My friend Nate's account of us hitching around New Zealand in 2004

Hitchin’ Aotearoa

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Land of the dirty, white thumb

Nate Clark



For Rob, a great traveling companion who I would gladly get lost in any country with. Thanks for the laughs and the insights, and for never getting around to writing this yourself, forcing me to do it, and in so recount one of the best adventures I could ever imagine.

Also thanks to everyone who made this journey possible, especially all those who offered up their services, chauffer extraordinaire, shady as some of them may have been. We never could have made it without you.

Day One

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The Journey Begins

It’s 6am and I’m fast asleep, curled cozily on my sardine sized plank of padded plywood which Moore Hall so loving calls a bed. She pulls her shirt off and opens her voluptuous lips, and begins to scream…“BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!” What the FUCK!? I lazily roll my eyelids back and curse that evil little device that has just ruined such a perfect dream.

As I drag myself out of bed, I stumble on an overloaded, blaze orange, 90L duffle bag that someone had the bright idea to put shoulder straps on and call a hiking pack. What can I say; I got it on sale, and after all, a pack is a pack right? WRONG, as I found while hiking up the snow covers slopes of Mt. Luxmore, two months earlier. Multiple twisted ankles, rubbed raw shoulders and a pulled back later I decided never to bargain shop for a pack again, but it’ll have to do for now.

Regaining my balance, I pull on yesterday’s pants (conveniently found on the floor next to the bed) and stumble down the hall to put in my contacts and neutralize that raunchy smell of morning breath after a night of fish, chips and beer. Stepping into the bathroom sends shivers up my spine. The feel of cold linoleum and the thought of your bare feet being attacked by everything living on this communal bathroom floor is enough to get anyone moving a little faster.

Essentials taken care of, I head back to my room to finish dressing and go in search of my travel partner to ensure a prompt departure. It’s not like we have a plane to catch, but the earlier we leave, the more cars we get to watch pass and sneer at the two shabby Americans hangin’ their dirty little thumbs out to air.

“ROB!” I pound on his door them listen intently for sounds of life. The only reply seems to be a slight moan or a muffled curse, maybe both. “Rob, get the hell out of bed! I’m leavin’ in 30 min with or without you. It’s always easier to get a ride as a single than a double.”

“I’m UP! Damn Nate, hold your horses!” He pulls open the door, and I’m hit with an overpowering smell of stale milk and marijuana. He looks as if he has confused his eye drops with an acid sample and squints at me painfully. “Come back down in ten, I’ll be ready.” With this he turns, lets a not so subtle morning fart slide by and begins to rummage around looking for toothpaste and Advil.

I return to my room and begin a last minute inventory to kill time. Half way through I decide I can’t be bothered anymore and my stomach begins to gnaw at itself. With the ever tactful parting words of “If I ain’t got it, I don’t need it” I pull the door shut and head off towards the dining hall, acquiring a moderately awake and somewhat sober Rob along the way, who looks to be in about the same shape as me.

As we’re sittin’ down to a hearty kiwi breakfast of spaghetti on toast, baked beans and Marmite, Rob looks across the table at me and asks “You think I should bring a water bottle?”  All I can think is, “We’re gonna die.” Shaking my head I look at him and tell him we will stop at the grocery store as we leave town to pick up a few last minute supplies, including a water bottle.

“So what should we name out tent?” He asks me through a mouthful of beans. “It’s blue and has a rhino on it…how bout the Blue Rhino?”

“Let’s call it the Purple Rhino, just because it’s blue” I reply through an equally large mouthful of spaghetti on toast. He glares at me with a look that says “Nate, your full of shit” but refrains from pointing out the obvious.

“Ok” is all he can muster, and we finish the rest of our meal in silence, probably both asking ourselves why the hell we are about to hitchhike around New Zealand with the person sitting across from us.

Upon completion of our meal, we return our trays, stealth fully sneak extra fruit (a pet peeve of the meanest lunch lady- we do it more just to spite her) and head out into a beautiful New Zealand morning. The sun is out and it appears to be a perfect day. Of course the weather here has a mind of its own, and may be pissing down rain within the next 20 min, but right now it’s gorgeous.

When we got to the supermarket we got quite a few funny looks for carrying our packs with us. It was like they had never seen someone carry a fully loaded hiking pack around the grocery store….Kiwis. After arguing over the “essentialness” of chocolate and beer (siding on the chocolate because it was lighter) we headed on our way south, Rob’s new 1 liter passion fruit soda “water bottle” in tow.

It’s amazing how much longer it feels to walk about 8 city block with overloaded hiking packs on then you would think. By the time we reached the outskirts of town we both were already worn out and complaining about our feet. I had decided it would be a good idea to wear my friend’s military boots that were 2 sizes too small, because they didn’t have the holes that my hiking boots did. This was “learning experience” number one. But as they saying goes, “It’s all part of the adventure.” I’m convinced that is just something someone said when told that if they complained about something being shitty one more time they would incur a beating. After making this smart ass remark I am sure they incurred a beating which was classified as “part of the adventure.”

We found a good looking spot (as far as good looking can be used to describe a hitchhiking post) and plopped our packs down.

“Now what?” Rob asked.

“What do you mean?” I responded questioning.

“Well, you’re the expert at this.” Because I had been hitchhiking once before, I was now the “expert.”

“Stick your thumb out.” I told him gruffly.

“How?”

“Hell Rob, I don’t know, like your stickin’ it up some ones ass for all I care. However you think it looks best. People see someone with a pack and their thumb in the air by the side of the road; they tend to get the picture.” I don’t think he liked my humor, and I kind of felt like an ass, but I figured we’d have all week to clear it up. He was still smiling anyway, so things couldn’t be that bad.

Forty-five minutes later we we’re starting to get a little antsy. There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs when hitchhiking. It is all but impossible to get OUT of a city. Ironically, you will have the maximum number of cars pass you with the minimum number of people who will stop. All I can attribute it to is that ever driver thinks “Oh, someone else will pick them up.” Whatever it is, it sucks.

Anyway, there we are, standing on the side of the Route 1 heading south out of Christchurch. With every car that passes our hearts sink a little lower. I had hitched by myself before, but not with someone else, and was starting to have my doubts, even though friends had told me it wouldn’t be a problem.

“SOMEBODY GET US THE HELL OUT OF THIS CITY!” Rob began screaming at passing traffic.

“That’s the ticket Rob. Point and yell at ‘em like a mad man. That’s the kind of person I like to pick up; the ones with rage in their eyes flailing their arms in anger at passing vehicles.” I immediately had to put my foot in my mouth, because no sooner than I commented on his style a car pulled over and waited for us to catch up. Our adventure had begun.

Her name was Jan. She worked with flowers at a nursery on the outskirts of Christchurch.  Ironically, her car smelled like dogs…and piss. She was on her way to work, which was only about 20k up the road, but we didn’t care. We were grateful for any ride we could get, especially if it got us out of the city.

“So where yous headin’?” she asked in that tell-tone kiwi accent?

“Mt. Cook to start with” Rob replied, “then Wanaka, then wherever we want to go.”

“Sweet as” she replied, again being very kiwi. “Wish I had the freedom to take a vacation to ‘where ever I want to go.’”

We had a good conversation for the short remainder of the trip. She spoke highly of her daughter, and said we reminded her of her. She was quite envious of our trip, and very supportive of our decision to travel.

“You boys take care” she said as she dropped us on the side of the road. She was probably one of the friendliest rides we would get all trip.

As luck would have it, not 50 meters from where she dropped us there was a small pull over on the side of the road. These are the things you need to look for when hitchin’. Straight road, so they can see you (and not hit you) and have time to think “Do I want to pick up this foul smelling stranger?” and a place that they can easily pull over to get you.

We waited at this next outpost for about 20 min before a small, dirty, poor suspensioned mini van swerved into the pull off.

“Hurry up I ain’t got all day!” and angry voice shouted at us as we walked to the wrong side of the vehicle (seeing as how they drive on the other side of the road, doors are different as well). “Put you’s git-up in the boot and get in the back!” the same angry voice called. We got in and she took off like a bat out of hell.

The same small talk conversations ensued, but with painful silence in between sentences. It was an old Maori lady who picked us up with her two daughters, one around 15, who couldn’t keep her eyes off of Rob, and the other about 3. Not only was our chauffer fat, angry, and hairy-chinned (and may or may not have had a penis as Rob and I decided later) but she was also hard of hearing. She would scream a question into the back, and then we would have to reply four times until she either understood or lost interest.

“Where yous goin? What’re your names? Why are you in Aotearoa (Maori name for New Zealand)?” The conversation went on for about 10 minutes. I made the mistake of mentioning that I would like to get in some snowboarding while I was down here and she spent the next 20 min talking about Mt. Hut. She was OBSESSED with it, but had NO idea where the hell it was. Every mountain peak we saw she would point out and screech “That there’s Mt. Hut!” A few moments later it was “Oh no, I was wrong, that’s Mt. Hut!” After several of these attempts of trying to point out this mountain it became clear that she had no idea what she was talking about. It also became obvious that trying to communicate from the front of the van to the far back was a lost cause. At this point she put in a CD and turned up the music. Eminem-unedited. How appropriate for the 3 year old sitting beside me. A while later after listening to raps about sex, drugs, whores, murder and homosexuals, we were left on the side of the road in a cloud of dust. We were never so happy to be by ourselves again.

The cranky old Maori lady (who’s name we never got) dropped us on the outskirts of Ashburton, a small town south of Christchurch. Happy to be on our own again, we both exchanged a look, and burst out laughing.

“Look, Mt. Hut!” Rob pointed to a nearby hill.

“No, that’s Mt. Hut!” I jeered, pointing to park bench that happened to be on our right.

We had our laughs and took turns jesting about our previous ride. All in all though, even though she was an individual I would not readily let my children play with, or look at, we were both grateful inside for her kindness and continued on our way.

Our initial plan was to hike to the other side of town and the try to hitch a ride out. This fell through though after about 5 min of walking. We stopped in the middle of the median for a small break. Rob needed to relieve himself behind a sparse shrub not 10 meters from the road, and I desperately had to get out of these military boots. Not only did I look like some neo-Nazi Old Navy model, with my pants tucked into my boots and my fleece vest, but my feet were screaming bloody murder.  I sat down to fix the problem, but no sooner than I had gotten one boot off a blue Toyota pickup pulled to the side of the road.

“Yous all need a lift” a friendly voice called from the waiting vehicle.

    “Yeah, were headin’ to Mt. Cook. You goin’ that way?” I replied.

    “Sure am, hop on in!”

     I called to Rob to hurry up and desperately yanked of my other boot. Rob appeared, looking rather frazzled that we already had another ride. It was clear that I had rushed him a little too much and he had not had time for a proper shake. This was evident by the splatter marks on the front of his pants. I looked down at it, then looked at him. He looked at it and then looked at me with that “I can’t help it, you rushed me!” face. We both chuckled and I nodded for him to get in the back.

    Our new driver’s name was Dan and he was from Dunedin. He had just been up visiting friends in Christchurch and was now on his way back home. He looked severely hung over, but was managing to keep the truck between the lines, so it was better than walking. As for the vehicle, the truck had the worst suspension in the world. Not only did my body absorb every bump, pebble, rut, turn or twist in the road, but the truck continually felt as if it wanted nothing more than to roll over and over, like a dog begging for a treat.

    “So where yous from?” Dan asked taking one hand off the wheel and turning 90 degrees in his seat, oblivious to the road ahead.

    “America” Rob and I replied in unison.

    “Ahh…the land of Bush. Tell me, do people really like that twat? Cause here, we fuckin’ hate him” Dan said with a laugh.

    Rule number one: Never talk politics, religion or income with strangers, especially if you are relying on them for safety or transportation.

    “Some do, some don’t” I replied, happy to find another Bush hater. “Unfortunately enough did to get him elected, but there are quite a few who see that he is a complete idiot.”

    “Good to know. Ya know most Kiwis think that yous all love bush over there.” Dan said.

    “Well, now you can tell them otherwise” Rob chimed in from the back seat.

    “So what do you do?” I asked our new found Bush hating friend.

    “I work on a farm, mostly sheep, some cattle, handful of deer.” Of course it was mostly sheep, what would expect in country with 4 million people and 10 million sheep!

    “Farm work eh? We saw a cow that got hit by a car the other day. It was a bloody mess! Knocked the engine right out of the vehicle, cow guts everywhere…” I couldn’t stop. Even as I was talking my mind was saying “SHUT UP YOU!” but my mouth just kept on going. Rob looked at me in horror from the back. His face said it all, “Nate! WTF mate? This is a man who lives with livestock, and here you are talking about slaughtered ones, and laughing! If he doesn’t hit you I will!”

    “Yeah they do make a bloody mess” Dan replied. Awkward silence. “…I hit a sheep going about 70k on the farm once. Little fucker exploded!” He bellowed a big laugh.

    Could this really be happening? In my moment of uncontrolled lip flap, I had stumbled upon a subject that seemed to make him truly happy. Rob looked at him, then back at me, and just shook his head in what was either disbelief or disappointment, maybe both.

    Dan then went on to graphically explain the death of every animal he had ever hit, I’ll admit I got a chuckle out of his enthusiasm, but I was surprised that there were any animals left in the whole country after hearing his tales. I was just glad I wasn’t livestock.

    The rest of the ride went pretty smoothly in that machine of death. Aside from the unhealthy joy he got from running down defenseless animals, Dan turned out to be a real nice guy and we were happy to get the ride. He left us with a wave and a nod at the intersection of Route 1 and Route 8. That’s where we met Matt and Darcie.

    To fully appreciate the dynamic duo that was Matt and Darcie, you had to be there, but I will do my best to shed some light on the situation.

    Rob and I were sitting on the side of the road just outside of Timaru. We had been there for about 45 min and had seen a whopping total of about 5 cars. As we looked down the road we could see a midnight blue Subaru station wagon heading our way. As it flew past we could hear upbeat techno crankin’ out of the vehicles not-so-state-of-the-art sound system. About 100m down the road the car stopped abruptly, and flew into reverse. When it got back to us, we were greeted by two college students who looked to be about our age.

    “Hang on a tic, let me make some room.” One of them called, as he threw no less than 5 full bottles of hard liquor over the back seat and into the boot. “Hop on in!”

    Rob and I looked at each other, and thought of all the rides we hadn’t gotten trying to get out of Timaru. I was skeptical, but he pulled me aside, and reminded me that we may not get out of here if we didn’t go. We agreed to give it a few miles, and fake that this was where we needed to get out if the driver turned out to be shit-faced at 1 in the afternoon.   

    “Where yous headin?” the driver asked, giving a glance over his shoulder through his fashionably tinted designer sunnys.

    “Up the road” Rob replied.

    “Fair enough.” He smiled and turned back to the road. “I’m Matt, this here’s Darcie” he nodded to his companion riding shotgun.

    “Wanna drink?” Darcie asked as he leaned back over the seat and offered us a bottle of rum.

    “No thanks I replied.” It was only about 1 o’clock, but it looked as if he had been going for a while. Matt, the driver seemed sober though, thankfully.

    We had the same small talk conversations that always took place with everyone you ride with. By the end of the day you have had the same conversation with everyone, and it gets to the point that you can predict exactly what they are going to say. It’s kind of creepy knowing a conversation verbatim before it even takes place. Every now and then Rob or I would give some bullshit answer, just to make things interesting, and then feed off of each others stories. It may be lying, but it makes the time go a lot faster.

    Turns out they were two University students from Christchurch on their way to Queenstown to party for the weekend. They had come equipped with enough alcohol to get an elephant coma’d, and were looking for a good time. I was sure they’d find something: whether it was a good time, police, or alcohol poisoning, I could tell this would be a weekend they would not soon forget.

    “So how far yous goin?” Matt asked. At this point we had decided that he was sober so we would ride with them for a bit.

    “We’re on a hitchhiking adventure around the South Island” Rob replied. “We left Christchurch today headin’ for Mt. Cook. Wanaka tomorrow, then were not really sure. Probably just hitch to wherever we wanna’ go.”

    “Keep and eye out for Liberties, Goldies and Blue Meanies,” Darcie told us from the front.

    “Pardon?” I asked in naive confusion.

    “Mushies man! Knock you into next week! They’re bloomin’ now.” He was referring to some mean psychedelic mushrooms that can be easily found along trails and such.

    “Yeah, actually, can you clarify something for me?” Rob asked, and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “I printed this off line, but there is no color-does this look like the right thing?” He had a print out of what appeared to be a Liberty Mushroom.

    “Where’d you get that?” I asked in amazement. Without bating an eye he told me he had printed it off the internet before we left (news to me), and handed it up to Darcie.

    “Damn, this bloke’s prepared!” Matt laughed as he saw the paper.

    “Yeah, that’s them alright,” Darcie replied.

    Rob smiled, “Sweet as.”

    I just went back to looking out the window.

    We pulled off at Lake Tekapo for a quick lunch break along the way. The water there looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, similar to the color of those little glow-in-the-dark stars you put on your ceiling as a kid then tried to imagine pictures of naked women in.

As we pulled off the highway, we arrived in front of the Church of the Good Sheppard. It was a small stone building, with one wall entirely glass, looking out over the lake. Now, I’m not a very religious person, but I would attend the Church of the Good Sheppard every Sunday, just to stare past the preacher at the beautiful view of Lake Tekapo with Mt. Cook standing in the background.

    After rambling around a bit and eating our pre-packed mystery lunch meat sandwiches, we got back in the car and headed on our way. That’s when things got a little more interesting.

    “Yous all smoke?” Matt asked, implying that sticky green better know as marijuana.

    “We didn’t bring any” Rob replied promptly.

    “We got some” Matt said.

    “Oh, we got some.” Darcie chimed in. The way he said it was a little too insinuating, implying either they had copious amounts, or it was strong enough to take out a platoon. Turned out to be both.

    At this Darcie reached into his pocket and came out with a sandwich bag-a full sandwich bag. It had to be at least a couple ounces. As he opened it, the car immediately took on the sweet, herby smell of fresh bud. He hunched over his lap for a while, and then came back up with a doobie that looked like he had cut a Sharpie in half and packed it with green. I hated to admit it, but for the amount that I didn’t smoke, I loved the smell of fresh herb.

    Darcie fired it up and it began to make its rounds. When it was handed to the back seat I was tempted, but decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to be stoned while trying to get our next ride. Rob on the other hand had no qualms.

    While the joint was going around the car, I noticed that it smelled a little funny. Not bad, just a little off, little harsher. I also noticed that something was a little out of place when Rob started coughing uncontrollably. For the amount that Rob smoked this was very strange. I thought about it for a minute, but then Matt put in a trippy CD and everyone started vibin’ to the beat, so I just let it go.

    Rob was silent the remainder of the trip. He pulled out his digital camera and seemed to be obsessed with it, staring blankly out the window. No one said a word. 30 minutes later we departed Matt and Darcie at an intersection in the middle of nowhere.

    “Cheers” I said, trying to mimic the kiwi lingo and thank them for the ride.

    “No worries bro. Have a fun trip and take care of your friend there, he looks a little worked” Matt waved and sped off, leaving us in a cloud of dust on the side of the road. I felt a bit like we had been picked up by a cyclone, spun a round for a bit, then tossed back out as it blew away.

    As soon as they had driven out of view, Rob dropped his pack in the middle of the road and turned to me. I could tell something wasn’t right. Rob stared blankly at me and I watched in horror as his pupils dilated and contracted independently of each other. Then came the quote of the trip.

    “Bad news man…I’m trippin’ balls!”

    His pupils were going haywire and I could tell by the look on his face he was in his own little world. Turns out that weed had a little more that just THC in it.

    “See ya later Nate, I’m goin’ to Mt. Cook!” He turned and began walking down the middle of the road, leaving his pack where it lay.

    “Rob, get you ass back here!” I yelled to him.

    “Oh, sorry Nate, guess you should come with me…” He looked around in bewilderment.

    As terrible as it was, all I could do was laugh. Here I am, standing at in intersection in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand, with a hitchhiking partner who barely knows his own name, and thinks the mountains are singing to him.

    “I think you should do the talking with our next ride, Nate.” Rob said, leaning in and confiding to me like it was a secret.

    “I think so too Rob” I said laughing. “Here, just sit down and enjoy it, not like we have much else to do.” I pulled up his pack and plopped him down on it. Then took post on my own pack to think about the situation.

    Not 5 minutes later a white station wagon pulled over. I hadn’t even put out my thumb.

    “Ok Rob, just play it cool and let me do the talking.”

    “Alright Nate, I owe you one man.”

    “Yeah you do, but save all the sentimental bullshit ‘till we get to out destination, you might end up owing me a lot more…”

    We loaded our bags into the trunk and got into the back seat. I was just getting ready to introduce myself when Rob forgot out little agreement.

    “HI, HOW ARE YOU DOING? I’M ROB!” He was shouting in their ears at the top of his lungs. I elbowed him in the side, but to no avail.

    “Pretty good” answered the driver, a little perturbed.

    “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” asked Rob, picking up on their accent.

    “Sweden” replied the female passenger.

    “AH, SWEDEN, I KNEW THAT!” He yelled back at her.

    I nudged Rob again, a little harder, and this time he got it. He sat dead back in his seat and dropped all conversation, staring out the window the rest of the ride. The couple looked a little weirded-out, but I began talking as if nothing was out of the ordinary and they began to relax. I calmly tried to ignore the fact that my traveling partner was probably hallucinating at this point.

    Turns out the couple was in fact from Sweden (as they had said) and were on a world tour vacation. They had been living out of this rental car for the past 3 weeks and were heading to Australia next. They drove us up the 40k road that leads to the base of Mt. Cook. Here they dropped us off. I thanked them profusely for the ride, in hopes that they would forgive us for Rob’s screaming. We were finally reached our destination.

    The first thing that grabbed out attention was the overwhelmingly powerful view of Mt. Cook. It stood there with such stoic beauty that we were breathless. The next thing we noticed was that the ground was covered with snow and it was cold as balls!

    “Holy shit it’s cold out here!” I exclaimed with more emphasis than necessary.

    “It’s Mt. Cook, dumbass, what do you expect?” Rob replied, with more contempt than necessary. He was still stumbling a bit, but seemed to be getting better. His wit was coming back and he was getting to be a smart ass again, so I knew he’d be alright.

    “I know, but I just didn’t realize there would be snow all the way down here at the base” I replied.

    “It’s a mountain!” Rob said laughing.

    “Ok asshole, I get the picture. Let’s just set up camp” I kinda’ wished he was still stoned.

    We wandered around a little bit until we finally found a spot of ground under a tree, that miraculously had no snow AND no roots! It was even level. We set down our packs and began rummaging through them for out ten, and some extra layers of clothing.

    “The virgin planting of the Purple Rhino!” I exclaimed with excitement. “Let’s see how this baby works.”

    “I can’t believe we named our tent the Purple Rhino.” Rob shook his head as he was pulling out our bright blue shelter. As if the blue was not bright enough, it came with an obnoxious piss yellow rain fly. The tent itself was an old school “A” frame, circa 1970. It had two poles which had to be staked out in about 3 different directions to get them to stand up properly. The most annoying feature was the front pole was directly in the middle of the door, so getting in and out without knocking it over could become quite a challenge.

    “There, she’s up!” I beamed with a feeling of pride, looking at out heinously ugly house.

    “The lines all tight?” Rob asked.

    “Tighter than a frog’s ass” I replied.

    Rob gave me a disturbed look. “Nate, you are one twisted individual” he said as he laughed at me and shook his head. “Let’s go have a look around.”

    There was a little trail head the lead up to a giant stone pinnacle. It was actually a monument to all those who have lost their lives in pursuit of the summit. It was very sobering standing there in awe of this monumental mountain, and reading about the families that have been torn apart by the lust for its summit. There will always be an unnamable force the strikes inspiration, fear, longing and peace into the heart of someone, all at the same time, while looking as a mountain such as this one.

    “Its starting to get dark and I’m cold and hungry as hell” I said, “Let’s head back to camp and make dinner.” Rob wanted to stay but I persuaded him to return with me so that we could have a hot meal.

    Just as we were approaching our tent there was a loud rumble, much like thunder in the distance, and the ground began to shake.

    “What the hell is that!?’ Rob’s eyes were wide with confusion.

    “I don’t know” I replied turning in circles and trying to figure out where it was coming from. All of the sudden, Rob looked up to the top of one of the surrounding mountains.

    “Avalanche!” He yelled and pointed to a cloud of snow falling down the peak.

    Luckily, it was only a small one, and there was another smaller peak between it and us. The whole thing lasted only a few brief moments, but the power of it was amazing. Rob and I were as giddy as little school girls.

    “Did you see that!? It was an avalanche!” Rob exclaimed.

    “Holy shit! We just saw an avalanche!” I yelled back, almost hugging him and jumping up and down. You’d think a normal person would be freaking out and wetting themselves if they saw an avalanche. We were so excited all we wanted was to see another one. Sometimes I wonder about our sanity.

    After calming ourselves from the avalanche ruckus, we hunkered down in front of our tent to cook up some dinner. Before we could get started though, we were distracted by the amazing scent of fresh garlic bread and some other Italian dish. We looked all around, but for the life of us could not figure out where it was coming from. There was a small resort about 5k away of which all we could see were the lights, and we thought it may be from there. However, it was down wind and we decided there was no way we were smelling food from there. At this point we were so hungry we could hear our stomachs conversing, and the smell was only making it worse. Finally I looked over to the far side of the camp ground and realized where it was coming from. There in the corner was the shabby, white, rental stations wagon we had arrived in. And in it were the Swedes.

    “Rob, I know what it is!” I said with confidence.

    “What!?” Rob asked with excitement. “God I want some so bad!”

    “It’s the Swedes!” I looked at him and pointed to the car. “I bet we can take ‘em…”

    The sad thing is the amount of thought we actually gave to ransacking these poor innocent people, who had already given us a ride here. Finally, we decided it would be too much hassle, not to mention really shitty karma, so we finally let it go and went about cooking out own dinner. Rice…with a soup packet added for flavor. It was no garlic bread, but it kept us alive. Besides, the last thing we needed as hitchhikers was karma trouble.

    We finished our meal and hunkered down for the long cold night that was to come. Lying in our sleeping bags, teeth chattering, we talked about the day’s events, and about what may be in store for us tomorrow. We heard a few more small avalanches, everyone getting us just as excited as the first. Finally, with aching muscles, frozen gonads, and somewhat full stomachs, we drifted off to sleep. We had completed day one.

    At about 3 in the morning, I stirred in my sleeping bag and woke to see a bright light shining directly onto our tent. I could hear footsteps, but no voices. I wanted to wake Rob, but was fearful to move, incase I were to startle our stalker (I think I may have had my priorities a little mixed up). After about 5 min of silent interrogation, the light wielder left, and once again we were on our own. Thinking he was asleep, it scarred the hell out of my when Rob began to talk.

    “What the hell was that all about?” He whispered.

    “I don’t know…Park ranger maybe?” I replied.

    “Eh, fuck it. We’ll find out if we got a ticket in the morning.” With this, he rolled over and went back to sleep. I unfortunately was not so lucky.

Figuring it was probably just a ranger wondering how we got here if there was only one car, and the Swedes were in it, I was able to put that out of my mind with relative ease. What I could not get out of my mind was the thought that I was going to die of hypothermia. Unfortunately, I did not have a sleeping pad for this trip. I figured, hey, its warm enough, and I can suck it up and sleep on the hard ground. The hardness of the ground was not a problem though; it was the lack of insulation. The frozen ground was sucking my body heat from me like a Hoover. The bottom of my sleeping bag felt like it was lying on a sheet of ice. Then I realized that it was; only the ice was the frozen top layer of soil. Unable to sleep, I spent the remainder of the night continuously rolling like a rotisserie chicken in my bag, minimizing the amount of time any part of my body had to be in contact with the frigid earth beneath me. Morning couldn’t come quick enough.

Day Two

---

Wanaka Bound

When we finally got up the sun was just beginning to brighten the eastern sky. Every part of my body hurt, and anything that didn’t hurt was numb. I went to turn to my right to see if Rob was up yet, but as I did so I heard a crackling sound. Looking down I discovered that I was covered in a sheet of ice. The crackling was my frigid cocoon shattering as I stirred.

“Hey Rob, you awake?” There was a pause.

“I can’t feel my nuts” he replied in anguish.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Nate, I’ve never been so cold in my life” He said with what sounded like a small whimper.

I looked over at him and noticed that not only did he have ice caked on his hat; it was also in his eyebrows.

“Welcome to the middle stages of hypothermia” I offered. He failed to find the humor in my comment.

“Let’s get the hell up and make something hot to eat before we die here and are found lying naked in the snow.” We were both fully clothed at the time, and in separate sleeping bags. I was referring to the later stages of hypothermia, where the victim become delirious, believes they are too hot, and strips down naked in the snow to cool off. Then they die…Rob did not understand this either, so the look he gave me was somewhere between total confusion and pure terror.

“Never mind” I said, “Let’s just get something to eat.”

“Nate, sometimes I wonder about you…” was all he could reply.

Finally, after much effort and many expletives, we breached out capsule (which was also caked in ice) and stumbled into the frigid air. Once we were outside and could have a look around, we both stopped and stood in awe. No words can describe the sunrise we witnessed that day. It was as if everything beautiful had come together to dance in the sky. The colors turned Monet into a grey scale.

We stared out over that open plain for the entirety of the sunrise, unable to look away. Finally, just as the colors faded, hunger took hold…I’ve never witnessed two people enjoy hot, plain oatmeal so much in my life.

“MmmmMMMMmmm” Rob mumbled.

“MmmmHhhhmmmmmmm” I replied. It was as if we were communing with the oatmeal gods. To a stranger, it was probably sick the amount of joy we received from those oats, but we didn’t care. It was warmth.

After breakfast we broke camp and decided to go exploring. There was a trail that headed up the mountain at the monument we had seen the other night, so we decided to hike it for a bit and see if we could get a better look at the infamous peak.

About 2k into the walk the trail began to get quite icy. Another 30m and it was all we could do to stand. Finally we came to a railing which offered much needed support. The only down side was that it overhung a raging, glacial fed river, which had eminent doom written all over it. Luckily we passed in safety and continued on our way. Then something happened that I don’t think I will ever be able to explain.

“Nate, what the FUCK are you doing?!”

I really don’t know what it was. Maybe the views, maybe the mountain…maybe I just lost one too many brain cells to the frigid night before, or maybe I was just happy to be alive and had too much testosterone raging through my veins. Regardless of reason, it appeared I had come upon another hand rail and was using it to ascend a steep incline. Somewhere along the line I guess I had the urge to conquer the mountain and pull an Ace Venture. Unfortunately, Rob could not see the reasons and feelings rushing through my mind. All he saw was me wildly thrusting a frozen metal pole and screaming to the mountain gods.

“CAN YA FEEL THAT?! HUH? CAN YA?!”

Rob looked on in horror.

It wasn’t so much that I was ‘stickin’ it to the mountain’, it was more just asking if anyone besides me could feel the invigoration of such beauty and such a place. Nothing says invigoration like a few good pelvic thrusts…or maybe I should just plead temporary insanity.

Eventually the trail got a bit too icy and we decided to head back. Upon our return to the Purple Rhino we broke camp, packed up and went on our way.  We had only walked about 100m down the dirt road that lead out of the camp when we got our first ride of the day. We hadn’t even stuck out a thumb.

“Yous need a lift?” the driver of a rough looking Isuzu Trooper called to us. “I’m not goin far, but I can at least get you to the tarmac.”

“We’d appreciate it” I answered.

It had to be the shortest ride we got, traveling all of about 400 metes up the dirt road. But it was 400 meters that we didn’t have to walk. Unfortunately, the next ride would not come so easily.

    We were dropped off at the end of the dirt road that led to the camp. Our driver was heading back into the resort area so we were left to wait for outgoing traffic. It was a truly beautiful place, with amazing views of the valley and of Mt. Cook. We had oodles of time to admire it.

    Finally, after about 45 min and 15 cars, we realized that these drivers were different from the others. They were all tourons. Not the laid back, no worries kiwis, but up-tight, anal retentive Americans who had been staying at the resort. The last thing they were going to do was give a ride to two shabby looking hitchhikers.

    “We’re never gonna’ get out of here!” I exclaimed as yet another car sped by trying to avoid eye contact.

    “Oh well” Rob said, in an increasingly laid back tone “not like we have anywhere we have to be.”

    He was right. Not really sure why I was so antsy, all I was going to do was get in a car to go wait somewhere else. May as well wait here-at least we had sun and a good view.

    “So, how ‘bout that conversation with Dan?” I looked to Rob.

    “Yeah Nate, what the fuck? Road kill-was that the best you could think of?”

    “I’m not really sure. My mouth was moving and I just couldn’t stop…at least he enjoyed it.”

    “Yeah, I’m not really sure what was worse, you bringin’ it up, or him getting so excited about it.” There was a long pause. It was obvious we were both contemplating it more than we should have been.

    “So, you notice how many dead hedgehogs you see on the roads here?” I asked him.

    “Yeah, it’s too bad. We see dead squirrels all the time, but they aren’t cool. They are just like climbing rats with furry tails.” He replied

    “Yeah…animals here are way cooler than in the states, especially their possums. I hate possums back home-they are pure evil. They got those beastie teeth, and those beady black demon eyes…and they hiss! I wish they weren’t marsupials, 'cause marsupials are cool, but American possums are pure evil.”

    “Ya know what animal I feel sorry for? Armadillos.” I looked at him with a confused face, but figured I’d hear him out; after all, I had just gone on about the black souls of possums.

    “What do you mean?” I decided to indulge his tangent.

    “Armadillos are like the Jews of the animal kingdom” Rob continued. There really isn’t anything you can say to a comment like that. So I just waited for him to go on.

    “They are like the scapegoats. It’s ok, just blame the armadillos. They always get hit by cars, or shot by farmers…Have you ever heard anyone say something positive about an armadillo?” He looked at me inquisitively.

    I was baffled, but he had a point. I couldn’t think of any positive comment I had ever heard in reference to an armadillo.

    “That’s all I’m sayin’.” He made this very final, and we went back to staring off into the distance, both wondering what the hell had just taken place. Either we were way too bored, or just had really twisted minds. My guess is it’s a little of both.

    Another 30 minutes passed in relative silence. There was the occasional comment, but none really led to substantial conversation. I guess we just needed more time to contemplate dead animals.

    Eventually, we were able to flag down a construction worker. Lucky for us, they had run out of supplies, and he was heading to the nearest town to restock. Unfortunately this town was in the wrong directions, but at least he could get us back to the main road.

    “How yous goin’?” we were greeted in the traditional kiwi lingo. You never really know if they are asking how you are doing, or where you are going, so you always look like an ass when you try to answer. I think they do it on purpose.

    “Ok/ to the main road” We both replied in a jumbled mess of words. The driver just laughed and motioned us to throw our packs in the back and hop in.

    The truck smelled like rotten Spam and cigarettes. The driver smelled worse.

    “So yous all hitchhiking?” The driver asked.

    “No, we’re trickin’ people into stopping and picking us up, so we can steal their souls and use them to work on our time machine” I wanted to reply so bad. Thank you captain obvious, here’s your sign…The conversation just went from bad to worse.

    “Yeah, it’s a dangerous thing. Was a couple just got killed hitchhiking ‘bout a month ago over in Oz” He told us in a matter-of-fact tone. I was ready to bail out, tuck and roll, but my pack was in the bed. “I picked up a couple once…” That’s all he said. It was like blue balls in a conversations, only the ending I had in mind was probably going to revolve around a desolate camp and a wood chipper. There was a painfully long and awkward silence. He never finished the thought.

    “You know, Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland are the gay capitols of New Zealand.” He finally broke the silence, but I kinda’ wished he hadn’t. Guess he thought Rob and I were together. Now not only was I going to meet a wood chipper first hand, but I was also going to become a statistic of a hate crime, that I wasn’t even involved in!

    “Um…good to know” Rob ventured an answer. More awkward silence.

    “Yous ever eat pickled seagull?” He asked. I was in disbelief. Who the fuck is this guy?! Did he really just ask us that?

    “They catch ‘em out on the ships then put ‘em into a giant barrel with salt water. Then you let ‘em pickle themselves for a few months, come back and eat ‘em.” It just kept getting worse. It was like the twilight zone, only this was really happening! I don’t think I have ever been so weirded out in my life. Rob shot me a glance that said he was in the same boat.

    Our driver didn’t say anything the rest of the ride. It was the most painful 15 minutes I have ever spent in the car with any individual-wondering if I was going to die. I found myself imagining scenarios of how Rob and I could take this guy, were he to try anything. I never took my hand of the knife in my pocket.

    Finally he dropped us at the main road and left with a wave, urging us to find some pickled seagull. If that was what he smelled like, I wouldn’t feed it to a famished dog. I was happy to believe alive.

    He dropped us off and left us bewildered on the side of the road. Rob and I couldn’t even talk about what just happened. We just looked at each other and shook our heads.

    “What the fuck…” is all I could manage.

    “I don’t know man, I don’t know.” We took a while to just enjoy being alive, then the boredom set in.

    We found ourselves back on Route 8 on a beautiful day. The sun was out, it was warm, there was an amazing view of Mt. Cook, and not a damn car in sight. The amazing thing was we really didn’t care. We were just so happy to be there.

    I took the opportunity to post an RU Outdoors sticker in the road sign for Mt. Cook. It has become tradition that when ever any of us from the RU Outdoors staff travel, there is an ongoing game to see who can get the “best” sticker placement, and photo proof of it. Rumor has is that there is even an RUO sticker in a hut in Tibet. I can’t prove that one, but I definitely tagged New Zealand.

    Even though we were happy to be alive, boredom finally got the better of us after about an hour of waiting without seeing a single car. We had exhausted many conversations, sword fought with sticks, tried napping on our packs, and were beginning to get destructive. There was a huge blue sign across the road which eventually took the brunt of our restlessness.

    “Ya think I can hit that sign?” Rob asked while juggling three fist sized rocks.

    “Dunno” I replied, implying that he should give it a shot.

    Rob let lose with the three rocks. All three went whizzing by, but no hits. Of course (both of us being males and having testosterone surging through out bodies) this became the game-who could hit the sign first. Now, this was no small sign, probably about 2 by 3 meters, and it was about 20 meters away. But we couldn’t nail it for the life of us. It was as if there was a force field protecting it against bored hitchhikers. Each rock magically deferred either to the side or too low…or maybe we were just a shitty shot. Eventually, it became quite maddening.

    “You know, were trashin’ signs, but that dude we just got a ride with…he fixes these things. Cause of people like us, get bored and can’t hit the broad side of a fuckin’ sign!” WHAM! I finally got a hit. It was loud as hell, and at first I was scared it was going to draw attention to us. But then I remembered- WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!

    This game went of for a good half hour, until both our arms were too sore to lift another rock, and the sign looked like it had been through a war. Well, actually the sign wasn’t too bad, on account of our being a lousy shot. But in out minds we had conquered. Finally the destruction came to a halt when a light blue station wagon pulled over and we hopped in.

    “I initially wasn’t gonna stop, but you two look harmless enough, and besides, I could use a little company” we were greeted by a cheery faced woman in her late 30’s. “My names Pauline” she said.

    “Cheers Pauline, I’m Nate” I introduced myself and Rob did the same.

    “So where are you heading to?” she asked. It was the first time we didn’t hear ‘yous’, it kind of threw me off.

    “Wanaka” Rob replied. “We want to go to Puzzling World and the Wanaka Theatre.”

    “Ah yes, the Paradise O theatre. It’s a real treat. Make sure to get the cookies.” We could tell she was speaking from experience.

    “Will do” I replied.

    “So where yous from?” she asked. I felt better hearing the familiar ‘yous’ again.

    “America” Rob answered, “But we are studying in Christchurch right now.”

    “Sweet as, how long are yous here for?” She seemed really excited about it.

    “About 6 months” I told here. “But I already wish it was longer. Don’t think I want to go home.”

    “Yeah, New Zealand will do that to you” she replied, as if she had heard it before. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world.”

    We had a really good conversation with Pauline, which branched off on several tangents. We told her of all our crazy rides (excluding the drug trip with Matt and Darcie) and had a hell of a time talking about the crazy construction worker who we thought was going to kill us.

    “Pickled seagulls?! What the hell was that all about?” Pauline exclaimed when we told her about our highway man’s delicacy. “I think that man was a few apples short of a fruit basket!” I had heard a lot of expressions, but this one was new to me.

    About 30 minutes into the ride Rob and I became very grateful that we were in a car. The weather took a drastic turn for the worse and we were enveloped in a fog so thick we could barely see the lines on the road. The temperature dropped drastically and it turned into a cold nasty hell outside.

    “Good thing I got ya when I did” Pauleen said, noting the outside conditions. “Yous all would never get a ride in this-it looks like something out of a horror film.”

    “Yeah, thank you so much for the lift, we really appreciate it” I told her.

    “So where are you heading?” Rob asked. Until now we never made it any of our business to ask them where they were going, we were just happy to be in the car.

    “Going to visit my sister in Cromwell” she replied.

    “Ah, the land of giant fruit” Rob continued.

    “That’s right! You’ve been there?” She sounded surprised.

    “Yeah, I drove through it a while back.” Rob told her.

    “Good on ya!” she replied.

    They were talking about these enormous statues of fruit that greeted you as you entered Cromwell. As you can guess Cromwell is know for producing most of New Zealand’s fruit. They brag about this by boasting 15 meter pieces of fruit at the center of town. This sparked more conversation about New Zealand agriculture, probably the most informative ride we had gotten so far. I can’t say that I was enthralled by the conversation, but I did learn a lot. It too eventually tapered off though and then we were left to stare out into the miserable conditions surrounding us.

    Pauline dropped us at the intersection of Route 8 and the road that takes you into Wanaka. The fog had lifted, but it was still quite cold out. It was also getting later in the evening and we beginning to wonder if we were going to make it to Wanaka today, or if we were going to be pitchin’ the Purple Rhino in some farmer’s back field.

    After waiting for about 20 min with no vehicles in sight, the clouds started settling back in. There was a field of sheep behind us who seemed to be taunting us with their nasty little calls.

    “Fuck you sheep! I’ll eat you!” I started yelling at them to vent my frustration. They must have known that I couldn’t stand the taste of ‘em and realized they were safe, so they just kept on laughing at us.

    “I don’t think yelling at them is really gonna’ help Nate.” Rob said, “They’re fuckin’ sheep.”

    “Rob will eat your babies! He likes lamb!” I continued to threaten the livestock, but to no avail. Finally a big rig went by, which scared the hell out of them and they ran to the other side of the pasture. I’d like to think I summoned it with my super human powers, but Rob told me otherwise-mainly that I was full of shit.

    We picked a new road sign and began our little game of ‘destroy public property’ to entertain ourselves. It also helped to take our minds off the fact that it was getting late, we were hungry, and there wasn’t a car in sight.

    10 minutes passed. 20 minutes. 45 minutes. Not a single car. The temperature continued to drop and things looked bleaker by the minute. Rob and I had already exhausted our inventory of roadside diversions, even video taping each other throwing rocks. Believe me it’s not as fun as it sounds…

    Then we saw the light…two of them. No it wasn’t a deity, it was a Toyota. More specifically a Toyota minivan, the first vehicle we had seen in almost an hour. Rob and I both put on our most pitiful, get us the hell out of the cold looks, and watched hopelessly as it passed us by. Going, going, going…we lost all hope. Then we saw bright red lights, followed by two little white ones. They were coming back!

    “I wouldn’t usually pick up strangers, specially not with my daughter in the car, but you two look like you are in a bad spot, what with the night and cold and all, so I’m going to have to trust you” The driver said as we hopped in the back. I’m not sure if she had ever been more concerned in her life.

    “Don’t worry; once you get past the smell we are completely harmless.” I reassured her. Her daughter, who looked to be about 7-8, thought this was hysterical, however I fear the mother didn’t like my humor, and she was the one I was worried about. Oh well, at least I had the kid on our side.

    “My name’s Rob.”

    “And I’m Nate”

    “We are students at the University of Canterbury, and are traveling for our vacation time” Rob explained. “We are from America, and are studying abroad here.” This seemed to calm her a bit. I guess she figured we had made it to college, so we must have something going for us.

    “I assume you two are heading to Wanaka?” she asked.

    “Yes ma’m” I replied with as much respect as I could muster.

    “Where yous stayin'?” she asked inquisitively.

    “Not really sure yet” Rob chimed in, “hopefully a campground, or anywhere we can pitch a tent.” The little girl’s eyes lit up.

    “Mommy, Mommy, we have a campground! They can stay with US!” she was so excited I thought she may pee herself. Her mother, on the other hand, was terrified.

    “Um, well, our camp isn’t working too good now…and I think it’s full” The mother stumbled over her words in her frantic attempt to politely say, “NO WAY IN HELL!”

    “Oh that’s fine. You’ve already done more than we could ask for in picking us up. We’ll find a place to stay.” I tried to calm the mother down and reassure her that we would not be intruding on her home. She had already stretched her boundaries enough by picking us up, anymore and I felt she may flat out loose it.

    We rode in silence the rest of the way, for fear of saying something that may land us back out in the cold, and not in Wanaka. Finally, we arrived, and she was nice enough to drop us at a campground at the far end of town. We thanked her profusely and waved as she sped away. Hopefully she will be able to find a good matching hair dye to cover up all the grey she got picking up two random American hitchhikers.

    So there we were, standing in a campground parking lot in Wanaka, surrounded by fog thicker than fleas on a stray's nuts. We were cold, we were hungry, we were sore and tired, but we were there. We checked into a campsite, pitched the Purple Rhino, and decided to go in search of the infamous Paradis-O. We found it about 20 minutes later, after walking entirely back through town. We took a small detour to the downtown area in search of meat pies along the way.

    I must take this moment to go on a little tangent about meat pies. Meat pies are…quite possibly the best food on this green, blue, and polluted earth. Physically, they are small pastries about the size of a large computer mouse, filled with processed cheese and a meat substance most closely resembling, and smelling of, canned dog food. What they really are…a little mouth watering, artery clogging, don’t let the kids see, sinfully delicious morsel of heaven. They say in ONE meat pie (remember-the size of a large computer mouse) is the equivalent of one solid golf ball of fat. If you listen hard enough, you can actually hear your arteries clogging and your heart saying “Hey buddy, fuck you!” while you eat them. But it’s worth every penny of the XXL pants, belt to match, and early heart attack. In short, they are damn good.

    Anyway, after sufficiently gorging ourselves on these tasty morsels, we made our way up to the theatre, only to find that the next show wasn’t for another hour. This didn’t concern us too much thought because outside there were two busted La-Z-Boys that were calling our names. We sat down in them for a minute, feeling all the insects and fungus crawl away from our rankness, and then Rob turned to me.

    “You know what would go great with these chairs?” He asked. We both replied in unison. “Beer.”

    We rummaged through our pockets and came up with what little cash we had. We had seen a Liquor King a few blocks back, and now we had a mission.

    “What do you want?” I asked, turning to Rob.

    “The best we can afford.”

    This wasn’t saying much, seeing as we were paying in all coins, but it did get us a six pack of Monteith’s Irish Red, a west coast Kiwi beer. After squaring up with the cashier, who was somewhat less than humored by our payment method, we took our prize back to our thrones.

    We gave a small toast to our journey and sat in silence, feeling every muscle ache and throb and smelling the odor of rotting flesh coming from our boots. At that moment in time, under those conditions, that may have been the best beer I have ever had. I felt every cool crisp bubble tickle all the way down my throat, my taste buds soaking up the red ale like a sponge. I think I may have gotten more joy out our imbibing that beverage than any human should ever get out of a bottle…unless it’s a ten foot bottle filled with naked supermodels…and they all have beer and pizza.

    We finished off our tasty beverages and enjoyed our little buzz outside in the fresh New Zealand air. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough alcohol to keep the cold away, so eventually we had to move it inside. No sooner than we had walked in the door and we were hit with that smell-the one that makes your nose flare and your knees buckle, your spirits rise and your mouth water…fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Alas, to our great dismay, all that was left was the smell.

    We shuffled around and stared long enough to make a group of young girls so uncomfortable that they left. Then we took their seats. These weren’t nearly as comfortable as our previous thrones, but they were warm (thanks lassies) and not nearly as bug ridden.

    “So what are we watching tonight?” Rob asked, looking around the room.

    “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen a sign anywhere.” I answered. Then I looked up at the giant board above the door, close enough to reach out and touch. “Looks like its Mona Lisa Smile.”

    “What’s that?” Rob asked.

    “I don’t really know, but it’s got Julia Roberts in it, and she’s hot” I replied

    “True that….well I guess Mona Lisa Smile it is.” It was the only thing playing, so it wasn’t like we had much choice.

    A few minutes later people began to file out from the previous show, so we bought our tickets and went on in. When we entered the theatre we both decided that this place was awesome.

    The thing about the Paradis-O theatre in Wanaka is that it has no movie theatre seats. Instead, the whole place is filled with La-Z-Boy recliners, sofas, love seats and beanbags. The best seat though was a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle convertible which was sitting off in the corner.

Knocking women and small children aside, Rob and I dashed to it and staked claim to the love bug. Yes, it did look a little odd, the two of us crammed into that car, and I can only imagine what the construction worker would have said, but we didn’t care. This was the only time we were gonna’ get to be there, so we figured we may as well go all out.

As soon as the show started, we realized we had made a mistake. True, the care was definitely the most unique seat in the house, but next to sitting on a cactus, it had to be the most uncomfortable. Before the previews were done my ass had already gone numb and my lower back was throbbing. Thing is, we had been so excited to get it that we couldn’t just get up and move, so we were forced to endure this bear trap we had entered.

We cursed and shifted position every thirty seconds and tried to settle in to watch the movie. This however proved to be just as painful. The movie itself turned out to be the EPITOME of all chick flicks. A ‘throbbing’ chick flick as Rob would later describe it, though I feel throbbing barely does it justice.  I would describe it as a pulsating, convulsing, blubbering, double over choking, gagging on a salami chick flick. But we watched it…and we might have cried.

About half way through the show the picture stopped.

“What the fuck!” Rob yelled, audible to the entire theatre.

“No worries bro” a slightly irritated voice called from somewhere in the back “it’s just intermission.” With that the lights came on and the owner came in the side door.

“Ok folks, the cookies are ready and so is the hot chocolate” she said.

As soon she had opened the door the theatre was filled with that amazing smell again. Rob and I didn’t need to be told twice. Knocking down the same women and children again, we rushed out to the lobby. We had heard of these infamous chocolate chip cookies at the Paradise O, and didn’t want to miss out.

We were greeted by the same lady, but this time she had several sheets of cookies. Now these weren’t your run of the mill cookies. For $2 NZ you got a hot, melt in your mouth chocolate chip cookie the diameter of a CD, and about 2.5cm thick. It was the best cookie I have ever had in my life. If I had had the joy I got from that cookie, mixed with the joy I got from the beer earlier…I probably would have had to change my pants.

After finding Zen in a baked good, and bathing in the afterglow, we reentered the theatre to finish the show. This time we made sure to avoid the Beetle. We could say we had sat in it, so we now decided on two glorious La-Z-Boys right up front. It was heaven.

    When the movie ended we got up and headed out into the cold. The temperature had dropped drastically, and we had a good 20 minute walk back to our camp. Because of this long walk in the cold, we justified buying the rest of the remaining cookies, under the guise of raising our blood sugar to keep warm. Really, we just wanted to gorge on those amazing chocolate chip wonders. Your grandmother couldn’t make better cookies.

    By the time we reached the Purple Rhino, our teeth were chattering, and once again Rob informed me that he could not feel his testicles. I told him that if he couldn’t feel them, I wasn’t going to feel them for him, and we went to bed. There was kind of a weird vibe in the tent, and I thought maybe I should have reiterated that the testicle comment was a joke, but I was too tired. He’d figure it out sooner or later.

Day Three

---

The Franz Josef Fiasco

    We awoke to a thick fog that seemed to blanket the entire town. We couldn’t see anything 5 meters in front of the tent, but at least it was moderately warm, meaning there wasn’t ice on our faces and we weren’t exhibiting signs of hypothermia. We managed to navigate our way through the fog to the common kitchen where we proceeded to boil water for breakfast.

    “I hate oatmeal” I told Rob, while pouring it into my bowl of hot water.

    “You picked it” Rob reminded me, with an ‘I told you so’ tone.

    “I know. It’s just so mealy…and oatey.”

    “Shut up Nate.”

    “I’m just so sick of eating it. All I ever eat when I’m camping is oatmeal.”

    “Shut up Nate.”

    “You’d think after this many years I’d pick something different for breakfast. It’s just so easy and cheap.”

    “SHUT UP NATE!” He paused, “…I hate oatmeal too.”

    When we finished breakfast we packed up the Purple Rhino and shouldered our packs. After checking out, and flirting with the cutie behind the counter (who’d have none of it-we just told ourselves it was because we smelled) we headed back towards the outskirts of town. It was quite a walk, but it wasn’t like we didn’t have the time. We did however still have one place to stop before we left Wanaka: Puzzling World.

    Puzzling World is a lot like a discovery museum…for big kids. They have many of the same illusions and puzzles; they are just a lot bigger and more intricate. We spent about an hour wandering from room to room. The museum was split into sections, one of which was full of AMAZING holograms. My favorite section though was the room filled with relief busts of famous people. The thing was, no matter where you went in the room, the faces were watching you. They seemed to turn their heads with you as you went. It was like an acid trip, but without the acid. If I were stoned I probably would have tried to talk to them, or cried in the corner because they were all staring at me.

After we had had our fill of illusions we went on to the big daddy of the place; the giant maze. We had been anxious with anticipation ever since we had arrived, wanting to act like lab rats in search of cheese. Of course we thought “how hard can it be? We’re college students, we can figure this out.” We were a little wrong.

“What the hell!” Rob started yelling in the maze. We hadn’t been in it for more than 10 minutes. “We were just here! This is ridiculous!”

“All we need to do is get to the other side of this damn wall! But it’s IMPOSSIBLE!” I joined in his irritation.

We spent another 30 minutes hopelessly wandering down corridor after corridor, coming to dead end after dead end. We progressively got more and more steamed ‘till finally Rob had had enough.

“FUCK THIS SHIT! I’M DONE!” Rob threw his hands in the air and promptly dropped to all fours and crawled under the evil red walls, directly toward the building and our much needed exit. I followed. I don’t think two grown men have ever been so pissed at a puzzle before. I swore I’d never do a maze again, unless I was trying to hide from the cops.

We came back into the main lobby to pick up our packs and were greeted by an overly cheery attendant.

“How did yous like the maze? Yous make it?” she said with a customer service smile that made my cheeks hurt. Rob shot her a glance that could freeze hell and asked for his pack. She didn’t ask any more questions, and we went on our way.

We trekked to the outskirts of town and took a post on Route 6, heading towards the west coast. It seemed like a good enough spot with all the essentials; they had plenty of time to see us, it had a parking lot for them to stop in, and it wasn’t on a blind curve so they cold re-enter the road with ease (like I said, these are the things you look for in a hitchhiking post-its an art really). The only thing that it lacked was cars that would stop.

Again, I feel it necessary to take this time to go on another tangent about hitchhiker passing etiquette. There are two things that you should never do to a hitchhiker, aside from throw shit at them:

One: Don’t smile and wave. I don’t give a shit if you’re having a good day or feeling like a good person. You want to spread some good vibes and cheer? Pick me the hell up! Don’t put on a smug grin and throw me a cheery wave. While you’re in your nice warm, dry car, I’m sitting in the cold rain, catching pneumonia. The last thing I want to see is a happy person waving wildly. If you’re not going to pick me up, don’t try to act like a friendly soul, you’re not. It’s a false smile and it shows. You don’t give a rat’s ass if I get a lift or not, so don’t act like you care. While you’re waving and driving by, I’m probably hoping I pass you later pulling a deer out of your grill.

Two: Don’t point up the road like your telling me where you are going. I know the direction you are going, that’s why I’m here. I’m going that way too jackass. The fact that you are going the same direction as me is NOT an excuse not to pick me up. If you don’t want to pick me up that’s fine, but don’t insult my intelligence. And if you’re trying to tell me that you’re turning off just a few miles up, don’t point your finger in some distorted manner in the direction you are turning. I don’t give a shit, and you just look like an idiot. Either pick me up, or be on your way. Don’t rub in the fact that you are going to get there and I may not. Again, deer in the grill. Now back to the story at hand.

After waiting for about 45 minutes, and watching many people do the two things that you should never do to a hitchhiker, Rob and I eventually got angry enough to begin walking, leaving out prime location in hopes of finding this mysterious spot people kept pointing to up the road. Eventually we found it. It was more deserted road. People here were full of shit. Finally we decided that we should just settle down for the long haul and picked a spot that looked good enough.

It always goes that as soon as you give up hope, it smacks you in the face. No sooner had we decided that we were going to be there all day, then the epitome of all free spirits, a hippie in a Volkswagen van pulled off to the side of the road. Turns out he had been at the same raging chick flick that we had been at the night before. He said he recognized us as “the couple who sat in the car.” We didn’t even try to correct him. We were just happy to have gotten a ride.

About 15 minutes up the road we passed another hitchhiker. The driver looked at us, and then at the hitch hiker, then back at us.

“Well, I picked you two up, so I figure I should pick him up to” he said.

This would have been such an issue it he hadn’t dropped all three of us off at the same spot, 15k up the road. Now we were screwed. We were all going to Franz Josef and there was no way we were all three going to get a ride.

Rob and I decided that we would be nice and walked up the road a bit. This meant that we were shooting ourselves in the foot and he was going to get a ride before us, but oh well, at least we could accumulate some good karma. We were angry as hell, but we bit our tongues and walked about a kilometer up the road. We were met by the shitiest hitchhiking conditions know to man. Blind curve after blind curve. Not only was there no way anyone would have time to see us and stop, but we also were 100 times more likely to get hit by a car. However, luck turned out to be on our side.

After waiting about 30 minutes and still not seeing the other hitchhiker ride by, we were beginning to get really steamed. Finally I told Rob that I was going to walk up the road a bit more and see if it didn’t straighten out a bit and offer a better place to post up. It didn’t, but on my way bay I was greeted by a strange site. There was Rob, in a white station wagon, with my pack, driving past me…fuck. I really didn’t know what to think-Rob wouldn’t just leave me would he? I had been hanging out with him for a few months now and felt that I knew him pretty well, but there he went pack and all. I watched the car expectantly waiting for it stop, but it just kept on going. Just as it past the spot where I decided that it wasn’t a joke and he really was gone, the car pulled to the side of the road, but not before my gut turned it self inside out, thinking that not only was I alone, but I had NOTHING with me.

When I finally caught up with the vehicle, I was greeted by Rob and our new driver laughing hysterically. I was still pretty hot about it, but I had to give it to them, they had gotten me good.

“Hop on in!” I was greeted by a thick American accent, something I hadn’t noticed in a long time. “I passed you guys earlier, and came back to get you. I saw the guy before you too, but was a little hesitant. I wanted company, then I saw you two and figured killers didn’t come in pairs.”

She was from the US and was just traveling around New Zealand for the month. I still don’t understand her logic (wouldn’t it be easier to rape and kill a girl of there were two of you?) but I didn’t complain, we had gotten a ride we didn’t think we would get.

“My parents would kill me if they knew I picked up hitchhikers, so don’t tell them.” She said. I had to laugh a little inside. How the hell were we going to tell her parents? We were on the other side of the world!

“My name’s Lucy, by the way, and you two are…?”

“I’m Nate.”

“And I’m Rob.”

“Well nice to meet you,” she said with a smile.

“Nice to meet you too,” we both replied, scarily in unison.

“So what are yall doing down here?” she asked. It was the first time I had heard ‘yall’ in a long time. It made my skin crawl.

“We’re studying abroad at the University of Canterbury” Rob told her. “We’ve been here since the beginning of February, and head home in July.”

“Right on!” she replied. “So where are yall headin’?”

“Franz Josef glacier” Rob told her.

“Me too!” she exclaimed. “Looks like we’ll be riding together for a while”

This was good news, a constant ride for the next few hours. It gave me the chance to sleep in the backseat while Rob threw his super-stinky, I haven’t bathed in 3 days mack down on out new chauffer.

We arrived in Franz Josef just as the rain began. Although it seemed to rain all the time in New Zealand, we had been blessed with a streak of good luck and good weather up until this point, but this was all about to change.

“You want me to drop you in town?” Lucy asked as we crossed the one lane bridge that lead to the town center.

This would have been the sensible thing to do, but I had idea in my head and looked over at Rob.

“Ya know, we still have a bit of daylight left. What do you say we try to go camp by the glacier?” I asked him, with a quirky smile on my face.

“It’d be cool if we could” he replied.

“Lucy, you mind dropping us at the trail head for the glacier walk? Think were gonna’ hike up and see if we can find a place to camp near the base of the glacier.” I told her, hoping she would be so kind. It was raining, we were hungry, it was getting dark, we had no idea if there would be a place to stay…but we were going to hike to the glacier anyway. This was flaw in judgment #1.

“Sure thing, if that’s what you want,” she replied, sounding a little concerned. “You do realize its raining right?”

“Yup” I replied.

“Ok” she said. It was obvious she was wondering what the hell we were thinking. We probably should have been too, but then again we were two young adult males in a foreign country looking for adventure…so of course we had to take on the elements.

    Lucy dropped us at the trail head and then turned and headed back into town. Warm, dry town. We shouldered our packs and headed up the path. As we began up the trail we were greeted by several commercially guided groups returning from a day on the glacier. They all gave us weird looks, and several even tried to tell us that we were going the wrong way; the parking lot was behind us. We just nodded and smiled and plodded on.

    “Oy, yous two, hang on a sec” a voice called to us from behind.

    We turned and were met by another individual with a puzzled look, but this time it was one of the guides.

    “What are yous doing?” he asked inquisitively.

    “Hiking up to see the glacier,” Rob replied, in a matter of fact tone.

    “Well I can see that. I got a call on the radio about two crazies walkin’ back in.”

    “Guess that’s us,” I said with a smile. “We realize its getting late, but we just got into town and are planning on camping up near the glacier.”

    “Oh…” The guide looked rather confused.

    “Is there a problem with that?” I asked.

    “Um, well…I guess not” He was rather puzzled, but obviously didn’t know what to say. “Stay off the glacier and out of the trail,” he stammered.

    “No worries mate, cheers!” I replied with my best kiwi impersonation. As I turned I shot Rob a glance to say “let’s just keep walking” and he got the message. We waved and continued on our way, leaving the guide to ponder what had just happened.

    By the time we reached the foot of the glacier it was pissing rain and almost dark. I was soaked through, and Rob looked to be in about the same shape.

    “Well shit, there’s a big ass glacier” I exclaimed as we stepped onto the grit-filled ancient ice.

    “Yup…that’s a glacier” Rob replied in a less than amused voice.

    We spent about 15 minutes scrambling around on the foot of the glacier, slipping and sliding, and doing exactly what we were not supposed to do. Once I slipped and about cracked my tail bone we decided maybe we should head down and look for a campsite, before we became a news story about two stupid Americans who died on a multiple thousand year old hunk of dirty ice. It was quite a humbling experience, to be held in awe of dirt and frozen water.

    When we reached the base of the glacier and started heading back down the trail we began to look for a spot to camp. This proved to be much more difficult than we had initially anticipated. Realizing very quickly that there was A) no place to camp out of view of the trail, and B) there was no place to camp that wasn’t full of pebbles, rocks and boulders; we were left in quite a predicament. Taking a look around I saw that our only option seemed to be to travel up into the dense forest growth and hope to find a reasonably flat area to pitch the Purple Rhino.

    “Looks like were gonna’ have to bush-whack it for a bit” I said to Rob as I headed towards the woods. He said nothing, just followed and plodded along behind me.

    As we approached the edge of the woods, we discovered that the only real way to enter the heavy greenery was to hike up a creek bed, complete with running, glacially cold water. We looked at each other, and began to hike.

    Picking our way gingerly up the creek, we hopped from rock to rock like a couple of soaking wet mountain goats.

    “FUCK!” I bout jumped out of my skin as I heard Rob yell out. I looked back to see what had happened, expecting to see Rob standing knee deep in the brook. He wasn’t, he was just balanced on a big flat rock.

    “What’s up?” I enquired.

    “I’m fuckin wet!” He said this like it was surprise to him. Not as if we had been hiking in the rain for the past 2 hours. I just shook my head.

    “Sorry, forgot to turn off the rain this morning” I taunted him.

    “Fuck you.” He was obviously in no mood to be here, but at this point we didn’t have much choice.

    About this time we were able to leave the creek bed and the ground began to flatten out. With the prospect of actually finding a place to camp we began to move about as fast as we could. Then we came to the sign.

    “DANGER Area closed due to land slides.” It hung across the pseudo trail we had stumbled upon.

    “Bummer” I said, as I looked to Rob, and stepped over the rope. At this point we were willing to take out chances. This was flaw in judgment #2.

    About 20 meters past the sign we found a nice piece of flat ground, just big enough for the Rhino. We pulled it out and began to set up. At this point the rain was coming down full force and it was completely dark. Our headlamps glinted off the raindrops, and our boots squished with every step.

The rain seemed to increase at a rate directly related to how much of our gear was exposed, so by the time we had both our packs wide open looking for stuff, we were stuck in a torrential down pour that proceeded to all but fill any empty space we made by removing gear. Realizing that everything we possessed was now completely water logged, we hurried to complete the set up, so we could lay in wet sleeping bags and prune our entire bodies for the next 10 hours. That’s when things went form bad to worse.

“Dammit! This is really pissin’ me off!” I exclaimed. I was trying to place the stakes of the Purple Rhino, stakes that were necessary to make the tent stand. It seemed that every time I put it in the ground it would just pull right back out. The rocky soil was so water logged that it just kept coming loose. It was about this time that it hit me-the soil we were standing on was turning into a muddy slip and slide. Then I looked up at the 100 meter rock and mud cliff that was towering above us and thought about the sign we had blatantly ignored and almost tripped on getting to this spot. ‘DANGER Area closed due to land slides’. This was a really bad idea.

    “Hey Rob, you’re gonna’ hate me” I said as I turned to him and gave a cowering glance.

    “What?” His tone was somewhat less than impressed.

    “You see that big muddy cliff?” I asked.

    “Yeah.”

    “Remember that sign we stepped over?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Shit.”

    The only words we exchanged as we began to repack our soaked and mud covered tent was that I now owed Rob a pitcher of beer, or two. Once we were reloaded we shouldered our packs, which now had about another 15lbs of water weight, and began the trek back to town. The 8k trek back to town-in the pitch dark and pouring rain.

    Although we were cold, wet, tired and pretty much miserable, in hindsight, the hike back was pretty cool. About 2k into it, we looked to our left and noticed that the woods were illuminated with the tiny blinking of hundreds of thousands of glowworms. Their blue-green, ‘glow in the dark’ lights were truly something to behold. It was a quite an amazing sight, and I dare say that it would have been incredibly romantic, if I were sharing it with anyone but Rob. But I was hiking with an unshaven, soaking wet man who hadn’t bathed in quite a few days, and I was in the exact same condition, so we’ll just say it was really cool, in a manly sort of way. Where romantically one may have commented on the beauty and magic of the evening, our remarks were more along the lines of “Kick ass! This fuckin’ rocks! I wish my feet weren’t bleeding.”

    When we finally reached town we were faced with the challenge of finding a hostel. After wandering the streets aimlessly and coming to locked door after locked door we began to get a little worried. Then we looked up the road and saw what appeared to be another one which actually had some lights on. When we got there the door was open, and we breathed a huge sigh of relief. Little did we know we had one more challenge to deal with.

    “Hello” Rob called out. There seemed to be no one in the building.

    We stood there long enough to form a standing puddle on the carpeted floor-we were that wet. Finally, a short elderly Kiwi appeared from somewhere in the back.

    “How yous goin’?” she asked, in a very clueless manner.

    “Wet” Rob replied with what little enthusiasm he could muster.

    “Aw bumma. How come?” she continued, just as clueless.

    Rob looked at me as if to say “Did she really just ask that?” I looked over my shoulder out at the downpour that was happening out side the OPEN door, and then looked at her.

    “So what can I do for yas” she continued.

    “You have any room tonight?” I asked.

    “Yup.” She replied, than stared at us blankly. There was an awkward silence.

    “Can we stay?” Rob finally asked.

    “Oh yeah!” She exclaimed, as if she had forgotten where she worked.

    Rob shot me a look as if to say “WTF mate?!” I shrugged my shoulders, and leaned on the counter. It was then that I noticed the empty bottle of wine on the other side. So that’s why she was acting so weird, she was piss-drunk shithoused.

    It ended up taking her 20 minutes to locate a room key and check us in, and another 10 for her to try to explain where everything was, which was to no avail. Finally, we politely walked away from her mid conversation to find things on our own. We were cold, wet and hungry, and didn’t want to listen to any more of her drunken babble. At the rate she was going, we also did not want to be witness to the regurgitation of that bottle of wine.

    Once we found our room and dropped our packs we began to wander around a bit, trying to figure out where everything was. We were greeted by quite a pleasant surprise when we entered the kitchen. A large pot of corn chowder on the oven, free to hostel patrons. We had barely eaten anything all day and were soaked through and chilled to the core, so the hot food was a real treat. It helped us to get back into good spirits and gave us the energy to deal with the insane amount of wet and dirty stuff we had, which was no small task. The next blessing came when we found that they had a washer and dryer. This meant we could actually leave in the morning with dry gear, showered, AND have clean clothes-things were looking up.

    By the time we finished unloading it looked as if a gear bomb had gone off in the hostel. Wet clothes lay everywhere and bits and pieces of tent were draped over any empty space. I rigged up a system of hanging our boots upside down above the wood stove, and our socks were letting off a toxic steam of sweat, blood and rain as they baked by the giant cast iron box.

    “What a day” I sighed, as Rob plopped down next to me on the common room couch.
    “Yeah, tell me about” he replied, “I’m beat.”

    “Sorry ‘bout all that buddy” I said to Rob, “didn’t mean to get us soakin’ wet and trekkin’ through the mud and dark. I owe ya’ one.”

    “Yeah, you do” he replied, “But as the Kiwis’ say, ‘No worries mate.’ It’s all part of the adventure.”

    “Yup.” I agreed and was glad to see he was still in good spirits.

    “…But you still owe me a pitcher.”

    He smiled and got up and staggered off towards the bunk room. I finished my glass of water and did the same. Every part of my body hurt and the thought of a soft, warm, dry bed almost brought tears to my eyes. It had been a wicked long day.

Day Four

---

The Best Nights Sleep

    In the morning Rob and I awoke, and scoured the kitchen for some free grub. Most hostels have a designated shelf for food that travelers will leave for others as a free goody basket. This usually consists of old stale bread, or items that no one else wanted to eat. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to come across things that were left because the previous owner just didn’t need them anymore, but more often that not it’s just the bottom of the barrel scraps-but it’s free, so you can’t really complain. This morning, we made out pretty well, not only did we get some vegemite and bread for toast, but we also came across some Milo, and another patron was kind enough to give us some milk. It was almost like having a real breakfast.

    Once we had dined, we began the task of recollecting all our gear, which was strewn about the hostel like a bad décor. We had pants and shirts hanging in at least three rooms and our socks and shoes had taken over the fireplace. Our packs hung above puddles of water on the bunk room floor, and there were more clothes on the beds. Our tent had commandeered the wash room and was hung caddy corner across the beams, all but blocking anyone else from washing there clothes. Even if they had made it to the washer and dryer, they would only have been foiled by everything else we owned that had been haphazardly crammed into the machines, with the hopes of rendering them somewhat less wet and offensive to the nose. Yes, we were the ugly Americans; No, we didn’t care.

    After about 10 minutes of scavenging, and another 30 of packing and repacking, we were reasonably sure that we had everything and headed on our way. The day was crisp and clear, and the brightly shining sun was a great sight to see, especially after the previous night’s rain-soaked calamity.

    “Think we’ll make it to Nelson today” I asked Rob as we strolled away from the hostel.

    “Hopefully” he replied with a cheeky grin on his face, “as long as you don’t find anymore land slides to camp under.”

    “I’m never gonna’ live this one down am I?”  I asked doubtfully.

    “Nope” he replied.

    “What if I buy you a meat pie for breakfast?”

    “I might forget about it for an hour or so” he replied with a smile.

    “Works for me.”

    With that we banked right and headed to a tiny dairy right next to a small restaurant. There we got two meat pies and a Hokie Pokie bar, which may actually be the best candy bar ever. After eating one I have come to the conclusion that the Hokie Pokie really is what it’s all about.

    As we sat outside the dairy, enjoying our fat intake for the week, we looked up and to our surprise, there was Lucy, cursing up a storm on her cell phone outside her car. Once she finished relating her exhaustive offensive vocabulary list to the poor soul on the other end of the line, we picked up and headed over her way.

    “What’s up?” Rob asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be up on the glacier right now?” She had told us the day before that she was planning on taking a helicopter tour of the glacier today.

    “YES!” She replied, agitated as all hell.

    “Then…why aren’t you?” he continued.

    “Fuckin’ helicopter broke!” She exclaimed, “And they canceled the trip!”

    “Damn, I hate it when they do that-who needs safety anyway, I mean, helicopters don’t really need to fly” I said with a little too much sarcasm. She was not impressed.

    “Did you get a refund?” Rob asked.

    “Yeah, but that’s not the point. This was the only time I had to get on the glacier”

    “That’s a bummer” I replied, “Why can’t you just do it tomorrow?”

    “Because I’m meeting a friend in Nelson tomorrow morning” she said with frustration. Rob and I looked at each other as soon as she said it. This was almost too good to be true.

    “Nelson, really?” I asked, “When are you leaving?”

    “Well, I guess I’m gonna’ head up there today, since I’ve nothing else to do.” She replied.

    “Want some company?” Rob asked, with the cheesiest shit-eating grin he could muster.

    “You guys are such mooches!” She exclaimed. “Fine, hop on in.”

    “We love you Lucy!” Rob and I gave her a huge hug and barreled into the car.

    “Hang on guys” She said, “I gotta’ hit the restroom before we head out, I’ll be right back.”

    While we were sitting in the car waiting for Lucy to come back, I was startled by a strange growling sound. I looked around and realized it was my stomach, screaming for more food. It seemed the meat pie had only wet my appetite, and left my stomach with at grand case of hunger blue-balls.

    “Damn Rob, I’m reeeeaally hungry” I said turning to him.

    “I can tell” he replied, acknowledging the guttural groans coming from my mid section.

    “You think they are gonna’ eat that?” I asked, pointing to a half eaten plate of food, lying on an outdoor table in front of the diner across the street. “I know those flies don’t need it as much as me.”

    “Nate…that’s bad.” He replied, shaking his head.

    “You think they’d get pissed?” I continued, becoming more and more serious as I thought of that huge plate of…whatever it was.

    “Dude, were hitch hikers, not homeless people” he said.

    “I’m HUNGRY!”

    “Nate, that’s someone else’s food!” Rob exclaimed, laughing in disbelief.

    “They aren’t eating it! They aren’t even there!” I was getting excited at this point.

    “Cause they’re probably in the bathroom or something.”

    “But what if they aren’t, it’s just going to waste!” I began to get more and more adamant, and was almost set in my mind that I was going to eat that food, come hell or high water.

    “Nate, you’re a fuckin’ nut.” Rob said, shaking his head. Then there was a long pause.

    “…I’m goin’ in!” I gave my warning and exited the vehicle.

    “Nate!”

    Just at that moment Lucy came out and confronted me. I tried to explain my situation, but she informed me that if I were to take that person’s food, I’d be finding my own ride to Nelson, and I’d have to meet up with Rob there. I gave it some thought, but then realized Rob was carrying the tent. I was foiled. As we were pulling away, I looked back longingly and had just enough time to see the waitress come out and scrape that mound of mouthwatering glory into the trash. I was pissed…and still hungry.

    As we wound along the winding road of New Zealand’s magnificent west coast, I stared off into the beautiful distance, and let my stomach grumbling lull me into a subdued trance. Watching the world buzz past, I began to think about my position and took a brief step back to observe my life from the outside. Here I was, 20 years old, riding around a country on the other side of the world with a complete stranger and a new friend. No where in particular to be, no one to answer to, just exploring and letting the world turn and toss us where it would. I was free; completely and utterly free. My only obligation was my own well-being and to have fun and explore. I was living, truly and deeply living…and it was amazing.

This new found sense of freedom had embedded itself deep within me, clinging and seeping into every nook and cranny of my being.  Freedom was no longer a term in a book, or an abstract idea to discuss in class. Freedom was real, in every sense of the word. I knew what it meant to feel something that can never be described by words, something that has been sung about, written about, fought for and died for. You can’t see, feel, touch, smell, taste or hear it. You can only feel it. But give me freedom and strip mean clean, for then I have all that I need. Streaming through my veins, flowing and soaking in like mist through the trees, I was fogged in peace and encloaked in happiness. I found myself admitting that I have no idea what I am doing, or where I am going. I feel that the world seems to turn to fast and is about to spin me into some unknown direction. I’m scared. But at the same time invigorated, longing for life to continue, but trembling under its every move. Anxious with anticipation and unnerved by the unknown, I stand trembling on the edge of something deeper that I could ever imagine, yearning to take the first leap, but ripped apart by the bitter cold of apprehension. Will I survive? Yes. How? I don’t know. Why? That’s what I am searching for…what I will be eternally searching for. The one question I can never answer.  Maybe that’s what this trip is about. Maybe that’s what this life is about, a journey, an odyssey with out end. Traveling everyday, towards an undefined and unattainable goal, but the real goal lies in the adventures along the way. Lessons learned, the emotions felt, the pride and heart crushed and nurtured by the same forces. Everyday getting up with a half broken compass, wandering until you cant take any more, crashing hard, dreaming, and doing it all again. Over and over and over again. Is this life? This is life. This is my life. And I love it.

    I awoke to Rob’s oh so sweet rousing call, “Nate, get the hell up! We’re in Nelson.”

    “Wha-huh?” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and pulled myself up.

    “Well, this is it boys” Lucy said as we came to the first stop light we had seen in a long time. “Anywhere in particular you want to be let off?” She asked.

    “Anywhere’s fine” Rob said, pulling his things together.

    Lucy drove a small way until we can to the middle of town, there she pulled over we began to gather our packs.

    “Thanks so much for the ride! It’s been a real great trip.” I told her.

    “Yeah it definitely has,” Rob agreed, “we really appreciate it.”

    “No worries, mates!” She replied, forcing a cheesy Kiwi accent. “Take care.”

    “You too” we said.

    We shouldered out packs and said our last goodbyes, and Lucy drove out of our lives just as quickly as she had driven in. It was sad to see a nice warm car go, along with a new friend, but we had other serious business to deal with at hand. Food.

    “Damn, I’m hungry!” I reported as we began walking.

    “You’re always hungry Nate” Rob replied.

“Yeah, but this time I’m REALLY hungry!”

“Yeah, I kinda’ am too. But first we gotta’ call Jason and find out where he lives”

Jason was a friend from Uni who was supposed to be in Nelson this week. We had spoken with him prior to our trip and he had offered a place to stay when we arrived and given us his phone number. The problem was no one was answering the phone, and there was no answering machine. This definitely threw a kink in our plans.

“Well shit! Now what do we do? It’s getting late, were in Nelson, our contact won’t answer the phone and we have no place to stay.” Rob was getting a little pissed at this point.

“We eat!” I replied. At this point my stomach was about to digest itself and I was getting a little edgy.

“Good call. Lets find some food and we’ll deal with this afterwards.”

We headed off down the street in search of a fish-n-chips that would still be open.

After making a few rounds of the surrounding area we were beginning to get a little frustrated at the lack of fish-n-chips, or even the lack of open food places for that matter.

“What the hell?” exclaimed Rob, “There’s a fish-n-chips on every corner in New Zealand, except now when we are looking for one!”

“Let’s ask this person coming up the street.” I said, hoping that they would be of some assistance.

    As the stranger came closer, he made eye contact and started heading right for us, as if he knew we were in search of something. There seemed to be a pep in both our steps and we hurried to meet each other. Out paths met, but before I could open my mouth he began to speak.

    “You have any herb I can buy, or know where I can get some?” he asked.

    WHAT?! Did I have a sign that said ‘drug dealer’ on my head? Who was this guy?! I was supposed to be asking him the questions! I turned to Rob, who gave me a look just as puzzled as mine.

    “Um, no. Sorry bro.” I replied.

    “You know anyone who does?” he was as impatient as a fiending crack addict, not a burnt out stoner.

    “Na bro, we not form here. Just got into town.” I figured the packs and scruffy faces, coupled with the stench of dirty gear would have been a dead give away that we weren’t locals, but so much for assumptions.

    “Buggar. Cheers anyway” he said and he scurried off, as quickly as he had come.

    Rob and I watched him turn the corner and head out of view then turned to each other.

    “What the hell just happened!?” I asked Rob, still in disbelief.

    Rob just stared back at me. “W T F” he shook his head and we just began to laugh.

    “Wow, welcome to Nelson. We don’t have food, but we want your pot!” Rob joked as we headed on down the street. We walked about another block, still laughing and trying to figure out what had just taken place. Finally we got over it and my mind went directly back to our first objective.

    “So as exciting as that little encounter was, we STILL don’t know where to find cheap food!” I exclaimed. “But you get to ask the next person, ‘cause apparently I look like a drug dealing hippy.”

    We turned a corner and about knocked down an old couple, paying more attention to each other than where they were going.

    “Excuse me” Rob interrupted, about scaring them into cardiac arrest. “Do you know where we can find a fish-n-chips around here? Mt friend and I just arrived in town and are famished.”

    The poor old couple looked as if they thought we were going to mug them, or at least get our smell on them.

    “Um, um, yes. I believe there is a fish-n-chips about 3 blocks that way” he said, pointing across the street. “Good luck” and with that they hurried away before we could engage them in further conversation.

    “Thank you!” we called after them, finding it quite funny how quickly they left.

    I turned to Rob. “Man, we must either look really rough, or smell really bad” I said laughing.

    “Probably a bit of both” Rob replied. “But oh well, we’ll scare food out of people if we have to.”

    We crossed the street and heading in the direction they had pointed, eagerly smelling for that aroma of deep fried greasy goodness.   

    “That’s funny. They said 3 blocks this way, but it sure doesn’t look like there is gonna’ be any food up here” Rob said. I was thinking the same thing. The stores were getting less and less and it was looking more and more residential. This was not good. We walked a few meters more, and stopped. This couldn’t be right.

    At that moment we saw what appeared to be a local, brown bag in hand, stumbling down the street.

    “Your turn Nate” Rob looked at me and smiled.

    As he approached I made an effort to get his attention.

    “Excuse me sir, do you know if there is a fish-n-chips down the way?”

    “Fuck no mate! Iss here’s all houses, taons back at way” He pointed the direction we had come from. “If ya lookin’ for a fish-n-chips ya go back 2 blocks, turn right, and go another 2 blocks, should be one around there.” There was enough whisky on his breath that I felt like I was gonna get a buzz just by him breathing on me.

    “Cheers” I said.

    “No worries mate” With this he turned and staggered on his way.

    “Well shit!” I exclaimed

    “This sucks!” Rob echoed my agitation.

    “Well, guess there’s not much we can do but turn back and start again.” I was quite frustrated at this point, not to mention so hungry I thought I was gonna’ die.

    We started our hike back, cursing and swearing until we reached where we had initially met up with the old couple. Here we turned right and continued on for the two blocks the drunkard had instructed. Two blocks later, we stopped and looked around. No fish-n-chips in sight. I was hot.

    “FUCKIN’ SHIT BALLS ASS AARRRGGGHHHHHH!”

    “Calm down pirate” Rob laughed at my angry cry.

    “NO IM FUCKIN HUNGRY!” I was livid at this point.

    “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted a drunken man.” Rob said with doubt.

    “Yeah, it seemed a little wrong.” I was trying to regain my cool. “But now what the hell do we do?”

    Rob and I looked around. This had become the hardest mission for fish-n-chips we had ever been on. It was like the search for the Holy Grail…full of deep fried potatoes and seafood. I had had better luck finding food when I was shithoused and couldn’t walk straight.

    “Look, lets just ask this guy comin' our way and maybe he can help.” Rob said nodding toward the large Maori fellow strolling down the street.

    “Excuse me sir” Rob began, “we are looking for a fish-n-chips that we were told is around here, but cant seem to find it.”

    “Oh yeah, no worries mate” Finally, someone who seemed to be on the ball. “It ain’t fa’. Ya’s just go down this road about 100 meters around that bend, and it’ll be on ya left.”

    “Thank you so much!” I exclaimed.

    “No worries bro, have a g’night.” He said, and carried on his way. He was the nicest person we had met in this town.

    We headed off down the road, praying that there was some truth to his words. Finally, we came around a corner and there it was, like a beacon of God, glowing with a neon buzz: “Fish-n-chips.”

    I was so happy I gave a merry whoop, which got me quite the look from Rob. We bounded in and were greeted by the most wonderful smells of deep fried grease and dead sea life.

    Rob and I placed our order, spending every cent in our pockets, and took a seat in the corner where we could get our packs out of the way. We waited for what seemed like an eternity (but was probably only about 5 minutes) until they called our number. The server looked at us with a little suspicion as she handed us the heaping tray of food. I don’t think she could believe that two people were about to consume that much artery clogging material, and seemed concerned she may have to call EMS to get our hearts unplugged afterwards.

    I could hardly wait. By the time I got to the table I was already done with a crab stick and working on my extra large basket of chips. I polished off two pieces of fish and moved on to another crab stick and a fried pineapple ring. It was by far the WORST fish-n-chips I have ever eaten, but I didn’t care. Gorging my face and ignoring my bodies cries for help as it drowned in fat I vacuumed up every last crumb and smiled. It hurt so bad, but tasted and felt so good. When I had finished I thought my stomach was going to split, and I could feel the grease congealing in my gut. I was happy again, complete.

    “Wow. I can’t believe we just ate all that” Rob said, a painful look on his face. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m gonna’ go die now.”

    “I’m not gonna’ die” I said, “but in about 20 minutes that grease is gonna’ kick in and I’m gonna’ blow my asshole inside out.”

    “That truly is an image I could have gone without” Rob said, disgusted and disturbed.

    “Well, now that that’s taken care of, we should figure out what the hell we’re gonna’ do tonight as far as finding a place to stay.” I said as I rose to my feet.

    We shouldered out packs, almost taking out a few customers in the process, and headed back out into the Nelson night. We tried to call Jason again but still to no avail. It was now almost 10pm and we were getting tired as anything and in need of some rest.

    “What do you want to do?” I asked Rob.

    “I don’t know. We don’t have any money for a hostel, so we better take a look around and see what we can find.”

    We spent the next hour hiking around Nelson, scouring for any place to pitch the Purple Rhino. It was the middle of the city, so you can imagine what our luck was like. Finally we ended up one the outskirts of town in a residential neighborhood.

    “Where the hell are we?” Rob asked

    “Nelson” I replied.

    “Shit head.” Rob found little humor in my comment.

    “Hang on a sec, what’s this?” I saw a sign a little way up the road and quickened my pace to read it. When we got up to it we both looked up at the lettering above us: “Nelson Public Golf Course.”

    I looked at Rob and he looked back at me.

    “Ya know, this could be a really bad idea.” I said.

    “Isn’t it trespassing?” Rob asked.

    “Probably” I replied.

    “And dangerous?” he continued.

    “Probably.”

    “Should we stay here?”

    “Probably not.” I replied. “But are we going to?”

    We looked at each other and grinned.

    It was the best night sleep we had the entire trip. The ground was perfectly flat, and wonderfully padded. The Purple Rhino stood magnificently, a proud feat of triumph, majestically displaying the “team No Shame” mentality of two weary travelers. We slept with the tent wide open, staring out at the busy highway not 200 meters away. We nestled our abode behind a large shrubby outcrop, trying to avoid being in sight of the residential neighborhood near by, and fell asleep to buzz of traffic and some strange shrieking that sounded like a dying bird.

Day Five

---

Butch

    When we awoke, the sun was already climbing and day was upon us. We had overslept.

    “Shit! Rob get up!” I tried to rouse him. “We gotta’ get out of here before we get clocked with a golf ball…or arrested.”

    “Arrrgggmmmffffggggaam” was all that came out of the piled sleeping bag.

    “Rob!” I nudged him (well, any harder and it would have been a full out tackle, but I’ll call it a nudge).

    “I’m up, I’m up! Chill out!” He rolled around and bit and sat up, drearily rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

    We arose and broke camp as fast as we could. After packing up and checking the area for anything we may have lost, and lamenting that we would never again find such a great campsite, we headed out.

    We were met at the entrance of the park by an elderly gentleman who had just shouldered his clubs and was advancing towards us. He had quite the confused look on his face, but then again, it’s not every day you arrive at a golf course at 7:30 in the morning and are greeted by two packing travelers hiking OFF the course. It was pretty obvious what was going on, but he was kind enough not to ask any questions. We said a friendly hello and nodded as we walked past, out of the course and onto the street. He just shook his head and went on his way.

    “So where to today?” I asked, as we mozzied down the sidewalk and back into town.

    “I don’t know, but I just found some change in one of my other pockets, so let’s go find a meat pie and we’ll figure it out from there.” Rob replied.   

    “Sounds like a plan to me.” I had no objections, I LOVE meat pies.

    About 40 minutes later, pies in had, we found ourselves once again standing on the side of the road.   

    “There anything you want to do in Nelson while we're here?” I asked.

    “Not particularly.” Rob responded, inquisitively inspecting the pie filing he had spilled on his shirt, then lifting the week old sweat-filled garment to lick it off.

    “You been to the Able Tasman?” I asked when he had finished sucking every last morsel off his shirt front.

    “Nope” he answered.

    “Wanna’ go?”

    “Sure.”

    “Cool.”

    Well, that had been easy enough. We shouldered out packs again and moved on toward the northbound highway, which was not very far. After waiting for about 10 minutes, a light blue minivan pulled over and waited for us to catch up.   

    “Where yous headin’?” the woman driving asked.

    “Able Tasman” Rob replied.

    “Well, I’m not going that far, but I can get you a little ways up the road” she said with a smile.

    “Better than walkin’” I said and grinned as we hopped in the back.

    “Just on my way to pick up my boy from school. Called and said he was sick and needed to come home. I think it’s more he just doesn’t want to be at school, but oh well.”

    “No worries, we’re just thankful for the ride” I replied.

    “Not a problem. Ya know, I remember doing the same thing when I was your age. Course, nowadays it ain’t the best idea for a young woman to hop in cars with strangers. But you two look like you’re doin’ just fine. Boy, I miss travelin’ around.” You could tell there was a longing in her voice as she went on to recall her hitching experiences. Too bad she was a married mother, she was still a bit of a looker and I don’t believe I’d have had any issue if she wanted to travel with us, except the fact that she was almost old enough to be my mom.

    In a few minutes we arrived at the school building, and had to move our packs over to accommodate her son. He looked a bit surprised to find two complete strangers in the van with his mother, but he seemed like a good enough young lad. Didn’t really say much, but smiled a lot. Probably was just thinking “God mom, you’ve really lost it-picking up random hitchhikers. Wait ‘til I tell dad.”

    “Tell ya what boys, I’ll drop you's off up here at the intersection. That’ll be your best bet for catchin’ a lift up north.”

    She let us off at a perfect location where the main north bound highway branched off towards the Able Tasman. We thanked her graciously, said good bye and wished her son a speedy recovery (although as she has said earlier, he seemed perfectly fine) and then watched her take off. We then settled in and dropped our packs. Rob took the first turn thumbin’ it, and we hoped of a speedy pick up so we could be on our way.

    I should probably back up a little bit and give a brief explanation of our current destination, the Able Tasman. The Able Tasman is a small national park located on the far northwest tip of the south island, just past Motueka. It is known for some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. However, just saying that doest nothing to describe just how unbelievable they really are. I had been once before over our mid-semester break in April. Upon arriving there you are greeted by glistening white sand beaches and crystal blue water, backed by lush forest and steep mountains. There is an approximately 50k trail that traces the coast line, bouncing from beach to mountain top the entire way. The scenery is enough to make you want to slap your grandmother, however the water will make your balls scream in terror and go fleeing to your stomach, giving the term ‘shrinkage’ a whole new meaning. All in all though, the Able Tasman is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places on earth, but back to the intersection.

    We waited for about twenty minutes at that intersection, watching hundreds of cars go by, and being reminded of just how hard it is to get a ride out of a city. Eventually, we were picked up and started on our way to the Able Tasman. About 3 hours and 4 rides later, we had finally made it to Motueka. Our last ride dropped us right at the beginning of the city limits, which is that worst place to be. If there is one thing harder than getting a ride out of a city, it’s standing on the city edge and trying to get a ride in. We eventually had to walk about 5k to the other side of town. Not a bad walk, just time consuming, and we still had a ways to go. Eventually we made our way to the end of the main drag and into a large empty parking lot at the end of the main drag.

    “Hang on a sec, Nate, I wanna’ make a phone call before we head out again.” Rob called to me as we approached a phone booth, which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

    “Cool beans bro, my feet could use a rest anyway.”

    We came to the booth only to find it occupied by a small bent Indian woman in traditional garb, Bindi and all. We stopped and waited, figuring she would be done in a minute. Boy were we wrong.

    Ten minutes later I looked to Rob, beginning to get frustrated. He gave me the same look.

    “What the hell is she talking about that takes so long?” I asked.

    “No idea.” Rob replied. “You’d think she’d have some courtesy and wrap things up though, it’s not like she hasn’t seen us.”  This was very true. We had made it pretty clear that we wanted to use the phone. We were sitting about 3 meters from it, staring at her like a couple of rabid dogs, making a point to make her as uncomfortable as possible. We had places to go. Still she babbled on, barely pausing for air. Another 5 minutes passed.

    “It is really that important?” I asked Rob.

    “Yes.”

    “Ok” I said, after a long pause when it became evident that he was not going to give any further explanation.

    “I’m gonna’ to go wait over there in the shade.” I said, pointing to a nearby tree casting a good shadow.

    “Good idea.” Rob said, and joined me.

    Another 5 minutes.

    “We’ve been here for 20 minutes!” I exclaimed, more than slightly annoyed. I had been watching traffic, or the lack there of, and realized we were going to need a good bit of time to make it to the Able Tasman at this rate.

    “What the hell is she DOING!?” Rob started yelling. “Get off the phone!”

    I don’t know if she could hear us, but she sure didn’t seem phased by our nagging.

    “What if we just go over and tip the booth over?” I asked, trying to make light of the situation, which was quickly (or not so quickly) going out of control. There was a long pause.

    “It’s times like this I wish I had a sniper rifle” Rob said, completely straight faced.

    “Wow…but tell me how you really feel.” I said, a little shocked, and trying to make light of the comment.

    “She’s already got a bull’s eye on her forehead” Rob said with a chuckle.

    “Holy shit Rob, I can’t believe you just said that.” There was a long pause. Then we both busted out laughing.

    “We’re going straight to hell” Rob exclaimed between bellows.

    “Where ALL the phone booths are ALWAYS occupied!” I added. By this time we were almost crying.

    Finally, just as we were about to give up and head on our way, the old lady abruptly finished her conversation and was gone. It was like she disappeared, twenty minutes she was there, then in one minute she’s gone.

    I watched Rob as he went over to the phone booth, dug out his wallet, found an arbitrary piece of paper and went inside. Less than a minute later he reappeared. I gave him an inquisitive glance as he walked back my way.

    “They weren’t there.”

    “WHAT!” I cried.

    “They weren’t there” he repeated.   

    “We just waited 20 minutes for you to make a damn call, and they weren’t even there!? You gotta’ be kiddin’ me!” I was in disbelief. We had just burned much needed time, passed up several rides, spoke of sniping a stranger and made fun of another cultures tradition damning our souls for Rob to come back and say, “They weren’t there.” It was like getting to the Pearly Gates and finding a sign that says, “Sorry, we’re closed.”

    “Oh well.” That’s all he had to say. Sometimes I admired Rob for his complete detachment and ability to be content with anything. We should all be so lucky.

    I moved to the side of the road and stuck my thumb out to begin the process of waiting and watching empty cars file past as Rob went to relieve himself behind a bush. I hadn’t been standing there 2 minutes when a large camper van slowed and pulled to the side of the road.

    “Rob c’mon, we got a ride!” I called to him as I picked up my pack and moved toward the van. A cross little man popped out of the van and immediately began yelling at me.

    “Hurry up, I haven’t got all day!” the angry little man shouted. It was about this time Rob popped out from behind the bush.

    “I’m comin’!” he called as he appeared and headed towards us.

    “What? There are two of you!” The little man shouted. “You DUPED me!” He was quite aggravated.

    “I’m sorry sir, we weren’t trying to hide, my friend was just readjusting his…” I tried to explain, but the cross little fellow, who reminded me very much of an angry lawn gnome, cut me off.

    “You’re sneaky. I should have known better. I can’t believe I fell for it. I wouldn’t have stopped, but you sneaky bastards tricked me.”

    “No sir, we weren’t trying to…” But again I was interrupted. He was convinced we were of mal intent and had tricked him.

    “Get in the back!” he ordered sternly. I almost wanted to tell him no thanks, we’ll get the next one, but the next one here may not be for a long time.

    Rob and I sat in silence, crammed in the back of a camper that had much more room to offer than what we had been given. The little old man kept on talking to himself, cursing us under his breath (but loud enough for us to hear) and acting as if the whole world was out to get him. Seeing all this, it was very befitting that he lived in his van, and I would place a hefty bet that at some point he lived in his van, down by the river.

    So there we were, Rob and I almost sitting on each other’s laps, the angry lawn gnome muttering in the front, and a silent golden retriever that looked as if it were on the brink of death. I found myself staring at it, and it just stared right back, completely unmoved. I felt sorry for him. The look in his eye was of total disappointment and surrender to a life devoid of stimulation. I looked at him and he just looked right back at me.

    “I peed in his laundry the other week, and he kicked my ass.” The dog couldn’t talk, but if he could this is what he was telling me. “Wait till he finds the present under that back seat. He’s gonna’ flip.”

    I found myself in an ongoing conversation in my head with this unfortunate four legged soul. His only joy in life the occasional dropped crumb, or bitch-in-heat, who would jump in with random hitch hikers. Unfortunately I had neither to offer, and Rob’s leg didn’t seem to do it for him.

    “So what’s the story old timer?” I asked, still talking to the canine in my head.

    “You wouldn’t believe what it’s like to live with him” the dog replied. I decided he needed a name. So I called him Butch. He had no other dignity, so I figured I’d at least give him a macho name. Butch continued, “He has no one, so he has attached to me. We ride around, no particular direction, just riding. It may not be so bad if I didn’t get so damn car sick from his shitty driving.”

    “It can’t be all that bad” I told him. “At least you get to travel.”

    “Speak for yourself. You don’t have to put up with him. He eats liver and anchovies like they are going out of style. I know his every habit, which is far more than I ever wanted. He shits every day at 8:43 in the morning, eats dinner at 6:57, and masturbates religiously at 11:11, every evening, right where you are sitting.”

    I was suddenly very uncomfortable.

    “His wife left him 3 years ago, and he reads the damn note she left him four or five times a day; out loud.” I had noticed it taped to the windshield. “Then he looks at me, says, ‘at least you still love me’ and tugs on my ear. I hate it when he tugs on my ear.” Butch paused. “About all I have to look forward to is remarking his laundry on the rare occasion that he stops somewhere and washes it… That and at least I can lick my own balls.”

    “Damn” was all I could say.

    “Yeah. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna’ go back to dreaming of dropped hamburgers, pussies, and this real hottie of a lab I saw the other day who was ready to go. God, I could smell her a block away” He took a long sniff and stared off into the distance. “Ahhhhhhhh.”

    With this Butch licked his balls, turned a circle three times, then once in the other direction, and went to sleep. I really had nothing more to say, so we rode on in silence.

    “Ok, get out!” The peace was shattered by the gnome. “I have things to do.” I knew this was not true because of my conversation with his traveling companion, but I was happy to put some distance between us and this angry little man.

    “Take it easy Butch” I said under my breath as we got out. I swear I saw him wink, then go back to sleep.

    As soon as we closed the door the gnome speeded off without letting us thank him. He continued the same way we were going. I silently wished him an early transmission failure, and hopped for Butch’s sake that he would crash into a hot dog stand.

    We looked around, and to our pleasant surprise we had been let off directly beside an apple orchard. There was a barn on the side of the road as well, with a sign that read ‘Apples, $2.00 a bag. Under the bag sat a large wooden trolley, in which were bags of apples.

    “Where do you suppose the attendant is?” Rob asked, looking around. The place seemed completely deserted.

    “Would you want to sit here on this forgotten highway all day?” I replied. “My guess is it’s an ‘on your honor’ thing.” Sure enough, there next to the apples sat a coffee can with a hole punched in the lid. Inside was a small pile of change.

    “Well, I could really go for an apple” Rob said.

    “Me too.” The thought of a fresh juicy apple was incredibly appealing, especially since the last thing we ate was a lard-filled meat pie for breakfast.

    “But I don’t have any money left” Rob continued.

    “Me neither.” At this point I was dead broke.

    We stood there and looked at each other for a minute, then back at the apples.

    “Well ya know, I bet most of the cost goes into paying the labor for someone to pick the apples” Rob began.

    “And the bags” I added

    “Precisely…So logically,” Rob continued, in a very professional and persuasive tone, “if there was no labor involved, and no materials, i.e. the bag, then the cost of the apple should be just about free, or at least a small enough portion that it could be rounded down to zero.”

    “Especially for a small number of apples, like two or three.” I said, in the same tone.

    “So logically, if we did the labor-picking the apples, and did not use a bag, they should be free” Rob concluded.

    “I like the way you think.” I said and smiled. With this we went behind the barn and harvested an apple a piece.

    As we sat on the side of the road, sloppily munching our apples and dripping juices all over ourselves, we noticed something; there was not a damn car on this road, and we hadn’t seen one since we were let off.

    “Ya know, we haven’t seen a car yet.” I said, dribbling bits of apple in my lap.

    “Nope” Rob replied

    “And we still have a long way to go to get to the Able Tasman” I continued.

    “Yup.”

    “And the day is not getting any longer.”

    “Nope.” There was a pause.

    “…You think we should start walkin’, and hitch on the way?” I continued. Another pause.

    “…Yup.”

    With this we finished our apples, snagged two more for the road, and hefted our sweat soaked packs on to our backs once again. After a few quick adjustments we were once more on our way, smiles on our faces and stink trails behind us. After walking for about 10 minutes, we came to a fork in the road.

    “Which way?” Rob asked.

    “Not sure, let’s take a look at the map.” With this I shrugged off my load and began digging through the pockets of my pack, in search of guidance. “Ah-hah, here it is.” I extracted a neatly folded road map, encased in multiple plastic bags. Upon inspecting the impenetrable package, I realized I may have gone a bit over board in my waterproofing. I fought through the bags and pulled out the map.

    “Well, looks like we’re right here.” I pointed to an intersection drawn on the map. “We are trying to get here” I said, as I pointed to the Able Tasman.

    “Well I know that much,” Rob said sarcastically.

    “Sorry” I replied. “Anyway, it looks like either way will take us there.”

    “How far?” Rob asked.

    “Looks like about 20k either way.”

    “Hmmm.” Rob pondered for a minute. I’m not really sure how to describe a pondering person, but Rob was doing it. “Well, the road to the left looks to go directly over the mountain(s).” He added the plural almost as an afterthought. “And the road to the right seems to go along the shoreline, mostly flat.”

    “And there are probably more houses, thus more people, thus more cars on the shoreline” I added.

    “So what do you say we go right?” Rob asked with a smile.

    “Sounds good to me.” With this we smiled and once again were on our way.

    We walked for about 30 minutes, in silence for the most part, just enjoying the fresh air and beautiful day. I found myself kicking a small rock along the side of the road, happily watching it tumble haphazardly along at the will of my feet. I became quite happy when I found a can that I could swap out with the rock. Now my game made noise.

    “Nate!” I heard Rob yell from behind.

    “Yeah?” I answered, still concentrating on my can.

    “What the hell are you doing?”

    “Kicking a can” I replied, nonchalantly.

    “Well I figured that smart ass” he retorted.

    “You should really try it” I responded, then in a more exaggerated tone “Ya’ know, you hear so many references to it that I figured I’d give it a try. It’s actually quite entertaining. Try it!” With this I dropped my heel back and sent the can flying in Rob’s direction. He looked at me with a strange glance, but after further coaxing tapped it back towards me.

    “What the hell was that?” I asked.

    “What?”

    “What are you trying to do, massage it? Kick he damn thing!” With this he gave it a good swing.

    “Shit!” He cried.

    “What?”

    “I stubbed my toe.”

    With this I about fell down laughing, as Rob hobbled about grasping his foot.

    “You dumb ass!” I shouted, and went to kick the can back at him. I pulled my foot back far for a hard boot and “THUDD!” I slammed my toes directly into the asphalt.

    “Fuck!” I started shouting and dancing around, my toes throbbing.

    “Yeah, dumb ass! That’s right!” Rob started heckling me.

    “Shut it!” I responded, trying to keep a straight face.

    Rob went on to continue mocking me and we both had a good laugh. Eventually we decided that maybe this was not the best activity, seeing as how neither one of us had the coordination to keep ourselves safe, even when playing a child’s game. Once we settled down and whipped the tears from our eye we tried to start the game again with a rock, but after tripping on myself, decided to just let it go. We walked on for another five minutes, still chuckling about the whole ordeal. Eventually Rob struck up a conversation.

    “Ya’ know, we haven’t seen a car pass yet” He stared.

    “Yea, I was trying to ignore that” I replied. It had been over half an hour with no traffic whatsoever. “Looks like we may have a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

    “My feet hurt” Rob said, nonchalantly.

    “That’s a bummer” I replied, blowing it off as a general statement

    “I think my toes are bleeding” he continued, still in a very matter of fact tone.

    I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. I knew that it was important for us to keep our feet in good condition, but I also knew there wasn’t much we could do about it.

    “Can you still walk?” I asked

    “Yeah.”

    “You’ll live” I replied, taking the sarcastic way out.

    Luckily, at that moment we heard a vehicle approaching from behind. We both spun around and began trying to thumb a ride. We watched in dismay as a large white van, the only vehicle we had seen since we began walking, flew past without evening slowing down. They didn’t even bother to move over and almost ran us off the road.

    On a side note, it’s amazing how fast a thumb can turn to a middle finger as a vehicle passes. It’s probably not the best courtesy, and in all honesty probably does not help to break the stereo type held about hitch hikers. But sometimes it just feels so good. It’s one fluid motion. As the car approaches, it’s all thumbs and giant smiles. As they get closer and closer without slowing, the thumb begins to sink, and the smile fades. The exact transformation takes place just at the vehicle passes-smile gone and fist in the air. Finally, there is a direct correlation between the height of the bird and the distance between you and the vehicle.  At close proximity it is a small nub, but it grows to a giant waving one finger salute by the time they are about 50 meters away.

    That was the only car we saw for the next three hours. The road eventually left the beach front and began weaving into the hills. Our trail got steeper and steeper, our packs felt heavier and heavier, and Rob’s feet seemed to be getting worse. Finally, after about 12k, we came over a hill and spotted a small town nestled on a tiny piece of beach front.

    “Thank God!” Rob exclaimed as the town came into view.

    “Yeah, now we can see all the cars that still haven’t picked us up. If we haven’t been picked up yet, what makes you think they are going to take us the rest of the way?” I smugly replied. I felt like being a cynic, so that if we did get a ride it would be that much better.”

    “Hey, I can dream can’t I? Don’t shit on my parade!” Rob replied with jesting anger.

    “Yeah you’re right. Maybe there will be a bus load of gorgeous naked women too, who have a thing for dirty hitchhikers, and well get rides AND give them” I said sarcastically.

    “But wouldn’t that be amazing!?” Rob was incredibly excited by this thought.

    “Easy tiger, your pants are dirty enough already.” I turned to Rob and winked. He responded with a single finger and a smile.

    “Oh well, let’s just get down to the beach and take rest.” Rob said. “My feet feel like I stepped in a meat grinder.”

    “Now that’s an idea I can handle.” I responded, and we headed on down into town.

    I had always thought that ghost towns were a thing of the past. That is until we came upon this little hole. The entire place was dead, not a person in sight. It was eerie as hell, kind of like an empty movie set.

    “Where the hell is everybody?” I asked, as we walked down the deserted main drag.

    “I don’t know.” Rob replied, “This is weirder than that time I walked in on my sister with that monkey.”

    I stopped and looked at him, wondering where the hell that came from. He just grinned.

    “You bastard!” I realized I had just been had.

    “You took the whole dame thing.” Rob said, smiling a shit eating grin.

    “Fuck you.” I said laughing. I had bit right in. “It was good timing, I’ll give ya that.”

    We continued on down that main street, and eventually found a bench by the beach. We took our packs off and sat down to rest for a few.

    “Holy shit!” I said, “Look at that bus!” Parked just up the street was a full size tour bus, completely painted from front to back. One look and you could tell it was a complete hippie mobile. There were tie-dyes and peace signs covering the windows, and the entire thing was painted with swirls, sunbursts, and starry scenes. It was the coolest bus we had ever seen.

    “Man, I bet those guys would pick us up!” Rob exclaimed.

    “Hell yeah! How awesome would that be?” I thought of the prospect of hitching a ride with these cats. It was like something out of a movie. I figured if we did get picked up we’d end up stoned out of our minds and left with an amazing story, if we could remember where we were. I know it’s a bit stereotypical for me to assume they smoked pot, and a lot of it, but c’mon. The only safer bet would be Cheech and Chong.

    “Man, why didn’t THAT bus drive past in the last three hours!” Rob said longingly.

    “Seriously. That would be sweet as.” I tried my best kiwi impression. Rob just looked at me and shook his head. “Sorry, got a little too excited.”

    We sat there on that bench for about 30 minutes resting our tired and sore feet. We saw a hand full of people drive or walk by, seemingly appearing from thin air, and disappearing just as quickly. Eventually we picked up and started walking again, fearing that we may run out of daylight if things kept up the way they had been. As we left town we took one more long gaze back at the hippie bus, hoping that it would suddenly begin moving towards us and take us away on a magic journey. Or at least a journey filled with narcotics, hallucinogenics and possibly some free lovin’ cute hippie chicks. Unfortunately, we were left to dream (although in the long run this may have been better because it probably saved us from STD’s, getting arrested and possible deportation…but man the story would have kicked ass!).

    No sooner than we left town we were bombarded by traffic, almost running us off the narrow, winding road. Of course, none of them stopped, or even slowed down.

    “Where the hell are all these people coming from?!” Rob yelled “And why the hell aren’t they picking us up?!” He began to shout at the on coming traffic. I almost stopped him, but then remember what happened when we left Christchurch, and kept my mouth shut.

    “Yeah, this is weirder than that time-”

    “Shut up Nate!” Rob stopped me before I could get anything out.

    Cars seemed to now pass every 5 minutes, yet none of them would stop. Eventually the flow died back down, and we were still left to hike in solitude along this seemingly abandoned road.

    Another thirty minutes passed and still no ride.

    “At least it’s a nice day out” I mentioned.

    “Nate, if you jinx us and it starts to rain I’m gonna’ beat you” It sounded like a promise.

    “Yeah, I’ll shut up.”

    I few minutes later Rob began to whistle. At first I couldn’t really pick up the tune, but eventually it came to me. Going out on a limb, and throwing my dignity to the wind, I began to sing along to Robs whistling of ‘The General’ by Dispatch, a band that has since ‘disbanded.” Expecting to hear Rob silence me, I was a little surprised to hear Rob just keep on whistling. So I kept on singing.

    “You know any Grateful Dead?” I asked when we were finished.

    “Uncle John’s Band?” Rob replied.

    “Right on!” I said, and we started up again.

    We went on to sing all sorts of stuff ranging from ‘Time after time’ to ‘Detachable Penis’. Finally there was a long pause and I figured we were done. Although it probably was a crime against humanity to force the world to listen to our off pitch banter, it was quite fun and did a great job to pass the time, keeping our minds off the fact that we were now on kilometer fourteen or fifteen, on foot. Then I heard Rob chime in from behind.

    “Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on-two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant…” When I heard this I gave a chuckle and told Rob I didn’t know the words, but he just kept on going. “But Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant; she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog.” I figured he would just reel on a bit until he ran out of words or got tired, but Rob continued. “And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.”

    He proceeded to sing the WHOLE DAMN SONG, in its entirety, barely missing a beat, for the next fifteen minutes. I was blown away.

    “Wow, thank you Arlo,” I said, clapping my hands as he finished. “I think you are the only person, other than Mr. Guthrie who can sing that entire song.”

    “Arlo Guthrie is the shit” was his only response.

    After hearing about Alice, we walked along in silence for a good bit. Maybe paying homage to a giant pile of trash and a seeing eye dog, or maybe we were just out of songs that we knew the words to (or at least songs we would admit knowing the words to). Finally we came around a bend, and there in the distance was an intersection.

    “Holy shit Rob, if that’s the road I think it is, do you know what this means?”

    “My feet feel like they were trampled by a yak and we took a wrong turn and missed the palace of 1000 virgins?” He replied, always right there for some comic relief.

    “That and we have just walked 20k!” I exclaimed.

    Just then we heard a sound we had almost forgotten, the hum of tires on pavement. We turned to see a pickup truck headed our way down the mountain. We didn’t even have to put our thumbs out.

    “Yous two look like you’ve had a bit of a walk” the driver said as he slowed to a stop next to us. “Where yous headin’?”

    “Able Tasman” Rob replied.

    “Well hop in the back.”

    “You heading that way?” Rob asked.

    “Na, but yous two look like you could use a breatha, and it’s only about 5k up the road. I ain’t in much of a hurry anyhow” He replied.

    “Wow, thank you so much!” I said, hefting my pack into the bed of the pickup.

    “Na worries mate!” he said with a smile. Man, I love the Kiwis.

    Rob and I hopped in the back and we headed off. We bounced around like a couple of Mexican jumping beans, every bump slamming our asses into the cold sheet metal. We hit one speed bump so hard it about knocked us into orbit, and I think it may have actually split my asshole open, but we really didn’t care because we were so happy not to be walking. Finally, we arrived at a small parking lot that at the trail head of the park. Here we jumped out, thanked our driver profusely, and waved as he turned around and headed back. We had finally made it.

    “Well damn, I think this has been the hardest day of travel we have had this whole trip” I said, turning to Rob.

    “No kiddin’” He replied, “this has been hell. Let’s just go find a place to pitch the Rhino and take a load off.

    We hopped on the Able Tasman trail head, which was right there in the parking lot, and hiked about a kilometer in, where we came to a small campsite.

    “You wanna’ keep going and see if we can find one on the beach?” I asked, as we came into the clearing.

    “Fuck no! We’re staying right here! 21 kilometers of hiking in these shit bricks is all I can take.” He motioned to his shoes. “My feet have never hurt so bad in my life!” I had forgotten that Rob’s feet were giving him trouble. He hadn’t said much, so I figured it wasn’t that bad.

    “That’s cool” I said. “Let’s set up camp, then I want to go down to the beach.”

    After we had pitched our palace, we put our packs up on the picnic table that was conveniently located right next to our tent, and headed to a trail spur about a hundred meters back that led down to the beach.

    “Hey look at that tree!” Rob said, pointing to a small shrubby thing that was growing on top of a giant boulder. It’s frail root mass wrapped around every nook and cranny possible in its desperate attempt to grow on the impossible. It was almost as if it had taken a bet with its other tree buddies that it couldn’t stay on that rock for over a year. Things weren’t looking to good for the tree.

    “Here take my picture!” Rob thrust his digital camera in my hand and without a second thought ran up to the rock and began to climb it.

    “Rob, careful with that tree, it doesn’t look like it’s too strongly rooted up there” I called after him.

    “Yes mother” Rob replied with a snotty sarcastic tone, then, “God Nate, you’re such a freakin’ tree hugger. You and your dreadlocked, hippie ways. Just take the damn picture.”

    “Alright alright, give me a sec to figure out how to work this thing.” My camera was a rather dated 35mm, which had two buttons: On and Zoom. “Ok, I got it.”

    By this point he had gotten board with trying to climb the rock in vain, and reverted to simply standing at the base and pointing to the tree, as if the people seeing the photo may not have been able to see it themselves. The picture I ended up taking did come out quite humorous though. There was this tree on the rock, looking like a bonsai on steroids, and there was Rob, flailing and pointing at it like an infant pointing at a nipple in expectation of dinner.

    After the photo shoot we walked around the beach a bit. It was a really cool area, with small caves and rock that had been eroded after thousands of years of relentless pounding by the ocean.

    “Hey Rob, check this out!” It was low tide and I noticed on the rocks just starting to emerge, giant patches of green muscles were showing under the ebbing water.

    “Yeah, I saw some over there too” he said as he approached and I pointed out the muscles.

    “You like seafood?” he asked

    “Yeah” I replied.

    “How ‘bout muscles for dinner?” he said with a smile.

    “You know how to cook ‘em?” I asked.

    “Nope.”

    “Cool, neither do I.” There was a long pause. Then Rob spoke up.

    “I guess if we get horrible food poisoning and die we didn’t do it right.”

    “Guess so” I replied, and with that we started gathering the biggest ones we could find from the rock outcrops. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea, but it seemed like fun at the time. After abut five minutes of gathering, I heard a splash and turned around. There was Rob, standing in water to his knees and cursing.

    “Rob, holy shit. HOW do you this?” You have to understand something about Rob: He always manages to get wet. It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you are doing, if Rob is there he will find a way to cover a good portion of his body with some form of liquid. He could get wet in a dessert sand dune. If fact if I was ever lost in the desert he would be the one person in the world I would love to have with me, because he would somehow find a puddle to roll in.

    “Oh well” he shrugged and smiled. “At least the cold water feels good on my toes.” I just shook my head and laughed.

    About twenty minutes later we trudged back to out campsite, sea booty in hand.

    “How the hell are we gonna’ cook this?” I asked.

    “I think you steam ‘em” Rob replied, trying to sound as if I knew what the hell I was talking about. We began pulling them from the bag we had collected them in and setting them on the table.

    “Ow, this one bit me!” Rob shouted as he threw a muscle to the ground.

    “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, looking at him strangely.

    “It fuckin’ bit me!” He replied.

    “It’s not a dog” I said, “how the hell can it bite?” We peered closer into the bag we had collected, and noticed that some of the muscles seemed to be moving.

    “What the hell?” I was thoroughly confused at this point.

    We dumped the muscles out on the table and that’s when we realized what it was. Not only had we collected a bunch of muscles, we had also collected a bunch of tiny crabs that seemed to be living on the muscles.

    “Well shit, looks like we got some hitch hikers” I said.

    “Yeah, hope we make it out better than they are going to.”

    “Well I don’t think we are gonna be picked up by some random giants and steamed in a pot over a camp stove” I said.

    “You never know.”

    We decided to try to clean some of the muscles before we steamed them, to try and remove any unwanted dirt or life matter. We figured it would be cruel to boil them, so we scrapped them all off so that they could starve, dry out, be stepped on, or be eaten by birds (in hindsight, maybe the boiling would have at least been quick and painless). In about 10 minutes we were sitting at our picnic table with a pile of steaming muscles in front of us.

    “Well, hope we don’t die.” Rob said, as he picked one off the pile.

    “I don’t know a lot bout muscles” I said, “but I do know that you aren’t supposed to eat them if they don’t open.”

    “Why not?” Rob asked.

    “Means there were already dead before they were boiled.” Rob promptly threw the one he had in his hand over his shoulder and grabbed another.

    “Well, here goes” Rob said as he went to pop one down the hatch.

    “Hang on a sec!” I stopped him before he had the chance to get it in his mouth.

    “What?” He asked. I paused, and mustered up my best serious tone.

    “…If you die…can I have your iPod?”

    “You bastard!” He laughed and tossed the rubbery little booger in his mouth and began chomping away. I on the other hand was a little more hesitant, and sat staring at mine for a while.

    “Wow, this really just looks like a tiny vagina.” I said, still fingering my food.

    “What!?” Rob almost choked.

    “Look at it; it’s a tiny orange vagina! It’s got lips and even a little clit!” I peeled it open a bit, revealing the body of the muscle inside.

    “Nate, you either haven’t gotten laid in a REALLY long time, or you have some REALLY fucked up obsessions with food.” Rob looked quite disturbed. I figured I’d play it up as much as I could.

    “God, I just want to lick it!” I moaned and began lashing the tiny thing with my tongue.

    “You are one seriously twisted individual” Rob said, shaking his head.

    “Bon a Petit!” I said and tossed the little bastard down the hatch.

    I’ve never really been a big muscle fan, but I must say, these were quite good. Not only were they green muscles, supposedly the ‘better’ muscle, but we were hungry, and had harvested them ourselves. There was also the added adventure of knowing they might make us deathly sick-all makes for a great meal.

    Once we ate we cleaned our cooking gear, packed it away and began to get ready for bed. That’s when it happened; something that for the rest of my life I will never forget. Rob took off his shoes.

    “Holy shit!” I heard Rob exclaim, so I came over to see what it was all about.

    There, sitting across his knee, was his socked foot, toes and heel soaked in blood. As he slowly peeled off the dripping dirty cotton foot condom, I watched in horror as flaps of flesh oozed and stuck to it like bits of meat dropped on a carpet. His feet literally looked like he had stepped into a meat grinder. I have spent a lot of time outdoors, and done a lot of hiking, but I have never seen anything close to what I was now witnessing. I wouldn’t wish feet like that on my worst enemy. It was so bad it mad my skin crawl and my stomach turn. Looking at them, all that was missing was the maggots and you would have the feet of a corpse. I don’t know how any human could stand, let along hike on such mutilated meat.

    “Holy shit Rob!” was all I could stammer.

    “I told you my feet were hurtin’.”

    “Yeah, but I didn’t realize they had been attacked by a rabid wolverine!” I exclaimed. “It looks like tried to kick tiger in the mouth!”

    “Yeah, they’re pretty nasty aren’t they?”

    “Nasty? I’ve seen trench foot that didn’t look that bad!” I was still in disbelief of the horror before my eyes.

    We spent the next 15 minutes starring at Robs mangled feet and taking pictures because no one was gonna believe that they were really that bad. Finally, we decided to let them air out for the night and crawled into the Purple Rhino to try to get some sleep. We lay there for a while, tossing and turning, and eventually I sat up and rummaged through my pack to find my journal. I couldn’t sleep so I figured I’d try to write a bit and recap the day’s adventure. It had been a while since I had wrote anything, so I recounted the glacial camping escapade and our trip with Lucy. I then went on to the shitty fish-n-chips and golf course tenting in Nelson, and eventually zoned out in my own little world.

    “I can’t believe you wanted to fuck a muscle.” Rob’s voice broke the silence.

    “Damn, you scared the shit out of me!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were asleep.”

    “Sorry…muscle fucker” he replied.

    “I didn’t say I wanted to fuck it, I merely noted its vaginal qualities.”
    “What ever Nate, what ever does it for ya. Some people have fetishes with whips or ice; you like to have sex with seafood.” With this he rolled over and seemed to go back to sleep.

    “I’m never gonna live that one down am I?” I asked with a chuckle.

    “Nope” he replied from somewhere deep inside his bag.

    I just rolled over and laughed to myself. There was no sense in arguing, so I figured I’d go ahead and get some sleep.

    “G’night” I said.

    “G’night…muscle fucker.”

Day Six

---

The Long Haul

    The next morning we awoke to find the Rhino completely soaked. We were dry inside, but it appeared it had rained sometime during the night.

    “Rob, you alive?” I asked, nudging his sleeping bag.

    “Mmmmfffff” was all I heard from the mound of nylon and polyester piled next to me.

    “K, just checkin’. Guess the muscles didn’t kill us.” Just then I felt the tent rumble and a massive fart erupted from Rob’s sleeping bag.

    “That might.” I heard Rob say through the muffled bag. Almost instantly Rob was out of the bag and gasping for air. I started laughing hysterically.

    “I can’t believe you just Dutch ovened yourself!” I said, amused at Rob’s misfortune. Then it hit me. “Oh God!” I started gasping for air as well. The stench was so bad I felt my stomach start to turn and almost dry heaved. “It’s burning my eyes!” I said, choking for breath. We furiously tore open the tent and went barreling out trying to get away from the murderous, vile smell.

    “What the hell did you eat!?” I gasped, gagging on the stench.

    “Same thing you did.” He responded, eyes watering.

    “Damn, maybe those muscles weren’t a good idea after all.”

    After cleansing our nostrils with fresh air and lamenting over how bad it was, we were quite awake and began to tear down camp. Everything left outside was thoroughly wet from the night’s rain, including Rob’s shoes.

    “Shit now I gotta’ put on cold wet shoes over my already torn up feet.” Rob was quite dismayed at the idea.

    “Yeah, but your feet can’t get any worse. I don’t know how you are still walking.” I replied, taking another horrified glance at his pulverized excuses for feet. “Ya know, we should hit the road early today, especially knowing how great the hitching is around here” I said, changing the subject.

    “Yeah, I really don’t want to walk another 20k.” The look on Rob’s face was of complete dismay at the thought of having to hike all the way back out. Personally, I don’t know how he got there with his feet so messed up and I couldn’t imagine how he would get out. But he seemed to be handling it pretty well, much better than I would have, and so we finished packing and were back on the trail heading to the road within twenty minutes.

    When we arrived at the parking lot we looked on with sorrow as we noticed that there was not a car in sight.

    “Well, this is it.” I said, trying to be as cheerful as possible.

    “Don’t remind me” Rob replied, less than enthused, “let’s just get this over with.”

    With this we began to walk back out the road we had come in on. It was about 8am and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Luckily the weather seemed to be clear and it was warming up, so at least we wouldn’t be getting rained on while were hiking.

    About 500 meters down the road we came to a small strip of houses. Each one seemed empty, except for one. Up in the distance, we noticed a little old lady who seemed to be loading her car. We looked at each other, both thinking the same thing.

    “There’s no way that old woman is gonna’ pick us up” I said.

    “I know.” Rob replied. “Let’s just knock her over and take her car!”

    As we approached her driveway, she was still going back and forth from her house, loading the vehicle.
    “Hey Rob, slow down, let’s make sure she sees us” We both began walking incredible slow, and put on our most worn out, in-need-of-help faces. Just then she came back out the door, and looked our way.

    “Morning Ma’m” I called to her from the road.

    “Morning!” she responded with a big grin on her face. “How yous doing today?”

    “We’re ok” I responded. Then it hit me-we have nothing to loose, let’s play the pity card and see what happens. “Just tired and worn out, got a lot of walking ahead of us, but at least the suns coming out.” I tried to sound as helpless as possible, but maintain a hint of acceptance to my circumstances.

    “Where yous two headin’?” she asked, still loading the vehicle.

    “Well, back to Motueka to start with, then hopefully Kaikoura by the end of the day” I replied.

    “That’s quite a ways” she said. Well no shit it was quite a ways, we had just walked it! I can’t stand it when people repeat stupid things, but I maintained a smile.

    “Yeah, we hiked in from Motueka yesterday; no one picked us up so we ended walking the whole 20+ kilometers. It wasn’t that bad, just tore my friend Rob here’s feet up ‘cause his boots aren’t fittin’ that good.”

    “Oh no, that’s no good” she responded. I could hear pity in her voice, I smiled and Rob and went in for the kill.

    “Well, we should probably be gettin’ along, got a long road a head of us and doesn’t look like we’ll get any rides. Hope we’ll make it to Kaikoura tonight and not have to camp on the side of the road” we would have done this anyway, but she didn’t need to know that.

    “Well, good luck with that, take care!” she said and went about packing her car. Shit, she let us go. Damn that old woman! We turned and began to walk away, pissed that we worked all that for nothing.

    “Hang on a tick boys” we heard her call. I grinned at Rob and we turned around.

    “Yes?” I asked innocently.

    “Tell you what. I usually don’t give rides to strangers, but you two seem nice enough. If you hold on while I finish loading I can take you to Nelson.” We were in.

    “Are you sure Ma’m we don’t want to be a bother.” I continued with as much smarm as I could muster.

    “No, no worries. Besides, I could use the company” she replied.

    “Well thank you very much, we greatly appreciate it.” Rob and I turned and headed up the drive way and hopped in the back seat. Once she finished loading, we backed out and headed on our way.

    “You know” she started, once we began driving, “I never would have picked you up if I had just seen you one the side of the road, but because you came and talked to me at my driveway I feel much better about it.” I gave a small chuckle and shot a glance to Rob.

    “Well we sure do appreciate it” Rob added. We were so happy not to have to walk all the way back to Motueka that we really didn’t feel bad about using this old woman at all. Yeah I know, we were probably bad people, but we weren’t hurting anybody. Besides, she needed to have her horizons expanded, and I’m sure it was the highlight of her day, and she went on to tell all her friends for the next two months about the time she picked up two strapping, handsome, young hitchhikers.

    When we arrived in Nelson she was kind enough to drop us off at the major round-about on the other side of town. This was great because it positioned us right at the beginning of the major highway that headed south towards Kaikoura.

    “I can’t believe we just played that old lady into giving us a ride!” Rob laughed as she drove away.

    “Yeah, that was awesome. I’m so happy we didn’t have to walk over that road again.” I responded. “I guess we got a way with the women.”

    “Yeah-the seniors! But hey, we’ll take what we can get’” Rob winked as I shook my head at him.

    “Whatever. We didn’t have to walk did we?” I said.

    “Na, I’ll give you that one.” With this Rob went to sit on a wooden guard pillar while I moved to the roads edge to try and catch a ride.

    I stood there for a while, watching cars pass one after another until I heard Rob call my name.

    “Hey Nate!”

    “What?” I said and turned around. Just as I turned I was pegged in the forehead with something that fell to my feet. I reached down and picked up a dried apricot.

    “What the hell are you throwing trail mix at me for?” I asked Rob as he sat laughing on his pillar.

    “Thought you might appreciate that one, especially after last night’s meal” he said.

    “What?” I asked, not sure where he was going with this.

    “Take a closer look” he replied.

    I turned my attention back to the apricot and immediately saw what he was referring to. The split in the side where the pit had been removed highly resembled yet another tiny vagina. This one even had a little fuzz on it.

    “Damn, what’s up with this trip and vaginal food?” I asked, laughing as I brushed off the dust and popped it in my mouth.

    “I’m not the one who wanted to fuck a muscle” Rob replied, still laughing.

    “I never said I wanted to fuck it!” I persisted, but it was to no avail. We laughed about it a little longer then I went back to hitching. For a brief time we made a game out of me trying to catch food in my mouth that Rob would throw from his perch, but when this almost landed me headfirst into on coming traffic I decided that it was not the best idea. Eventually a beat up 80’s, rust brown, Chevy Celebrity station wagon pulled to the side of the road. I have no idea how it made it all the way to New Zealand, or why the heck anyone would even want it there. Besides the fact that it was a royal piece of crap, it looked as if it had driven through hell and back, and been shit on by a bat the size of a flying elephant.

    “Hop in” the driver choked, through curls of acrid cigarette smoke. It seemed a like a bit of a scary proposition coming from this dirty, weathered soul, but standing on the side of the road wasn’t going to get us to Kaikoura any faster.

    “Where yous headin’?” the driver asked, as he sucked his cigarette till the cherry burned bright.

    “Kaikoura” Rob replied.

    “Well, I’m not going quite that far, but I can get ya a long a way. My name’s Ralph.” Ralph looked a bit like he had just crawled out from under a rock. His hair was a mess, he hadn’t shaved in about a week and he smelled a bit like the monkey house at the zoo. Maybe this was just the car, but I have a feeling the stench had more to do with the inhabitant rather than vehicle.

    We chatted along for a bit entertaining the same conversations with Ralph which we had had numerous times before, then he hit us with something we hadn’t heard yet.

    “Ya know my dad was in WWII” he started.

    “Really?” Rob replied, trying to sound interested.

    “Yea” Ralph continued, gearing up for more. “He was a fighter pilot.”

    “Wow” I said, trying to help Rob out “I bet that was interesting.” Then the conversation took an interesting turn.

    “Ya know, New Zealand was next in line to drop the bomb.”

    “What?” I asked, taken by surprise.

    “Not many people know this, but there was a debate over whether the US or New Zealand would be the ones to do it” Ralph continued. Rob and I gave each other the same confused look.

    “I didn’t know that” Rob said, trying to entertain him.

    “Like I said, not many people do. But my dad would have been the one to do it, if it had been New Zealand.” He was dead set in his conviction.

    “Wow” was all I could say. I didn’t know what to think. Was this guy being serious? Somehow the history books I read in school seemed to skim over this minute detail.

    “So how do you know this?” Rob asked.

    “He told me.” Ralph said, very matter-of-factly.

    “Well, um…you learn something new everyday.” I was at a loss for words and really didn’t know how to respond. From the look on Rob’s face I don’t think he did either. Luckily it seemed Ralph had spoken his peace, and we continued the remainder of the ride in relative silence, except for the heavy phlegm filled smokers cough chronically emitted from our chauffer.

    Ralph eventually dropped us on the side of the road, about 10k before Blenheim. We thanked him for the ride, and the second hand smoke, and merrily sucked in deep mouthfuls of air, trying to cleanse the tar from our lungs.

    We stood on the shoulder of the highway, kicking rocks and discussing the validity of Ralph’s argument that his father was almost the one to drop the bomb in WWII. Neither one of us had ever heard such a thing. If true it may show our ignorance, but we both came to the conclusion that Ralph was completely full of shit. We had a good laugh about it and then were eventually able to flag down a large white car that looked like a cross between a Cadillac and a Ford Taurus.

    “Good day.” A very proper sounding English voice greeted us as we entered the vehicle.

    “G’day” I said, trying to imitate the popular Kiwi greeting, but failing miserably.

    “Where would you two being heading?” The driver asked with a smile.

    “Trying to make it to Kaikoura if possible” I responded as we hopped in the vehicle.

    “Well, I can get you as far as Blenheim” he said as we began to move.

    “That’ll be fine” I said, “We appreciate anything we can get.” However, both Rob and I were a bit disheartened to hear it. Before starting our trip we had talked to many of our friends about hitch hiking in New Zealand and they all had said the same thing. It was great, unless you were in Blenheim, or Blenhole as they called it-supposedly the hardest place to get a ride out of. Unfortunately, I knew this to be true from previous experience. But a ride is a ride and as the saying goes, ‘beggars can’t be choosers.”

    “My names Tim” our driver said, turning from the road to face us.

    “I’m Nate” I replied.

    “And I’m Rob.”

    “Please to meet you” Tim continued in his very proper English. It was obvious he was not originally from NZ.

    “So how long have you been in New Zealand?” Tim asked. I almost responded Kaikoura, being so used to hearing ‘where are you going?”

    “Almost 5 months” I replied, “we arrived in February.”

    “Really?” Tim responded, sounding excited. “And you and your partner are just traveling?” There is was again ‘partner.’ Maybe we were just used to the American homosexual terminology and partner was another word for friend here, but the way he said it, and the way the other truck driver had said it, I think he thought we were gay too. I just laughed inside and turned to Rob.

    “Actually we are studying at the University of Canterbury” Rob replied.

    “Doesn’t look like you are studying now” Tim said with a smile.

    “True, true.” Rob gave a chuckle. “We are on break. The university offers a week long study break before our final exams, but we were more interested in travel than papers, so here we are.”

    “Studying at the university was really just the excuse to come to New Zealand for six months” I added with a smile.

    “I see” Tim said with a chuckle. “Well then, where have you been?”

    “We started in Canterbury and first went to Mt. Cook” I replied. “We about froze ourselves to death there so we headed over to Wanaka to catch a show at the Paradise O.”

    “Great theatre” Tim replied, nodding his head.

    “Yeah, it was cool. We really loved the hot cookies at intermission” Rob interjected.

    “Oh yes, quite good!” Tim agreed. I was really getting a kick out of his accent by now. It was such crisp and proper English, I half expected him to pull the car over and stop for tea and crumpets.

    “Anyway, from there we went to Franz Josef glacier and did a lot of hiking in the rain” Rob continued, shooting me a look reminding me that I still owed him a few pitchers for the night hike in the monsoon. “And finally went up to Nelson and the Able Tasman the past two days, and now we’re here.”

    “Wow. It sounds like you have been able to cram a lot into the past few days” Tim said, impressed by our great adventure.

    “Yes sir” I replied, thinking back over all we had done. I had not really taken the time to ponder all our travels thus far, and it wasn’t until now that I realized just how much we had done in the past few days. I sat back and smiled, I was quite proud of our journey.

    When we arrived in Blenheim, Tim was kind enough to drive us all the way to the other side of town, even though he was not heading in that direction.

    “Here you go” He said, “this looks like a good enough place to get a ride. Good luck on your travels!”

    He had dropped us at the exact spot where I had posted up the last time I was hitchhiking through. There was a horse field behind us, and crab apple trees all around. Looking behind, we noticed an old, grey horse moseying his way across the field to see the two new comers standing beside his pasture. When he arrived, he just stood there, staring at us as if he expected us to do something amazing. We just stared back. Eventually the horse snorted, and reached across the fence for a crab apple that was just out of his range. Looking around I noticed that there was a distinct line where the apples stopped, at the exact distance from the fence that the horse could reach.

    I turned back around to face the road with Rob. Staring at the constant stream of cars passing by, I looked to Rob and said, “This sucks.”

    “Yup” was all he replied.

    I turned back to the horse, and reached for an apple that was on my side of the fence. With this the horses ears perked up and he immediately became very excited, and I dare say aroused. This was a very humbling and slightly disturbing sight to even the most well endowed individual. I handed the apple to the horse and swallowed it in one bite, then looked at me expectantly until I reached for another one.

    As we stood on the side of the road, feeding crab apples to the ever-hungry horse, we began to get a little anxious. We had heard horror stories about hitch-hiking through Blenheim. Not so much along the lines of people getting hurt, but more along the lines if it being impossible to get a ride.

    “Sutton told me Blenheim was a real pain in the ass to get out of” Rob said, looking away from the line of cars passing us by.

    “Yeah, Blenhole is what most hitch-hikers I’ve met call it” I replied, matching the concern in his voice. “I really hope we don’t sit here forever.”

    Just then, a sleek looking sedan pulled to the side of the road, chrome grill, Twenty inch gold 100 spoke rims and windows tinted black. If we had been in Inglewood, California, I would have been a little concerned that we were about to be innocent victims of a drive-by, but I really didn’t think the horse had done anything that bad, so I figured it would be ok. Plus, we really didn’t want to get stuck in Blenhole.

    As we opened the door we were blasted with the overpowering smell of cheap air fresheners and patchouli. It was like a hippie got lost in the potpourri isle at Wal-Mart. I slid in the passenger seat, while Rob climbed in the back, and the first thing I noticed was the plastic, golden, crown on the dash. The second thing I noticed was the first middle-eastern person I had seen in NZ behind the wheel, and the third thing I noticed was my brain slamming into the back of my skull as we pulled back onto the road, oblivious to oncoming traffic and moving like a bat out of hell. It hadn’t been 20 seconds and I was ready to get out.

    “Hello, how are you today” our host started, with an accent you only hear in bad racial jokes, or upon entering any quick-e-mart, anywhere. It was all I could do not to laugh-people that speak like that really do exist, and all this time I thought it was just a stereotype.

    “My name is George” he continued. I saw Rob behind him mouthing my exact thoughts ‘What the fuck?!’ I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but figured it may make me sound like an ignorant American (which by this point I was-at least by the comments I had made in my head).

    “I’m Nate” I replied, “and this is my friend Rob.” George smiled at both of us and kept cruising along at death defying speeds.

    “I cannot take you very far; I am only going to Seddon.” George said. This really didn’t bother me, and I think Rob felt the same way. The less time spent with George the better. I also couldn’t help but feel like we were riding with New Zealand’s only middle-eastern drug lord.

    We began the usual meaningless chit-chat, but were cut short by the ear piercing ring of George’s cell phone (to this day I still don’t understand why people go out of their way to find the most obnoxious ring tone in their phone, then set the volume to ‘awaken dead grandmothers’). Anyway, George kept on cruising, now paying even less attention to the road as he conversed about his next big drug deal (he claimed it was his mother on the phone, but I was sure it was the south Pacific’s cocaine kingpin). Eventually we came to Seddon, a town which probably should not even be on a map.

    “I will drop you off on the other side of town, so you can catch the leaving traffic” George said, as we entered the main drag.

    “Thanks, that’d be great” I replied.

    George pulled over 100 meters down the road. This really was the middle of bum fuck nowhere.

    “Good luck in your travels” George said, as we got out of the car.

    “Thank you very much, come again” was the reply in my head, but I was able to contain myself and thanked him for the lift. He sped away leaving me and Rob on the side of a desolate highway in the afternoon sun.

    “Well” Rob began, “this is Seddon.”

    “Breath taking” I replied. “Think we can stay a few days to take in all the sights?”

    “Oh, I think we may need weeks” Rob came back quickly, as we both laughed.

    “At least we aren’t in Blenhole anymore” I said. We looked around us and noticed a small dairy a little ways back down the road.

    “Let’s split a meat pie” I suggested, “I’m starving.”

    “I thought you didn’t have any more money?” Rob asked inquisitively. I held up a two dollar coin and smiled.

    “I noticed it sitting on the seat of George’s car, and it happen to slip into my pocket as I sat down” I replied, sounding as innocent as possible. Rob just shook his head.

    When we entered the dairy, I felt like we have just wandered into Mexico. The establishment looked like something out of movie, where the stupid American wanders into the wrong roadside convenient store on a third world, back-country road. There was a mangy looking dog sleeping (maybe dead?) in the corner, and the cashier gave us a look.

    We wandered the two isles until we came across the rack of Mrs. Mac’s pies, found in every dairy in the country. We made our selection of artery clogging goodness, paid the devil for our sins, and hurried back out into the street.

    We decided to wander up the road a little ways to see if we could find a better location. Where we stood was right in the middle of a turn, and there was another road that emptied onto the main drag a little ways up. From the looks of things, we were going to need all the help we could get to get out of this place.

    About half a kilometer up the road, we came to a long stretch of straight highway with nice wide shoulders. We found what seemed to be a good place to hitch, dropped our packs, and took a seat.

    “How long you think we will be here?” I asked Rob, digging through my bag to find an apple I had forgotten about.

    “Who cares, at least it’s a nice day” Rob replied, smiling at the sunshine and blue skies.

    “Good call.”

    We spent about twenty minutes, eating the apple, shooting the breeze, and just relaxing. It was kind of nice to have a break, although we had not seen a car since we had been dropped off. We began thinking back over our trip, reminiscing about good rides, and laughing about the bad ones. Then we heard a rumble coming from just over the hill.

    “What the hell is that?” Rob asked, looking over his shoulder.

    “Dunno” I replied, equally confused.

    As we got up expecting a car to come over the hill, we were somewhat disappointed to be greeted by a huge farm tractor. This definitely was not going to get us to Kaikoura, our next destination. We threw a thumb out as the driver passed, just for a laugh. We could see the old man, burnt by the sun, and hardened by years of farm work, give a chuckle.

    Another hour passed and we began to get really aggravated. We had run out of things to throw, and things to throw shit at. We had sung every song we cared to sing, twice. We had told stories. We cursed…a lot. Finally Rob lost it.

    “Fuck this! I can’t take it anymore!” He shouted as he jumped up and kicked dust into the wind. I felt his same sentiments and stood up to join him.

    “This place makes Blenhole look amazing. This has got to be the worst town in all of New Zealand!” It may have been a bit of an overstatement, but at this point I held a grudge against the entire town, and I was sick of standing on the side of the road.

    Just then we heard a loud whistle blast coming from somewhere behind us. As we turned around, we could see a train rolling around the bend, about a half mile away. We stood and watched in envy as the train rolled on south, and we were left stuck in place on the cold pavement.

    “You know, that train is heading straight to Kaikoura” I said coolly.

    “Yep” Rob replied. “…Think we can catch it?” He gave me a grin that had trouble written all over it.

    “You know, if it weren’t that far away I’d probably say let’s go for it” I said, watching the train as it disappeared around a bend.

    “You up for a long walk?” Rob asked, his grin getting bigger. “If we take the tracks it will be much more direct.”

     I looked at him and knew exactly what he was thinking. It was a stupid idea. A terrible idea. Something that we would probably regret at some point in the near future, and all I could think about was how bad Rob’s feet were (however he seemed pretty content and I didn’t want to remind him). Then I thought to my self ‘you know, some things you gotta do just for the story.’

    “Hell yeah!” I replied, “Let’s do it!”

    “Kaikoura here we come!” We pulled out Rob’s digital camera and decided to make a video entry, stating our intentions. At least it this way they would know why there were two dead Americans on the railroad tracks.

    I don’t know what made us think we could walk a mere 140k to Kaikoura, but we shouldered out packs and set off with new ambition, probably mixed with a large dose of testosterone. It was ludicrous, but we thought we were invincible and started off on our journey.

    At this point, I think the forces that be put down their game of shit head (the international backpackers’ card game of choice) and said, “Hey look at these idiots, they actually think they are going to walk 140k in one night. It’d be pretty funny to watch them try, but we should probably give them a hand.”

    We hadn’t gotten 5 meters down the road when a car pulled up and stopped, without even a thumb.

    “Yous two need a lift?” the passenger looked out the window at us.

    Rob and I looked at each other. It was as if at the same time we realized the ridiculousness of our idea.

    “Sure” we both replied in unison.

    “Wait a tick while we move some of this stuff to the boot and make some room.” The driver got out and started loading large rolls of what appeared to be plastic wrap into the back of the vehicle.

    “So where yous headin’?” the driver asked as we drove away. We were so happy to be moving again we almost forgot to answer.

    “Kaikoura” Rob replied. “I’m Rob, by the way.”

    “And I’m Nate” I chimed in.

    “Cheers, I’m Kim and this here’s my partner Michael.” They were obviously business partners, as they later both talked about their wives.

    “So what do you two do?” Rob asked. They were both pretty dressed up and it looked like they were on their way to a conference or something.

    “We are sales reps.” Kim replied.

    Michael went on to explain their product (the large rolls of plastic they had move to the boot when they picked us up. It was some sort of high-strength, super-specialized, poly…something film, as Michael described it. To me it just sounded like glorified plastic wrap, but I didn’t want to diminish their pride by stating my opinion.

    We chit-chatted along for the next couple hours as we traced the curves of the coastline south along Route 1. The weather was holding out pretty well, a little cloudy, but the rain wasn’t quite adventurous enough to fall. The temperature seemed to be leveling off, after a bit of a drop while we stood waiting in Purgatory, er a Seddon I mean. It had forced us to pull out our wool hats, which Rob was always super excited to do. This was because he had just bought the massive eyesore of a hat that he loved to death. He was enthralled by the fact that it was reversible. He told me it was the perfect hat because he could wear it to either Canterbury or Otago rugby games.  You see, one side of the hat was black and red, Canterbury colors, and the other was blue and yellow, Otago colors. He couldn’t wait to wear it to a Canterbury vs. Otago game, so he could simply turn it to match whichever team was winning. Needless to say, Rob loved his hat.

    Anyway, we weaved along, eventually overtaking the train that had passed us earlier, at which point we filled out current chauffeurs in on our previous plan of getting to Kaikoura.

    “Yous do realize it’s about 140k from where you were to Kaikoura?” Kim asked.

    “Yeah” Rob replied with a smile. Kim just shook his head and laughed.

    Eventually we rolled into Kaikoura, with about an hour of daylight remaining. Kim and Michael pulled into an upscale looking seafood and steakhouse called Fishbones and let us out in the parking lot.

    “Well, here you go guys” Kim said. “Company’s picking up our meal so we’re gonna’ stop and have tea hear.” By tea they meant a $70 dinner.

    “Wish we could put yous two on the tab as well, but I think they may question four meals and two people” Michael chimed in. “Good luck to yous though.”

    “That’s fine. I think I saw a fish-n-chips a few blocks back” I was lying though my teeth. I hadn’t seen any fish and chips, I was just trying to hide the fact that I was starving and the smell coming from the restaurant was making my mouth water so much I thought I was going to start drooling in front of them. “Thanks anyway.”

    They turned and headed inside, while Rob and I were left with our packs in the dusty parking lot.

    “So, where you think we’re going to stay tonight?” I asked, turning to Rob.

    “Dunno” he replied “I heard there was a free campground south of town, but I think it’s about 15k away.”

    “Damn, I really don’t want to that far. Actually, I don’t really want to walk at all” I said, staring down at my pack.

    “Same” Rob replied “but I don’t think they would be too happy if we pitched the Rhino in the parking lot.”

    “Probably not” I agreed. “Ok, let’s get going.”

    “You know, I remember seeing a little public park a few blocks back, maybe we can pull a Nelson” Rob said, as he grunted his pack onto his shoulders.

    “I’m game” I replied, “Let’s go check it out.” With this I finally picked up my pack, which I had been reluctant to touch since we got out of the car, and with as little enthusiasm as possible hauled it onto my back.

    When we reached the park, we were quite disappointed. What had looked like it may have been a large concealed area turned out to be a child’s playground, and about 10 meters of grass, all of which was spotlighted by a lone dingy streetlamp.

    “Well shit” Rob said, unimpressed. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

    “Yeah, we’ll stick out like a boner in sweatpants if we try to stay here.” I said.

    “Wow, Nate I can always count on you to make a sexual or obscene comment on the smallest things” Rob laughed.

    “That’s what I’m here for” I replied with a smile. “Just to make you feel more mature.”

    We gave the ground one more quick pass over and decided it was definitely not an option. The sun had sunk below the horizon a few minutes earlier, and we were running out of daylight.

    “What do you suppose is on the top of that hill?” I asked Rob, pointing to a rather steep embankment on the far side of the playground. “Looks pretty open up there.”

    “Let’s go find out” Rob said, but I could tell he really didn’t want to take on the 60 meter hill covered in waist high grass. I tried to be more convincing.

    “Looks like it flattens out” I said, “I bet there is a clearing up there where we can catch an excellent view of the sunrise over Kaikoura in the morning.”

    We began hiking up the hillside, only to find that it was much steeper that it appeared from the base.

    “Nate, this sucks! There better be something good up there” Rob threatened, cursing the hill and the evil spiked plants that were attacking our legs as we plodded upward. Finally, we reached the top and looked out over a perfectly manicured, flat grassy field. It would have been the perfect place to camp, except for the small detail that it was lined with about eight houses which seemed to share this communal space.

    “You’re right Nate, this is a perfect, flat field” Rob said with sharp sarcasm, “but I don’t think the Johnson’s over there would be to happy if we camped in their backyard.” Rob pointed to a family who was just sitting down to dinner in front of their giant bay window. By this point it was pretty dark out and we weren’t too concerned of them seeing us now, but a bright yellow tent would probably be noticed in the morning.

    “We could just hope we wake up and leave before they see us” I said jokingly, knowing that neither one of us had an alarm, and the chances of this happening were nil.

    “How bout over there in the corner” Rob said, pointing to a dark area in the far side of the field.

    “Let’s go check it out” I said, hoping it would work so that this mission would not have been in vain.

    We bobbed and weaved under windows and behind trees until we came to a fenced in cemetery that we hadn’t seen in the dark.

    “Wanna sleep with some dead people?” Rob asked.

    “No” I replied quite bluntly. “And besides, we are still in view of the houses.”

    We continued on towards the far side of the field. There were more trees in this area, and it almost looked like we could make it work.

    “This actually doesn’t look that bad” I said. We were tucked behind a few trees and some tall grass, and almost out of sight of the houses.

    “Yeah, except for the giant Marai behind us.” Rob said coolly. I turned and realized that we were standing in front of a huge Marai, a Maori place of worship, similar to a church. Our plans were foiled again.

    “Fanfuckingtastic” I said. I was beginning to get annoyed. “Guess we’re not sleeping here.”

    “Nope” was all Rob had to say. Without talking we began our stealth mission back to our point of entry. When we arrived at the top of the hill, we looked to our left and noticed something we had not seen on the way up. A perfectly maintain path. We shook out heads and descended back to the street.

    When we reached the road once again, we looked at each other and it became obvious that we were both pretty much sick of searching, and of being hungry, and dirty, and tired.

    “Let’s just get two cases of beer and a handful of caffeine pills, go down to the beach and get shit house drunk.” Rob said. “As long as we don’t fall asleep they can’t charge us with camping on the beach.” I gave a chuckle, but had secretly been thinking the exact same thing.

    “I hate to admit it” I started, “but that sounds like a really great idea right now. Let’s at least go down to the beach and check out the scene, my feet could use a rest, and it’s not like it’s gonna get any lighter.”

    We dodged the only two cars on the road and crossed over to the shore side. There was a little stone bridge over a small causeway, and a trail that headed down toward the rocky shoreline. When we got there we found a nice drift wood log and plopped down on it like dropped scoops of ice cream, our energy melting away. We sat for a long time in silence, throwing pebbles at a small piece of wood about 3 meters in front of us. It was lit up pretty well by a small streetlamp back on the road behind us, just enough to make it a good target. Neither one of us said anything, we just threw rocks. Finally Rob broke the silence.

    “So, we trying to head to Hanmer Hot springs tomorrow?” he asked.

    “Yeah, I guess so. That was our original plan” I responded with as little energy as possible. There was a long pause.

    “You really want to go?” Rob asked in a lack luster tone. Another long pause.

    “…Nope” I replied, being perfectly honest.

    “…Yeah, me neither” Rob agreed. It was beginning to become obvious we were pretty burned out. We threw a couple more rocks.

    “Any place you still really want to go to?” I asked after finally hitting our drift wood target, which made a hollow thump and crept back further into the darkness.

    “…Nope” Rob responded, throwing a little harder and knocking the wood even closer to the waning tide, and this time out of view. We paused and stared off into the inky black night, listening to the small waves wear away at the pebble beach. At that moment I think we both felt like those tiny pebbles, pounded and pushed around, worn down, cold and ready for a better place. There was another long silence.

    “…Wanna’ see if we can catch a ride with Kim and Michael back to Christchurch tonight?” I asked Rob. We had over heard them talking in the car and know that they were heading back there after their meal.

    “We better hurry up” Rob said, “it’s been over an hour, and they are on the other side of town.”

    All of the sudden there was a new energy in us both-a new motivation. We were no longer driven by the adventure and what lies ahead, we were now moved by the prospect of a hot shower, warm food (Captain Bens fish and chips down the street from Uni was open late) and our coffin size padded wooden benches we so loving called beds. In short, we were heading home.

    We ran the entire way back through town, roughly seven blocks, with our fully loaded packs bouncing as we went. The pain was drowned out by the hope that we were not too late and may actually get home tonight. When we finally reached the restaurant we raced to the parking lot and were overjoyed to find the silver Holden sedan still sitting there under the streetlamp.

    “Sweet as!” Rob exclaimed, “They’re still here!”

    “Hell yeah, now we just gotta’ wait for them to finish dinner” I said, dropping my pack to the ground and trying to catch my breath. “You know, this may look a little funny, them coming out from dinner and we are just sittin’ here in the parking lot waiting. Hope it doesn’t freak them out.”

    “Yeah, we probably shouldn’t be sittin’ right at their car, may make us look desperate” Rob said.

    “We are desperate” I added, “but your right. Let’s hang out here by this street lamp so we can see them when they come out. We moved our stuff to the base of the pole and sat down on our packs. Before long we were throwing rocks again, this time into a small puddle a few meters away.

    “I kinda’ feel weird askin’ ‘em for a ride” I said to Rob, as I tossed a stone into the muddy water.

    “Yeah, I know what you mean” Rob agreed. “It’s different actually asking than sticking out your thumb. I guess this is more personable, but it just feels strange.”

    “You ask ‘em” I said, appointing Rob as our spokesman.

    “It was your idea-you ask ‘em” Rob retorted.

    We bickered back and forth like a couple of middle schoolers trying to get a date to the dance. It was kind of ridiculous, two grow men arguing over who has to beg from the stranger. Finally, Rob had had enough.

    “That’s it” Rob said sternly, “we’re gonna’ have to settle this like men.” We both pulled our fists up in front of us, and placed them in the palm of our other hand. “Best two out of three. Ready, GO!”

    “Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!” Paper over rock-my point.

    “Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!” Rock crushes scissors-Rob’s point. We went in for the tie breaker.

    “Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!” Scissors cut paper-victory was mine!

    “Shit!” Rob exclaimed, realizing his defeat.

    “Hey, you called the game” I reminded him with a smug smile.

    “I know asshole, shut up” Rob replied, shaking his head in exaggerated frustration. Now all we had to do was wait and hope our welcome wasn’t worn out yet.

    As we sat under the streetlamp, casting stones into the silt colored puddle, I once again found myself thinking back over our journey. I gave a small smile as I remembered the angry bearded lady, Jewish armadillos, and vaginal fruit, along with all the other good times we had had. It was hard to believe it had only been a week. Enough had happened that it seemed like a month. I must admit, I felt a like a bit of a quitter when we first decided to skip out on the last two days of our journey, and head home early, but when I thought back over all we had done, I felt content and realized I really was ok to head home.

    We waited in the parking lot for what seemed to be an eternity. We thought for sure that Kim and Michael would be done soon, but we must have been there another forty-five minutes before they emerged from the building.

    “You’re up, cowboy” I nudged Rob as I saw them come out the front door of the restaurant.

    “Well, here goes nothing” Rob said, as he got to his feet and started off to greet them.

    “Don’t say that, we’re trying to get something” I reminded him. He laughed and headed off to intercept out prospective chauffeurs en route to their car. When he met up with him they looked a little surprised, but once he started talking they began to laugh. I could not hear the conversation from where I was sitting, but it looked as if things were going well. Finally they broke and Rob came back over to where I was sitting.

    “Well, what’s the story?” I asked, as he walked toward me.

    “They said we are horrible people, they hate us, and we stink” Rob said with a laugh, “and they’ll give us a ride to Christchurch tonight.”

    “Hell yeah!” I was so excited I could almost smell the mildew of my dingy mattress. We picked up our bags and headed back over to their car.

    “Thank you so much” I said, as I approached them and put my pack in the boot. “Really appreciate the lift. We were going to keep traveling, but realized we are just ready to be home.”

    “No worries mate” Kim said with a smile. “I completely understand, ‘bout ready to be home myself.” With this we piled into the car once again and headed out into the night, back along the windy road toward Christchurch.

    As we traveled on in darkness we carried on superficial conversations about the importance of plastic wrap, and rocket ships, and flying monkeys, and maybe even rhinoceros hemorrhoids for all I know. I wasn’t really paying attention. Finally the small talk tapered off and we were left to cruise through the cool night in silence, the only sound being the occasional ‘thwack’ as a bug or moth expired on the windshield. Eventually Rob began to softly snore, and I stared out the window at the stars in the moonless night. At this point all I could think about was getting back to campus and crawling into my tiny, poorly-padded plywood bed with the white tail spiders and ten years of dust. I missed home.

    I must have dozed off somewhere along the way because the next thing I knew I was being shaken by a stiff hand.

    “Oy mate, we’re here” Michael’s voice came through in a haze. Then I heard Rob much clearer

    “Nate, get the hell up!” He shook me one more time and I snapped to in that split second panic of waking up in a total stranger’s car on the other side of the world.

    “Oh, what, yeah I’m up” I tried to collect myself. “Must have dozed off there for a bit.”

    “I’d say” Kim said, “You were snoring like a champ there, mate.” I felt a little embarrasses, but he was laughing about it so I let it go.

    They dropped us about four blocks from the bus station, as they were heading in the opposite direction. We thanked them profusely, gathered out packs and bid them farewell. They drove off into the night and left us on the corner to gather our bearings.

    “SHIT!” Rob yelled, scarring me half to death, as he looked at his watch. “The last bus to Uni leaves in five minutes and we’re still four blocks from the station!” He didn’t need to say anything else. We had our packs on and were once again running as fast as we could. Every part of my body hurt, and with every step the pack bounced down hard on my shoulders, rubbing them raw and making the muscles in my back kinkier than an S&M video.

    When we finally reached the bus station we were so out of breath we couldn’t even talk. We entered the waiting area just as they made the last call for our bus and we watched the door close. We sprinted across the terminal and slammed into the sliding glass door. The driver looked at us through the glass, and for a split second I felt as if I was gong to cry. She must have seen it in our faces, and reluctantly got up, and opened the door back up for us.

    “Thank you! Thank you so much!” Rob and I were almost on our knees, and gave her a huge hug when we got on the bus. She was pretty taken back (I don’t think she had ever seen two people so happy to catch a bus, or met two worse smelling individuals for that matter) and it was obvious she just wanted us to pay our fare and get in the back. I was so happy I probably could have kissed her, but I had a feeling that may have gotten me arrested and deported.

    Rob and I sat in silence on the bus ride back to Uni. I’d like to say it was because we were deep in thought about our journey, but in all honesty, we were just so tired we could barely keep our eyes open. Actually, we couldn’t keep our eyes open and ended up missing our stop and having to get off about three blocks from out intended destination. When we rang the bell for the bus to stop we realized we were the last ones on board. We thanked the driver again, and stumbled out into the night, so fatigued we could barely lift our packs.

    “Wow, this sure has been one hell of an adventure” I said to Rob as we dragged back towards our dorm building.

    “Don’t get all sentimental on me now Nate, I’m too tired” Rob replied, his eyes open just enough to keep him walking in a straight line. I laughed and smiled, and figured we would have years to reminisce, and that tonight the best plan was to shut up, walk home and go to bed.

    When got back to the building I must have fumbled with my key for three minutes trying desperately to get the door open. Maybe the lock was really just that shitty, or maybe I was secretly hoping to have to pitch the Purple Rhino in the quad for one more night to add to the story. Either way, the door eventually opened and Rob and I painstakingly climbed the stairs.

    When we reached the third floor, Rob looked at me, shook my hand and said, “Good night Nate. If you wake me up before 3pm I will kill you.” I tried to think of a smartass comeback, but came up with nothing, so I laughed and headed up the final flight of stairs.

    As I walked toward the end of the hall (of course my room was all the way at the end, putting that much more distance between me and my bed) I realized that as soon as I opened that door the adventure would be over. As tired as I was, I almost wanted to turn around, unwilling to settle for such a nonchalant ending to such an awesome trip. As my key stuck in the door, as it always did, and I had to wiggle and twist and contort and do a little magic key dance to get the damn door to open, I realized that I really was home. I threw my pack on the floor, kicked off my boots, put the same pair of pants back in the same spot I had picked them up from a week ago and flung myself down on my sardine sized plank of padded plywood which Moore Hall so loving calls a bed. I stared at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling that had been placed there by some student years ago, and wondered what constellations I was supposed to be looking at. Finally, immaturity got the better of my and I found myself envisioning constellations of giant breasts and naked, voluptuous women. With this I reached down and made sure my alarm was unplugged, then closed my eyes and drifted off into the hidden galaxies of the ceiling constellation tittius maximus to embark on my next great adventure.