This morning marks only the fourth day of being on the road, but the past three days have already taught us a number of valuable lessons:
1. Never Gasp for Breath While Gazing Out to Sea (Turn Your Back on the Waves)
Saturday and Sunday nights, we camped at Taputaputa Bay, just south of Cape Reinga (the northern tip of New Zealand.) Another lesson could be, “Always choose the campground with the biggest waves.” We set up our tent with a couple dozen others on a stretch of grass looking out across a swath of white beach, with bright green bluffs and cliffs on either side and a roaring surf.
These were the biggest waves I have EVER swum in, and I’ve been in some biggies. Our estimates are probably biased (when a wave is spinning you around like a small piece of driftwood, it seems impossibly huge) but they were probably somewhere between 5’ and 8’ waves; people were actually surfing on them. It’s deliciously scary to see a wall of water that’s much higher than your head moving toward you in the surf. We spent a couple hours both days happily getting pummeled. Of course, we occasionally got slammed into the sandy bottom, or swallowed a big mouthful of seawater (hence our lesson learned), but we made sure never to go out deeper than waist-high.
2. Sea Water is No Good for Making Pasta
We cooked our first dinner in a pot of fresh sea water and it tasted horrible. It was so salty it made my throat hurt. There was also the unfortunate side effect of a crunchiness that pasta salad should not possess.
Luckily, as we were forlornly trying to down it on the picnic table, next to our mini tent and my little one burner propane stove (everyone else had these behemoth tent-houses and big portable grills) a small Asian woman came over and offered us fried rice. At first we kind of thought it was a joke, or a strange sales tactic, but turns out she had a leftover pot of homemade fried rice, and we must have looked pitiful enough to warrant it. It was delicious.
3. While Sandboarding, Keep Your Arms in Tight
Sunday afternoon, we rented two sandboards from a little petrol station and spent a couple hours exploring and sandboarding down the Giant Te Paki Sand Dunes on Ninety Mile Beach. It felt like we were in an endless desert or, even more, on the set of Star Wars on some distant planet.
Zooming down the dunes was pretty awesome, but I did have a magnificent roll towards the bottom when I stuck out my arm in a misaligned theory that I might guide my board and sent myself into an impressive triple barrel roll. I’m still rubbing sand out of my ears.
I could probably come up with some lesson learned from our excursion to Cape Reinga, where we saw the meeting of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean (you can actually see an outstretching line of waves colliding) and ate beans on bread, or from my short solo hike from Cape Reinga back to our campsite (a beautiful coastal stretch that was supposed to take 2.5 hours and took me one – haHA!) There are lessons to be learned from sitting on the beach under a full moon and watching the waves after dark - or from sleeping in a three-man tent with four people and five hundred mosquitoes.
But the most important lesson we’ve learned so far is:
4. If You’re Going on a Really Long Road Trip, Make Sure You Have a Decent Car; and for God’s Sake, Change the Coolant if it’s Brown
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
Driving away from Cape Reinga yesterday morning, our little Toyota Corona (we have named him Achilles) started to make a horrible rattling noise. It sounded painful when you turned Achilles on, like we were slowly torturing him by allowing him to run. We cringed for twenty straight minutes until we hit the first petrol station, with the idea of pouring in some more oil; we were pretty low. Naturally, they had sold out of oil, so we struck on. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of nowhere with no garage, no mechanic, and so we decided to keep on and pull over at the nearest service station.
But two km later, the car sounded so painfully, loudly BAD that we pulled over, across the road from a small emu farm (I am not making this up.) When Steven popped the hood, a cloud of smoke rose out. We discovered a river of brown coolant merrily escaping from underneath the car. Achilles had been hit by the proverbial arrow, and we were in the middle of nowhere.
Over the next couple of hours, several events occurred: We discovered we had no cell phone coverage. Steven hitched a ride back up to the petrol station, where he called AA (the Automobile Association, of course) and the nearest garage to find out about towing. Meanwhile, the guy who lived on the farm across the street from where Achilles had fallen came home and drove over to check us out. He turned out to be a friendly, elderly South African who looked under the hood and proclaimed the problem to be our water pump; after which, he allowed us to feed his emus. (Emus are some scary creatures, lemme tell you – but they love bread.)
When Steven returned, he told us the cheapest option was to join the AA ($195 for a membership) and then immediately ask for a tow. However he hadn’t been able to do this over the phone because he doesn’t have a credit card – so we crossed the road and walked up to our new South African friend’s house, where he let us use his phone – AND hand feed his adorable calves. (Seriously, at this point for me it was basically worth the hassle.)
A few card games later, an enormous flat-bed truck arrived; we winched Achilles aboard, and Steven and Jamie went in the cab with the big Maori driver, while Jen and I sat in our car on the truck’s back. It was very bumpy and illegal up there, but an exciting experience. We got dropped off at the nearest garage – forty km further south, in the depressing small town of Hohoura. The mechanic offered us a sunny patch of grass next to the highway to camp on, quoted a staggeringly high estimate, and said it MIGHT be done tomorrow. Just as we were despairing, a small man waltzed over and offered us a tow to Kaitaia, the next reasonably sized city. “This guy looks like he’s about to rip the sh!# out of you,” he said. “Anyway, there’s a couple of us traveling together, we’re all helping each other out.”
So, two minutes later, we were hooking up our Corona to a muddy Jeep with a ROPE; albeit a thick rope, but rope nonetheless. The Jeep JUMPED the car he was traveling with so we could all get on the road, and we rolled out. Steven put the car in neutral and braked and steered; the rest of us sat in the Corona around him, marveling at the situation.
We made it to Kaitaia basically problem-free, and Brett, the Jeep man, dropped us off right in front of the Toyota garage, and even walked us in, where he knew everyone behind the counter, and introduced us as his ‘new friends.’ When we offered gas money, he threatened to “tow us right back again,” and told us to go get ourselves a beer.
This is how we find ourselves at the Main Street Lodge in Kaitaia, a place described in every guide book as nowhere you want to spend any amount of time. (The cashier at the supermarket literally laughed out loud when I asked if there was anything fun to do.) In a few hours, though, we should have Achilles back, with his brand new water pump, cam belt, clean coolant, and refilled oil (total bill: $660.60* – thank god we get to divide it by five), and the road trip will carry on!
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