A Great Walk

The adventures have picked up.

After a heartfelt goodbye (Wendy and Bridgette were awesome flatmates, that became good friends), we headed off toward the East Cape. If I were a giant, and New Zealand was my home, the East Cape is the room I would go to when I wanted to be alone. It was delightfully unpopulated, with plenty of coastline. The beaches were eerily loaded with driftwood, and the few, isolated houses were in various states of disrepair. The East Cape could be a lonely place. We just kept on driving, viewing most of it from the car. It was a pleasant, quiet start to the post-work stage of our journey.

We met up with our now former flatmate Wendy at Lake Waikeramoana. This was to be our first “Great Walk”. There are about a dozen of them in New Zealand, and they’re supposed to be… great. I wasn’t so sure. It could be cold. It could be wet. It could be cold and wet! I could get blisters. I might just get really, really tired. What if it’s just really boring. Day 1, alone, was supposed to be 5 hours; uphill. Gulp. I sucked it up. 45 kilometers, 4 days. It was a religious experience. A revelation. By the time we made it back to our cars, I felt like the Buddha. 4 days of rigorous hiking, with a single purpose to my existence, left me with a profound sense of calm. Everything made sense. Enlightenment, baby. Zen and the Art of Tramping. New Zealand style.

Today, we’ve made our way to Palmerston North. I sit in a “stunning” library, in a city that is home to NZ’s largest university. Tonight we’ll sleep in a small, free campground, in a small town not far from here called Fielding. We’ll slowly make our way west to Mt. Eggmont, and then to the Whanganui River. From there, we’ll rent a canoe and float lazily downstream for 4 days. I’m not complaining.