Kiwi Tracks (27 page)

‘And you are travelling around New Zealand?’ I ask. My mind is not as sharp as it was a few minutes ago.

‘I’m taking four months off from my studies.’ She has a disarming way of staring at me intently.

‘Have you had dinner?’ I ask, thinking the queasiness in my stomach might be fixed by eating. The hammock sways, just fractionally, but in my current state I am likely to vomit if I continue lying in it. Amazing how sensitive testicles can be. ‘I can make us both dinner if you want, it’s just as easy as making it for myself.’

Cooking as a team, we wade through the preliminary backpackers’ conversation: How long have you been here? Where have you been? Where are you going? Lisa has been all over New Zealand these last four months and she is leaving on the same day as I am. Like me, she started in the south and worked her way north.

We have the farmhouse to ourselves. Claes is out in the fields setting green branches on fire, which is what I had smelled burning; his wife has gone to pick up their two kids from a friend’s house.

‘What was your most memorable experience here?’ I ask.

‘The best part of New Zealand for me was the Catlins, in the South Island. I was standing on the beach one evening. It was pouring with rain and the wind was blowing so hard from the sea. I stood there for a long time, feeling it all. There was no one else there. I danced in the rain naked, feeling the drops pelting my body. It was a powerful experience and at the end I felt as if I had been reborn.’

She stirs the pot of spaghetti sauce as I add
the already fried onions and garlic.

‘I also love the macrocarpa trees; they are like a painting done by a mad artist. You cannot believe they can be leaning over so much, blown horizontally by the wind. And the Milky Way is so intense and bright it almost makes the other stars disappear. Once when I was going for a walk in the middle of the night, I looked up and couldn’t believe it. I had never seen anything like it in Holland. For the first time, I understood the difference between seeing nature and experiencing it.’

‘Don’t you get lonely?’ I query nonchalantly, tossing a salad. ‘I mean, four months travelling on your own?’ It is a question I am often asked and I am curious as to how she responds.

‘Occasionally. It feels good sometimes, to feel sad and lonely.’ She slices mushrooms.

‘Why would it feel good to feel sadness?’

She stops chopping and stares out of the kitchen window, thinking. ‘Because you feel, really feel. It’s profound. It reminds you that you can feel emotions; that something can make you feel unhappy. Sometimes you need that sadness and loneliness, after weeks, even months of happiness.’

We watch through the kitchen window as a car pulls up to the end of the driveway. The driver gets out, helps himself to a basket of apples or peaches displayed in an open shed, puts money in a box, and drives off.

She continues: ‘It is difficult to remain unchanged tramping around forests and mountains for four months. Walking is a meditative process, it clears the clutter of the mind. Carrying a heavy pack and tramping is a good way to focus your energy on other things, besides the daily worries of life.’

I am consistently amazed at how Europeans such as Lisa can express themselves so well in a second language. The Dutch seem to have a particular ability. ‘And you’ve been happy here?’ I ask.

‘Happier than ever before. When I left Holland on my own, I was sitting in the airport lounge thinking what a loser I am, travelling with no friends. Now, because I travelled alone, I have more intensely experienced a foreign culture and language in a country far, far away, and discovered an independence and courage I
never knew I had before. Now I know better what I want and who I am. I will be happy to continue my studies. Before, it was just an academic exercise.’

Although hitchhiking is free and the backpackers’ facilities are competitive and relatively cheap, New Zealand is still a surprisingly expensive country. I wonder how a student could afford to travel here for four months. ‘And the money for this trip?’ I ask.

‘Before, I would be embarrassed to tell anyone what I did to earn enough money to come here. Not now.’ She places cutlery on the dining table and returns to find some plates. ‘I wanted to come to New Zealand, since I was young; it was a dream. So I took a year off school and for six months’ – she hesitates – ‘I sorted garbage: plastic, glass, tin. It was a horrible, shit job and smelt very bad, but it paid well. Working there was an insight. The employees in the factory, they did that all their lives, sorting through garbage. I didn’t tell them what I was saving money for. I am sure they would understand why, but they just couldn’t do it, because they were paying off a mortgage, or a car, or have a family to feed and clothe. That was their life, looking through other people’s garbage. It was humbling for me.’

She strains the pasta. We sit down to eat and continue talking. To give particular emphasis to some esoteric philosophical point, I jab my forefinger at the table. The container of margarine is in the line of fire and my finger plunges into it. Unable to believe I have actually done this, I silently remove my greasy digit, hold it in midair and stare at it. Lisa starts giggling, at first subdued, then a bellyaching laugh. It takes the two of us some time to recover our composure.

We settle down to eating again and wipe the tears from our faces. Apropos of nothing, Lisa volunteers in a completely different tone: ‘I got a letter from my father today.’

She had been reading a letter earlier, I recall, when I painfully climbed the veranda steps. She holds up the one sheet of paper for me to inspect and then folds it and puts it in its envelope. ‘It was a shock.’ She places her cutlery on the plate and is suddenly very
quiet. Feeling awkward eating on my own, I put my own cutlery down too and wait. ‘I’ve never had a letter from my father before,’ she continues. ‘I don’t feel close to him. Not at all,’ she adds, with force. ‘I sat down and opened the letter at the post office. I was so nervous about what it would say.’ She drops her hands under the table. Her body language has changed, as if she has just crumpled.

She is silent for so long that I have to encourage her to speak again. ‘What did your father say?’

She shakes her head and stares out the window, avoiding looking at me. Finally she says, whispering: ‘There were only three lines in the letter. He told me how much he envied me, how much he admired my courage in coming here on my own, and how much he loved me and missed me.’ Her eyes brim with tears. She plasters a paper towel to her face, covering her eyes.

And then she tells me. I feel the visceral reaction, the nauseous response, as if someone had punched me in the stomach. One reads about sexual abuse in the newspaper. One knows the statistics. I have never heard it from a personal perspective and certainly not in such graphic detail.

I hand her my paper napkin and she uses it to wipe away her tears. We sit opposite each other silently, not eating. Her eyes are downcast. She turns to look over her shoulder at the green orchard outside, her eyes bloodshot, her lower lip gripped between her teeth. She looks so vulnerable, more like a young teenager than an adult.

I feel like putting my arm around her but after what she has just told me, I daren’t. We sit there, not saying anything.

When she has recovered, Lisa asks me: ‘Where are you going tomorrow?’

‘To the kauri forests, then on to the Ninety Mile Beach leading up to Cape Reinga.’

‘I am too. Could we do it together?’

I have been looking forward to these last few days in New Zealand and would prefer to be on my own, rather than sharing the end of my trip. But Lisa seems an ideal companion. Not only
has she spent the same amount of time in New Zealand as I have, but she has tramped many of the same tracks and more difficult ones as well. We are both feeling nostalgic about our respective departures.

‘I like walking on my own during the day,’ I reply.

‘So do I. We can meet up in the evenings.’

Return to beginning of chapter

I cannot find my sandals anywhere. Lisa, Claes and his two daughters form a search party and hunt for them everywhere, but my sandals are nowhere to be found. It is mysterious. I even phone the last place I stayed, without luck. Finally I tell Claes: ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure they’ll turn up somewhere. I’ll give you some money to send them on to me, in case you find them.’

We are almost ready to leave when Lisa hands over a plastic bag, whispering: ‘Your sandals.’

I open the noticeably cold plastic bag and recoil from the cheesy stench. ‘Where did you find them?’ I ask, recognising the odour without having to inspect the package closely.

‘In the fridge,’ she says, deadpan. ‘With your food.’

I had wrapped the sandals in an empty plastic grocery bag, because they smelled so bad. I must have absent-mindedly stuffed them in the fridge with my fresh food, which was wrapped in identical plastic bags.

‘Do they know?’ I nod my head in the direction of the others, who I assume are still searching under beds and sofas.

‘That I found your sandals in their fridge?’ she asks.

‘Yeah,’ I reply, looking around to see if they can hear us.

‘No, they don’t.’

I put a finger to my lips. ‘Good. Don’t tell them.’

Together we hitchhike from the farm. It feels good setting out together with Lisa. Within minutes of sticking out our thumbs, the
first car stops, with an Indian Fijian happily offering a lift. He speaks with an accent distinctive of the Indian sub-continent and tells us without much prompting: ‘I emigrated here after the elections in Fiji. The Indian-race party won and the government, with the help of the Fijian-dominated army, took over.’ When he smiles, his teeth show brightly against his dark skin. ‘I have more Maori friends than pakeha, because they look on me as being “black”, like them. I like it here. I bought a house in Auckland, fixed it and sold it at a big profit. With the capital, I have bought an even larger house in Northland.’

He has to check on a blocked drainage ditch on a rural side road, so he lets us off where the road diverts to Dargaville. Lisa and I remove our packs and dump them one behind the other to diminish their profile, so that their bulk doesn’t intimidate drivers from picking us up. We stare down the empty road, not so much waiting for a ride as waiting for traffic. We amuse each other by talking, while ever watchful for a car, truck, anything, to come past.

‘You hitchhiked all over New Zealand?’ I ask.

‘Everywhere.’

‘On your own?’

‘You are the first person I’ve hitchhiked with,’ she replies. ‘I’ve had no problems at all. Would never hitch in Europe though. Too dangerous.’

A Maori stops in a ute. He has someone with him in the cab up front, so he uncovers the back. We climb into the open rear, removing our foam mattresses from our packs to lean against. As he speeds down the winding road, we are painfully thrown against the hard metal, despite the foam mattresses. I grab onto the side with one hand and throw my other arm over Lisa’s shoulder, not so much to protect her as to keep us from being thrown into each other or over the side.

The air rushes by. Strands of Lisa’s hair are blown loose from the ponytail and flick over her face. She smiles and says: ‘I’m really happy.’

‘I feel the same.’ It makes a big difference having a companion.

Despite our frenetic speed, I notice the British publican on the shoulder of the road, plodding relentlessly towards Cape Reinga. I yell into Lisa’s ear to explain who he is, as he stares resolutely at the ground in front of him and disappears out of sight.

The Waipoua forest is more like the tropical rainforest of the south-west Pacific than the temperate forests of the rest of New Zealand, with more than three hundred species of trees, shrubs and ferns growing in its protected area. I had been worried that this last walk into the forest might be a disappointment but I need not have been concerned. Just peering into the thick, unspoiled vegetation, I recognise the distinctive sense of tranquillity inspired by the forest’s bouquet of scents. I breathe through my nose, mainlining the fragrances of health-restoring trees and plants.

We silently follow a winding duckboard path, as if we were walking on sacred ground. Lisa moves ahead along the raised wooden trail, which curves through forest thick with trees and ferns. The path ends at Tane mahuta, the largest kauri tree left standing in New Zealand. The tree appears to have been there since time immemorial and has the same shape as a gigantic broccoli. High in the branches above is a whole ecological system with scores of different plant species growing out of the thick branches. The trunk is so monolithic that it resembles a stone wall; although its total height is a relatively short fifty-two metres, its girth is thirteen metres and the total volume of the tree a colossal 244 cubic metres. Or so the sign tells us.

You do not need the formality of measurements to understand the might of this living thing. The tree has a powerful presence: it is not hard to imagine why the Maori, in their cosmology, believe that Tane the tree, son of Rangi the sky-father and Papa the earth-mother, physically tore his parents apart, breaking their primal embrace to bring light, space and air into the world. Tane is the life-giver and all living creatures are his children. Even the
surrounding bush is in obeisance, granted an audience from an indulgent monarch. Not only is there a sense of power emanating from this majestic tree, but a sense of benevolence as well. As if in a cathedral, we remain silent, paying tribute, touched by the sight of one of God’s creations dwarfing us to insignificance. It is a humbling experience.