Well, I’ve been out fishing today. I am getting a real taste of Kiwi lifestyle here in Fox Glacier. When the closest bigger town is 2 and half hours away, you live much differently. The barter system is still a form of payment here in a lot of cases. The trade off of goods and skills. Today I experienced it first hand. Shaun was our fishing captain. Fisherman his whole life and by jeeze he couldn’t look more like the classic fisherman. A tiny black beanie just barely covers his ears to expose his salt-blown curly hair and a body full of tattoos shows dragons, anchors, and naked ladies. He knows all the secrets of the ocean and knows where all the hotspots are. A missing tooth, curses like a sailor, and has an accent so thick you aren’t quite sure if he’s speaking English. Paint a perfect for ya?
We bailed out in his little silver skiff and flew across the water spotting seals and yes, the big number three, dolphin sighting. My crew mates were Vicky, the town’s sweetest Mom, and Lucy, another honorary local. Shaun was taking us girls out fishing while he went scuba diving for crayfish. He was only down for 15 minutes and he had surfaced with two bags filled with the giant crustaceans. We hadn’t even got a nibble. We were fishing for Blue Cod but all we were getting were these orange bottom feeders. We just threw them back. After Shaun retrieved enough crayfish to supply the town with gifts he motored us over the “hole.” The tide was right for fishing off the boat in this one spot. And it was incredible. Lucy and I dropped our lines and not 10 seconds later we both had bites. Two minutes passed and Lucy and I had already brought up four blue cods. Bam, bam, bam. It was such a great feeling to catch these beautiful fish knowing they were going to make for us a beautiful meal. The tide soon shifted and we had to maneuver to different areas and the biting slowed down. After hours on the water we came home with 14 blue cod and a Takahiri fish. “A beautiful eat,” Shaun said. I ended up fishing 2 sharks as well, but we sent them back to the depths.
The sun stayed out for the perfect amount of time amd it began raining just as we pulled the boat out of the water. We headed back to Shaun’s cottage where we filleted the fish and I had my first try at it. All I can say is it is a lot harder than it looks. I ended up butchering the one I attempted but it was fun to try. The girls and I split up our catches, and picked out two crayfish each before heading back to prepare dinner. We went to Vicky’s house where we baked up the takahiri and cooked the crayfish. We had coleslaw, fresh bread and a whole family to eat dinner with around the table. It felt so great to share all of it together. Something about eating the food you caught with your own hands makes it that much more tasty.
As for home life in Fox Glacier, I live with an obsessive compulsive alpha male named Tim, who is moodier than a woman on the worst day of her menstrual cycle. He has lived here for 8 years and has basically sprayed his piss on every branch, leaf, and tree in this house, so to speak. He discreetly (so he thinks) accuses me of using too much hot water in my showers and using his cooking utensils incorrectly. Certain doors must be locked after certain hours, even though there is only a population of 200 people in this town. His mood swings are outrageously bipolar-esque and one minute he’s offering me fresh venison sausage and vegetables for dinner and the next he is purposely ignoring me when I have a simple question to ask him. He hates everyone in this town, shaves his legs, and uses his towels only once and then throws them in the dirty laundry. I’ve never seen such a high rotation of towels. He is one of those people I have absolutely no interest in getting to know anymore than I have to. But he makes for a character. I have a new, and much more lovely flatmate moving in next week, Mel, and she and I already get along like school girls. Thank goodness.
The work is going swell too. I’ve mastered the art of making great coffee and the I’ve caught on to most of the locals’ regular orders. There ain’t no Timmy Horton’s kind of coffee going on here. It’s freshly grinded as you order it and espressoed on the spot. What’s so great though is that I get to pick the music that gets played while I’m working. So each night before work I load up my mp3 and make a Café Neve playlist. You can’t beat working to your favorite tunes playing on the speakers. Also one of the locals is already named Ashley, and there was a collective agreement made amongst the staff that I would have to be given a nickname. So in Fox Glacier, I respond to Sid. I recalled one night of having numerous dreams about sloths, and one featuring Sid the Sloth from the movie Ice Age and now I am Sid. I am forever surrounded by characters in this place. Our most recently hired employee is a 5”1’ cute little fart named Casper with ADD. The boy cannot stop talking and barely even waits for your response when he asks a question. At least he acknowledges the problem. After giving him, what I thought, to be thorough instructions on how to clean the espresso machine, I assigned him the task of practicing the following day. He responded, “ Well too be honest Ashley, I don’t know how to do it because when you explained it to me yesterday I wasn’t listening at all.” Alright Casper, here we go again. Focus this time. Really though, who names their child Casper. Antz is my favorite. He is the 12 year old brother of Josh (one of the cooks) who comes in to work on Sundays to help in the kitchen and make Café Neve McMuffins for the locals. Half Maori with little brown freckles on his cheeks and a lovely sparkle in his eyes. He sings 80’s pop songs with me while we work and he emits enough pleasant innocence around the town to make up for the potty mouth, dirty minded hicks who make up most of the place.
It’s not a town I could spend a significant amount of time in, but for these couple of months it will be a grand time I think and have already met the kookiest and kindest Kiwis. As some of you may have known, I had broke my camera a few months back in Raglan and had been relying on Alex’s camera for pictures. But I have purchased a new camera last week and have pictures up again on my flickr account. So check out my new pics and take a look at the fish we caught!! Love.
