I woke up this morning and I knew the sun was shining before I even drew my curtains. It was one of my days off from work and since it rains in Fox A LOT, I deemed myself more than lucky. I don’t know why the thought came over me but I thought to myself while laying in bed and the sun shining through the windows, “Today is a great day for a skydive.” Do I know what skydiving is like? No. But one would assume that a day like today would be great for such an activity. Up I got at the wee hour of 8am and marched up the street to where my skydiving friends work. They were almost as excited as I was for me to go skydiving when I showed up to book myself in. They drink my coffee everyday and the least they could do they said was give me the ride of my life and with a generous local discount.
I was to fly at 2:30pm so I still had the whole morning to kill. I treated myself to eggs benedict and smoked salmon for breakfast while basking in the sun and reading the Greymouth Star. My excitement was building up and I had to do something to vent it. So I drove down to Gillespie’s Beach to view the surf and play in the sand, cursing the tourists that drove in front of me going 25 the whole time. I then realized I was damning the tourist drivers just as much as the Kiwis do. Besides this realization, I have noticed other little things that show that I have assimilated nicely into the Kiwi way of life. For example the phrases and words I use. I can’t even recall if I’ve said them before being in NZ. Hell, even before being in Fox. I know now why I’ve been enjoying this small town so much, is because it’s the first place I’ve got a real dose of Kiwi. The first 8 months of my travels have been great and educational no doubt, but when I think about it, most of the people I met were from other countries. The actual Kiwi friends I had made before Fox were countable on 2 hands. Here in Fox, the traveler is definitely the minority and it’s been a blast living amongst some true Kiwi culture.
Supper is called tea. The trunk of the car is the boot. The parking lot is the carpark. To chug a drink is to skull it. To makeout with someone is to snog or pash. Getting drunk is getting on the piss. Making fun of someone is taking the piss out of. Pouring rain is pissing down. They love the word piss here. When something is awesome it’s “sweet as bro” or “good as.” Enter any adjective here followed by “as” and you have a Kiwi response. “How was work today?”
“Busy as.”
Another thing these oh so lovely Kiwi’s say is something us Canadians are familiar with. Eh. They even say it more than we do and use it in different contexts. They spell their eh, like “ay.” And then there is also “Oy!” This is my favorite of the Kiwi expressions. This one single sound, often shouted, “OY!” can be used when referring to a person you are trying to get the attention of, or simply enough as asking someone to repeat what they just said: “Oy?” It covers all grounds. What I mean to say in all of this Kiwi lingo, is that I feel that I have been here long enough that I don’t know what is Kiwi and what is Canadian. All these once-were-oddities now just feel normal for me to say and do and I can’t recall if I knew these things before I got here or if it was something I’ve just become accustomed to. It’s been embedded in my brain and it’s a pretty cool feeling.
As I’m walking back towards the skydive center to suit up for my jump, I notice a tourist taking a picture of a random SUV parked in the hotel carpark. “Friggin’ Asians” I instantly think in my head, “taking god damn pictures of everything.” But walking past it I notice two freshly hunted deer tied to front of the vehicle. Fair enough Asian, you have good reason to take a picture. Hunting is big here in this part of the world. Granted they don’t have much diversity in things to hunt but there is enough wild deer around to keep them all entertained. But it’s not just about entertainment. Killing a deer, or a chamios, or a tahr is a great achievement and often is what feeds the family, especially here on the West coast of the South Island. It wasn’t until the other night when I realized the importance and privilege of it all. A friend had recently shot a deer about a week ago and I got the opportunity to taste my first wild deer steak. Adam, his wife Julie and their cute little baby Niaomi brought over fresh venison steaks for BBQ purposes only. I have never ever ever tasted meat this good. As Julie stated, there is no fear in this meat. The hormones are completely different in a wild animal as they are in a farmed animal, and by jeeze can you taste it. The flavor and the texture was to die for and I can now understand why hunting these animals is such a way of life.
At this point it still hadn’t sunk in that I was to be jumping out of a plane at 12,000 feet. I decided to let that nervousness come as I sat in the plane. I suited up in my orange and black jumpsuit and was strapped in by my tandem instructor to my proper harnesses. It was a 45second freefall and we went over the procedure from the plane door being opened to the landing. Easy as. It wasn’t till I sat in the tiny little plane, ready for take off that the butterflies appeared in my stomach. Anyone who skydives for the first time must go through this same feeling of, “Why the fuck am I about to throw myself from a moving airplane 12,000 feet above the ground?” The feeling is just so unnatural that it makes no sense until you are actually ejected from the plane. I got the seat next to the pilot right next to the glass door and we spent the first 15 minutes doing a scenic flight over through the mountains, viewing the Fox Glacier and Mt.Cook up close and personal. Then I was told to put my goggles and hat on and that we would be jumping in 5 minutes. It’s like a panic, but a good panic knowing you are in good, professional hands.
SWOOSH! The door beside me opens and I am one-on-one with ice cold mountain air. My legs swing outside of the plane and we hold to take a few pictures then we jump out doing a front flip. The feeling is quite incredible as you are flying, well falling, but you are moving in three dimensions and it is such an uncommon feeling for your body to experience for such a length of time. I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing the whole time that my mouth kept filling up with cold air and my god was it frigid. But those 45 seconds seemed to last for minutes as we spun around looking at the horizon at all 360 degrees. Amazing. Then out went the parachute and we floated. After such a an adrenaline rush, the float to the ground is quite therapeutic. My head was buzzing and we cruised above the sheep paddocks which looked like one big green quilt with white speckles. The landing was smoother than I was expecting and I stood up feeling stoned. And I continued to feel stoned for the next few hours. Just awesome.
My time here in Fox is almost up before I finish up my South Island travels. I will be taking a few weeks to travel the Milford Sounds, Stewart Island and the Catlins and anywhere else I end up and think I will return for a week back to Fox Glacier for Christmas, where I have friends to spend it with. Still I can’t believe it that once Christmas is over I have one month left this country. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I have been gone as long as I have. This voyage is feeling like the first of many to come.
