EPIBLOG

Five minutes ago I woke up from a dream. I was stepping off a plane and into the light drizzle of an unusually cool April evening in Seattle, thinking of a few of my favorite things.......

April 12: Cheers, mates!!

5am comes quickly, but I'm ready. Shower, then breakie. (Gotta admit that I did leave some last remnants of the foodbag in the "free food" bin at the hostel. The PB&J and bread issue is similar to the oreos and milk one; it's about impossible to run out together. Sometimes you simply have to walk away and say you tried.)
As the first rays of sun creep above the horizon over Cloudy Bay, I climb the tight steps into the 15 seat Air New Zealand prop plane bound for Auckland. My bike box is safely stowed beneath, I hope. It is 7deg(C) out and mist hangs over the local hills, hinting at another clear day of grape harvesting for the Marlborough region. The 2011 Sauvignon Blanc is safe; I sure hope my 2008 Mt. Difficulty Pinot Noir is; 25,000' air pressure will be a sure test for screw top Sprite bottles.

As the green vineyards fade into a green patchwork fade into verdent mountains I doze happily, and only awaken in time to see the last of the north island's Mt. Taranaki in the distance, standing defiant with it's new snow cap. Closing my eyes, I can still see the view from atop. Gosh, that was five weeks ago!

Gazing northward, the downtown towers of Auckland appear through the clouds and thoughts turn forward, to the future, and of being home.

Cheers mates, new and old!!

April 11: One final day at Watson's Way

The starlight from the Southern Cross poured in the bedroom window all night, and only the mating bugles of the resident stag broke an absolute silence of the cold morning in the Takaka valley. Breakie is filling (love those free range eggs) and Ivor explains hybridized coastal redwoods, engineered and grown in NZ by a local bigname grower. Could have talked all morning, there were a few topics we missed, but gotta get back. So, I never reached Golden Bay or Cape Farewell... Next trip.

In a few hours I'm back at Watson's Way doing final prep, for myself this time. The drive back was a flood of happy memories from the last weeks: of huntaway dogs manicly herding throngs of chubby, wooly sheep, of rows and rows of espalied grape vines hung with ripe fruit, of ponga silver ferns bending the bright sunlight, of endless days of postcard-worthy vistas and of smiling, friendly faces....

My bike box is finally sealed, and with a 600ml waterbottle full of a fine pinot noir strapped on, just in case. I've time for one last walk around the vineyards close to town and finish in the clear, cool autumn dusk. The automatic grape harvesting machine has just run several farms and I snatch handfulls of missed bunches; super sweet pinot gris and reisling grapes that leave my paws sticky and craw tingly. All around, grapes are being processed 24/7.

Final farewells to Pat and Paul, charismatic owners of Watson's Way, themselves world travellers.
One last pub stop, just to be sure. This night, I sit next to a rugby player as we watched a league game, and he volunteers every little detail and nuance of a game whose rules, til now, I had only been able to guess at. I can now leave the country informed and look oh so good next time a rugby game is shown on the flat screen at a Seattle pub... Can't wait.

No trash novels to keep me up late tonite, gotta catch an early flight.

April 10: takakahomestay@farmside.co.nz

Today is Rick's departure. I think he's out of calling card minutes and is looking forward to getting home before the Visa bill. We haul his bike box to the airport for early checkin. Weights of both boxes are 22.999 kg. Not even room to put on another piece of tape. Now, bike boxes are getting to be a sore spot for me. Airlines have agreed on nothing regarding bikes or other oversize baggage except for the weight maximum of 23 kg.. Each airline has different rules and fees, different phase in regulations for the invariable rule changes, and different degrees of flexibility. Plus, after you pay them the extra handling fees, your box is thrashed and treated like a piece of steak between two rotweilers. At this point, I'm just hoping to get all the parts home. Ugh!

At 12:30p, Rick walks thru the big sliding doors to Blenheim airport and is off. Me, I gas up and head west. 3pm in the afternoon sees me 200 km away, climbing Takaka Hill and entering Tasman province. I've been thru acres of fruit farms, and lots more than grapes: kiwifruit, apples, pears, hops, peaches and citrus. Here in the Nelson/Tasman area is a perfect growing region: abundant sunshine and rainfall and the needed combo of warmth and chill to be New Zealand's fruit basket.

Approaching Takaka, a farmstay sign catches my eye and I pull in. Ivor and Robyn Evans, recently NZ farm owners via UK, Tasmania and Melbourne, run a small, 40 acre farmstead, raising deer and cattle, and chickens, turkeys and pheasant. Bella, their fluffy and hefty herding dog, takes a liking to the smell of Brindilhound on my shoes and adopts me. Ivor, well informed on and having a thing for world politics and finance, presents some well oiled discussion on current events, with the viewpoint of questioning all before taking a practical stance.  We could have gone on all night, chatting such diverse topics as totara wood door restoration, the New World Order and the fair market value of deer velvet.

This evening's treat is maroon velvet sheets on a king sized bed, a rack befitting only a Spanish billionaire or me, prince for the night of the outbuilding at the Takaka Farmstay.

April 9: I got pregnant by a Spanish billionaire!

This morning, Gary found the "man purse of his dreams" after plowing through the deep pile at Blenheim's Goodwill. Every guy should have one, it's the latest...and black is always in. Rick and Gary tried the staple "sausage roll and black coffee" Kiwi breakfast, leading to immediate indigestion.
Bike's are disassembled and components and bags, tools and miscellaneous are fit into bike boxes, keeping gross weight under 23 kg. per. (Reason #78 why not to bring your own bike internationally).

We check out Cloudy Bay, Bouldevine and Grove Mill wineries for a last stop of tastings. My liver and kidneys are sure gonna be glad to leave this place!

Watson's Way is jammed tonite with what seems like 20 loud, fast talking German kids and our room is right off the lounge. But sitting at one end of the table, and happily crunching down on a grand crawfish carcass is Granny, an 83y.o. senior from Auckland, who we engage in polite conversation between bites of our pasta blowout and her rather pricey softshell. At an appropriate moment when the kitchen background noise approachs the hysterical pitch of youthful glee, Rick and I retreat to the limited library that all hostels seem to collect: out of date guidebooks, self help journals in odd languages, magazines on obscure topics like extreme bodybuilding and, of course, trash novels...

And there it is, my refuge for the night. Away from the hustle and noise of the young, I curl up with a well read copy of "I got pregnant by a Spanish billionaire" and start in on 186 pages of absolute rubbish, a journey thru adventure, conquest, betrayl and ultimately, a happy ending for Luiz and Nell...

April 8: Closing the circle

All that grog last night lent full meaning to the term "waking up groggy", and at 10am we finally assemble to walk Ferry Ave. in toward Christchurch Center, not knowing what to expect. Earthquake damage seems to have buckled parts of streets, the upper portion having been chopped away and replaced with gravel. Dips are common. At least the Ferry Ave. bakery is open, amidst many, many closed or boarded up buildings, some posted with the red notice of impending demolition.

Bhagoti is awake when we return and after fond farewells, we drive down to Dilip's restaurant for pictures and meet Raj there, one of the cooks and architect of our sumptuous feed last night. We get a tour of the kitchen, some secrets to south Indian cooking and a glass of spiced Chai, plus learn that he has been a resident of New Zealand for a few years and dreams of opening his very own restaurant. Go Raj!!

Inquisitive as we are, we drive to the port city of Lyttleton, 6 km away, which was the epicenter of the most recent earthquake. We weren't quite ready for what we saw. Nearly the entire downtown commercial district, all of brick and mortar, pre-WW2 age, was in major ruins. Nearly all buildings showed huge stress cracks, all windows shattered, with porticos and columns collapsed into piles of bricks and concrete. Entire blocks were fenced or bannered off limits. A stone church sat with its steeple lying on the sidewalk like someone whose hat had suddenly fallen at their feet. The downtown was eerily quiet except for isolated groups of tourists like us, come to see for themselves the reality that is ground zero of a major quake.

Sightseeing was much more pleasant this afternoon as we drive north for lunch in Kaikoura, then a stop to see the seals at Ohau Point, who were as lounging as ever amidst crashing breakers. Then back over Weld Pass, which Ellen and I had sweated over two times by bicycle, and down into the Wairau Valley and to Renwick and Watson's Way Hostel, from where we had started our journey 19 days ago.

Takeaway fish n' chips and a nice n' crisp bottle of Huia Winery Sauvignon Blanc 2010 end our day on the uptick.

April 7: No worries, hot curries (and grog)

You gotta worry when you are specially invited to a friend's own Indian restaurant for "hot" curries and lots of grog...
And it's how Rick and I find ourselves at dinner this evening at Indian Sumner, one of Dilip Singh's fabulous restaurants in Christchurch. Dilip's family and I go all the way back to 1982, when as a 25y.o. post-hippie yearning for the friendly skies, I spent 5 glorious summers in northern India running treks to the Himachal Pradesh Himalaya with Dilip's family. The long days at high elevation, basking in the alpine beauty of the Zaskar mountains, along with enthusiastic trekkers and a hard working group of Indian cooks and horsemen, are forever etched onto my adventure wall.

We were hungry and quite tired of driving as we crest Lewis Pass and descend once again to the flat Canterbury Plains. Last night had been very wild and windy, and the arrival of several Tasman storm fronts periodicly woke, and soothed us, thru the night. Conversation at the breakfast buffet centered on the nuclear vs. non-nuke energy issue, in light of the Japanese tsunami disaster. New Zealand is decidedly non-nuclear (check out the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor in the 1980's by French SS men).

We are greeted at Dilip's place by his nephew Bhagoti, as Dilip is now in India after his mom's recent passing. Our sleeping quarters are a lovely separate cottage and at 6:30pm we are freshened up and ready for eats. The roads over to Sumner and the restaurant are a disaster, all construction barriers and single lane and temporary, after severe buckling and liquifaction during the earthquake.
The restaurant's doors and bar area are of intricately carved wood brought from India and the chefs hail from Mombai (Bombay). And let's not forget the cobra facsimile faucet in the loo...
The magnificent dinner brought me back 25 years. Tandor delights: garlic naan and chicken tikki, plus lamb kebobs, aloo gobi, samosas, veggie briyani, and popadams with mint chutney, all washed down with lots of Kingfisher beer ... The chili heat was "Kiwi level", tho I suspect a bit more, just for the geezers. Thank you Dilip, for one of my best meals!!!