The One Daycare Reunion

“So are you excited to see your mate?” Nicky asks me.

With an ear-to-ear grin I excitedly respond with an affirmative, “Yes!” After pausing for a moment the smile fades and I ask, “Why do the addresses run from 446 then jump to 450? Where the heck is Spencer’s house?”

We had been driving for 25 minutes up and down and around every major road in Albany (a small suburb of the nations biggest city Auckland) in search of Spencer’s apartment complex. I had never met the kid officially, but he was seriously dating my longtime friend Brianna and she had flown over for a visit during his semester abroad. It took us another drive-by before Nicky asked incredulously, “That can’t possibly be it there? That tiny tiny sign and hidden driveway that you can only see coming from this direction? There’s not even a turning lane for it!” No wonder we had passed the place two or three times…

Hopping barefoot out of the van, I walked toward apartment #26. My knock was promptly followed by footsteps and Brianna opening the door. It was an incredibly surreal moment seeing someone I’ve known since the diaper days standing in front of me in a country on the other side of the world

“HI!!!” We both exclaimed between hugs. I introduced Brianna to my travel buddy Nicky and then got down to business. “I’m sure you can smell us, can I be really cheecky and ask for a shower before we head out?” Brianna obliged.

A glorious shower and three surprise packets of Good N Plenty candy later, (Brianna you absolutely ROCK for bringing those for me!) we were on our way. Leaving the city behind us after a brief lunch and shopping spree, we drove toward the beautiful Coromandal Peninsula whilst Brianna filled me in on rapid-fire questions about home. Farm country began blending with mountainsides and peaks of ocean bays the further we drove.

By early evening we pulled into a beachside campsite (that was shockingly not a total rip-off). After setting up camp, we headed to the beach for some chill time and to watch the sunset. I hounded Nicky about not spending the whole time collecting shells (if there were an actual occupation for beach-shell collecting, Nicky would be a highly sought after professional) and instead we had an impromptu photo shoot. Amidst a beautiful sunset we waded out a hundred yards into the shallow receding waters to take it all in. A delicious veggie dinner preceded a night of drinking games with a rather hilarious couple from Auckland.

Brianna, ever the responsible one, sat and watched most of the night while the rest of us proceeded to drink ourselves into a guarantee hangover. Sleep came quick and morning came even faster. By dawn we were up busying ourselves with apple-cinnamon pancakes and tea. After breakfast we packed up and headed out for the rest of our short adventure.

Winding roads did not help our hangover cause, as Nicky and I complained relentlessly and Brianna probably had a good inner laugh at our expense. We arrived mid-afternoon at the trailhead to Cathedral Cove just as everyone began to perk up. A half-hour hike, including Brianna and I relentlessly gabbing about Chico (poor Nicky), brought us to a beach of fine white sand and crystal blue aqua waters. Amongst it all jutted dramatic rock formations and cliffs with haphazard groups of sunbathing tourists.

Nicky and I swam, Brianna waded, and we all marinated in the warm sun. An excursion through the hollowed archway brought us through to another beach where, while casually walking, a black blob in the water caught our attention. Upon closer inspection we realized it was a huge stingray! The graceful creature glided toward us, as if to say hello and show off for our rapidly clicking cameras, before heading back out to sea. We all stood smiling and practically dumbfounded by our luck! What a special moment to see such a beautiful animal in its natural environment.

Tanned and tired we headed back to the car for our trek back to the city. As if we hadn’t beaten the subject to death already, Brianna and I passed three more hours talking about home, daycare, and high school dramas. I soaked up every word. After a Herculean effort to get gas and find our way back to the freeway (whatever madman thought up Auckland’s street system should move to Chico and have to share a jail cell with the creators of Walmart’s parking lot) we made it back to Spencer’s pad. All three of us were exhausted and could barely keep our eyes open.

An early night to bed followed by another early morning brought my daycare reunion to an end. Hugging Brianna and thanking Spencer for his wonderful hospitality, we grudgingly bid farewell. The childhood reunion had been brief, but had me dealing with a fresh wave of homesickness. Brianna’s lovable nature and jovial stories reminded me of how incredible so many of my friends and family back at home are. She was a near perfect ambassador for everything I missed and craved from home and her visit, along with meeting Spencer, will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of my travels in this faraway place.

Thanks Bree.

-Ashley

Fun Fact: A little lesson in Kiwi pronunciation (or Maori technically). The combination wh makes the "fa" sound whilst r's are rolled (whenever you pronounce an "r" make a "d" sound instead). So try pronouncing city names like Whangerei, Wharekauri, and Whakatane. Freaking hard right? No wonder they all think the tourists sound like idiots. 

The One Where Freedom Camping Isn't "Free"

Forty bucks will buy you a patch in the grass, a kitchen with no pots, pans, utensils, cups, plates, or bowls, a stove with one setting (burn everything), a refrigerator that you can unlock with a $2 coin, dish soap that you sheepishly borrow from a high school kid, showers that will put you another $2-5 in debt, internet access (for an extra $12 an hour), bathrooms impossibly far from your sleeping quarters, and a bunch of screaming kids. Sounds appealing right?

With “freedom camping” increasingly becoming a problem with the locals around New Zealand, my friend Nicky and I decided tonight to be polite law-abiding tourists and pay for a campsite in the small surf city of Raglan rather than quietly slipping to the side of the road and bedding down for the night. Normally we would park somewhere unobtrusive, cook dinner in the back of the van, find a public toilet to do our business, be in bed around eight, and be quietly asleep by nine. In the morning we pack up our things (sometimes taking other people’s discarded trash with us) and head out for a cuppa and some shopping. So how do we get acknowledged for our low-impact sleeping and economy boosting spending? Threats of a $200 fine and a big ‘get the hell out and don’t come back’. It’s almost worth it when compared to absurdly priced “camp sites” up the road.

It is understandable that locals have become frustrated with campers parking on private property, ditching rubbish, and leaving behind appalling poo poo’s (and the accompanying toilet paper)… and I can easily see why freedom camping is losing support. But not every Yank in a van is going to live up to the stereotype that a handful of tourists have unfortunately given the rest of us. I really don’t understand how someone can have the mentality of ‘lets head to this beautiful country and give the locals a big thanks by chucking out our garbage on the side of the road and taking a big crap next to that lovely tree’. What’s even more atrocious: meeting those tourist and watching first-hand how they toss aside their plastic packaging and beer can along with their cigarette butts. Their response when confronted? Generally a shrug and a helpful reassurance that ‘Someone will pick it up’ or that, ‘we’re leaving so it doesn’t really matter’.

Excuse me while I puke.

If someone can shed light on this mentality (in today’s age when we have constant reminders of our carbon footprint etc) please e-mail me! So while I hate to disrespect the people and government of this stunning country – I equally cannot subject myself to being ripped off of forty hard-earned dollars for a ‘proper’ campsite. So RESPONSIBLE freedom camping – here we come!

-Ashley

Fun Fact: Want to check out with your own eyes how adorable Raglan is? Rent the movie The Endless Summer, shot on location in the tiny New Zealand town amongst its’ world-class surf. 

The One Weekend of Trying New Things

One. Two. Three. Where the hell is my rescue??? Four. Is that a kayak? No, damn…it’s a rock! Five. Six. Don’t panic… Seven. Was that a bump? Eight. Oh my God! Kayak! Grab it! Nine. My lungs are exploding; take a breath…CRAP that was only water! Ten. Drown or swim? Screw it. I’m swimming.

There is a saying when one comes close to death that goes something like, “your life flashes before your eyes”; well, I wasn’t exactly close to death, but my life was definitely flashing before my eyes. Ten seconds is a relatively short time to hold your breath, but when you are upside down emerged in freezing water, drifting into rocks with half your body uselessly lodged into a piece of plastic, ten seconds is a very very long time. Here I was, not twenty minutes into my first trip kayaking down a river and already I had flipped on a pathetically calm rapid. Yanking my legs from the overturned kayak, I shot toward the surface with wild and panicked determination. Gasping for air in between heaving coughs of water, I felt myself being pulled by my lifejacket onto the bow of an instructors kayak.

“Had a nice swim did we?”

Cough. “Ye-,” cough “-s”.

“Told you not to lean away from the rocks”

Cough. “I’ll definitely,” cough, cough, “remember that now.”

Two weeks ago I had no intentions of learning how to whitewater kayak in the next…maybe ever. But when a cheery Kiwi university student gives a completely random invite to go on a practically free three-day whitewater adventure, it would be stupid to pass up such an opportunity. So here I was, sputtering and shivering half submerged in the Mohaka River trying to figure out how the heck I was supposed to get back in the kayak.

One of my Instructors on an earlier trip. 

Luckily I was surrounded by several very helpful and experienced instructors including CJ (Canadian Jen), Obi, and Magnum (a slightly serious but very fun older gentleman). CJ held my paddle while Obi emptied the water out of my boat. Finally Mag steadied me while I wedged my legs back into place and unsteadily tested my balance. Within a few minutes we were headed downriver again and maneuvering through one set of rapids after another. Three more swims and two t-rescues (when a kayaker flips and uses another kayak to upright themselves) later, I had completed the day’s run. Cold, wet, hungry, and exhausted, I wouldn’t exactly say I was thrilled at the idea of two more days on the river.

We managed to pack 10 people into Pip before shuttling back to camp where food, dry clothes, and a warm fire awaited us. Night fell as the haphazard members and friends of the Auckland University Canoe Club (AUCC) gathered around a massive bonfire. A giant redhead aptly nicknamed Big Red was quick to consume his drinks and begin the first of many songs of the night. Half playing his beloved didgeridoo and half singing, Big Red led all 60 of us in enthusiastic choruses of The Lion King’s Circle of Life and the crowd-favorite Hakuna Matata. I found it enormously entertaining to be singing Disney songs alongside several dozen full-fledged (and slightly if not incredibly drunk) adults!

Day two was apparently not meant to be a river-day. Outnumbered by club-members, my friend Caroline and myself were ousted out of our spots on the raft to run a grade 3 section of the river. Instead, we drove out of the mountains and toward the ocean for a relaxing day at the beach. My first real attempt at surfing was humorous if anything, and a rugby-related shoulder injury kept me from being able to paddle the waves for very long. After six or seven goes at catching a wave (followed by as many wipeouts) I called it a day and made my way to shore. Swapping a surfboard for driftwood, I began indulging in a favorite childhood past time and built a sweet beach fort!

By evening we were back at camp and had just settled in when a random girl came running toward us. She worriedly asked if we had cell phone reception before explaining that she needed to call 111 (the equivalent of 911) because one of the AUCC guys was really sick. I jumped up to follow her back toward the tents along with a fairly new kayak instructor named Ellie. We approached as light was fading and found a young man shivering and in a state of fevered delirium. Apparently the girl had just happened by the tent and heard the guy moaning. One look and it was obvious the poor kid was not in good shape. I quickly assessed his condition by asking him as many relevant questions as I could think of, while just feeling his forehead was enough to know he had a very high fever.  Ellie was careful to get very specific responses before grabbing someone and jetting off in a car to find cell phone reception.

In the 45 minutes it took Ellie to make the phone call, we had already begun moving Omar (in fear that his appendix had burst) onto a board in preparation of loading him into my van. The hospital was over an hour away and we had no idea if anyone had been able to make a phone call. As we were just about to move him, word reached us that the ambulance was on its way so we covered Omar in blankets, got him to drink a little water, and waited. The ambulance arrived nearly three hours into the ordeal. Omar was loaded in and driven away. Within minutes of his departure it was as if nothing had happened and everyone began gathering for dinner and the nights unruly festivities. *Omar is still in the hospital with a virus or something but will be okay.

Morning came quickly on Easter Sunday and soon the lot of us, sleepy and now on our third day of showerless camping, began readying ourselves for yet another day on the river. Once arranged into kayaking and rafting groups, the newbies (including myself) were sent on a frenzied Easter hunt for a chocolate rabbit amongst the beached kayaks. I came up short of a chocolate treat but was rewarded with a bag of Goon (the inside container of boxed wine) to drink on the river instead. Because there weren’t enough instructors (most had left earlier to kayak a gnarly Grade 4 section of the river) seven of us were put into a raft with Obi as our guide. Obi, not happy to be guiding a raft down a measly Grade 2 river, brought with him chips, beer, and magazines and situated himself smack in the middle of the raft.

“Who’s rafted before?”

Three of us raised our hands.

“Alright, you” (pointing at a clueless looking shaggy-haired freshman) “you are guiding us first. If the boat starts going out of control I’ll tell you what to do.”

And that’s how the raft went down the river on Easter Sunday.

Perfectly content to sit on the raft and chill down the river all day, my time on the boat was short-lived. While bumping our way down the first rapid, we noticed a group of kayakers on the side of the river with several standing on the shore. Once we got close enough, the instructor Victoria cheerfully asked for a volunteer to kayak in place of a girl who had spent the last ten minutes swirling around half-drowning in an eddy. No one looked very interested so I took a big swig of Goon, high-fived Obi, and jumped into the water.

Day two on the kayak was phenomenal. The girl who I switched with had a kayak that was a hundred times easier to stay upright in than the topsy-turvy contraption I had paddled two days before. I smashed through the rapids and was able to maneuver around obstacles without fear of rolling with every splash. Only swimming once (I rolled trying to avoid another kayaker who had already flipped) my second attempt left me wanting more. Once back at camp, buzzing from the excitement of a successful day on the river, I noticed a girl named Lou walking by her motorcycles.

“Hey Lou! Can I try riding one of those?”

“Hell ya girlfriend!”

Sweet as.

I somehow managed to get the dirt bike started on my first attempt, into gear on my first attempt, and took off in an attempt to brake. I got the bike to stop but didn’t realize how heavy it was and found myself leaping over the handlebars as the bike fell to its side. Laughing, Lou ran over to help me upright it before I jumped back on and started the process over. This time I was able to stop and go several yards before Lou shouted at me to let ‘er rip. I did! Much to the annoyance of other campers, I zoomed up and down the campsite testing my speed with each pass. It was brilliant! I got hooked to the adrenaline rush before I even got off the bike; it was like mountain biking without all the effort!

What an epic weekend of firsts…Now I just have to figure out how to do it all again!