Wait. Where did February go? — A month in a couple pages

Originally published March 2018.

Suddenly it’s March and I’m couchsurfing in Auckland and Beep Boop is sold and I leave New Zealand in 5 days to fly to Australia.

All loose ends are tied up. I have a place to sleep every night this week. And then I leave. My two months in New Zealand are abruptly almost over.

This whole trip has been a whirlwind, but February had some extra whirling and some extra wind. We conquered seasickness and arrived on the North Island after our 3 hour ferry ride over from the South Island on February 3rd, which somehow both feels like ages ago but also yesterday.

A couple days later we backpacked the Tongariro Northern Circuit in Tongariro National Park, another one of the great walks of New Zealand

But we pushed through our heart pounding and made it safe back to flat ground, so long as the active volcano didn’t decide to erupt. Those four days were extremely moving for me, walking and reflecting connected a lot of dots for me and left me crying with gratitude on our last day, and maybe I’ll write a post on why later. (Or let’s be real it probably won’t happen because I’m finding out I’m not the best at blogging.)

After we got off the trail, we crashed in an Airbnb for three days and literally did not leave the house. We celebrated Danielle’s birthday with lots of good food, and then even better desserts. It was a little taste of normal and rest.

Then we headed north to visit the K’s friend Courtney, whom they met at Lucas’s sister’s wedding last year. We stopped along the way in Rotorua, the geothermal wonders capital of New Zealand, but it was rainy so we didn’t feel like hiking, so we went for a swim in Kerosene Creek, a geothermally heated river that left us smelling like rotten eggs. I washed my swim suit three times and it still smelled.

We eventually made it to Courtney’s town, Mt. Maunganui, on the coast, where we entered our home for the week, a giant camper bus that was parked in Courtney’s church parking lot by Courtney’s grandparents, who drove the bus down so that we would have a place to sleep for the week.

They were some of the most endearing old folks I’ve ever met, calling us “darling love” at the beginning and end of every sentence. They kept saying things like “sorry it’s not much” or “sorry it’s out of date…”

and we were like No. you don’t understand. We have been living out of a van. Sleeping three people in a twin-sized bed. We hand-pump our sink to wash our dishes and most poops we take are in pit toilets that smell so bad you almost pass out from having to hold your breath. This bus has the luxuries of a flushing toilet and running water and a gas stove and a table and two separate beds and actual drawers to put our food in. This bus is a mansion and we will feel like queens and king all week. We are so grateful.

Our week in Mt. Maunganui was playing kubb (a new outdoor yard/beach game we learned that I like better than cornhole), going to the beach

me feeling like a strong 5th wheel sometimes, sipping whiskey sours on valentines day,

having a veggie burger the size of my face and chips and a beer all for only $10 on the local Tuesday special, playing code names (a new favorite board game that requires the perfect amount of mental energy), getting overheated and hurting my knee on a hot beachside run and limping all the way back home, it was hiking up to the summit of Mt. Maunganui at sunrise

going to a street food night market and sitting in the park listening to acoustic covers while eating churros,

going to see a local band called Joe’s Van (which planted the lyrics of a classic Kiwi song into the soil of my brain that would not let go. I sang “DRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK YOURSELF MORE BLISS. FORGET ABOUT THE LAST ONE GET YOURSELF ANOTHER” probably 500 times that week), it was going to a brewery and having a sour with the the best korean vegetarian deep fried dumplings while sharing stories and laughing with new friends who actually know about five of our same friends back in the states (Small world),

it was staying in our giant bus and conserving water so we didn’t run out and taking two minute showers and feeling like instant coffee was a luxury and sitting outside in the rain next to the church so we could call people we loved back home because that was the only spot we could get wifi. It was going to Courtney’s church and not feeling quite so isolated and lost and actually engaging honestly with the pastor admitting that I don’t 100% line up with what Western Christianity has become instead of hiding, it was taking Beep-Boop, our van to three mechanics giving money in exchange for zero answers of what was wrong, and it was leaving in said van hugging the necks of my new friends not knowing when we would see them again, still not having much confidence in our trusty steed that wasn’t so trusty anymore, praying that Beep Boop wouldn’t crap out on the side of the road and leave us out thousands of dollars as we headed onward.

Beep Boop survived, though. We drove up to the Coromandel Penninsula, an area of the North Island where many Kiwis vacation. Coromandel was driving to Opoutere, a tiny town on the coast, camping for free for three nights. Late night beach walks, staying up to watch the stars come out, having our morning routine of coffee, breakfast, and then insanity workout in the shade and still sweating like pigs and gasping like fish out of water,

filtering water to drink out of the men’s bathroom because the water pressure was better there than the women’s, long day beach walks by naked old Kiwi men, cooking curry for dinner over our camping stove still wearing my bathing suit because clothes become redundant after a while here, waking up and driving to Cathedral Cove, getting there around 12pm, hiding in the van eating tuna and crackers for the 748th time waiting for the giant thunderstorm to pass, walking an hour to Cathedral Cove, shivering when the sun was behind the clouds and relaxing when it came back out,

hiding in the big cave with humans from all over the world when it started raining again, hiking back out on sore legs from insanity and the hills coming up while talking to two guys from Charlotte, on holiday from studying abroad in China, it was digging our own personal geothermal hot tub in the sand at hot water beach,

driving an hour out of the way that night just for a free very cold shower and turning around and driving the other way, cooking beans and rice for dinner in a parking lot and spilling half of it on the concrete and trying not to lose my cool even though most of my dinner was now in the dirt, driving all the way back to our campsite in Opoutere because all the self-contained spaces were filled at the parking lot with a shower where we had planned on parking, sleeping in, waking up, not doing insanity because #calves #owie and we wanted to enjoy clean hair for more than 12 hours so we left calling for a rest day. 

We left Coromandel and drove to Auckland, found a pak’NSave next to a library on the outskirts of the city so that we could grocery shop and go do some research of what the heck we were going to do in Northland before we kept driving. There weren’t so many free campsites for self-contained vehicles in the Northland, so we found a popular campsite just south of Whangerei (pronounced Funguhray) that cost $13 a night and stayed there for two nights, continuing our routine of wake up, coffee, breakfast, suffer through insanity, cool down in the shade, lather up with half a bottle of sunscreen, checking three times to make sure you got all parts of your body or you would pay for it later, beach, beach walk past more naked old Kiwi men, swim and play in the waves, beach walk some more, cold shower, dinner, night walk, read, bed, repeat.

That first night at the campsite in the Northland was the night that I had a really hard night of repressed emotions coming up all at once, missing my people back home, questioning why I am all the way on the other side of the world just to eat tuna by myself and go on night beach walks alone when I could be eating homemade pizzas with kale and sweet potato and tomatoes and onion and goat cheese and mushroom patte as a base across the table from Julia, or reading New Jim Crow and talking about its implications and questions it provokes cuddled up next to Peter in his bed. But I had a good long beach walk with Danielle where we were able to connect and it grounded me a little more in reality, that there is significance to being here even if it just to rest and prepare my spirit to be fully present with my people when I get back to them.

So yeah. Day one on the northland was the hard beach walk where I cried a lot. Day two was beach all day. Day 3 was waking up and driving to Whungarei, taking the car through a car wash and the machine misreading the length of the van and shattering the mirror attached to the back of the car, which was so dang awesome because another broken part is exactly what you need when you are trying to sell a car, trying and not liking Israeli coffee at a cafe, going to the library for wifi, then going on a hike to the summit of Mt. Manaia, what seemed like thousands of stairs up to the summit, feeling strong and realizing this would probably be the last “mountain” we hike in New Zealand.

We stopped by pak’Nsave for the K’s to get cold drinks, and they surprised me with a lemon ginger kombucha (they’re the greatest), and then we drove to the Waipu caves, a free cave with glow worms and also a free campsite. Seeing the glow worms was amazing, a cave sky filled with blueish lit constellations, and did I say free, and we could guide ourselves through the cave without dozens of tourists opposed to going to the Waitomo caves, the most famous glowworm caves in NZ that are always insanely crowded and where you have to pay like $40 to go in. So having this cave to ourself was the best.

Then we went on a walk, thinking it was a hike to more caves, but it ended up being a hike very much uphill for an hour after our day that all seemed to be uphill, and the caves ended up being an overlook on private farmland that looked out over the rolling green hills of cows and grass and sheep and few houses, the the most beautiful aspects of the New Zealand countryside wrapped up in one panorama. So we took it in and captured what would be our last self-timer group photo in New Zealand,

and then listened in a mixture of awe and terror as a bull across the fence belted the most intense sounds I have ever heard come out of an animal.. He was either intensely lonely or intensely horny. Who knows with cows yanno. And then we headed back down to make dinner by the van, and sipped tea while the tea lights we set up on the boulders around us twinkled and sung us to sleep

That was the last night sleeping in Beep Boop. The last night of prepping vegetables on a grungy red cutting board with a tiny dull knife, the last night of changing our clothes out in the open because we just don’t care anymore and changing inside the van is too hard and annoying, the last night cooking dinner over a camp stove, the last night of washing dishes in the back of the van with a hand-pump sink, the last night of getting bitten by bugs while trying to sip tea, the last night of journaling by light of head lamp, the last night of cramming three people in a twin-sized bed, where feet and shoulders and butts are always touching in some annoying way, the last night of Danielle and I having to pee in the middle of the night and having to climb over lucas to roll out of the side door of the van to then squat right next to it, not caring if anyone sees, the last night of the most interesting and fun and hard and exciting and adventurous social experiement I have ever experienced.

A married couple and a woman traveling solo all living out of a van together, and it somehow worked. Who knew.

We woke up and went to Auckland, our final destination in New Zealand. There wasn’t much that we actually wanted to do in Auckland, as we are not exactly city people, but we figured we needed to be in Auckland at least a week early so that we would have time to sell the van.

I stayed at an airbnb with the K’s the first night so we could gut Beep Boop and get him ready to sell and move all of my belongings back into my pack, and then the next day I was off to my first of four couchsurfing hosts of the week.

Danielle and Lucas dropped me off on a street corner.

I waved. “See ya at the airport!”

And they drove off. And then I was alone. In a city I have never been to before. With nothing but my backpack and a bag of a few leftover veggies and trail mix. About to walk up to the front door of a stranger’s house, enter, and make my bed in their living room.

One of my favorite scenarios in which to find myself.

I knocked on Anna’s door, my first couchsurfing host for the week, and thus began the most unexpectedly awesome week where I somehow stumbled into getting to do things I would never have been able to do if I had not met the exact people that I did. Another couchsurfing week that broke me open with new experiences, being around the table with strangers that quickly became family.  

To be continued.

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Cheers to the Journey, and may your Spirit always reside in a state of wonder.