Having a Look Past Havelock

I grew up in a small town, so I get it. I like the pace of a lot of cities, and the way you can kind of just blend in to this fast-paced chunk of the world while still having your own domain within it, but I don't start panicking if I get dropped into a spot where the only grocery store closes at 7:00 and if you want a greasy burger at 2:00 in the morning, your best bet is to put on your darkest clothes and sneak onto the cow field down the road. For me, Havelock is a great place to come and hang out for a little while, but after seeing the glowworms three times now, going to the local pub on a Friday night (with a midnight last call – is Lotties even on the go by then?), and swimming in the Pelorus River a handful of times, it's not totally unreasonable to want to sneak out of this little valley.

Fortunately, that's not that hard. The only direction is up.

Shane is the kind of guy who's impulsive – he gets an idea or an opportunity, and everything else gets dropped (or at least laid down in a rushed fashion). And it's not normal stuff, like, “Oh, I should really fix that gutter,” it's more like, “I've got the morning free, I'm going scuba-diving with my buddy and spearing a kingfish.”

I was holding a sign in place for him when the phone at his hip rang, and next thing he's telling me to hurry up, because we're going hang-gliding.

Let me clarify, before you start thinking I'm unduly cool – I never actually went up in the hang-glider. He brought three of us no-goods – myself and my English compadres Jennie and Ed – up through a farmer's field and along a rickety sheep path, climbing and climbing and climbing to the top of this flat bluff overlooking the whole valley. As he set up his hang-glider, reinforcing the wings and setting the harness in place, his van basically looked like the closing shot of every cool SUV commercial.

So, we went to the side of the hill, looking out over a sheer drop, and watched him walk out, check the wind on a fluttering flag along the edge, and just jump with these massive wings on his back. He circled around a bit, caught in some winds, before hitching a ride on a thermal updraft and shooting up above our heads. Pretty soon, he was up in the clouds (that's legally as high as you can go here), headed for the mountains and becoming a speck, like an eagle a long ways off. He kept afloat for some three hours, which is a pretty freaking long time to just be flying on the wind with no engines or thrust. Shane told us that, of all the things that he does, nothing compares to the feeling of awesome independence that you get from flight.

 

And then there were three. We had to get back by a way that was less scenic, but probably as big an adrenaline rush – the winding sheep path skirted the edges of the hillside as it went about its swerving deathtrap course, and I was the unlucky one best suited for manoeuvring an automatic. I'm convinced that trying to pass another car along the Yungas Road in Bolivia would be safer than this.

A German girl showed up that day to start working, and we got her into the routine the right way, by taking a trip to Blenheim to get some groceries and to visit some [more] wineries. Lawson's Dry Hills was a nice, family-run spot (we each got a bottle, and it was good stuff, but we still made a promise that we were doing the rest of this wine tasting business for free), and driving between rows and rows of vineyards, we may have scrumped a cluster of tiny wine grapes. Or two. That, and stopping at a chocolate factory on the road, caused us to show up at Wairau River just around closing time, so we basically got a few sips and, when it was obvious that we weren't reaching for our wallets, we got politely pointed towards the door.

It's around this point that Tommy from Connecticut shows up, and just as the last call was being made at the Havelock Hotel Bar, he and our German gal announce that they're ditching town that night and making for a place that's actually called Golden Bay. In between wondering if we should plead ignorance to the hostel owners in the morning (the two ended up writing a note saying they were madly in love and eloping, so the onus was off us ones left in their wake), we couldn't help but think how cool that was. At some point during our busy morning (three doing the work of five, do the math), Ed just stopped and pointed out how the whole fiasco was basically a Bon Jovi song. I hope those crazy kids made it ok.

Not surprisingly, the next day was hectic – all the rooms were checking out and, with a full house expected for that night, there was a lot of sheet changing and washing to be done. It was the early afternoon by the time we were done, just in time to transport some kayakers down the river. The thief in the night approach didn't seem so cool anymore, and we were all feeling worn down and frustrated – until Shane brought us some homemade whisky, a bottle of red wine, and sausage casserole as thanks for a very trying day.

Thankfully, this morning was less of a circus, and by lunchtime we were given a chance to relax. The other evening, I took one of the seen-better-days bicycles through town, to a crab apple tree by the side of the road, and filled up my bag; since then, I've been itching to get back on it and go for a decent ride.

It turns out that riding a bike isn't just like a riding a bike. I mean, ok, I remember how to keep my balance and steer and stuff, but there are certain muscles in your legs that you use when you have to bike up hill, and if you haven't been on one since you were sixteen and spent the last few years of your life studying literature, those muscles don't get a lot of practice. I can't pinpoint which ones do all the pumping, but I have a good feeling that, come the morning, I'll know exactly what part of my body I beat to a living snot this afternoon.

It started out easy, my route hooking out of the town via the Queen Charlotte Drive that loops on to Picton, the scenic route alongside the Pelorus Sound. I started to climb up to Cullen Point – and, as I reacquainted myself with switching gears, quickly understood why Lance Armstrong was doped up on just about everything. Can someone please explain how mountain biking is a thing? If you've ever driven through Gros Morne Park back home, you know what the roads are like: steep and winding, and the stretches never get particularly easy, just less hard. That's what this track was like – it felt like it would never end, and I could still see Havelock.

For better or for worse, I'm stubborn. Stopping a few times to pick some berries on the side of the road or to wheel my bike along the unfairly steep sections, I crested the point and came to a downward section. I had about two minutes of liberation, the bike happily carrying me back to the level and the wind blowing through my hair, before I got struck with a thought: I have to go back up this if I'm going to get back to the Blue Moon Lodge.

That was a problem for the future. For now, I was along a sunny level stretch through farmland leading into Linkwater, where I left the Queen Charlotte Drive and went along the Kenepuru Road. And started to go back up.

 

After a while, the roads started looking the same: up, winding, down, winding. Every time I wasn't hunched over my handlebars, thinking about throwing up and feeling sweat trickle into my eyeballs and not having the resolve to wipe it away, it was a pretty spectacular trek. There was next to no traffic on the road, and on the open stretches, it was just you and the wide world. The sounds opened up as I got further along the coast, blue-green waters and grassy hillsides everywhere. There are lots of summer houses in these little inlets, a bunch of them only accessible by the mail boat or water taxi – looking around, it's not hard to see why someone would want to lose time in themselves here, away from the traffic and stress of the outside world and in their own little nook that nobody can touch.

 

Just don't rely on a bicycle for the commute. Although, if you do, if you really push yourself to get there, it's worth it.

 

After I made it to the inner edge of the Mahau Sound, I had been gone for over two and a half hours, which meant at least two and a half more hours to get back – assuming I still had the vigour I did after eating lunch. The water bottle I brought was nearly empty, and after I devoured the only food I brought, a handful of crab apples, my mouth stung with a dry, acidic aftertaste.

I don't want to sound melodramatic, but I kind of thought I was going to die. So I figured I should probably think about heading back about now.

If hokey pokey ice cream and Tim Tams weren't so good, I'd probably end up getting into shape down here. After I'd been back up and down a few more of these never-ending fishtail summits, I was pretty sure I was going to die. And then, somewhere before Linkwater, a car slowed down.

“D'you want a lift back to hostel?”

So, I guess I died somewhere on the Kenepuru Road, and the Lord God Almighty was whispering my greatest desire directly in my ear. Matt, a Blue Moon guest from London, had been taking the scenic route in a rental car, and had spotted me earlier in the morning. “I wasn't sure if you were going to say yes, or if you'd want to go the whole way.”

I hope the look I gave back conveyed that, if my bike hadn't fit into his trunk, I was leaving it right the hell there in the middle of the road with literally no second thoughts.

When I made it back, lay down on a reclining chair on the deck with a Speight's Summit beer, and looked back over the wicked 35 km that I had managed to cycle, I felt like it was all worth it. Maybe even fun.

When we pan fried some fresh kingfish, I was pretty well convinced.

Sometimes you have to escape, but I'm pretty glad right now that I'm spending a quiet night here in town – and an early one, at that. I've been busy making other arrangements too – by the end of the week, I'll be at a cherry and garden estate outside of Blenheim, working for food and board and sleeping in a caravan.

Continuing my path through the South Island, simultaneously figuring out just what that path is. If it's anything like the one today, I'll probably try to borrow a hang-glider.

Cheers,

rb