DECEMBER

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   QUEENSTOWN – WANAKA – GREYMOUTH – CHRISTCHURCH
   AKAROA
   CHRISTCHURCH –KAIKOURA–NELSON
   ABEL TASMAN NATIONAL PARK
   HEAPHY TRACK
   CHRISTMAS DAY, KARAMEA
   BOXING DAY, WESTPORT
   NELSON LAKES NATIONAL PARK

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QUEENSTOWN – WANAKA – GREYMOUTH – CHRISTCHURCH

‘Cool,’ the young Scot replies, when I tell him I am headed for Queenstown. ‘So are we. Throw your pack in the back seat.’

I crawl in beside my pack, which takes up most of the room. ‘Queenstown is fantastic,’ he adds, as we continue down the highway. His girlfriend sits up front with him. They look like teenagers, although he must be at least twenty. Must be their sun-protected complexions with all the rain back home. In New Zealand everyone looks older than they really are. Must be the sun and the hole in the ozone layer.

‘That’s where they invented bungee jumping,’ he continues with enthusiasm. ‘Cool place. You can do anything there. Go bungee jumping off the biggest jumps, go on jet-boat rides, dirt biking, parachuting, paragliding, river-boarding, skydiving, hang-gliding, kayaking, canoeing, horse riding. Full-on place.’ He uses the Kiwi vernacular, having picked it up, he tells me, during the six months they have been driving around the country in their Holden. ‘Tried to get a job in Queenstown but everyone wants a job there. Queenstown has it all. Ever been bungee jumping?’ he asks, lighting up a cigarette. I have to concentrate to understand his broad Scottish dialect.

Distracted, I reply, ‘Uh-uh.’ I continue to admire the perfect scenery, while sticking my nose out the open side window to get a whiff of fresh air. It doesn’t get much more picturesque than this anywhere in the world.

‘You should. You’d like it.’ His head bobs in synchrony to the radio tunes. ‘It’s cool.’

‘Actually, I would like it about as much as I would enjoy dodging highway traffic during rush hour. Not a lot of skill involved in having someone tie a giant rubber band around your ankles and push you off a big drop.’ I can be such an amenable guy but sometimes little twerps like this start wagging my tongue for me.

‘Tried parachuting then?’ he asks, undeterred.

‘BTDT,’ I reply dismissively.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘Been there, done that.’

‘How about jet boating?’ he persists.

‘Too wilderness intrusive,’ I respond. The jet boat, invented in New Zealand, is unique in that it dispenses with propellers. Unfortunately, the impellers built into the hull provide powered boats with shallower draft. Practical as that may be, it gives jet boats greater access up otherwise non-navigable rivers, into what would normally be impenetrable wilderness regions. Great when you are trying to ‘tame’ the bush, but not so great when you are trying to conserve it.

‘Should try rafting then. That’s not wilderness intrusive.’

‘I used to own a rafting company in Norway, on the Sjoa River.’ That’s also about as beautiful a setting as you could ever hope to find. I’d be hard put to choose between the Sjoa and here for scenic beauty.

‘You don’t any more?’

‘Every time there was a drowning, the bookings went up. Didn’t like the mentality of the clients. Bunch of yahoos.’ At his age I was rafting and doing a lot more foolish things too.

‘You had drownings?’ He turns around, eyes wide, as if this were an inconceivable consequence of rafting.

‘Every summer.’ At least he is quiet after that. I stare out the window at the landscape. To compensate for my testiness, I fill his car up with petrol when we get to Queenstown. I love the enthusiasm of younger travellers; their lives are in front of them and they’re excited about everything. I hate it when I start acting and talking like a killjoy.

Queenstown is the kind of party place that fills up on Friday and Saturday nights and empties just as quickly on Sundays. Arriving on a relatively subdued Sunday afternoon, I walk up to the gondola on the mountain overlooking the town. Despite the beautiful setting, the ‘full-on’ tourism of Queenstown has destroyed whatever authentic New Zealand atmosphere there might once have been. The commercialism has little appeal for me, despite the build-up given by the Scottish couple during the drive up here. With all the businesses vying for the tourists’ dollars I can’t help but feel uncomfortably like a punter, and I decide to continue on to Wanaka tomorrow.

A casualty from the party weekend walks up the path at a snail’s pace in front of me. As I pass, I stop practising saying ‘cool’ with a hard ‘kuh’ and ask her: ‘What’s there to do in Queenstown?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I arrived here on Friday night to party, and this is the first time I’ve been outside since then.’ Although she is young, she has dark rings under her eyes. ‘Still got a hangover,’ she adds proudly.

She has what I detect is a Scandinavian intonation. Sometimes I amaze myself at how quickly I can recognise foreign accents. Often I can guess within a couple of spoken words

‘Kuh-ool,’ I say. ‘You’re Danish, right?’

‘Canadian,’ she replies.

The Wanaka backpackers lodge reflects the tone of this settlement, which is downright sleepy compared to Queenstown. Befitting the more laid-back atmosphere of the place, classical music plays softly as backpackers play chess or read. I set off early in the morning for Mount Roy, which towers solitary on the other side of the lake. In a setting like this, it is impossible not to fantasise what it would be like to live here permanently. I could easily be tempted to settle in Wanaka, a community in a setting as beautiful as Queenstown’s, but still unspoilt by mass tourism and rabid urban development.

From the summit of Mount Roy, I peer through my camera at panoramic views of tiny sheep in green fields, a turquoise-blue lake and snow-clad mountains. By twisting the polarised filter to punch out the sky and paint the lake a darker blue, I can saturate the colours by removing the extraneous reflections.

It takes me most of the day to walk all the way around the lake to the top of Mount Roy and back to the backpackers. My mind is full of thoughts, memories triggered by the cool air and the scenery. The hike reminds me of walking in the mountains of Norway some months ago. On my last day in Norway and our last day together, Kirsten and I walked up a familiar valley, well above the tree line. It was one of those rare September days, the weather stable, the sky blue; although it was cold, the sun was strong enough to warm us in its direct light.

Already the grass and bracken had turned rusty autumn colours. We both knew that this time tomorrow, I would be gone. I wanted to climb one last peak. With the intensity of the condemned we hiked to the summit, where we sat huddled together staring out over the surrounding mountains and valleys. Only the fading September sun kept us warm. As it dropped in the sky, the shadows crept up the hillsides. Then the sun disappeared behind the mountains, casting us in its shadow. Once again, the familiar deep-rooted fear of an impending Norwegian winter cast its icy tentacles into the depths of my being.

I held Kirsten tightly, knowing that tomorrow I would not be able to hold her any more. As I scrunched up my eyes, the tears I had successfully been holding back squeezed out, dampening her hair. She started crying too, great hulking sobs. The sound carried far down the valley.

In the morning, when I roll up to pay for the overnight accommodation, the owner of the backpackers says: ‘You look terrible. You going to travel feeling like that?’

I nod. It’s hard to know if am really sick or whether I’m just so psychologically down that I feel like an invalid. LONELY GUY is emblazoned on my forehead again – and I don’t have a sense of humour about it today.

‘God loves a trier,’ she says, shaking her head.

I sleep on the bus most of the way to Franz Josef Glacier on the West Coast. I have a burning fever, my joints hurt, and it feels as if my eyeballs are being pushed out of their sockets. It could be psychosomatic, but I am sweating despite feeling cold and shivering uncontrollably. Everyone avoids me as if I had the plague, just when I could do with some TLC. I have a cold, probably the flu, but I worry this may be a recurring bout of malaria. I had planned to walk up the glacier as soon as we arrived in Franz Josef but I feel too sick to manage that. The idea of a glacier extending down through rainforest almost to sea level had seemed incredibly appealing when I read about it. But now all I want to do is get into bed.

At a hostel in Franz Josef, most of the backpackers sit hypnotised in front of a television, watching Seinfeld. Why come all this way and then watch TV shows from home? The owners of the hostel must love the television. Keeps their clients nice and docile. I watch for a few minutes and find myself even more alienated from my fellow humans. Never having owned a television, I find it hard to understand these sitcoms. Sometimes I think I must be a Martian, unable to relate to a vast component of earthlings’ lives. I feel as strongly about television as I do about recreational drugs. It can be such a waste of human lives, especially young ones. I catch myself again, being crabby, antisocial, although it can hardly be social to sit with a bunch of uncommunicative backpackers watching television. I crash on a bed and dejectedly study the poem pasted on the back of the bedroom door.

Hostel Life

Well, I’ve roamed the world, over many a day,

And a hostel’s the place I generally stay.

Now there’s some things about them that’s always the same,

It’s a world-wide conspiracy, that’s what I claim.

’Cause there’s always one who stays out till three,

Then turns on the lights ’cause he cannot see.

He smells like a pub, and he’s usually drunk,

And he steps on your arm when he climbs in his bunk.

And then there’s the one who leaves pots in the sink,

And when they run out, it’s your milk that they drink.

They sprawl on the sofas so there’s nowhere to sit.

Consideration? Hell, they don’t give a … !

And the worst ones of all, they’re really a drag,

Keep every bloody item in a different plastic bag.

Now I’ve spoken with others, and they all feel the same,

We’re all considerate and we are not to blame.

So who is this group which disrupts hostel life?

Who stirs us from dreams and causes such strife?

Now I’m not paranoid, but it’s a thought that I’ve had,

They’re all on the payrolls of our mums and our dads.

They follow us around wherever we roam,

Making life miserable so we will all go home.

But the last laugh’s on our loved ones,

And that is for sure,

Because as for the travel bug,

There is no real cure.

They can torment us and tease us,

But when all’s said and done,

In spite of it all, we’re still having fun.

Cathy ’90

BC, Canada

I feel sick. And empty. And I’m not having fun at all.

I labour down the road to catch the bus to Greymouth, my backpack seeming heavier than ever. A team of sightseeing helicopters circle noisily overhead, carting passengers to the glacier and back. ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles) bounce away full of tourists and a light plane takes off with skis attached to its wheels. The Franz Josef village is a staging point for an army of tourists on manoeuvres.

I had really looked forward to climbing on this glacier. For five years I took groups of people up the glaciers in Norway. The magic of the glaciers was awesome, without intrusive sounds. All you could hear was the trickling of meltwater, the crunching of crampons on granular ice and the occasional almighty crack as a piece of glacier moved or dropped. No ATVs, planes or helicopters distracted from the intensity of the nature experience.

In the bushes by the main road is a hut decorated with hobnailed boots, iron cooking utensils and initials carved into bunk beds and walls. This museum was the original shelter, now transplanted, where visitors overnighted when they walked through the forest to reach the foot of the glacier, which they climbed with ropes and crampons. Remarks in the visitor’s book reflect the awe and fascination that early tourists had for the glacier. It is cheapened now; it’s almost a fabricated Disney World. Witnessing this magical and spectacular experience rendered mundane by modern technology leaves me with an even emptier feeling.

The bus arrives. I climb aboard to be confronted by a stocky woman in slacks and a brooch with ‘IYQ’ in big gold letters pinned to her blouse. She smiles at me and says loudly: ‘Hi!’

I look at her as if she were a toad belching. I ask: ‘IYQ?’ and fall into her conversational trap.

‘You do? Well IYQ too and so does Jesus,’ she replies, in a southern United States drawl. She sits down next to me and insists on talking, especially when the driver speaks over the intercom to impart information.

‘Could you repeat what you just said?’ she asks him. Even before he has repeated it for her sole benefit, she is already asking me: ‘So, where do you come from?’

Don’t these types ever stop to listen? I tell her: ‘Yi yam from Peru,’ pretending I cannot speak or understand English.

We hurtle down an empty ribbon of road pressed to the sea by mist-shrouded mountains. I rest my head passively against the windowpane as New Zealand streaks by. A helicopter has landed in a paddock, blades still rotating, the pilot in a jump suit taking a leak. On the other side of the helicopter, two hunters stack the floppy carcasses of magnificent red deer stags into the back of a utility truck. The sight depresses me.

I am having a bad day and accept it as such. I have to learn that not every day can be a high.

Greymouth was a hive of activity during the gold rush. Now its main industries are coal mining, fishing, sphagnum-moss collecting, farming and tourism. A huge man with a walrus moustache and a beer belly talks with several others, all festooned with long scraggly beards. If they had tried to look like goldminers from the last century, they could not have succeeded better. The town, despite its unprepossessing name, is authentically colourful.

The train to Christchurch is delayed, so I ask a woman walking by: ‘Could you tell me how far it is to the nearest supermarket?’

‘It’s a five-minute walk that way,’ the woman replies, pointing down the road.

I follow her directions, and half an hour later I am still on my way to the supermarket. It is not the first time a helpful Kiwi’s assessment of how long it takes to walk somewhere is out of whack. I don’t think they’ve ever actually strolled these distances: the supermarket is a five-minute drive and a forty-minute walk.

On the wobbling little narrow-gauge train to Christchurch, the conductor holds up a camera: ‘Does this belong to anyone?’

‘It’s my Nikon,’ I say, when he sashays close enough for me to recognise it.

He hands me the camera. ‘You left it on the platform. Someone found it and handed it in to the ticket station.’

Kiwis tell stories of how New Zealand is not as crime free as it used to be, that now you cannot park your car in a parking lot at one of the hiking tracks without having it broken into. My own experience has been truer to the clich�: that old-fashioned New Zealand is as honest and na�ve as North America was a couple of generations ago.

The train wiggles its way through mountains and dense forest, affording an occasional glimpse of snow-capped peaks and long stretches of open, bouldered rivers. Dense mist steams out of the thick vegetation like smoke. On the other side of the pass is a deluge of heavy rain. I am very happy I decided not to get off en route to take on another waterlogged track.

Return to beginning of chapter

AKAROA

Arriving back in Christchurch for the second time, I am more aware of the town’s distinctive appeal – for one thing, I can see the sun. I join a walking tour and recognise quaint scenes depicted in coffee-table books. Our guide, a retired schoolteacher, leads us into Christ Church Cathedral and proudly points out a stone plaque dedicated to the memory of one of the original ‘Canterbury Pilgrims’, who arrived in 1850. She pulls her frame up to its full diminutive size and says: ‘I was fifteen years old when that original pioneer died.’ The anecdote puts the short history of New Zealand in perspective. Even the Maori, in their giant canoes, arrived in these islands from Polynesia as recently as a thousand years ago, which is nothing compared to the Australian Aborigines’ claim to be the oldest living culture at fifty thousand years. The Maori named their new homeland Aotearoa: the land of the long white cloud.

I look forward to starting another track, hopefully one not thoroughly soaked with rain and snow. In the late afternoon, I step aboard the Akaroa shuttle bus.

The driver greets me: ‘How you going, mate?’

I show him the brochure. ‘I’m about to do the track across the farmers’ fields.’

‘Your name Stevenson?’ I nod. ‘Well, somehow they’ve cocked that up. Got you booked on the wrong track. It’s going to be a bit of a case sorting that one out.’

He starts the engine. There are no other passengers.

‘Is there a big difference?’

‘They copied ours.’

‘Ours?’

‘Yeah. I’m one of the owners of the land that the track goes through. The other track people phoned me up to see if you were coming on the four o’clock shuttle. If so, I was to drop you off at the church in Little River.’

‘Can I get on your track still?’ I want the original, not a copy.

‘Sure, but you’d better sort it out with them first.’ He smiles as he puts the bus into gear.

We drive out of Christchurch towards the volcanic hills to the south-east. All the instruments, dials and instructions on the bus are in Japanese. A ‘new-in-NZ’ used bus.

‘How’s your Japanese?’ I ask the driver. ‘I mean, how do you know what knob does what? Everything’s in Japanese.’

He looks at the dashboard. ‘Tell you the truth, I don’t. My wife usually drives this bus. I’m a farmer.’

‘Your wife can speak Japanese?’

He laughs.

I am dropped off at the church in Little River. The church door is open and I walk in. A woman vacuuming the carpet sees me, turns the machine off and smiles radiantly. ‘Andrew!’ I smile and nod encouragement. ‘We were expecting you at one.’

‘Well,’ I say, pleased that someone should actually know who I am, ‘I think there’s been a mistake. You see, I was in Te Anau when I booked and they didn’t know that there are two tracks around here.’ I am prepared to walk this one even if it is a copy, all things being equal. ‘Have the other trampers already started?’

‘There are no other trampers.’

Bad sign. I was hoping to break out of my solitary routine and tramp with a group of others. ‘Would it be terribly disappointing if I cancelled?’ The thought of doing another track on my own has lost the appeal it had weeks ago.

She almost looks relieved. ‘No problem.’ They are not going to charge me a cancellation fee. ‘What are you going to do instead?’ she asks.

‘See if I can still get on the other track. Is there a phone here?’

She points. ‘There’s a phone booth in the village, that way.’ She packs up her vacuum cleaner, then asks: ‘By the way, when did you find out about being on the wrong track?’

‘On the bus on the way over here,’ I answer, not appreciating the internecine politics of competing private tracks.

‘Ah yeah, well I sussed that one out correctly,’ she says abruptly. The smile gone, she ushers me out of the church like a chicken out of the coop.

I walk the few hundred metres to the phone booth, look up the telephone number on the brochure and dial. When a man answers, I explain: ‘I was in Te Anau about two weeks ago and thought I’d booked a four-day trip on your track. Unfortunately, I’ve just discovered that there are two similar tracks here, and the travel agency booked me on the wrong one. I’m in Little River now and they don’t mind if I cancel. Do you have an opening for the four-day track, starting this evening?’

‘No worries, mate, we’ve got room for one more.’

‘I’d like to sort out the payment situation first, though. I’ve already paid the full amount to the travel agency. I’m sure that when I phone to explain, it’ll be no sweat for them to transfer the payment to your outfit instead.’

‘No problem, just get yourself over here, mate. We can sort it out.’ He sounds like another easy-going, laid-back Kiwi bloke. ‘You’re going to miss the shuttle bus to the first hut, leaves Akaroa at six sharp. But I can send a taxi down to get you for twenty bucks.’

‘Thanks, that’s very thoughtful of you.’ I look at my watch. ‘I might make the bus; I’ll start hitchhiking now.’

As soon as I stick my thumb out, a red van stops. The driver gets out to help me hoist my pack in, and when I explain my predicament, he accelerates. It is a few minutes past six when we arrive in Akaroa, just as the shuttle bus is about to pull away. I scramble out of the van into the bus, to be driven the very short distance to the first hut, which is situated on the sloping curve of a hill, overlooking the harbour. The exorbitant offer of a twenty-dollar taxi ride must have included an open bar in the back seat.

Arriving at the hut, I discover that the rest of the group is comprised almost entirely of Kiwis. Perfect, a chance to mix with the locals. I find myself a room with a couple of empty bunk beds. The man on the phone’s line about there being only one place left was either wishful thinking or a good marketing ploy.

Not yet fully recovered from the flu or recurring malaria or heartache or whatever it is I am suffering from, I put my sleeping-bag on a sofa on the covered porch and crawl into it. I hear the pop of champagne bottles inside. One of the Kiwis comes out to ask: ‘Would you like to have tea with us? There’s heaps of food.’

I’d definitely like to get to know these Kiwis, but I don’t feel up to it right now. There will be lots of time as we do the track together, staying in the same huts each night. ‘Lost my appetite, but thanks anyway. Maybe tomorrow.’

They sit down to eat. A loud English woman dominates the conversation. She is celebrating her new Kiwi citizenship and I overhear her mocking the formal ceremony, in which she swore allegiance. The story is told as if the whole thing had been a bit of a lark: she ridicules herself and the ceremony. She tells how there was also a family of five Vietnamese at the ceremony, and I wonder if the Vietnamese family’s reaction to finding a new home, so peaceful and tranquil compared to their war-torn country, was as flippant as her own.

I ignore the conversation and study a pair of nesting swallows with baby chicks just above my head. The parents twitter around busily as the sun drifts lower over the surrounding hills. We are perched on the edge of a gradient overlooking the filled-in caldera of an ancient volcano and the open sea, surrounded by green fields. The setting could not be more bucolic.

Over the Kiwis’ conversation, I hear what sounds like a dirt motorbike without a muffler approaching. A man steps noisily on the covered wooden porch into the hut and says ‘G’day!’ to everyone. ‘I’m the owner of this hut,’ he announces. Then he asks: ‘Is there some single foreigner here?’ They point in my direction. He sees me lying in my sleeping-bag on the porch and struts up, reaching a hand out. At first, I think he is extending it in greeting and reach out in return. But he is not extending a handshake. ‘I need $120 off you,’ he demands.

His jeans are ripped, his sweater is shredded in several places, he is covered in grime and his hair is uncombed. Even backpackers do not look as threadbare as this guy. He reminds me of a cartoon character after a stick of dynamite has accidentally exploded in its hands. He keeps his upturned palm extended, waiting for me to fill it with dollars.

I shift to an upright position, uncomfortable talking to him while lying prone in my sleeping-bag. ‘As I explained to you on the phone, I’ve already paid. I’d like to get the payment I made to the other track transferred to you.’

‘I don’t care what you’ve got to do. It’s nothing to do with me.’ He has an unmistakably aggressive look about him. ‘I don’t want a fight with you.’ He spits out the word ‘fight’, spraying phlegm onto my upturned face.

Who is asking for a fight? I am lying helpless in a sleeping-bag feeling sicker than a dog. This cartoon character has come out of the forest beating his chest, defining his territory. What happened to the nice bloke I talked to on the phone, who was so understanding, calling me ‘mate’, telling me we could work out the payment? I do not feel like a tourist with a minor problem that can easily be sorted out in the morning with the management. Either this wild man should be on stage, or locked up. ‘Look, I think I’ll just quietly slip out of here and resolve the finances in the morning,’ I say meekly, as I extricate myself from the bag.

‘How are you going to get to Akaroa?’ he asks.

‘I’ll walk.’ It is now past sunset and almost dark. I drape the sleeping-bag over my shoulder and head to the bunkroom to collect the rest of my gear.

Then, out of the blue, he offers me a bit of advice. ‘There’s a backpackers hut a hundred metres up the hill. You can see the smoke coming out the chimney. They have a vacancy.’

The Kiwis are all silent. The farmer mumbles derogatory asides: ‘Bloody foreigners are taking over the country.’ With my tail between my legs, I walk up to the backpackers lodge in darkness. A pleasant Swiss manager shows me the ‘cabins’, outside the farmhouse. The physical setting is lovely but the ‘cabins’ are the most dilapidated, hillbilly structures I’ve seen anywhere. I say to the manager, ‘Back in Canada, you would not be able to get a permit to operate something like this. Could you do this in Switzerland?’

‘No, I’d be in jail.’ It is the only time he says no. The rest of the time he says: ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ He looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I opt for the cabin that looks least likely to collapse on top of me in the middle of the night. When I follow the manager back to the main farm building to retrieve my backpack, in the gloom I see my adversary sitting on a sofa glowering at me through blood-shot red eyes.

‘Is this your place as well?’ I ask, nervously grabbing my pack.

‘Yeah.’

Fuck.

Return to beginning of chapter

CHRISTCHURCH –KAIKOURA–NELSON

As I start to hitchhike again, a woman stops to pick me up almost before my thumb is out. She is barefoot, with close-cropped hair and a broad smile. ‘Shove your pack in the back,’ she says, opening the tailgate of the station wagon, which is filled with pillows and futons and clothes, all tossed about. I pitch the pack in with a practised motion, landing it neatly on a futon.

I tell her about the incident with the farmer. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ she commiserates. ‘Picked up a hitchhiker, a girl, and she was still so upset with her reception there she started crying when she told me what happened to her.’

I don’t want to go on about this negative experience so I ask her: ‘What about you? Where are you from?’

She tells me about herself as we drive to Christchurch.

‘I was born in Gore, inland and north of Invercargill, and moved to Christchurch when I was still a child. When I was fourteen I met a Maori from Akaroa. At sixteen I married him and had my first child. Both my children are at university now, and I’m divorced. I did my big “OE”, you know, our Overseas Experience? During my seven months in London I became a Buddhist and a Shiatsu therapist. I loved it there; I could be whoever I wanted to be, totally anonymous. No one cared what I did. When I came back to Christchurch, I almost left again. It seemed so conservative and small-minded. I felt stifled. I cried myself to sleep that first night back; it was such a flat, empty feeling. I had changed so much, but none of my friends had, so it was hard to relate to them. Christchurch seemed so quiet compared to London. That was a few years ago.’

‘Has it changed since then?’

‘A lot, especially in the last three years. It’s becoming more cosmopolitan. Attitudes are changing fast among the pakeha.’

‘Pakeha?’

‘Whites. I’m glad I decided to stay in New Zealand now, but for a while I wasn’t. Too many guys with the attitude you just encountered.’ She is silent for a while as we drive through the rolling countryside. ‘Now I’m taking courses in the Maori language.’

‘But you’re no longer married to a Maori?’

‘Always been interested in Maori culture, even before I met my husband. I love the Maori legends, their songs, stories, dance. Maoridom captivates me.’ She gets animated as she talks. ‘It’s strange because I feel like a Maori, even if I’m not. When my husband and I divorced, I was upset that my ties to Maoridom might be cut, but then I discovered I had Maori relations, a great-uncle in Bluff. That made me happy, really happy, like I had Maori blood in me. It explained why I identified so much with the Maori people. I felt a Maori after all, and proud of it. But when I went to visit my relatives in Bluff, I found out my great-uncle was Spanish, not Maori. Then I had a real identity crisis.’ She nods, remembering. ‘I explained my affinity for everything Maori through having a Maori relation, and when I discovered I wasn’t a Maori at all, it kind of pulled the carpet out from under my feet. I became withdrawn, depressed.’ She is quiet as we drive through impressive farmland.

‘And then I figured: this land is of the Maori. They’ve been here for over a thousand years. I too am of this land, born and bred, therefore I’ve got Maori in me too. That’s good enough, whether there are blood ties or not.’ She turns to look at me. ‘Then I was happy again. I could understand my identification with the Maori culture and history. It’s all a part of this land called New Zealand and I’m a New Zealander.’

I like that story.

She drops me off at a backpackers lodge in Christchurch, where I find myself with an Irish roommate who has spent the last three weeks in New Zealand. He has official ‘Government of New Zealand’ papers spread all over his bed.

‘Jesus, if I’d known it was going to be so cold, I wouldn’t have come here,’ he says, pulling on a jumper. He has been travelling around on a backpackers bus, but bailed out when everyone else started doing all the big adventures and put peer pressure on him to do the same. ‘Couple of hundred bucks to do a bungee jump,’ he exclaims in his Irish lilt. ‘Thank God I didn’t fall for that one.’ He shakes his head at how close he came to being parted from his money on numerous occasions, and counts the days until his departure for Australia, where it is warmer. He goes out for dinner bundled in layers of clothes against the cold. Good thing he never tried tramping down in Fiordland.

While unpacking my bags I cannot help but notice the papers, which he has thrown in the bin between the two beds. I read the words ‘Self-assessment Guide for Residence in New Zealand’ and pull them out. He must have picked up the application forms for immigration to New Zealand in London on his way over. The Immigration Officer at New Zealand House has attached a note to the brown envelope informing him the current pass mark for immigration is twenty-six points. It sounds like the daily fluctuation of currency exchange rates, or the level of the stock market index. I sit on my bed and calculate points for a ‘quick self-assessment’ under the ‘General Skills’ category. I get the maximum twelve points for education and the maximum ten points for work experience. No one has offered me a job, so I lose those five potential additional points. Two points are offered for the capital I would bring over with me. No spouse, so I get no additional credits from a failed marriage and apparently zero credit for broken hearts either. If I married a Kiwi woman, I would not have to worry about calculating points at all; I would be in like Flynn. I barely squeak under the wire and only get two points for age; if I were fifteen years younger, I would get ten points. I add up the points and it comes to exactly twenty-six.

If I wanted to, I could settle here. But I’d have to make up my mind fast. If I wait another year, I’ll be too old to get the paltry two points for just being warm and alive.

I pick up my poste-restante mail from the Christchurch central post office, the first letters I have had in five weeks. Included is a package with a home-made Advent calendar, which has messages written on some twenty-five sealed red envelopes to be opened and read each day until Christmas. I sort through this treasured mail while sitting on the steps of Cathedral Square. The letters drag me emotionally half a world away, and when I have finished reading them they leave me alone with my thoughts.

I listen vaguely as the Wizard, a bearded Christchurch character in an outrageous outfit, provocatively spouts off tired chauvinistic ideas about the place of women in society. Unlike Speakers Corner in London, no one heckles him. Perhaps they all agree. When the Wizard tires, another speaker replaces him. He climbs a stepladder he has brought with him and starts spouting how Jesus Christ came to earth to save us sinners. A young man in torn jeans and long hair ridicules him and the evangelist threatens the fellow with a thumping in return. The jeering continues until the evangelist steps down from the ladder and really does thump the persistent heckler. A shoving match ensues before the young man takes off, to mutter profanities under his breath from a safer distance. Satisfied, the proselytiser of goodwill towards all men climbs back on his stepladder.

He shakes his fist and points at the motley crew assembled in front of him. ‘I’m sick of you people getting up my nose. And Jesus Christ’ – his forefinger indicates the sky – ‘is sick of people getting up his nose.’ He dramatically thrusts with his forefinger as if he were trying to stick it up someone’s nose. ‘But I’m here to tell you in no uncertain terms, Jesus is going to get up your noses’ – he points to us – ‘like you wouldn’t believe, on the Day of Reckoning.’

Recovered from whatever it is that ailed me, I hitchhike north up the eastern coast to Kaikoura. When the Kiwi nurse giving me a ride stops at a local gas station to fill the car with petrol, I pick up a copy of the Northern Outlook.

The front page is dominated by the headline: ‘CAMPERS DIVE FOR COVER TO AVOID SHOTS FROM HELICOPTER’.

Campers cowered behind a vehicle for protection against shots fired from a helicopter spotlighting a deer above the Loch Katrine bach settlement on Saturday night … At about 9.45 pm several shots were fired from a semi-automatic weapon in the helicopter as it followed the animal down the hill … A group of campers were gathered around a campfire on the beach. Some of these people took shelter behind a vehicle as the shooting got close. ‘I’ve seen helicopters shooting deer in the area for thirty years, but this was the most blatant example of a flying cowboy I’ve ever seen,’ a witness said.

I ask the nurse what a ‘bach’ is, pronouncing ‘bach’ as in Johann Sebastian Bach.

‘Ah yeah, you mean a bach,’ she replies, pronouncing it ‘batch’. ‘That’s what you’d call a cabin or a cottage. They call it a crib in the woopwoops down south.’

I show her the article as we drink a couple of soft drinks. ‘Dangerous out there,’ I observe.

‘Is it what!’ she replies. ‘Too many trigger-happy lunatics lurking around with loaded rifles, bad eyesight and even worse judgement. Got be an Armed Defender with a reflective red flak jacket and helmet to survive a bloody walk in the bush nowadays.’

I gather she isn’t a hunter.

At the Kaikoura information office, the usual adventures are offered to tourists, but there is an innovative one I have not noticed before: ‘Possum hunting’. For a few dollars you can get equipped with a gun, accompany a local psychotic and blast a few deadly possums out of the trees.

The settlement of Kaikoura is asleep. In the pre-dawn light I wander down to where fifteen other dolphin spotters have assembled to put on heavy wetsuits, flippers, goggles and masks. The wetsuits are still damp from yesterday’s use. We are shivering and cold even before we board a vintage bus. As we drive to the boat, the sun flops lazily over the horizon, colouring the sea turquoise; the nearby snow-capped peaks of the Seaward Kaikoura Mountain range are cast in the warm light of dawn. It is an impressive setting even by New Zealand’s high standards.

Our guide stands at the front of the bus, spouting her prepared speech: ‘The visual splendour you see above water matches the opulence under the sea. Just off the coast is an ecological wonder, a marine-biologist’s dream: easy access to whales, dolphins, seals, bird life and of course fish. All congregate in this area to feed off the phytoplankton, krill and other life forms rising with the deep ocean currents. Fifteen different species of marine mammals feast here, from giant sperm whales to tiny Hector’s dolphins.’

Sitting silently in damp wetsuits, we wait for our boat to be launched. It is on a trailer, which is lowered by tractor down a ramp into Kaikoura’s harbourless water. A fishing boat is in the process of being pulled out, a hapless man-sized shark draped over the bow. We all stare open-mouthed but no one says a thing.

Within twenty minutes of setting off into the South Pacific Ocean we reach a pod of dusky dolphins. They are easy to locate even from a distance; the ocean surface is roiling with their activity. Some are jumping high out of the water and landing on their backs with a splash, somersaulting forwards or backwards.

Our guide says: ‘Although they are creatures of the wild, they are actually executing these acrobatics for the sheer fun of it. These are the awake dolphins, on the leading and lateral edges of the main pod. The main group of dolphins is calmly swimming, surfacing to exhale and inhale – in effect sleeping. There are probably four to five hundred dolphins in the pod at this time.’

We drift into their midst and the engines are switched off. The dolphins swim slowly by, the younger dolphins close to their mothers. The puffing of their collective breathing is the only sound. We could reach over the side of the boat and touch their backs. The boat circles in front of the pod again and this time we slip overboard as the dolphins come closer.

It seems unnatural jumping into the middle of the ocean like pre-packaged shark bait, with hundreds of wild dolphins swimming towards me. The cold water and the frenetic activity of the dolphins are startling. The first to make contact are the awake dolphins as their pale streamlined shapes torpedo past. We have been told that if we want them to stick around and play, we must do something unusual to arouse their curiosity: sing to them underwater, make squeaky sounds to communicate, dive beneath the surface, or swim around in circles after them.

Finally getting used to the cold and the ghostly shapes hurtling by, I dive underwater, not easy without weights to counteract the buoyant wetsuit. I submerge a couple of metres and half a dozen dolphins surround me. They move effortlessly and quickly, with the grace of underwater ballet dancers. One manoeuvres closer, curious, and stares long enough for me to make eye contact. It is so near I could hug it. There is an unmistakable sense of connection between us; two species with a higher level of intelligence. This experience is not like staring a cold-blooded fish in the eye.

Others advance, studying me as intensely as I examine them. Their eyes reflect humour, accentuated by the upturned smile to their mouths. These warm-blooded animals have a presence about them; they seem almost cuddly, even if they are hairless and denizens of a totally different realm. Out of breath I surface, then plunge again, kicking my flippers in unison to imitate a dolphin’s tail. The dolphins slip by with barely a propelling movement as I struggle to stay underwater in the wetsuit. At a depth of two metres, I twist upside down to see the surface of the ocean like a silvery waterbed mattress, with above me the dark shapes of swimming dolphins. They seem to beckon, inviting me to join them. Then, as if frustrated as much as I am by my ungainly physical limitations, they disappear into the depths with a flick of their tails.

I surface and remove my mask and snorkel. The other swimmers sing through their snorkels, as the guide told us, to keep the dolphins amused and hanging around. The high-pitched inflections are both muffled and strangely amplified by their snorkels. The ocean is alive with hundreds of dolphins playing, jumping and somersaulting around us. A six-foot blue shark swishes its tail languidly as it drifts through the pod.

Returning to shore, we sit shivering in our wetsuits with broad grins despite our frozen and purple noses. Back in warm, dry clothes again, I leisurely eat a colossal hokey-pokey ice cream with a couple of home-made chocolate biscuits, while perusing the local newspaper. An article on the front page catches my eye:

SHARK BITE ON DOLPHIN SWIM TRIP ‘UNUSUAL’

An incident last Thursday, in which a German tourist was bitten by a shark while swimming with the dolphins, was reported to be highly unusual. A company spokesman said the man was swimming with the dolphins some four kilometres off the coast. He was swimming a little away from the main group when … a small blue shark bit him.

‘The man felt something but didn’t realise he had been bitten until he got into the boat and saw the blood,’ the spokesman said. ‘The doctor said it was a very clean cut, there was no flesh missing.’ The man did not require hospitalisation and continued with his trip around the South Island after receiving medical attention and stitches to his right arm.

Good thing it was him. If I had been bitten by a shark, I would have noticed for sure.

From the guidebooks, Nelson would seem the ideal place to settle in New Zealand. It lives up to its reputation, being a quaint town with one of the highest amounts of sunny days in the country. For the first time since arriving in New Zealand, it’s beginning to feel warm. I register at a popular backpackers lodge.

Around the swimming pool, half a dozen young lager louts in their early twenties, skinny bodies contrasting with budding swollen stomachs, recline languorously, partially anaesthetised by the contents of the empty beer cans lying in a mound at their feet. Medical researchers would be hard pressed to locate two synapsing neurones amongst the lot of them. They obviously don’t care about the hole in the ozone layer, nor the burn factor, and their normally pale bodies are fried a nut-brown, tinged with radiation red.

My roommate, a pale Englishman in his early thirties, wears a polyester shirt buttoned to the neck, tight-fitting polyester slacks frayed at the pockets, black patent-leather shoes and a wide-brimmed perfectly white sun hat. He hugs a cheap plastic bag close to his hip, its strap wound securely over his head and shoulder. Other than the plastic bag, he seems to have few other possessions besides a pocket-sized computerised chess set.

Kiwi news is read on television. Behind the two newscasters is a map of the world from a New Zealander’s perspective, with New Zealand at the centre of the world. Why not? But it is also magnified out of proportion so that it is – comfortingly – as big as Australia. At the end of the news, the weather forecast includes ‘burn times’: how long the average person needs to be exposed to the sun’s rays before his, or her, skin begins to fry. Eleven minutes. You don’t have to be exposed to nuclear radiation to die here. Mowing the lawn for fifteen minutes in the sunlight will get those free radicals going too, and with the ozone hole over the Antarctic growing larger every year, those burn times are just a hint of what is coming.

My roommate is on his bed, knees drawn up to his chin, distractedly watching television while playing chess. He looks shrivelled, as if the television were sucking the life out of him. We talk without him taking his eyes off the telly. He tells me: ‘I always travel light. Before checking in at the airline baggage counter, I fill my bags with plastic bottles full of water so I’ve got the maximum allowable luggage.’ He smirks.

‘Why?’ I ask. Rather than being interesting, sharing a room with such strange people only intensifies my feeling of loneliness.

‘Read the small print on your travel ticket,’ he says. He turns to rummage in his plastic carrier bag, pulling out his airline ticket. ‘The airline companies only compensate for lost luggage according to its weight. The heavier it is, the more you get back in compensation.’

I imagine him travelling the world, sitting in the aircraft cabin, fingers crossed that his bags stuffed with plastic bottles of water will get lost. He idly points the remote control at the television and channel surfs to a Maori-speaking programme. ‘Why don’t they speak English like they’re supposed to,’ he says, offended. I leave him huddled on his bed, channel surfing with a flick of his wrist.

Return to beginning of chapter

ABEL TASMAN NATIONAL PARK

In the morning, psyched to start another track, I prepare a hot breakfast. I turn on the grill in the oven and place several slices of bread with cheddar cheese and tomato on the top rack, then quickly pack. My roommate is already immobilised in front of the television. Full of anticipation and also fully loaded, I wobble around the corner to pick up my mail from the Nelson post office. I prop my pack against a bench outside, sit in the sun and read my Christmas correspondence, which includes a gift from Norway, cards, some letters and a fax. It is strange to read how dark and miserable it is in Norway, Canada and London. How easy to forget, and a nice reminder of how lucky I am to be here. A Danish couple next to me open a package and pull out four candles for Advent, as well as home-made Christmas biscuits. When the girl sees these reminders of home, she starts to cry. Her boyfriend puts his arm around her shoulders to console her. A few minutes later, she is laughing and happy again as they read their correspondence together.

On the bus to the Abel Tasman National Park, I feel pangs of hunger and belatedly recall the toasted tomato and cheese sandwiches. In fact, I had not even taken them out of the oven. Being chronically impatient, as is my bad habit, I had even closed the oven door to get the cheese melting more quickly. What if the oven caught fire? What if the hostel went up in flames? Will the police be on the lookout for me? I slide back down into my seat and hide, just in case.

I distract myself from these twinges of guilt by glancing through the DOC brochure. Abel Janszoon Tasman, a Dutchman, was the first white man to ‘discover’ New Zealand in 1642. He saw no riches or trading opportunities in New Zealand and the Dutch authorities showed no further interest in developing the new territory. Imagine discovering a place like New Zealand and figuring it wasn’t worth declaring ownership over. It was not until Captain Cook arrived, 125 years after Tasman, that any real exploration by the colonising European powers took place.

The path into Abel Tasman National Park is so well manicured that you could practically cruise the track on roller blades. Anchorage Hut is located in the bushes just off the end of a long curve of golden beach. Several kayaks are pulled up on the sand and more paddle in. The hut is almost full of kayakers and trampers. I find one of the few spaces left on the communal bunks, pull out my sleeping-bag and spread it on the mattress, claiming my spot for the night. Next to me a blonde, clad in a minute bikini, rummages through her pile of belongings. Her bikini is about as small as she could wear without redefining it as a G-string. I have a piece of disposable camera-lens tissue in my pocket which would be more effective as a bathing suit than both parts of her bikini combined. She has a perfect hourglass figure, the kind us guys are wont to fantasise about. She unfurls her sleeping-bag next to mine and then looks at me, her dark brown eyes contrasting with her long, curly blonde hair.

‘Do you snore?’ she asks. I deliberately keep my eyes on her nose, which in contrast to everything else about her is angular and freckled. ‘Do you snore?’ she repeats.

‘No,’ I gurgle. Why are men like this?

‘Good,’ she says. ‘I don’t like snorers.’

‘Do you?’ I enquire, my mind not wondering about her snoring at all.

‘Snore?’ she repeats.

‘Yeah,’ I manage to say, choking on the syllable. Men are so visual. I wonder if she can tell what I am thinking.

‘No,’ she replies.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask, on an articulate roll.

‘Candy,’ she answers. I wonder what she is thinking. ‘What’s your name?’ she asks.

‘Candy,’ I repeat, the logical side of my brain finally packing it in. ‘I mean, Andrew.’

Nice recovery Andrew, but you’re losing it fast and about to short-circuit big-time. Get a grip.

More trampers with backpacks arrive at the hut, but all the bunks are taken. Ten trampers are without an allocated mattress on the communal bunks and the DOC warden pulls out more stored mattresses and puts them on the porch. Several young boys staying in the adjacent campsite sway around the place with litre-sized soft-drink bottles on which they suck suspiciously frequently. One of them abruptly passes out in the bushes, having totally miscalculated his system’s capacity for alcohol.

Candy sits outside on the porch steps, surrounded by four more drooling males: two Americans, a Canadian and a Dane. They are so busy flattering her that I involuntarily stand apart. This is the first track for all of them. She asks me which tracks I have done.

Given an opening, I answer as if naming nature products bought in a tramper’s version of the Body Shop: ‘Rakiura, Milford, Caples, Routeburn, Kepler.’ I don’t tell them I tried to do the Banks Peninsula but got booted off. I am fast moving out of my role as ‘new boy’ and becoming somewhat of an authority, a veteran tramping guru.

‘Which did you like best?’ Candy asks.

I think about this and stroke my unkempt beard in a show of sagacity. ‘It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Depends on the weather, your mood, who else was in the huts. They’re all different.’ I am still not used to how these various tracks are neatly packaged, marketed and put on the shelves for consumption. ‘Done the Milford’ – as if that was all that was needed to explain the nature experience.

Candy asks me where else in the world I have travelled. When I tell her, she says: ‘Sounds like you’ve got the travel bug.’

‘It’s not a bug. A bug is curable,’ I reply.

They sit around a candle on the porch and show no signs of going to bed. An overweight German, with his daughter next to him, snores loudly and contentedly on one of the mattresses put out for the overflow of trampers. I withdraw from the conversation about the best places to stay in backpackers’ Asia and walk the length of the beach and back. The peacefulness of the waves lapping on the empty shore, the sounds from the bush, the stars, all emphasise my solitude. It’s an exquisite evening and it feels intense being alone on an idyllic beach under a black sky full of stars.

When I return the others are still talking. I brush my teeth then plug my ears with wax balls so that I cannot hear the snoring. Even inside the hut, it is cold. I slip into my heavy-duty sleeping-bag and am soon asleep. Sometime later I feel someone climb onto the bunk, then crawl into the flimsy sleeping-bag next to mine. I turn to see who has disturbed me and recognise Candy’s curly blonde hair, strands of which are close enough to tickle my nose. I lift my head to see how crowded the mattresses are. On her side of the bunk is plenty of room, next to a couple who are huddled together, barely taking up any of their allotted mattress space. Ditto the couple next to me. There is plenty of elbow-room for Candy to sleep nice and secluded on her own designated mattress. I lie down again but she insinuates herself closer, her hands almost shoved under my body. I do not roll away. I think I hear her whimper, but I have wedged my earplugs firmly in place and cannot distinguish sounds effectively. I lie there absolutely still, too dopey to remove the earplugs and find out whether the murmuring is just the fantasy of a Lonely Guy who has been travelling on his own too long. For all I know, she could be whispering sweet nothings to me.

She is still asleep when I leave the hut.

Timing my departure perfectly to coincide with low tide, I cross the exposed mudflats rather than skirt the long way around the lagoon to the next hut. Halfway across, I become bogged in sloppy mud and have to slow down. I stub my toe on a hidden obstacle, lose my balance and slip. Trying to regain my equilibrium, my extended arms fluttering like a butterfly, I overextend myself and dive forwards, plastered to the mire by the weight of my top-heavy pack. I slowly get up on my hands and knees. My entire front, head to toe, is covered in slime and I silently extricate myself, scraping the mud from around my eyes, mouth, beard and out of my nostrils. I feel like Charlie Brown’s mate, Pig-Pen.

When I reach the safety of hard ground on the other side of the lagoon, I watch gleefully as two trampers cross the expanse of mudflat, following my footsteps. Sure enough, about halfway across they too slow, lifting their legs in the gumbo like flies stuck on flypaper. Disappointingly, neither of them takes a nosedive.

I reach Awaroa Hut, to find another backpacker there. She takes one look as I come through the door, my entire front still covered in what looks and smells like dried cow shit, and ignores me. It’s not easy to ignore someone in the limited space of an otherwise empty hut in the middle of the wilderness. But she manages it, somehow.

The trees are blackened in many areas in the forest, as if a fire had raged through the area, but they are clearly still alive. As I walk, a distinctive sweet smell lingers in the air. Inspecting the tree trunks closely, I can make out nodules from which hairs protrude, with tiny clear drops on the end. I dab a finger on several globules and then lick my finger, to taste a flavour like honey.

The eastern side of the park is too full, but this end is empty. Although I find this north-west part of the Abel Tasman Park more alluring than the other, more popular extremity, there is no one else to share the homestead-turned-DOC hut when I arrive that evening.

John, a retired local from Takaka now working as the hut warden during the summer months, checks my pass. His long hair curls over his square shoulders. He sits down with me, clearly interested in talking about the fauna and flora of the park: ‘The small nodules you saw on the beech trees? They’re formed by a female insect, who seals herself within the bark. She draws sap from the tree and excretes the excess through a fine hair-like thread, which you saw protruding from the trunk. The excrement you tasted forms in a little drop at the tip of the hair and is fed upon by birds and insects like bees and wasps. If the drop falls on the ground or the trunk of the tree or the surrounding vegetation, it nourishes the black sooty fungus. That’s the black stuff.’

‘And the sweet smell in those sections of the bush is the honeydew?’ I ask, as I boil water for tea.

‘Yeah.’

I rummage in my pack and pull out a package of milk biscuits, hoping John will stay and talk for a while. I’m spending too much time on my own, and even if I have a lot of stuff to sort out in my life, there’s only so much I can accomplish by being alone.

‘Plenty of traps on the track,’ I observe, while pouring two cups.

He takes a sip of tea before commenting. ‘Ah yeah, some traps are for possums, some for stoats. I’ve got control over them now, but they were pretty bad. Possums practically sit up and beg from the trampers. Bit of a hard case, those possums. Even come into the hut to steal food out of packs.’ He reaches into a breast pocket. ‘Ciggie?’

‘Don’t smoke.’ I hand him the opened package of biscuits. ‘Where’s the possum come from?’ I ask. ‘I thought there weren’t any endemic mammals in New Zealand except bats.’ I know the possums aren’t endemic; I’m just making conversation.

John shakes his head and sips his tea, closing his eyes against the steam. ‘Australian brushtail possum,’ he answers. ‘Ironically, they’re protected in Australia but here, without natural enemies and lots of food, they’ve multiplied so successfully that there’s some seventy million of them covering about 90 per cent of New Zealand.’

‘That’s the same number as the sheep you’ve got.’

‘Exactly. That’s why we have to get rid of them. Bloody useless. At least we can eat the sheep.’

I say, defending them: ‘But they’ve got big eyes, and soft fur, like African bushbabies.’

‘Marsupials,’ John corrects. ‘They have pouches and are nocturnal, feed at night.’

‘That’s why you see so many squashed on the road?’

‘Get caught in the headlights of vehicles. Good thing too.’ He dips a biscuit into his tea and chews on the soggy portion before finishing the rest.

‘I’ve seen dead ones lying on the track.’ I offer him another biscuit.

‘Poisoned. Usually by 1080,’ he says, as if this was a numeric combination of which everyone should know the meaning. ‘Good bikkies,’ he adds.

‘1080?’ I ask.

‘Sodium monofluoroacetate. Supposed to be water-soluble.’

I nod, as if those big words explain it perfectly. Poison. I also try dipping my biscuit in my Sleepytime tea. It tastes funny. ‘What’s that do to the environment, other animals, birds?’

He shrugs, and suddenly sensitive to my question, says: ‘What’s the alternative? The possums are eating our forests away.’

‘They look cute.’ I’m not trying to provoke John, because they really do look cute, other than in DOC propaganda, which makes them look decidedly evil.

‘They destroy our native plants and trees; snails, wetas and other invertebrates; bird eggs and chicks such as the kiwi, or those two oystercatchers you probably saw on the beach just now. Every time that dumb pair lay eggs the possums get ’em. Probably sit there watching and wait for them to lay their eggs. They also spread bovine tuberculosis, which threatens our dairy and meat industries.’

‘So what can you do?’

‘Shoot them, trap them, poison them. Whatever we do, it won’t be enough. Bringing possums here has really stuffed up our nature.’

‘Seems a bit harsh.’

His face flushes and I change the subject quickly. ‘I thought I saw a marijuana plant beside the path today.’

‘Ah yeah. You only saw one?’ He laughs. ‘There are fields of marijuana in the parks. You can make a thousand dollars from one marijuana plant. The marijuana growers keep one step ahead of the police and the possums. They began by protecting the gardens from possums by using razor-blade wire fencing. Then the possums found their way through that, so they started to use electric fencing. When the police flew their helicopters to search for marijuana fields, they located the gardens by listening to the electrical interference on their radios. So the growers got smart and used the electric fences only at night when the possums were out and the helicopters weren’t. It’s a cat and mouse game.’ He is quiet for some time before he flicks his long hair off his shoulders and adds: ‘Course, a lot of people think us DOC workers have got the best access to good growing areas.’

During the night there is a terrific rainstorm and before dawn the loud din of birdsong wakes me. It is impossible to sleep in on such a glorious day. I follow the track to the western end of the park. Steam rises from the damp forest floor as if there were vents under the fallen leaves. The slanting rays of the early-morning sun filter through the upper canopy of trees, illuminating the mist in a ghostly latticework of light and shadow. The rainforest reverberates with the assorted melodies of unseen birds. The sense of infinity in this ancient forest humbles me.

Return to beginning of chapter

HEAPHY TRACK

There are so few cars in this corner of New Zealand that I almost have to walk instead of hitchhike all the way to Takaka, the hippie epicentre of the country. On the main street, a horse-drawn carriage passes by, constructed out of the rear axle of a car. Grey hair, a beard and bushy eyebrows disguise the driver’s face, and he has a red kerchief wrapped around his neck. A long-haired grey dog sits on the seat next to him wearing an identical red scarf. They could be twins. The cart passes old Morris Minors, Hillmans, Anglias, Vauxhalls, Rovers, Humbers, Sunbeams, Land Rovers, Zephyrs, Oxfords, Austins, Triumphs and Bedfords. Half a dozen sheepdogs in the back of a ute bark noisily as the carthorse clip-clops by.

A minibus takes several of us trampers to the start of the Heaphy Track, a five-day walk which will lead us back to the West Coast. The track was a route used by the Maori; it is not just designed for tourists, there is some historic merit to it. En route, we stop by a spectacular gorge. As we climb out of the vehicle, our driver lectures us: ‘Adventure tourism is the wrong kind of tourism for New Zealand. It’s a fad. You can bungee jump anywhere in the world. Unspoiled nature is what we have that is unique. Look at this.’ He points ahead of him. ‘They’ve built this huge, ugly, steel contraption, just to bungee jump from. Why? It was such a picturesque place before, why not sit there and watch, meditate, or float down in a kayak or a canoe? People come all the way from Wellington now by helicopter to bungee jump from the thing, but the river’s natural beauty is ruined.’

He’s in the minority with his opinions in New Zealand as far as I can tell, although all of us murmur agreement.

It is addictive, this silent plodding in rainforests. There’s an unmistakable feeling of contentment. Hours after I have started the track, it begins to pour with rain, just as I reach Perry Saddle Hut. Inside is a Kiwi family, a man named Wayne, his son and daughter, and also two Kiwi women, Myra and Linda. The latter, who are a delightful couple when they can be bothered to speak to us, spend most of the time unabashedly huddled together on a communal bunk. Their lustful indulgences are ineffectively disguised by sleeping-bags pulled carelessly over their bodies.

Wayne cooks up thick slabs of fresh beef each the size of an encyclopedia volume. Tired of packaged pasta and soup, I bought something different for this trip in one of the health stores in Takaka: dehydrated split peas with ham. I cook them the standard five minutes prescribed for any dried food but the meal is almost unpalatably salty, the peas hard like tiny pebbles. Hungry, I devour it anyway. Then, feeling incredibly thirsty, I drink a litre of water. I feel bloated, as if the vegetables are re-hydrating in my stomach. Wondering if I have done something wrong, I retrieve the plastic package from my litterbag. The split-pea and ham soup mix did include dehydrated ham, but the kilo of split peas requires soaking overnight, prior to cooking for some hours. I had soaked them no time at all and boiled them a scant five minutes, barely enough to put a dent in them. Now they are immersed in a litre of water like they are supposed to, except they are in my stomach. My intestines bubble as I sit and read the visitor’s book, trying to ignore what I have done to myself.

My bloated abdomen becomes painfully distended. I toss and turn all night in agony as fermenting peas detonate, the implosions muffled by my trustworthy triple-layer sleeping-bag. Myra and Linda, my two bunkmates, are too absorbed in their nocturnal bawdiness to be bothered with my gastronomic problems. Occasionally an ankle, hand or fleshy protuberance appears from an angle I would least expect. I pull my sleeping-bag up to my nose, secretly observing their frantic ribaldry.

It rained, snowed and hailed during the night. Several times I was awakened by the howling of the wind, sure the roof would be ripped off the hut. Now it is calm again, snow dripping off the corrugated roof in wet lumps. My stomach is still sensitive and I attempt to keep my flatulence discreet, but as I roll my sleeping-bag from the bottom up, the lingering gas is expelled.

Catching up with Wayne and his family at Saxon Hut, I find him already cooking up an evening meal of sausages and chops, while his two kids play cards. Afterwards Wayne clears up; he seems to do everything. Although the ‘kids’ are at university, they are living at home and I gather the same routine exists there too: he does the work, they relax.

‘Want to play caads?’ the son asks.

‘What?’ I reply, busy scouring pots and pans with Wayne.

‘Caads. You want to play caads?’

I shake my head. ‘Say it one more time.’

Wayne interrupts. ‘Cards. He wants to know if you want to play cards.’ He repeats it in an accent I can understand.

‘Oh, caards,’ I reply. ‘Sure.’

‘Good as,’ the son responds.

They teach me to play Last Card, and Assholes and Kings. Outside, a torrent of water inundates the forest. Technically, we are on the West Coast, where the rainfall is the heaviest in New Zealand. ‘Pissing with rain,’ the son says, looking out the window.

‘Persisting,’ his father corrects.

‘What do you do for fun besides play cards?’ I ask, sorting out my hand.

‘Go hunting,’ Polly the daughter replies, without batting an eye.

Myra and Linda arrive, dripping wet. Within minutes they are warmly huddled together on a bunk bed, their lusty embraces ignored as we try to resolve who is the Asshole and who is the King. There is nothing to remind us that it is almost Christmas. No radio, no television, no Christmas lights in the bush.

Wayne has got into the habit of serving me a cup of tea in the mornings.

I walk the entire day on my own. It is definitely addictive, this walk into the depths of a rainforest. I feel my body must crave the oxygen, the ambience, something …

When I arrive at the next hut, the two kids are already playing cards and Wayne is busy frying up the remaining side of beef. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a whole steer in his pack. He asks: ‘Did you see Linda and Myra?’

‘They were still in bed when I left the hut this morning. I don’t know how they do it.’ I quickly add, so that he doesn’t misunderstand me: ‘I mean, leaving it so late yet getting from one hut to another so quickly.’

‘Flat out like a lizard drinking,’ Wayne replies, removing another chunk of beef from the iron frying pan. His kids wait expectantly with mouths open.

A couple of hours later Linda and Myra arrive. Immediately after unfurling their sleeping-bags, they go at it hammer and tongs.

I do not feel alone in the rainforest. After looking about to see if anyone is watching, I try hugging a tree, my face pressed against the mossy solid trunk, arms wrapped around it. I do this for several minutes before letting go. It does not feel as strange as I thought it might: it feels good. Trees make good friends. I take another look around before trying it a second time – and see Linda and Myra standing hand in hand. Embarrassed, I smile at them. They theatrically shake their heads and happily continue tramping down the track on muscular legs I’d kill to exchange my own for.

The walk to Heaphy Hut includes a couple of crossings on swaying suspension bridges, skirting limestone cliffs and caves on one side, and the Heaphy River on the other. The rocks are so overgrown with vegetation that it is difficult to distinguish, in the subdued light of the dense rainforest, what is rock and what is plant matter. The roots of a huge tree drip over the limestone, like the dribblings of a melted wax candle over a wine bottle. I am not sure whether the cliffs are supporting the trees, or vice versa. The trees in turn are covered in parasitic plants, which extract nutrients from humus collected in the branches high above. Rocky clumps and vines, tentacles and roots, all are intermingled in a seething, silent mound of vegetation and rock. It does not take much imagination to see all kinds of terrifying creatures in their shapes and shadows.

Through a gap in the nikau palms, I catch sight of the wide Heaphy River opening out to the Tasman Sea. When I get to Heaphy Hut itself, I find it has a view over river and sea, protected from the offshore winds by the forest. Because the hut is shielded from the breeze, it is infested by sandflies so vicious I wouldn’t be surprised if they could actually bark as well as bite. I walk along the river to the seashore, where huge breakers crash along endless kilometres of empty beach. Driftwood, probably from trees that have fallen into the river and been carried down to the sea, litters the beach, especially at the mouth of the river.

To avoid sleeping in the hut, I spend the best part of the afternoon building a windbreak on the spit of beach, where the river curls before it flows out to sea. Heaps of fantastically shaped driftwood provide ample construction material. The completed shelter is both useful against the burning rays of the sun and as a windbreak from the strong westerly wind.

An athletic Kiwi jogs across the sand, negotiating the tangle of driftwood to admire my handiwork. ‘Choice,’ he says. ‘Cool. Wicked. Love it. Awesome, amazing, sweet as.’ He is stoked, full on, rapt, to use the colloquial expressions. ‘Cool’ is a word he uses often, even when I introduce myself. I never thought there was anything inherently cool about my name.

‘Rad shelter,’ he says in conclusion.

‘Crisp,’ I say. I might as well coin a new exclamation, having given up on my ability to say ‘cool’ in a way that sounds remotely cool. I don’t have the right emphasis on the ‘kuh’ part of the cool, I reckon.

‘Crisp?’ he repeats.

‘Yeah, crisp. Means cool, but better than cool.’

‘Crisp.’ He repeats it several times, listening to its sound, the effect. ‘Cool,’ he concludes.

He jogs off through the wreckage of tree trunks, heading back to the hut. I set up my home for the night. The sun sets in a red ball over the Tasman Sea, just as an orange full moon rises over the river lagoon on the other side of the spit. I cook dinner in the middle of this celestial performance, then stretch out beside my shelter. I think about what my family and friends are doing over Christmas, as I lie on this remote beach on an empty coastline, so far, far away.

The roar of waves collapsing on the beach awakens me. It’s the day before Christmas. The sun shines and already it is warm. White-breasted shags nearby dry their wings in the sunlight. I slept exceptionally well, lying on a soft cushion of sand with a comfortable sea breeze keeping the insects away.

I shake the sandy grains from the sleeping-bag, roll it up, pack my backpack and walk to the hut. Most of the resident trampers, including Wayne and his kids, have already gone. Despite the pesky insects, Linda and Myra are still affectionately locked in a wrestler’s embrace. I debate whether I should wait for them to disengage before I say goodbye, or just leave. I decide to continue down the track, knowing they will catch me up.

At the park entrance Wayne’s wife waits for her husband and children. They offer me a ride to Karamea, the nearest settlement, where as a special Christmas treat I have already booked myself into something more up-market than a regular backpackers lodge. After passing up their invitation to continue with them to Westport, further south, I check in at the motel reception. With nothing better to do, I amble through the isolated village past a small wooden church and notice that Christmas Day service is at ten in the morning. There is not a lot to explore besides the church; Karamea is a straight road with a caf� and a grocery store. The woman who owns the caf� serves me a coffee, insists I try her cakes and will not let me pay for them. Two of her tousled-headed sons distract her: one rides his bike as fast as he can down the middle of the road, pulling the other on a skateboard, like a water skier on a rope behind a jet boat. The skateboarder careers recklessly between both sides of the deserted street; if he wipes out, he is going to cover himself with gravel rash.

‘Git yer helmets on!’ she yells at them. ‘Going to do themselves an injury one day,’ she says to me. ‘Ever since they tar-sealed the road they think it’s a slalom course.’ The kids are barefoot and so is their mother. Everyone is. I feel conspicuously dressed up wearing sandals.

‘Where’re you staying?’ she asks me.

‘At the motel up the road.’

‘What you doing tomorrow?’

I shrug self-consciously.

‘Don’t know what we’re doing either, but if we get a barbie going, would you like to come?’

‘That’s kind of you.’

At any backpackers lodge I would have been with other homeless travellers and we would have made our own Christmas cheer. I walk back to the motel realising I have made a mistake booking into this more expensive accommodation. The few guests there seem unhappy and intent on forgetting Christmas. At least, I console myself, I do not have to cook. But sitting alone in the almost empty restaurant that night is a sad affair. In Norway, the Christmas Eve dinner would be the focus of Christmas. I try to forget that, but it reinforces the fact that I am alone in a desolate corner of this isolated country.

I escape to the lounge, where I watch television in the hope of catching something that might instil some seasonal cheer. But just as Christmas carols are about to be broadcast and my spirits are primed to perk up, the staff close down the main building of the motel. I am unceremoniously kicked out and the doors are locked.

I morosely close the door of my room, a prefabricated concrete cell without toilet, sink or television. It is a few minutes past midnight on Christmas Day. There are two minor consolations in this, I conclude as I undress, feeling sorry for myself. Firstly, it is twelve hours later in Europe and even later in Canada, so Christmas has not really begun back home. Secondly, it is the first occasion in two months that I have slept in my own room, in a real bed, with clean sheets. That must count for something.

It is hot and stuffy in the room and the windows, for some unknown reason, are cemented shut in their frames. Reluctant to sleep all night with the door ajar, I switch on the ceiling fan. Then I slip under the smooth, fresh-smelling sheets and lie restfully on my back. I turn off the bedside electric light, another luxury, and cradle my head on a feather pillow covered with white linen. The overhead fan picks up speed, wafting a comforting breeze over my body. I focus my mind on these small luxuries as the rhythmically circling blades rotate faster and faster.

Something flies off one of the fan blades and rudely flops over my face. I peel the rubbery, fishy-smelling thing off my nose, sit up and turn on the light. Hanging limply between my forefinger and thumb is a well-used, sticky condom.

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CHRISTMAS DAY, KARAMEA

Credit on the hundred-dollar telephone card disappears within minutes; I call my father in Toronto, my mother in London and Kirsten in Norway. For several minutes I am Superman, flying from New Zealand to Canada, then England and Norway. Then there is silence, and I am back in my Clark Kent suit on a sunny day in a phone booth, a world away from the dark, snowy Christmas of those I love.

It has been snowy and cold since I arrived in New Zealand. Now it is hot and sunny and I am complaining. I am not sure I could get used to having Christmas in the summer season.

Perhaps home is not so much a place in space as a place in the heart, I muse as I head down the road to church, dressed in my backpacker’s best. I enter the chapel and self-consciously slide into a back pew. The congregation, all couples or families, appraise the newcomer in their midst. An elderly woman in a colourful dress formally welcomes me and the warm reception chokes me up with memories of Christmas church services in Norway with my adopted Norwegian family. Those Scandinavian Yuletide images seem so confusingly idyllic now; the darkness countered by candlelight, the epitome of Christmas. Unlike Norway, where we would be bundled in overcoats and wool, the men here wear light polyester shirts, belted trousers tucked under ample bellies and worn, but polished, shoes. They must be farmers, judging by the backs of their necks, which are weathered and creased like elephant skin by the sun’s searing rays. The women are resplendent in flowery cotton dresses. As if on cue a single bird sings vigorously outside the church.

A member of the congregation hesitantly begins to play a hymn on the organ. She finishes too soon, but we carry on, reading from the hymnbook before we stop, one by one. We wait for her to lead us again and she flips the music score back to the beginning. Her head nods up and down a couple of times as she mentally plays through the first few bars. We give it another try with better success, but halfway through she loses it, and we have to start from the beginning once more. By comparison, we sing ‘Silent Night’ almost flawlessly, although I have to reduce my voice to a whisper when I become emotional, remembering previous Christmases.

As I exit the church, nodding my head to acknowledge the friendly greetings, a younger woman smiles and asks: ‘Where are you from?’

‘Canada.’

She introduces herself. ‘Carrynne.’

‘Where are you from?’ I ask.

‘Here. Karamea.’ She introduces me to her husband, Evan: ‘From Norway.’ I greet him in Norwegian; he replies and we carry on conversing in Norwegian. ‘If you’re Canadian, why do you speak Norwegian?’ Carrynne asks, surprised.

‘Lived in Norway for five years.’

She asks: ‘What are you doing today?’

‘Nothing,’ I reply, scratching my forehead. The other invitation was vague, just a possibility.

‘You’re welcome to spend the day with us. We’re going back for Christmas lunch and there’s more than enough food.’

‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

‘Most definitely.’

That afternoon, Carrynne and her husband treat me like family at their cosy but magnificent wood-furnished house, which is on a hill overlooking a river. Two visiting Norwegian guests keep me happily chatting in Norwegian, making me feel slightly closer to ‘home’ in Norway. It is well into the evening before they drop me off at the motel.

When I return to my room there is a note pinned on the door. The caf� lady had come to collect me so as I could join her family for Christmas too.

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BOXING DAY, WESTPORT

Eager to move out of the depressing motel, I catch a ride to Westport just down the coast from Karamea, and on the way back to Nelson. I find myself at the traditional Westport Boxing Day races. Here the Kiwis come in all shapes and sizes: weathered farmers whose portly bodies no longer fit too-tight, worn tweed jackets; their white-haired wives in print dresses, with wide-brimmed straw hats; bare-chested studs with tattooed biceps, shaved skulls and drug-dealer sunglasses. The latter guzzle jugs of beer in the back of flashy utes. Their women lie on their stomachs, legs displayed like barbequing Bratwurst sausages, with splotches of white skin on their lobster-red backs marking precisely where fingers covered in sunscreen have ranged. Other punters are more authentic, with shaggy beards, long hair, missing teeth and home-made tattoos.

The loudspeakers crackle, barely audible: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, there are only two minutes before the start of the next race, please make your investments.’ Not bets but investments.

The scratchy recording of a trumpet heralds the start of another race. My ‘investment’ doubles.

Another announcement: ‘A sum of cash has been found. If you have lost some money could you please come to the information booth to collect it.’

I check my pockets. Anywhere else in the world, that proclamation would be met with derision, especially at a racetrack. It is refreshing, this old-fashioned honesty on the West Coast of the South Island.

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NELSON LAKES NATIONAL PARK

Outside Nelson, one could be forgiven for thinking one was in North America: whole hillsides have been clear-cut and replanted with Montana radiata pine. These trees grow faster in New Zealand than anywhere else; any vestige of native New Zealand on these hills has been lost through the widespread introduction of this imported pine species. Whole ecosystems are shrinking as whatever is left of native bush is chomped on by introduced species, particularly possums, deer and goats. Indigenous birds, reptiles, frogs and larger invertebrates fall victim to other introduced species like stoats, rats, cats and dogs. New Zealand looks green and beautiful, but beneath the surface is an ecology that has been either destroyed or made insidiously vulnerable.

Arriving at St Arnaud in the late afternoon, I walk down to Kerr Bay and stand on the beach of Lake Rotoiti. Jet boats, skiers and motor boats zip backwards and forwards speedily in front of me. The scene, the sounds of engines and the drifting smell of petrol remind me vaguely of summers spent in cottage country in the lake district of Ontario, Canada.

Later in the evening, after dinner at my lodge, I head back down to the same beach. This time there are no boats on the lake and the overall effect is quite different. Instead of focusing on the water sports, I am more conscious of the wilderness, the snow-covered peaks on either side of the lake reflected in its still waters, the sounds of birds and the smell of fresh air. It is quiet and serene, in direct contrast to the activities earlier in the day. It reminds me now of Norway, where no motor boats are permitted on lakes, and especially not in national parks.

In the morning, I climb for hours. The views are spectacular, the temperature is perfect, the day being sunny but cool; yet I cannot escape the annoying buzz of the motor boats on the lake below. I am alone with no one else on the track, but the wilderness experience is diminished by the unrelenting hum of engines, just as that last day on the Milford Track had been. I feel old-fashioned and grouchy, but I cannot help imagining what it would be like if the only boats allowed on the lake were sailboats or canoes. I try to ignore the audible irritant but it bugs the hell out of me. It is only when I am over the crest of the mountain ridge and at aptly named Bushline Hut that a semblance of solitude pervades at last. I console myself with the fact that they have at least outlawed jet skis on the lake.

A solitary kea comes to pester me in the evening, strutting about looking for trouble. I rescue my boots and place them out of his reach inside the hut. He emits a plaintive cry before sulkily flapping away, presumably as pissed off with the day as I am.

Leaving Bushline Hut, I enter a high alpine desert of brown rocks and patches of snow left behind from winter. The views from the top of the ridgeline are spectacular, with jewel-like coloured lakes at the bottom of steep scree slopes, resembling elegant turquoise necklaces. Ascending one last snowdrift to a saddle, I unexpectedly overlook Angelus Hut, which is set beside a semi-frozen, shimmering sapphire lake encompassed by a glacial cirque. I scramble down towards the lake, the semi-circle of snow-covered ridges reflecting and concentrating the sun so harshly that I can feel it burning into my skin.

Later, as I sit below a window in the shade of the hut, out of the searing sunlight, I overhear the conversation of two English couples inside. They had emigrated to South Africa a decade ago, and have now re-emigrated to New Zealand.

‘Kiwis are unassuming compared to the English,’ one of them comments.

‘There’s not the same stultifying sense of hierarchy here. If you make it, you make it and good on you,’ another says.

One of the women adds: ‘True, but I wanted to go back to South Africa when we first arrived in Auckland. The weather here still bothers me. It’s so cold. Can’t get used to doing all the housework either. Used to complain about the help in South Africa, but I’d be happy to have it now.’

A husband backs up the argument. ‘Materially we were better off in South Africa, with good housing, swimming pools, fancy cars and tennis courts. The quality of life wasn’t anything like we have here, though. We don’t live in armed compounds any more, don’t have walls, guns, dogs, guards or burglar bars. I used to worry every time she drove to the supermarket to buy groceries, in case she got carjacked. It’s no life for children there, either. Here it’s great, our children can go out and play and we don’t worry about them. You can’t measure that freedom in material terms. Besides, we’ve got the same great outdoor life: rugby, cricket, barbies. Just don’t have the problems.’

Angelus has an auspicious ring to it and I decide to stay rather than move on. Just in case anything should happen to me, I leave a note in the hut, stating my intentions of climbing Mount Angelus. There is no marked path up to the summit. I follow bright yellow alpine buttercups growing along mountain streams, which empty into icy emerald lakes. Alpine daisies and New Zealand edelweiss flourish in the waterlogged areas.

It takes a couple of hours to reach the top of the mountain, which is 2075 metres high. Jagged peaks and lines of mountain ranges fade into the background and clouds hug the valley towards Nelson. The long curve of Golden Bay is visible in the distance, with snow-covered mountains looming in the foreground. Descending the same route, I slide down snowfields, using my hiking boots as impromptu skis. I happily shout and scream like a kid until I reach the rocky, boulder-strewn scree and the confines of the hut.

I search through my backpack for a suitable dinner. There are several packages of dried pasta, each with a misleading portrayal of a delectable meal on a plate: macaroni and cheese, fettuccine verdi, sour cream and chives, sour cream and mushrooms, cheese and black pepper, bacon carbonara, creamy mushrooms and bacon. Despite the fanciful names, each of these instant meals tastes and looks exactly the same. I should know; I’ve been eating them daily for the last two months. I take out the second of the split-pea and ham soups I bought in Takaka, the same meal that had given me severe abdominal problems on the Heaphy Track. This time I read the instructions carefully: ‘Soak overnight or simmer for a minimum of two hours’. I haven’t soaked it overnight, so I’ll have to cook it for two hours. While the package of soup cost only a couple of dollars, the portable gas canisters cost eight. By the time I finish boiling these split peas until they are edible, this dinner will be the most expensive meal I have consumed on the trip.

Just as I get the water boiling, other trampers arrive. As they prepare their own dehydrated dinners, they can’t help but notice that there is one portable gas stove burning for an inordinate length of time, unattended. Even after they have all finished cooking and eating, and even cleaned up after themselves, my solitary stove, lit long before their arrival, is still aflame.

I put the book down that I have been studiously reading and stir the gooey mush of peas.

‘You’ve been cooking your soup for a couple of hours?’ someone says, with the distinctive Kiwi inflection that renders a statement more of a question.

‘I know.’ I continue reading, as if cooking soup for hours on a portable gas canister is perfectly normal behaviour. ‘Heaps of gas canisters in my pack. Trying to use them all up,’ I say in explanation, without taking my eyes off the pages of my book. ‘Lightens the load,’ I add, trying not to appear any odder than I already am.

I decide to spend yet another lazy day and night at Angelus Hut. Everyone else packs and heads off in different directions, leaving me behind. It is the last day of the year, New Year’s Eve. I climb the cirque’s knife-sharp ridge, which encircles the half-frozen sapphire lake. Strands of mist rise vertically from the valley bottom, caught in invisible thermals. On the steepest and highest point on the rim, as I step on a large boulder, it gives way and lodges against the back of my calf, pinning me against the snow. Too frightened to move, I stand there carefully balancing the rock with my leg. Finally I manoeuvre out of its embrace, and once released it rolls, crashing down through the steep field of snow and ice. At first it careers like a sled, then cartwheels and bounces down, leaving a curious pattern in the snowfield, beginning like a snail’s trail and ending up like a giant’s leaping footprints. Curious, I time the descent. Thirty long seconds pass before the boulder crashes into the lake with a spectacular splash, the noise amplified by the sound chamber of the cirque. Ripples spreading out on the lake are absorbed by the remnants of soggy ice. Sometimes I scare myself when I realise how accident-prone I can be, although this was only a close call.

It is an anti-climax to return to the hut and find it still empty. Now that I’m getting to the point where I actually want to meet people, there aren’t any around. It wouldn’t be the first time I spent New Year’s Eve in a cabin out in the wilderness; in fact, it’s my preferred way of passing this particular night. But wonderful as it is here, in this setting, it would also be nice to share the evening with others; I mean, I feel a bit of a loser spending New Year’s Eve all alone. I lie on a bunk bed and try unsuccessfully to read. Late in the afternoon, the first tramper arrives, entering the hut and dropping her pack heavily on the floor. She is covered in perspiration; her fair hair is wet around the temples and the back of her neck. She stands on a leg and stretches her quadriceps; despite the perspiration, she does not breathe hard and is clearly very fit. She’s also pretty. I can’t believe my luck, and introduce myself: ‘Hi, I’m Andrew and I’m in this hut all by myself, with nowhere better to go on New Year’s Eve.’ I don’t actually say anything other than my name, as she can probably figure the rest out for herself.

She tells me her name. ‘Tania.’

I ask where she is from. She hesitates.

I have seen that equivocation before. ‘Don’t tell me, I know where you are from. Auckland,’ I say, with the smugness of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

‘How’d you know?’ she asks, humouring me.

‘Because any time a Kiwi hesitates to say where they come from, at least on the Mainland, then I know they come from Auckland.’ People in rural New Zealand seem to view Aucklanders as if they come from a separate country.

‘The Mainland?’ She looks at me as if I am stupid, then balances on the other leg and stretches. ‘Where’s the Mainland?’ she asks indulgently, as if dealing with someone mentally challenged.

‘You know, the South Island,’ I reply.

‘Who told you the South Island’s called the Mainland?’ she asks, bending over and almost touching the wooden floorboards with her nose.

‘All the Kiwis I meet.’ I smile at her when she looks sideways at me from her upside-down perspective.

‘And you’ve only been on the South Island, right?’ She holds the position, blood rushing to her head.

‘Right.’

‘Figures.’

She unpacks, pulling her food and stove from the bottom of her pack. I ask her: ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. Why aren’t you with friends at a barbie?’ As a Kiwi, she must have plenty of friends; it seems strange that she is here all by herself. If I were a cool Kiwi I’d invite her out for sure.

‘The men stand around the barbie pretending to cook but all they really do is talk rugby or cricket. The women stand together in the kitchen and gossip. For a change, sometimes I go to a pub on New Year’s Eve. It’s such a pain in the arse, though. Guys won’t take no for an answer. Last New Year’s Eve I had to hit one over the head with a beer bottle.’

I take a step back to give her some more personal space. No point getting clobbered because of a cross-cultural misunderstanding.

‘Sometimes you have to physically fight them off.’

I take another step backwards as a precautionary measure.

‘I thought it was the Aussies who acted like that?’

‘Ah yeah? You haven’t seen a Kiwi in action, mate. You know what an Aussie bloke thinks is foreplay?’

‘No.’ I shrug my shoulders.

‘Hey sheila, you awake?’ She raises her eyebrows with contempt.

I laugh to demonstrate that I clearly know this is the most graceless form of foreplay.

She studies me. ‘At least the Aussie asks if you’re awake,’ she adds, without a trace of irony.

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