The Best Reason

After about three feet of backing the Blue Moon Lodge van and trailer up at Totara Flats along the Pelorus River, around about the point that I cut the wheel to the right and the trailer very nearly went in through my side window, I was struck with two thoughts. The first was a string of words that I won't put here, for decency's sake. The second, as I looked out on my self-made maelstrom in the midst of the families out for a Sunday afternoon swim and picnic, was that this would make a funny story as soon as I managed to get myself out of it.

After dropping a tour group off further up the river on Sunday afternoon, I was due to meet them in a few hours time at a point where the river collects in a decent swimming hole. Plenty of time for me to jump in, get soaked, and dry off on the rocks with a good book – once I got the damn trailer parked.

I did the only thing I could think of. I jumped out, went to the bro-ist looking dude I could find, and asked if he'd ever backed up with a trailer before. I hoped my Canadian accent would somehow forgive me, like the culture shock was somehow responsible for this catastrophe instead of ignorance. “Sure,” he said. “I'll teach you.”

So, with a Kiwi walking alongside the van and talking me through the motions, I brought it back neatly into a clearing in the woods, knowing the next time I'd try to replicate it I'd end up completely in the river somehow. 

Later that night, once I'd handed back the keys, myself and Shane went to a run-down sheep barn just outside of Havelock, which in hindsight would have been the perfect place to murder me, if he'd felt like it. Turns out he didn't – he buys used canola oil off of the fish and chips spots in the area, and keeps it out in here in drums, along with some methanol and powdery caustic soda. Again, he could probably have used this stuff to murder me, but instead he measures and mixes it to make biodiesel to run his vehicles instead of gasoline. Then he showed me the single-person plane he's just bought, pointed out the hills that he goes hang-gliding off, and told me how to hunt wild pigs, after which we had omelets made from an ostrich egg, which I had to crack by drilling a hole into either end with a power drill, put my lips tight against one opening, and blow the yolk and the rest of the crap right out the other end. Seriously.

Yesterday was the first real dose of rain I've seen since I've been in New Zealand – there were a few showers in Auckland the day I landed, but even then I could wear sunglasses most of the time. Yesterday though, the heavens opened up, and the sunny weather that's spoiled me was replaced by a bombardment of wet stuff. Shane had another tour group going out, and they were up for it in spite of the nasty weather, so myself and Asha (being his other half, hostel-owning-wise and life-wise) did the pick up routine, grabbing a coffee at a roadside cafe and swapping travel stories instead of swimming. It's funny how that becomes your norm when you immerse yourself in this tumbleweed lifestyle – conversations aren't so much about who you are back in “reality,” but the things that you've done and seen on the road. Every time I start to feel worldly, I'm reminded of (and maybe a bit overwhelmed by) all the other stuff that's out there. I think, though, that everyone has a bit of a duality to them, a push and pull between the domestic and the adventurous, and the key is to not get too stressed out about the way you're “supposed” to live your life, or the balance you “should” strike between the two – it's that you're happy with where you are, right here and right now. Yes, the idea of spending a month in Israel, living in a kibbutz, is pretty cool – but so too is watching the rain dance on the current of a crystal clear river in southern New Zealand. If you can't look around right now and just be happy, then what reason is possibly good enough for keeping you there?

Another thing I've noted is the real spectrum of people you meet in this revolving door kind of life. The fact that everyone is a long way from home, running into the same kind of challenges, mishaps, and victories is a cementing kind of thing, at least superficially. Still, there are those people who you just really get along with – like the English couple that's spending a few weeks here in Havelock, who don't need a particularly good reason to get a bottle of wine. He came in, said he liked Canadian music, and that ended up being a particularly good reason for getting a bottle of wine (Great Lake Swimmers was his go-to; I saw them play an acoustic show in a freakin' record store a few years ago, officially becoming cool in this foreign country).

There is also, of course, the other end – the people I don't get along with. I [naively] assume this list is pretty short in general, but I met a real dousy here in Havelock who has taught me to just grin and bear it. I feel like this counts as character building – oh, and it's also a proven good reason to get a bottle of wine.

Speaking of wine, this whole Marlborough region is known for its vineyards and wineries, the white Sauvignon Blanc being the defending champion. This weekend coming happens to be the Marlborough Wine & Food Festival in Blenheim, about half an hour from Havelock, incidentally. Anyway, the rain from yesterday changed to overcast this morning, and Shane was heading into Blenheim, so I grabbed a ride from him. My English duo had been in the area a few days prior, and spent some time actually exploring the wineries that dot the countryside just outside of town. Turns out that a bulk of them have a cellar door, which doesn't just happen to be the nicest sounding phrase in the English language – it's a place where wineries offer tastings of their wine, along with some explanations of what spices and flavours have gone into it, the process of producing it, and how high you should stick up your nose at the people whose wine purchasing method is a calibration of alcohol content and price.

So, I was told to go to Lawson's Dry Hills, which had a free, home-style cellar door about 10 minutes outside of town. I, of course, screwed that up, and an hour later was still walking towards Drylands winery. To be fair though, the walk along the Old Renwick Road, a vast country road where I had to move out of the way of more than one tractor, was really nice. There was a scant layer of snow on the distant mountains, the sun was shining, and I was surrounded by farmlands and vineyards. 

Almost to Drylands, I saw a sign for the cellar door to Rock Ferry, and decided the hell with Dry Hills or Drylands or Dry anything.

I ended up in the foyer of a restaurant, saying I was probably going to get a meal after I tried some wine (just like you might buy those crackers at Costco that you sample half a dozen times). You know how some things stick out like a sore thumb? Ok, pretend that your hand grows a fin, and that gets sore. That's kind of what I was like here, swirling my glass and making some indescribable noise of agreement whenever the woman next to me talked about the flavours she noticed in her glass. I left here a little sheepishly, happy to have been to a winery but, let's be real, I might as well have been trying to understand Inception in Korean with no subtitles.

So, now I had to get back to Havelock. That's the other part of the equation – because no matter how sunny and scenic the countryside between it and Blenheim might be, I didn't really want to walk 30 km of it. So, I stuck my thumb up and walked backwards whenever a car went by.

The first car, the Russian woman who worked in a mussel factory, took me as far as the mussel factory, which was just a little farther down the road. The guy who ran Dog Point Winery took me as far as Renwick, at which point I ended up outside of a little family-run boutique winery, Gibson Bridge, and saw that their little cellar door had racked up some hefty accolades in just a few short years.

So I shrugged my shoulders and said why not, and with two women from London who were on a wine tour of their own (and clearly not just swishing it around in their mouths and spitting it out into a spittoon) I tried another half dozen wines. I was less awkward here (maybe because I paid something, but more likely because I'd been drinking wine), and actually learned a little something about their Pinot Gris and the difference between dry and sweet by asking those dreaded “stupid questions.” 

The best part was how unpretentious this one was; yes, we cleared out palates with crackers, but when I asked how you were supposed to drink it, she gave me some tips on getting the aromas, but that it really is up to you to just enjoy it. Oh, and pairings with food? Just drink the wine you like. It's better that way. We ended our tasting with a Sweet 16 dessert wine, which uncultured me had never imagined existed before (and unemployed me could never really afford).

Thumb back up, and a guy transporting milk brought me right to the Blue Moon Lodge (and said that if he didn't have the next four days off, he'd pick me up tomorrow and take me to some of the cool spots along the coast he recommended as must-sees), where it was time to actually earn my keep by patching up an inflatable kayak and playing hide and seek with a four-year-old.

There are, of course, worse things in the world. I'll have to bring that up soon – that's a real good reason to get a bottle of wine.

Cheers,

rb

P.S. Speaking of good reasons, for no good reason, I'm only just now uploading all of my travel pictures to Facebook. All the ones from the blog, plus a couple hundred others, are here.