Back to the North

Sunday, I ventured out into Christchurch to get a feel for the city. When I looked out my window at 11:00am, the sun was shining in a perfectly blue sky. When I left my hostel at 12, only one hour later, the sun had surrendered to the clouds and a light drizzle fell in the air. I was disappointed because I was looking forward to basking in the sunshine for a change. I still wandered around the city anyway and found an open-air market where I bought roasted cashews that reminded me of the ones I always buy from the street vendors in New York City. After, I made my way to the Botanic Gardens, but I was too cold to wander much farther than the iron gates. Instead of walking back to my hostel, I hopped on one of the old-fashioned trams (my roommate had given me a ticket she wasn’t going to use) and rode it around the city circuit. I actually did find Christchurch with its gardens and parks quite appealing, though most people claim the city doesn’t have much to offer. I probably would have enjoyed it even more if the sun had been shining.

When I got back to the hostel, I decided to give myself an impromptu haircut (sorry Aunt Lucy). I needed one badly but didn’t want to spend the money to get an inch of dead ends cut off. I halved my hair and pinned the top half up and started hacking away with the only scissors I had – my nail scissors. I only cut off about ½ an inch or so and decided to leave it at that. I lost my confidence ¾ of the way through the underneath section so I finished it off and left the top half alone, deciding I probably should put my strands in someone else’s skilled hands. At least it’s not a total disaster; the underneath layers aren’t even visible.

After a long and stressful battle with my travel agent and Air New Zealand, I finally decided to cancel my flight out of Christchurch and postpone leaving for Australia until mid-December. I bought my own ticket from Auckland to Sydney rather than trying to change the one I already had – it came to about the same cost and made it much more convenient for me to fly out. Airlines make it virtually impossible to alter flight plans easily. It’s not like they wouldn’t be able to fill my vacant seat, so I don’t understand why they make it so difficult to postpone a flight. I think they just take joy in saying “no” to the desperate pleas they must hear day in and day out. I planned to head back up to Taupo in central North Island and recharge for a few weeks before jumping into every-other-day-a-new-place travel in Australia. I’m staying with a friend in Taupo, whom I met and traveled with on the North Island, and who is currently working and living there.

I was up at 6am on Monday and traveled for 12 hours to make it to Taupo, my home for the next three weeks, by nighttime. I had to take the ferry across to the North Island, followed by a bus ride from Wellington to Taupo. I tried to sleep on the full-length couch I had snagged in one of the ship’s lounges but could do little more than doze in and out. I couldn’t sleep on the bus either though I had two seats to myself. I usually never fall asleep in moving vehicles; I’ll close my eyes in rest, but hardly ever in sleep. I occupied myself listening to my iPod and reading “The Devil Wears Prada,” a book I had picked up from my hostel’s book exchange in Christchurch.

The rest of my time I spent trying to figure out if the two people sitting diagonally in front of me were two girls or a girl and a guy. I seriously couldn’t tell. Every time I’d decided on a conclusion, he/she would do something to suggest otherwise. Person in question sported long hair (girl) covered by a knit skull cap (boy), a long sleeve t-shirt (either) with a fleece vest (boy), khaki pants (either), chunky black pseudo-bowling shoes (girl), and indeterminate androgynous features – masculine for a girl and feminine for a boy. I think I had decided on girl by the time I got out at my Taupo stop (6 ½ hours later), but I couldn’t be 100% sure short of asking him/her, but obviously that would be insulting, so I decided I was right – it was a girl – and left it at that.

I’m looking forward to my three weeks in Taupo. It’ll give me a chance to relax and unwind and it’ll be nice to semi-unpack my stuff rather than keeping it packed and extracting only what I would need for a day or two. I think it’s important to “settle” somewhere – as much as you can while on the road – once in a while and relax, if only temporarily, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.