butchers, more bait shops and a shop dedicated to hoses. 

The views are beyond words. So I won’t try. I will just hand them over to you.

coromandel town

the laundromat with roof dressing

Lucky sheep

alpine village ….not

 We didn’t book any of our hotels. I have to say that because last night we stayed at a place that I called our Christian camp. It is in a place called Thames that is famous for a short lived gold rush in the 1860’s. It is on the coast at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula. It has a long Main Street with buildings that look like an old western town with aprons declaring their current incarnation as an Indian restaurant or a four square super market. The town climbs up  a hill and the little houses climb up and up on curving roads and way at the top is a cemetery. My guess is that it was for sailors. Because from up there the view of the Bay would calm any tired sea faring soul. 

But back to the hotel. The motel. The camp.The whatever.

Called “ Coastal Lodge.” It was a series of Alpine A Frames. Perhaps a piece of whimsy. Perhaps like Portmeirion. But on second thoughts, whimsy suggests magical. Nothing whimsical here. The inside was more plastic and poor taste than one room can hold. There were metal sculptures of flowers on the wall. There was a dining table with matching chairs with a salmon patterned fabric that has not been seen since the mid 80’s for good reason. There was a bible on the bedside table . There was a wallpaper with a matching frieze in brush strokes of grey. And there was a lot of linoleum, the flooring of luxury.

The bathroom was , what shall I say, ….curious?  Cynthia, my traveling companion needs accessibility..she has got it down to grab bars. As long as there are grab bars. She never thought to specify where those grab bars should be.  The grab bars in this accessible bathroom are of no use to anyone needing them for help with a shower or the loo. We decided that they were for amateur gymnasts. Doing side bends, or something. 

The Bible went to live with the tea bags. 

We went to bed early like good Christians.

So we could get up early and put the linoleum and the attempted whimsy behind us.

But the Bay was there before the Alpine village . And it will be there long after.

My Brother , the Champion.

  I spent my first few years as a child living in Ireland. There was always this story that made my mother laugh to melting point about how one summer we went down south to Skibereen, close to Cork. Where they held the annual Long Boat race of Skibereen, She would tell, often unable to finish for the laughter that overcame her, of everyone from the village and beyond gathering on the beach and the men climbing into their long boats with hand slapping and shoulder punching, and these boats being pushed out to sea and the oars going in and out of the waves and everyone waving until they were specks and then everyone shambled off to the pub or wherever, and no one bothering to wait for their return. Assuming , presumably, that they would row back and be bought a pint. It was a lesson in the event being bigger than the prize. 

Today I watched my brother for the first time compete in his newly adopted sport of Wakaama. Originally from Hawaii and Samoa, it is a canoe with an outrigger and two, four or six people sit down with a paddle and go for their lives into the waves.

It was a bit like Skibereen. I watched them clamber in, I watched them paddle away, I saw them become specks and I was hopeful I would see them again.

setting out from the shore

There is a whole community around Waka. It is a native force that has been shared with others. But today the Māori presence was strong. They paddled because it was in their blood. My brother and others paddle because it is sport that challenges them.

it is the Nationals. This year they are taking place in Waitangi. In the Northlands of the North Island of New Zealand. It is where the Māori were recognized as the rightful people of the land and it was given the name of Aoteara. It is where the Peace Treaty was signed. And for the last few days it has been where Māori and their guests have paddled their way through the waves to try and win honors.

Stephen . Number 5. 

The races can take hours. if we were in Ireland, all the spectators would be well into their second pint. For me I did a little dance as they paddled away, I went up to the Treaty house and had a guided tour and a Māori cultural show and then came back down to the cliff overlooking the sea where below me these long boats were going from small specs to just specs in the water below me…except that my brother, position 5 in the boat, was wearing a bright turquoise hat. “ isn’t that him?“ my friend Cynthia said. I looked without the help of binoculars and number 5 in this tiny boat that was cutting though the water certainly had a brighter head then the rest of them. 

watching from the treaty grounds

Two and and a half hours of punching a paddle into the water and they were still going. I went down to the dock in time to see them pull in. Their legs so cramped they had trouble standing, their faces covered in dried salt water, their clothes drenched.

The easy headline is my brother is a champion. He got a bronze medal in the 2022 Wakaama nationals in his class. He and his five paddling friends kept it up for two hours and fifty-five minutes. Three of them were women. Most of them were over 60.

This year Waitangi. maybe next year, Skibereen.

I have to tell you I am so proud. I would be standing on that beach waiting for him to paddle back in till the sun went down and the beer went flat

Traveling anywhere.

 It’s not that I’m complaining.

 I have a pretty blue suitcase that was a wrap gift from the TV show,        “ Orville.” I am very good with little zip up bags with specific needs. The glass and pens packet. The cables packet. The immediate toiletries packet. The “ should I bring mascara ?” packet. I roll clothing. I have shoes in zip up red bags. I have my two passports just in case one of my countries does something dubious and I need to swivel allegiance. I have scarves to save tired hair. I have lipstick to brighten my tired skin.

I had the unexpected and, let’s face it, fantastic chance to upgrade, courtesy of my traveling companion Cynthia, who has more miles on Hawaiian air than there are lava lamps in the world.

But nobody….nobody should fly anywhere for 25 hours.

Your body feels like a random selection of metal rods that have lost the connecting instructions. Your mouth will not come back from fuzzy. The bottles of water you drink send you tottering to the lavatory where you try to balance over the loo with feet carefully placed to miss other peoples misses. The vegetarian meal you ordered comes out with vegan margarine, and a tomato spaghetti that would embarrass an Italian child. You don’t want it, but you eat it, because there is something so endearing about those little square boxes of food on the tray and the salt and pepper that is dressed up as a Hawaiian shirt.

In the pursuit of good looking nightwear that I try to disguise as traveling clothes, I wear clothing free of zips and buttons. I want to look together and current. Words I have seen in advertisements. I want to report that I am never anywhere near current and as for together.. by the end of a long flight the elastic that was meant to be my friend has given up the fight and has left me more shapeless than the mashed potato you wished you could have had instead of the vegetarian spaghetti.

But here I am, 25 hours later. 4 hours behind. 1 day ahead. In New Zealand.I am hoping for a more stylish future. 

I will let you know how that works out. 

I don’t hold out much hope.

 It is Midsummers eve. The evening before the longest day in the northern hemisphere.  

The night of Titania and Oberon. And the naughty Robin Goodfellow, known to his friends as Puck. who squeezed fairy dust into lovers eyes which caused them to fall in love with the first thing they saw on awakening.

I was a big fan of Thomas Hardy growing up. I was very fearful for his heroines. In "Far from the madding Crowd" I wanted Bathsheba to settle down with Gabriel Oak the minute I smelled the whiff of a red uniform. In "The Woodlanders", all the unmarried women in the village run down to the local pond on Midsummer's Eve and look into the water. Behind their shoulder, they would see the face of the man they would marry. 

I like those astronomical tilts in our planetary system. Equinoxes, when all things are equal. Solstices, when things tumble forward or backwards.  

If you believe in fairies, or warm winds of promise, or shooting stars bringing answers; midsummer's eve is the night.

So this evening I went down to the edge of the ocean. There were people going in to swim or packing up after a day on the sand. I must have looked like a painter without an easel. I was wearing baggy pink and white striped shorts. I had a straw hat that tumbled around my face. I had paper and a pencil. 

I didn't write big questions.  But I wrote a few smaller ones.

I wrote a lot of names. People who I want to remember before I go to sleep at night. People I want to make sure I see because they don't live near me. People, who live near me, whom I want to make sure I remember to see. 

And a few things that only Titania would understand.

To finish what I start. To learn new things. To be ready to move in a moment. To find love wherever I am.

Then I took my paper and I slid it into the water Away it went. The words disappearing with every squirl of the waves. 

Over to you, Robin Goodfellow.