Of drops, disease, and domesticity.

There are times in life when one begins to truly regret avoiding all the fatal accidents that could have happened up to that point in one’s career. As I pushed through the fronds back towards the feeble path that had led me to the Paihia summit this thought struck me, and I was forced to debate whether my current situation was one of those times. The rain was falling like the backdrop to a Vietnam war movie, and would have obscured vision even if I hadn’t been wearing my glasses. As it was the path itself quickly became obscured first by the droplets loitering a half inch in front of my eyes, and subsequently by the small creek that it became as the rainwater found its path of least resistance.

I stood, a touch forlornly, under the meager foliage of a Kauri tree just off the path and considered my options. Following the path would mean a quick-ish escape from the increasingly dangerous rainforest (from time to time a miscellaneous branch would be knocked off a tree by the force of the rain) but would semi-irretrievably soak my hiking boots, which in a hostel-living situation is basically a Gordian knot. I chose instead to do a little amateur orienteering and strike across a more hilly and direct region back to the school road trailhead, which was probably the better choice in the end as I saved my boots – if at some personal expense.

I arrived back at the hostel ‘wet as’, as the Kiwis would say, and immediately put on a strip show in my room for the sympathetic German roommates en route to blanketing my body heat back up to acceptable levels. Thus began my great traveling sickness for this trip, as my immuno-depressed corpse sucked up all their delightful Deutschland antigens with delight. I extended my stay and concentrated on futile recovery efforts while the crazy storms continued apace outside my slightly leaky window; eventually I judged that the storms had abated (they hadn’t) and that I was on the mend (I wasn’t), and once more hefted my sizable backpack for a good old fashioned hitchhiking experience.

Rounding the southbound crest heading out of town and reaching a beachside stretch of the highway just as the monsoon revisited, I put out my thumb. I did this with some mild trepidation, being a solo traveller, but with the secure knowledge that I was essentially a plague bearer at this point and that any motorway murderer would at least be hit by Dougezuma’s revenge. In the event the longest I stood forced-grinning beside the highway that day was about 15 minutes, as a succession of displaced Australians cheerfully brought me all the way to my intended destination: the city of Whangarei. I had previously visited this city on the bus north just long enough to begin my annoyed relationship with globetrotting Germans, so another visit was clearly in order to flesh out my opinion of the town.

If only I could flush away my entire experience instead. My destination was a hostel outside of town whose claim to fame was proximity to a series of caves in which you can see various species of glow worms; I simply underestimated how far out of town it truly was. Well, the last part is untrue: I knew I would have to walk for about an hour and a half to get there, but not what the mental effects of doing that journey in a monsoon would be. I arrived drenched as could be expected of anyone stupid enough to be out and about, to the great humour of the affable hostel manager. He outfitted me with caving gear much as one might give board games to kamikaze pilots, and watched my departure and almost instant return with a certain grim amusement. The cave mouths, you see, had all essentially become rivers completely unnavigable by anyone with any degree of sense. Thus it was that I abandoned the reason I had endured the grimmest walk in recent memory, and retired to my Balinesian-furnished room to dry clothes and count regrets.

Finding myself at leisure the next day while waiting for the bus, I toured Whangarei in a kind of listless, influenza-influenced haze. It has a certain joyless, utilitarian character (at least in the middle of winter), shaken up only by the ever present signs in restaurant/pub fronts declaring their establishments to be gang-free zones. Suddenly the odd proliferation of neck tattoos amongst the young male population began to make more and more sense, though thankfully my resemblance to Typhoid Mary’s grizzled brother kept them at bay. I was going back to Auckland (making a mental note to avoid Whangarei in the future at all costs) to rest, recuperate, and inundate myself with delicious foods in order to combat the rain-fed illness given me by my futile Northland quest.

It is probably well that I took the days I did to heal, because by the time I decided to further indulge my wanderlust I felt…exactly the same. One can only assume how much worse I might have been, given another couple of days dodging catfish as they swam across the roads. Having vacated Auckland only some 5 nights previous, however, I had little interest in further wasting time there… no, I was bound for the capital city of Wellington – very much the Victoria to Vancouver for those who know British Columbia – to further continue my quest for a place to plant roots in Aotearoa’s fertile volcanic soil. A cheap domestic flight later (a single hour with free nonstop in-flight serenade by the 2 year old seated behind me – at no extra cost!) I stepped first out of the airport door, and second with some rapidity in the direction my toque had suddenly decided to fly. It seems that some stereotypes are there for a very good reason; thus was my entrance into ‘Windy Welly’.