Rock and Pool is Nice and Cool

Today is Friday the 13th (well, it was. I wrote this a few days ago). The day that is led to believe that demons come to earth this day. Evilness runs amuck. I have always anticipated this day from the time of a young child finding deep curiosities in the supernatural. I cherish scary days. Dark clouds, high winds and that stickiness in the air right before a ripe thunderstorm. This is an eeriness that excites me so. But after a decade of uneventful Black Fridays, I gave up on them. I gave up anticipating that numerous events of usualness would occur throughout the day. It stopped being a pseudo-holiday for me. Until today that is. Black Friday woke me up this morning. The rain was pelting on top of the metal roof of Bush Haven and served as my alarm clock. The sky was dark grey and the wind was gusting through the ferns making terrific noise. I ate my breakfast wrapped up in my enourmous blue fleece blanket. It’s coming winter in New Zealand and is much colder than I had previously predicted. We wear pants and jumpers in the nights and have a difficult time keeping the door open because of the cold air that sweeps in. There are two new people living here in Bush Haven now with Alex and I. Nigel, and Irishman who makes us lovely breads for breakfast and taught me to make cheese sauce for my pasta from scratch. It was good too. And then there is Theresa. A young Kiwi girl who has left her home and parents for the first time. She is on a diet and eats measured portions of food. Actual measured portions. She brought a scale and everything. I have never seen the likes. She’s nice, and shy, and I feel like I could do some corruption to her innocent soul. Mwahaha. Just kidding. Or am I?

Let me not forget about Black Friday though. I worked with Kim in housekeeping and we went from chalet to chalet cleaning in the rain and discussing the happenings of this weeks episodes of Home and Away. Home and Away is a Dawson’s Creek-esque soap opera from Australia. It’s my 5:30pm guilty pleasure. The power goes out. Slightly disappointed I was since this would further delay our work from getting done, but mostly excited that eeriness was happening on Black Friday. So I shut the sliding the door in the chalet and pulled down the blinds. I turned my back and Kim pointed at me to close the blinds. When I look back at the window, the blinds were up again. I am 100% sure that I drew those blinds closed. Phantom blinds. I blame Black Friday. We enter Chalet 39. I roll back the mosquito net from the bed and there it was. I jumped and squealed like a school girl and ran to the back of the room while simultaneously scaring the shit out of Kim for a reason she was unknownst to. It was the biggest spider I have ever seen in real life. Dunsford Truth. It was dark brown and nearly as big as my outstretched palm. Its legs were as long as my fingers. Kim wouldn’t go near it so it was up to me to do something. She suggested killing it but there was no way I could kill something that big. I found the biggest cup in the room and made my move. It dashed under the bed which threw us into another frenzy of heebie jeebies. The spider resurfaced on the pillows of the bed, crawling slowly along as if to taunt us. I took my cup and placed it over the spider and put her back outside. Black Friday at its best. I later found out it was a Huntsman spider. Despite my reactions to the spider, I was very glad I saw one up so close. And as I’ve said before, you must be able to live with the bugs. Alex and I have established that you can’t turn your head a single degree without seeing an insect as I take a sip from my wine glass that has 3 drosophila floating on the surface and an ant in the bottom. Black Friday finished with some more power outages and a creepy silence from the eye of the storm. Overall it was a hit and I have further regained my confidence in Friday the 13th.

In further news from Pauanui, I spend most of my free time at the beach (weather permitting) body boarding in the huge waves that throw themselves against the shores here. We cook lots of nice meals here together, avocado being my constant weapon of choice for any meal. Seriously, you can use it for everything and I do. And it’s so damn good you can usually find me spooning it right out of its skin and eating it like a grapefruit. For a treat I’ll hit up the town center for some tempura hoki fish and kumura chips and the ever delicious NZ ice cream. One evening Nigel, Alex and I went to the beach to see all the unrecognizable stars. All of us being from the northern hemisphere we were lost in the stars with only Orion to remind us that we were still on planet Earth. You can always see the Milky Way on a clear night in NZ because there are so few lights. So much country. We sat on a log and waited for the moon the rise up over the mountain to light our path back home. The moon rose like a cartoon. It moved so fast we could feel the Earth turning. So this week is a trip to the library to print off a southern hemisphere star chart and to find a bird book so I can identify all the birds that coo outside my window and the those little green ones that keep flying in the house and sitting on the window sills.

To round it up, I didn’t stay sick for long. I stayed an evening in a backpacker in downtown Auckland. Sucked balls, but I was sick and needed somewhere to rest. One night was enough in this overpriced hostel with recycled air. I had to leave the god forsaken city. A city is a city no matter where you go, and Auckland I did not want to be. So I drove my way out of the city, to a town named Thames in the Coramandel Peninsula. I found the first backpacker and booked a single room for another night day of rest and sleep hoping that my sore throat would cease. It was so bad at this point. It was like swallowing swords. Oh the pain. I stayed in my room all the day. Except to make a meal of squished banana and milk. It was about all I could handle.

At this point in my travels, I was planning on finding some paid work for a month or so to make up for money I’ve spent. Try to break even is the goal here. Then I can go elsewhere. But anywho, I had made contact with my friend Matt Martel who is also traveling NZ. He is working at a resort close to Thames and said I’d be able to get a job there as well. Done deal. But still, I was sick and needed to recover before offering myself as an employee. The following day, my throat felt a little better, but I thought it best to spend another day and night resting. So I paid for another night at the backpacker. This day, I met Lili. It was raining the whole day. Lili and I, both solo female travelers. In Thames chillin’ at the backpackers. We became quite good friends and hung out most of the day together. We laughed a lot. Each day passed and the both of chose to stay another night. Unsure of what step we were to take next, we ended up staying 4 nights at our little backpacker. We loved it so and basically had it to ourselves. And because everyday was raining we made ourselves quite comfortable with the place. It felt like home. A cozy living room with lots of couches and movies to watch. A patio and BBQ and homey rooms for sleep. We spent one afternoon walking Thames in our barefeet. To be a true Kiwi, you must go everywhere in your barefeet. The “No shoes, no service” rule does not apply here. So we thought it best to work on our calluses and walked the streets and the stores sans shoes. Now I go shoeless all the time. It is quite lovely. Meanwhile, I managed an interview at the Puka Park Resort in Pauanui and got myself a job for 6 weeks. Perfect.

I said so long to Lili that Thursday, but we have arranged to meet up in the South Island and do some hikes together. We made a good team. Off I drove through the beautiful hills of the Coramandel Peninsula to my home for the next 6 weeks. Pauanui.

I was given my job details, housekeeping and serving in the restaurant, and then given a key to the staff accommodation. Properly named Bash Haven. It’s nestled among the trees and you really can’t see it unless you know it’s there. The entrance reminded me of the Ewok village in Return of the Jedi. A long wooden bridge leading to the first building which houses the kitchen, living area, and bathrooms. The building next to it has our rooms. There are just 3 of us. Me, Matt and a French guy, Alex. Flatmates extraordinaire.

Like three peas in a pod we are. We all get along famously, entertaining one one other during the quiet evenings in this small town. All being equally disgusting and making crude and rude jokes about one another. Just how it should be right? Our honourary flatmates are Ben and Alexi. Ben, a Kiwi, and Alexi, another Frenchy. You can usually find them out on the deck smoking their cigarettes when we arrive home from work. All the French company worked out great. As well as Matt being bilingual, a lot of our conversation is in French. Good practice for me. Alex and I have worked it out nicely so that we both learn the other language. I speak French to him, and he speaks English to me and we correct each other a long the way and teach new words.

The resort is really nice and consists of all chalets hidden in the trees on the mountain side. As always, the people make the work fun and I now have a nice group of friends from places all over the world to hang out with everyday. God I love socialness. As for Pauanui the town, it’s small. A summer home for most. Most of it consists of old people and their summer getaway. Right now the tourist season is over and most people have moved out. It’s very quiet. But there’s a beach, and that’s what’s most important. The village center is compiled of a small supermarket, real estate, a surf shop, a liquor store and a couple of cafes. They open and close whenever they feel like it. Shorty’s is the bar, famous for their potato wedges and plays host mostly to Puka Park staff when they feel in need of a drink or five.

There are no police in Pauanui, just Tom, the security guard with his pierced ears and tattoos. He stops by Bush Haven occasionally for a smoke and has joined us at Shorty’s for a drink. This place cracks me up and I love it. As of current, Matt and Alexi have both departed Puka Park for further travels and I have just returned from Auckland for a quick trip and to send them off. Why I keep ending up back in Auckland is beyond me. I hate this city. It’s too big and unorganized and there are just too many people. Yet, I was there again. The three of us would have liked to pull a Lokey-7 on the whole damn town after the 2 days there. I am now boycotting Auckland. I hope not to return there except for the airport. Now Alex and I remain here at Bush Haven. With the bugs.

To live in New Zealand one must become at peace with the insects. They are anywhere and everywhere and you must accept the fact and stop trying to kill every one spider you see. You just must let them be because they will just come back for more. I have learned to love the spiders that spin their invisible webs in the corners of every room and cupboard and welcome them as mosquito catchers. I even kept one by the head of my bed. And because no one has screens on their windows in NZ, and the nights are often humid, the house quickly becomes a playground for every bug that is attracted to light. Alex and I have named all of our favorite species. There is Robert (en Francais), the large brown beetle with long antennae who joins us every night in the living room. Then there is Isobelle, the praying mantis who likes to fly into my hair and climb on Alex’s computer. Albert, the moth the size of a small sparrow. Endless.

Despite Pauanui being a small and fairly uneventful little town, it offers some great natural fun. Hidden amongst the bush, and a 5 minute drive is a the most superb waterfall/swimming hole I’ve yet to encounter. After a 20 minute walk into the bush, Alexi, Ben and I came to the waterfall. Below is the swimming hole in which the fall runs into. And it’s deep. And there are rocks to climb. Which means…rock jumping into the water!!! O was it fun. Fresh water with a slight smell of sulphur and a deep blue color to jump into. We climbed the rocks and jumped the 3-4 meter drop. AH! I wish you could try it! And my other favorite, the beach here, is a common spot for surfers as the waves will get quite large. So yesterday, Alex and I took some boogie boards down for our day off of work. We were in the water I am sure for over an hour. The waves were perfect and we glided in flawlessly time after time on our bellies. There were a few waves though that were too big for me and my ilttle board to handle. I saw the wall of water behind and just gave up. The wave took me under, tumbling about, near stripping me of my togs. Lots of water up my nose, but I kept going. It’s exhausting having the waves beat you up. But it was worth it.

The Coramandel Peninsula is beautiful, and has some really great scenery while driving through the mountains. My car’s CV joints have recently been repaired and my car is sounding smooth and jazz. Oh I love my little star car. I’ve also become aware of the Kiwi language I’ve been picking up without even noticing at most times. I now say, “How ya going?” instead of “How ya doing?” Thankyou has now turned into, “Cheers” and my favorite, “Ta!”

So ta to you all for reading and sending emails. I hope all is well where ever you are!