Jun 2007

Richard...the merino mullet toting local farmer. Now a merino mullet is a special brand of mullets...it's a kiwi mullet. It has the poof and fluffiness of the number one road kill in new zealand--the possum and the curly-q tail or 'party in the back' of a pig. Now, I met richard while staying in a campground in the outskirts of Invercargill. As I made my way into the kitchen for a late dinner of sorts with my latest Irving novel in hand I found a comfy chair in the corner and sat down. A good 10 minutes later the real 'encounter' of the week occured. Richard introduced himself as a local who lived at the motor camp full time and was kind enough to point through the window to his trailer...the one with the year round christmas lights and huge fishing pond in the front with fake fish in it. We then got into a 'heated' discussion about his childhood love of farm machinery and how that translated into an adulthood spent collecting model farm miniatures. Now, richard was a rather expressive man always using his hands to gesture...it was hard not to take note of his hands or rather fingernails...each nail was cut in an alternating pattern of long, short, long...with an equal amount of dirt deposited underneath. Richard also had a lovely habit of calling me 'sweets'...not to be confused with 'sweetie'...but sweets. He then told me how his lifelong dream was to go to disney WORLD...funny I said, mine was to travel and see the WORLD.

It has been a little over a month since I have been on the rowdy road and it is only in this past week that I can say I feel like I've finally hit my stride. Waking up around 6:30/7 every morning to a backpacker breakfast of sorts--meaning whatever I can scrounge around that is cheap and easy. By the time I finish packing up and hit the road the first signs of daylight are usually painting the sky piercing reds, oranges, pinks and purples and the sun is in that low almost blinding spot on the road where you have to squint and pray that what's making your tires screech and your car rattle is actually the road.
This past week I have made my way down from Te anau to Dunedin via the Southern scenic route. I realize that means nothing to you...but anyways it's some sort of reference. I spent four nights in Te Anau where days were spent hiking the kepler trek (one of the great walks of new zealand) and exploring the little town.
On June 1st, I drove to Milford Sound along milford road which is rumored to be one of the most beautiful drives in all of new zealand. I would concur that is if I could have seen a damn thing I was driving through. The cloud cover was so dense that it seemed almost a pity to waste my petrol, but alas I knew going to new zealand and missing the milford sound would be like going to the united states and not seeing the statue of liberty...in other words it wasn't an option.
I apparently arrived just in the nick of time for the last cruise of the day in the sounds. Without time to grab a jacket I was off and running. Now, the first clue that should have alerted me to the fact that this cruise was more 'hands on' then your typical cruise of the sounds was that it was called 'the encounter.' the second should have been the fact that onboard everyone seemed to be wearing these red rain jackets...it felt like they were all part of an exlusive club...a club of rain jacket misfits and I was on the outs. Now the third and final clue would be that the once classical easy listening music streaming through the speakers started playing the all too familiar jaws theme music...and then it happened the small cruise boat went head on into a waterfall...now if you have never been on a boat headed straight into a 750m high powerful force of mother nature...then I can honestly say you have never lived before. It felt like the ultimate white water rafting experience as the small boat rocked back and forth with the front of the boat at times nearly pointed to the sky...we crashed into the falls and while everyone screamed in excitement it hit me...so that's what the rainjackets were for. To say I looked like a wet dog would be an understatement I looked like the dead lifeless soaking rat the wet scraggly dog dragged in, but alas who can complain when your traveling on a small private cruise ship through a neverending landscape of fjords, hundreds of thousands of little waterfalls and the picture perfect rainbow cutting across the hazy, now slightly clearing skies of the MILF...milford sound that is.