The Eduardo VI dropped us at the pier in Lagunas, the town that serves as the entry point for the Reserva Nacional Pacaya Samiria. Here we organized a canoe and two guides and embarked for a four-day canoeing/camping trip into the jungle. During the days, we paddled. Javier and María, our guide and cook, talked over our heads in heavily accented jungle Spanish – a disjointed melody with stops and uplifted notes in an exotic patois. Their voices stayed in my head like a song, working, knocking around until the tune was familiar, pleasant, and I could almost sing along. In moments, our paddles struck the water in perfect unison, propelling us through the quiet, dark water, between narrow river banks overhung with dense greenery. Papagayos (macaws) and parrots exploded from the canopy, feathered fireworks of red, green, blue, yellow. Small yellow butterflies landed on Jesus’ bare back, tasting his sweat. Our guides’ sharp eyes picked out monkeys in the trees and spotted the markings of crocodiles and turtles on the sandy banks. The first day, it rained – poured. I sat in the canoe and tilted my head up, drinking the warm rain, letting it drench me, feeling wild and real and alive. At night, we searched for caimans and hunted the fish that jumped in the shallows, spearing them with a three-pronged lance. We slept on spongy palm branches under tarps and mosquito nets. After dark, we went to the bathroom in pairs, checking the ground and branches carefully for spiders and snakes before squatting. I fell asleep every night listening to the whooping of the frogs and counting the flashes of the lightning bugs flickering through the dark trees. This is the Amazon, the real deal: there are trees that walk, and other trees that kill, clinging with their roots to a healthy trunk like a giant squid wraps its tentacles around a ship, squeezing, strangling, subsuming.

There’s a potent magic in the jungle. Primitive, elemental, it stirs something deep in our bodies, something we already know but have forgotten the words for. Jesus and I returned to Lagunas enchanted. Time passed differently. I caught myself drifting, waking after minutes, hours; four more days slipped through our fingers. We spent hours at “the beach”, and more hours in the town’s only bar, drinking cold beer and watching the heat shimmer on the packed dirt of the main street. There was lots of walking barefoot and playing volleyball in the street with the same group of kids, every afternoon at four. There was nothing to do and so much time to do it in, but no one ever seemed bored. Different to the culture of the States: Do MORE in LESS time – IMMEDIATELY!! Life is simple: simple foods, rice, eggs, fish, bananas, and yucca, simple homes with dirt floors that still need to be swept, hammocks instead of beds. And yet, in the month I spent in the jungle, I saw more people laughing, more smiling and joking, more families at ease: more enjoyment.

I took a lot of pictures. The town of Lagunas is incredibly photogenic, the grass and trees are tall and bright green-yellow against the blue and green houses and the dirt streets that look golden in the baking midday sun. A girl moves through the grass with a bucket of water on her head, a toddler walking at her side. Women use machetes to chop at the grass in front of their houses. Half-naked boys stand on the gunwales of their canoes, leaf-shaped paddles in hand. A fisherman hauls his nets across the river, shouting and stamping his feet to scare off the pink river dolphins that circle his catch. The realization that came to me was simple, but powerful. These images, these faces and scenes in front of me are real. Not from the pages of magazines, romantic, exotic, staged, or contrived. This is life. These people don’t know that they’re beautiful, that what they’re doing is special or photogenic. It’s just life. It’s just the jungle.

Just.

15 July – 6 August

Angus and I arrived in Puerto Montt on the Sunday morning bus, and chose Casa Perla at random out of the guidebook.  Perla herself met us at the front door of the homestay, urging us to hurry up, come in, drop our stuff, and ¡vamos!  She spoke too rapidly for me to catch what, exactly, the hurry was, or where we were going, but there was a small cluster of people at the door, clearly waiting for us to join up and get on with it.  “It’s a curanto (coo-RAhn-to),” Trina (a Kiwi woman about my age and fellow guest at Casa Perla) explained as we trooped down the hill toward the waterfront.  “But I’m not really sure what that means.  It’s a traditional Chileno meal, and we have to go to this island, where there’s this woman cooking it.  And that’s all I know.”  Lunch on an island in Chile.  Okay.

At the bottom of the hill, we waited for a bus.  We stood next to the Sunday market, and the scent of fish was overpowering in the 80F sun.  Standing room only on the bus; I found myself pressed up next to Clementine, a Frenchwoman who spoke better Spanish than English.  We communicated between languages, using words and hand gestures and facial expressions.  Closer to the front, Angus met the perfect mate to play Cheech to his Chong.  He and Stace, a sixty-year-old English/Dutch yoga instructor, had somehow grabbed seats and were cracking open their cans of beer, the hoppy odor adding to the sticky air inside the bus.  Stace had a frizzy silver-and-ginger beard and long, thin hair pulled into a tight knot on the top of his head.  Small wisps of light red hair ringed his forehead, ears, and neck.  Off the bus and down a long cement ramp to the edge of the water, where a small, brightly-painted boat waited to ferry us the ten minutes across the sound to Isla Tengla, then another ten minutes walking to the opposite side of the island to the farm where the mysterious curanto was meant to take place.

The farm was small, sheltered, and consisted of a few small buildings: a house, a barn with attached animal pens, and a round, open-ceilinged structure with long tables set for the meal.  Scruffy dogs bickered in the grassy space between the buildings, and older, dark-skinned men stood silently in the doorway of the barn.  Meanwhile a plump, soft-looking matron in a long skirt and lavender apron moved busily from barn to house, house to dining area.  I smiled at the men, asked if I could take photos, and suddenly I had an escort.  Pedro led me through a green arborway into the garden, and to the edge of the stone wall that separates the farm from the beach.  It was low tide, and the beach was huge and wet.  I took a few pictures, and then stood talking to Pedro, doing my best to understand his rapid Chileno speech and trying to respond with the right words when he paused.  He was perhaps seventy, and short, with a heavily lined face, a thick grey mustache, and dark eyes.  My comprehension was not 100%, but it was enough.  He told me about his life, about his travels: he worked in a factory in Connecticut, and later (or perhaps at the same time?) served in the Chilean air force, flying a route that took him through Toronto, Detroit, St. Louis, Dallas, San Antonio, Huston, Mexico and Central America on countless occasions.  It was from him that I learned that GW Bush was on a tour of the Middle East, and that Hillary Clinton had won out over Obama in NH.  He’d like to see Hillary take the general election in November, but agreed with me that change is important.  This feels like someone else’s life, like something I might read about.  And yet, this is real.  This is where I am.

Finally, we were called into the barn to watch them “open” the curanto.  In the floor of the barn was a poured cement hole, perhaps a foot deep and a meter square.  Perla, our expedition leader, stood next to me and explained the process in heavily-accented English.  To build a curanto: first, a fire is built in the bottom of the hole, on top of a layer of round stones.  The stones bake in the fire, and when they’re red hot, the cooks begin constructing the layers of food.  Several layers of huge wet leaves cover the rocks, and on top of that they lay alternating layers of shellfish, leaves, meat, potatoes, vegetables, leaves, more shellfish, more meat, and then on the very top, two kinds of heavy, rich potato bread.  The whole lot is covered with more leaves, then several burlap sacks.  For two hours, the food sits and steams and the fat and juice and flavors from the various ingredients drip and mingle and cook.  The smell, as Pedro and two others peel back each layer, is exotic and mouthwatering.

The shells clack and clatter against one another as the matron forks them out in their red net bags.  Two shy cats hide under the benches around the curanto, eyeing the fish and the people, and the dogs creep closer and closer to the hole until someone notices them and shouts them back outside.  The food, once served, fills the long tables to capacity.  There is a watery salsa to spoon over the potatoes and the mussels; bottles of cool white wine are passed while the pile of discarded shells grows on a tray at the end of the tables.  Jo the dog sits at my feet, licking my knee occasionally in hopes of a pork bone.  By the end, my fingers are greasy and my stomach groaning.  This is cuisine.

There is a siesta on the beach after the meal.  I sit with Angus, Stace, Trina, Ant (Trina’s partner), and Clementine, not talking, each of us in our own private digestive stupor.  There’s no need for words, no need to play the “getting-to-know-you” game.  The six of us, we’ve discovered, are going to be together for another whole week as we travel south to Puerto Natales on the Navimag Ferry.  It’s a four-day boat trip through the Patagonian Channels, and it’s the only way see Chile’s Pacific coast.  We will have plenty of time to talk in the coming days.  For the moment, I am easy.  I’m humming along with the universe, in the exact right place at the exact right time.

And now there is a soft gray cat in my lap.  Oh, the simple pleasures.

If I visualize this period of transition as a piece of music, then at this moment what I am hearing is the quiet reflective melody that follows a particularly powerful crescendo: The Hollyford Mission!  It was a ten day trip, through the remote wilds of Fiordland in the southwestern corner of the South Island.  Three days tramping along the beaten path of the Hollyford River valley with a few other hardy souls, three days living in a hut on the beach waiting for bad weather to clear, and four days of complete solitude on the hardest trail I’ve ever walked.  On day one, I hiked 30 km (18 miles – Huge.) and felt six of my ten toes and the bottom of my right heel develop large, swollen blisters.  On day three, I found myself caught out in a torrential downpour, complete with jagged bolts of lightning and crashing thunder, on the wrong side of a flooded river, and had to spend the night huddled between flax plants in a wet tent in a wet sleeping bag.  On day four, I waited for the eye of the storm, packed all of my (sopping wet) gear, crossed the river, and all but sprinted the last three kilometers to the Big Bay Hut.  Big Bay (as the name would suggest), is a large, rectangle-shaped bay on the northern coast of Fiordland.  It’s accessible only by helicopter, small fixed-wing planes, or a four day walk from the nearest road.  Remote.  Beautiful.  Even in the throes of the storm, the wild seas and gray, rocky beach were magic.  What a place to be stuck.

I waited out the weather for two and a half days, and could have easily let myself forget the outside world and simply stay.  There were three surfers stranded with me for the first day, waiting for a break in the clouds so that their airplane could land on the beach and take them home.  Before they left they introduced me to our neighbor, a hunter named Aussie Bob, who was spending a few weeks in his private hut a kilometer further down the beach.  When the surfers finally soared away, it was just Bob and me and the beach and the wind and rain.  Bob was perhaps fifty years old, a sheep-shearer, and for 17 years had been hunting the coast and hills of northern Fiordland.  I wished, repeatedly, that I had a tape recorder to capture the stories he shared.  A genuine, multi-faceted individual, a true man of the land who could gauge deer’s bloodlines from the shape of the antlers of the stags he’d killed.  He described himself as a redneck, but he was the most open-minded and accepting redneck I’ve ever met.  “Different strokes for different folks,” he’d say as he shook his head over the lifestyles of the various people he’s met in his long and varied life.  He wasn’t sure what to make of me at first: a young woman on her own in the absolute last frontier of the NZ bush, confident of my abilities yet responsible and aware of the risks of the back country and the measures needed to counter them.  I walked down the beach to his hut the first night to listen to the weather forecast on his mountain radio, and stayed to chat over a can of beer.  As he listened to my stories of Antarctica and past tramping experience, I could see his respect for my independence grow at the same time as he sought to protect me.  Bob sent me home with flour and yeast to bake bread in my hut’s camp oven, and the next afternoon showed up with fresh venison back steaks (the nicest part of the animal) wrapped in a plastic bag.  These I cooked in a curry, using the ingredients that the surfers had left behind.  Venison curry and fresh bread baked on a wood stove in a little hut on the beach in Fiordland in NZ.  I’m not sure that cuisine gets any better than that.

For two days, life took on a simplicity and a peace that I would find difficult to recapture.  In the mornings, I stoked the fire, got it roaring, with a kettle on top of the stove for tea, then ventured out to the beach to check the weather and gather more driftwood to feed the fire.  The water would be hot when I got back, and Bob would pop in and join me for a cuppa while spinning yarns about his work and his misadventures as a young, redneck Aussie visiting New Zealand for the first time.  After tea I’d have a wash at the faucet behind the hut, sweep out the sand, mix up a batch of bread dough to rise, then sit and read and watch the birds, fantails, wax-eyes and tomtits, swoop and dive outside the window.  Eventually the rain stopped and I could go for walks on the beach, taking pictures and collecting shells.  In the evenings I’d walk over to Bob’s hut to catch the weather and listen to his stories.  I’d inevitably show up barefoot (it was warm enough, and it was easier than putting on wet hiking boots), which would make Bob shake his head.  ”You’re a tough bitch, aren’t you?” he said, in a tone of deep respect and admiration.  The night before I left, three of Bob’s hunting mates arrived by fixed-wing plane, and he invited me to come over for a roast (wild boar, pumpkin, kumara).  There I sat, smack in the middle of a kiwi hunting “man’s weekend”…how did I get here?  I marveled.

The rest of the trip was along the Pyke River valley: tough going.  This was a track that sought to break me.  It had already sent blisters, lightning, wind, rain, floods.  The second half tried to turn me back with fallen trees, mud, lakes, suffocating bush, thorns, vines, roots, slips, trips, falls, cuts, and bruises.  It thrashed me good, and then dared me to keep going – and I did.  Yet my memories are tinged with a glowing sort of magic.  I saw no one.  Red deer grazed along the sides of the rivers, and stags roared terrifyingly in the bush.  A NZ falcon swooped down from its lofty perch to examine me close up.  At one side creek, I balked at the murky orange water of questionable depth and the half-submerged tree stumps that poked out ominously.  Instead of walking through it, I took a gamble on a fallen tree that conveniently bridged the 8-foot creek.  It was narrow and smooth.  Too narrow and smooth.  So much for my dry sleeping bag and my mobile phone!  The next day I walked around Lake Wilmot, a small lake made nearly impassable by windfalls – it took me four hours to cover one kilometer.  Next was the Black Swamp, where I had to leap between tiny tussock mounds to avoid the sucking, stinking mud that at one point swallowed both of my legs up to my groin.  On the last day, I walked five kilometers through Lake Alabaster (yes, I had to walk IN the lake), climbing over slippery rocks and fallen trees, staring tiredly through my raincoat hood (it was raining again) at the waterfalls pouring down the cliffs on the other side of the lake.  Like the creature from the Black Lagoon, I rose from the lake at the end of the day, trudged wetly across the beach to the hut, and stood solidly on the porch.  I turned and surveyed the length of the lake I’d just conquered, and cheered.  The Hollyford – Pyke/Big Bay Mission: DONE!!  Satisfaction supreme.

24 April, 2007

(A real time update: Kelli and I are in Taupo, in the middle of the North Island, and all is well.  More to come as the (mis)adventures continue!)

A week of sunshine followed by two weeks of pouring rain saw me doing my best to help Susan out around the Dreamhouse.  Washing windows, edging gardens, cooking meals, vacuuming, dusting, mowing lawns, hauling wood, etc.  The rain cleared for a weekend, just long enough for the whole family to travel south to Hokitika for the world-famous Wildfoods Festival.  It’s an annual event on the Coast that draws up to 30,000 visitors from both NZ and around the world and celebrates the – ahem – wilder side of West Coast cuisine.  By way of example, I present a list of the delicacies that I, personally, consumed: venison, wild mushrooms, crickets (they were in peanut butter truffles, so they tasted okay, but when I was still picking legs out of my mouth a half hour later, I had to rate the crickets as the nastiest thing of the day), snails, homemade ice cream with organic strawberries, kava (a traditional beverage from Fiji), corn on the cob, kangaroo, crocodile (tastes like chicken), elderflower champagne, worms (chopped up and served in chocolate truffles), punga (native ferns), possum, horse (that one I could have done without), and huhu grubs (fat, white wood-boring critters that taste like nuts when roasted).  It was a day for daring and for strong stomachs.  I met up with Andre and Genevieve, two of my favorite Ice people, and spent the night with them out on the beach, relishing the opportunity to enjoy their company in the real world.  More rain…I visited Geoffrey’s gold mining claim and fell on my bum in the mud.  I also got to watch the whole mining process, do a bit of panning for myself, and actually hold raw nuggets of gold in my hand.  We escaped the rain for another weekend, this time across the Alps to Christchurch to watch the Crusaders (the local professional rugby team) bash the Bulls, a team from South Africa.

All in all, I spent a refreshing, fun (if a bit wet) three and a half weeks with Geoffrey, Susan and Navare.  It was longer than I’d planned to stay, but I’d mapped out a 9-day hike through the main divide of the Southern Alps, and couldn’t attempt it til the rains quit, as it involved numerous river crossings and fairly rugged, un-marked terrain.  Just as I was beginning to think I’d have to scrap the whole thing and move on, the rains cleared, and I was off.  Nine days… The idea for the trip originated with Lumir, and it was a doozie: gorgeous river valleys, tempting tall peaks, pristine lakes, natural hot springs, and two challenging mountain passes in the very heart of the Alps.  Definitely the road less traveled by.  For the first four days I was completely alone.  There wasn’t a soul living or breathing for miles…just me.  It was an incredible, empowering experience, having to use a map and compass to find a safe route, having to problem solve and navigate and take complete responsibility for every aspect of the trip.  The first night out, I slept next to the Waiheke River in a bivouac that I constructed out of a large blue tarp and a length of rope.  I woke during the night, rolled onto my back, and stared directly up into the clear, starry sky: wow.  I waded up one river, crested the first pass (the Amuri), and spent four days wandering the river valleys of the eastern Alps.  I camped next to Lake Sumner and was almost carried away, bivouac and all, by sandflies (wicked, demon biting insects that travel in gangs of millions) but was rescued by a kind, retired schoolteacher-turned-fisherman-and-violin-maker who loaned me an extra tent for the night.  He also shared his wife’s homemade cake with me and in the morning, wouldn’t let me leave until l’d sat and had a cup of tea with him.  Love, love, love this Kiwi generosity.  On the second to last day of the trip, I stood on top of the Harpers Pass (936 meters – approx 3,000 ft.) after a long, extremely difficult morning’s climb, and felt my soul absolutely fill to bursting with triumph – I had done it!!  Nine days in the back country, completely self-sufficient, learning, growing, and loving every minute.  It was a bit anti-climatic then, when I came down from the pass and had to stay put in a hut, a mere sixteen kilometers from the end of the trip and civilization, waiting for two whole extra days because of a wicked rainstorm and flooded rivers.  Two days, alone in a hut, reading, playing solitaire, watching the rain, doing jumping jacks, stoking the fire, and staving off the stir-crazies by working on the 1,000 piece jigsaw that some kind, blessed soul had left behind.  It was a relaxing way to end the trip, if a bit boring.  Eleven days later (nine days tramping, two days sitting), I strode out of the bush and made my way back to the Dreamhouse on the hill, stinking, filthy, but revived.

So now: freshly showered, clothing laundered and hiking boots dried, I’m off.   Last night Susan and Navare and I had a farewell marshmallow roast in the gia (a Mongolian dwelling, like a yurt…yes, they’ve got a yurt as well as a boat on their property.  They’re a pretty unique family.), and this morning Navare presented me with a piece of a possum jawbone for good luck.  It’s hanging from Dr. Gonzo’s rear view mirror, along with a piece of shell that Jenny gave me before I left Methven.  Ahhh, it’s good to be on the road again.  I’ve got three weeks before Kelli gets here, and way, way too many things to try and fit into that time.  Oh well.  A full life is a good life.  I’m back to the internet cafe scene, which means less time for emails and website updates.  With any luck I’ll be in the mountains most of the time anyway.  I’m a month and a half away from the Ice, and a month and a half away from home.  I’m at the balancing point, ready to make the most of the downward journey.  Let’s go have some fun!!

- Thanksgiving!
I ran the 5k Turkey Trot race, served up massive quantities of turkey and stuffing and pie, and then crashed on the floor of a friend’s lounge, wrapped up in my duvet, dozing through the Lord of the Rings. Walking back to my dorm after the movie, the strap to my flip-flop broke, and I had to limp back with only one shoe. Two observations about being barefoot in Antarctica: 1) volcanic rocks are sharp; 2) after about two minutes you’ve forgotten how sharp the rocks are because your foot has gone numb (and 3: barefoot in Antarctica…ha!).

- Runway Testing at Pegasus
Was asked to work for a day with Fleet Ops (the crew that maintains the runways and drives all the heavy equipment), performing density tests on the Pegasus white-ice runway (the only one like it in the world!). Drove a truck up and down the runway, stopping at certain coordinates to measure how many taps it took to drive an RSP (Russian S-something Penetrometer, a 3 foot long, 1 cm thick steel needle) 120mm into the snow on the runway’s surface. The runway’s 15 miles out of town, on the permanent ice of the Ross Ice Shelf – town looks like a tiny smear in the distance. Lovely to be OUT, even nicer to be out AND performing essential tests on a runway…in Antarctica. As a thank you for my help, Rudy (one of the Fleet Ops crew) brought me out to the runway’s namesake: the wreckage of a Navy airplane (the Pegasus) that crashed during landing perhaps thirty years ago. I climbed on the partially buried Navy plane and carved my name among the others on the tail and body – making my mark on history.

- “TNT…dyn-o-mite!”
There’s ongoing construction outside my dorm. The Fleet Ops blasting crew is gradually leveling a hill, piece by piece, to make room for a new addition to the Science Support Center. The ground’s so frozen that it takes explosives to break it up into movable chunks of volcanic rock. They’ve been blasting every day for the past three weeks – and on one particular day, I was the one pushing the detonator! Marty, the blasting supervisor, sat next to me on the C-17 that brought me down here, and offered me the job of “guest blaster”. Yay connections! “Blasting in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – fire in the hole!” And then KABOOOOOM. I even got to keep a blasting cap as a souvenir.

- Pressure Ridge Hike
Over the hill, on the ice shelf near Scott Base, gigantic frozen waves stand, blue and icy. Tidal movement far below the surface drives the seasonal sea ice into the permanent ice shelf, lifting these wave-like pressure ridges that shift a little bit with each tide. Scott Base staff maintain a trail that winds between, over and around the one-foot to four-meters high ridges. It’s typically off limits to the Americans, due to certain individuals behaving badly in the past, but I won a spot on a guided hike of these gorgeous, impressive phenomena. I got three hours off of work to wander through this blue wonderland of ice and snow and abstract sculptures. It’s magic, the way a short walk changes one’s perspective. As one janitor in my group said, “THIS is why I clean toilets!”

- Women’s Soiree
An annual event featuring the talents of McMurdo’s ladies…belly dancing, guitars and singing, tap dancing, poetry recitation, acapella, jazz dancing, a musical performance on a stand-up base – and the finale: yours truly and six other women, lip-syncing, dancing, and acting to “Cell Block Tango” from the film “Chicago”. If you’ve seen the movie, you’re thinking, “Woah…Catherine Zeta-Jones, tango, black lace and lingerie, sex and violence and sensuality…oh my!” It wasn’t quite up to Catherine ZJ standards, but it was still pretty hot. We’d spent three weeks choreographing and learning tango, and it paid off marvellously.

- Christmas!
First, there was the huge holiday party, in the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF) with food and dancing and Santa Claus posing for pictures on a snowmobile. I’ve been taking swing dancing lessons from a good friend, and this was the perfect venue to unveil my new skills: being flung in the air, flipped and tossed and spun, kicking and smiling and loving every minute of it.

The next night – Christmas Eve! I went camping. Yup. CAMPING. Sleeping outside, in Antarctica, on Xmas Eve. Oh, wow. Not far out of town, just a couple of miles out onto the permanent shelf ice, where they typically teach the snow survival classes. I hiked out with another DA after work and just enjoyed…it was a warmish night, perhaps 15F. No wind, and low clouds to make the sunlight seem dimmer, almost like it was setting. I sat out around the cooking stove with friends, melting snow for hot chocolate, snacking on stale granola bars and PB&J, loving it. Slept with Dana, my fellow DA inside a quinzhee (snow mound). Surprisingly warm, though a little cramped. You’ll have to check out the pictures – my powers of description are feeling a bit strained. Waking up in the morning to hike back into town was like being reborn. I can’t begin to explain the wonder of knowing that it was Christmas and that I was in Antarctica. I slid out of the quinzhee and saw nothing but white – the clouds had closed in, and large, soft snowflakes were floating by on the wind. A cold start, but the simple joy that came from having been outdoors for the last 12 hours (the longest I’ve been outside in nearly five months) was all I needed to carry me back to town.

As a thank you for recent hard work, Jennifer, my (wonderful!) supervisor gave me the option of taking either Xmas day or New Year’s Day off – with the rest of town! I chose Xmas. What a novelty, having a day off at the same time as the rest of the community! After unloading my camping gear, I sat at brunch for two hours, talking to friends, relaxing, basking in the community holiday spirit. As I had the afternoon off, I was able to be pulled into an interesting McMurdo tradition: Santarctica. One participant described it as “beautiful mayhem”. Picture it: 20 or so McMurdians dressed in Santa suits and elf costumes (hats, beards, jingly bells, shoes, the works), running around like maniacs, chanting “ho ho ho!” and cheering, playing impromptu games like “Red Rover”, making appearances at: rugby practice; brunch; the weight gym; the computer kiosk (among other places). This year the event planners stepped it up a notch…this year, Santarctica created Art. Way out of town, near the Pegasus runway, NSF-funded artists had created an installation piece on the ice: The Stellar Axis. 99 large, blue spheres placed within an (approx) 100 meter square area, each sphere intended to represent the 99 brightest stars in the southern hemisphere on the summer solstice (Dec 21). That’s the artist statement. The practical description is this: 99 blue balls scattered randomly across the ice, like a handful of marbles dropped from the sky. What better place to unleash 20 Santas and their elves for a little mayhem? It was two hours of singing, running, frolicking, cartwheeling, snowball-fighting and human-pyramid building. It was a beautiful thing. Cold, windy, snowy, and exhausting, but great fun.

- New Year’s!
Finally. The last, and most recent event of note. What can I say? There was dancing, champagne, and carousing…inside an empty fuel tank. A very under-the-radar event, a secret well kept until about 9pm on the night itself. The bottom line, though: I said hello to the New Year from Antarctica. Antarctica!

The end.

(new pictures to supplement: http://community.webshots.com/user/susanm483)

Visited Queenstown with Moni – Drove his car, The Beast (twin turbo engine, sports shift, v6, responsive and oh so smooth on the corners), south through the Canterbury Plains and the barren, imposing Lindis Pass. Wandered about the town, which is the adventure tourist mecca of the South Island – all overpriced jetboat rides, partying backpackers, skydiving, and high-energy, super trendy pubs. Rode the gondola to the top of a mountain to see fantastic views of the town, Lake Wakatipu, and the Remarkables Mts. Drove around the lake through patchy rain and gorgeous, intermittent rays of sunshine, checked out a fantastic art house movie theater and had drinks in a warm, dimly lit wine cellar complete with fireplace.

Resigned from the Godley! Immediately after which, all of my plans for jobs and travel in the next months fell through, leaving me stressed and stuck and (with gritted teeth and swallowed pride) asking the Godley for my job back. Managed to get three extra days of work after my official last day (one of which was Easter Monday = double pay!), but then, out of the wreckage of my plans came an ideal job offer for the ski season: cleaning and reception work at an upscale backpackers in Methven in exchange for a free single room and a free ski pass to Mt. Hutt, the highest (and one of the best) ski field in NZ. The work is day on/day off, leaving me three or four days a week to be on the snow. Nights will be spent waitressing at the nearby Methven Resort Hotel, which will provide me with the cash I’ll need for food, petrol, etc. Hallelujah!

Spent two weeks traveling back and forth between Tekapo and Methven, sussing out the jobs, the town, and organizing ski equipment. Quite a laid-back two weeks, though, with much of my time in Tekapo spent at Moni’s place. I ended up moving out of my flat and across the driveway to Moni’s – he was the only one I really wanted to see in town anyway (Anja had left for a two week holiday with her Dad), and it would save me having to pay $70/week rent. Great fun cooking together, listening to music, drinking, arguing over who would sleep in the bed and who would take the floor, and discussing the business/finance plan for Moni’s dream of opening his own restaurant. On a couple of evenings, John and Mary (our landlords) invited us over for a bbq and dinner. I was talked into making apple pie, Moni roasted a chicken, John prepared fresh field mushrooms he’d found, and we sat up talking books and tramping late into the nights. Another time, John treated me to a ride in his tiny white Mazda MX5 sports convertible – oh, man.

Spent some quality time with Dr. Gonzo…he failed his warrant of fitness. 1) rusted exhaust pipe; 2) rear seat belts didn’t lock. Exhaust pipe, okay, I knew that was coming. Seat belts? Horribly expensive. In an attempt to save money, I put on the mechanic’s hat, and got up close and personal with the backseat of my car. Unbolted the seat, took out the belts, and went on a hunt for new ones, only to be told (after I’d visited three wrecking lots with no luck) that the seat belts were fine – the mechanic who performed the WOF had done the wrong test. Several cuts and a few scraped knuckles later, the Doc was bolted back together, and I went to confront the original mechanic. In a moment of triumph that left me grinning and clicking my heels all the way home, I plead my case: not only did I get the new warrant, but I stood up for myself and got my $40 inspection fee refunded! Take that, car mechanics who think women don’t know anything about cars and can be taken advantage of!!

Turned 23! Moni took me to Christchurch for a couple of days to celebrate. About three hours north of Tekapo, on the coast, Christchurch is the third largest city in the country (the biggest on the South Island), and is very English in its environs. Class-tastic birthday: dressed up (new shoes!) for a delicious dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Sushi, sake, and fish, lamb and veggies that the chef prepared right in front of us, the grilling and seasoning more like dancing than cooking. I even got a bday fruit platter with a candle in it! Also made the most of the trip to the big city with time spent in the art gallery, botanical garden, and took a white-knuckled (but fun) drive over the Lyttleton Hills, to the southeast of the city.

And now, off again! I’ve got a month before my winter jobs start, and I’m hoping to make the most of the time. Today I’m heading to the west coast, through the alps, then south to the glaciers, rainforest, and fjords. It’s been six months, one week, and three days. I’m officially half-way through!

I was surprised to arrive and meet Darryl, the American.  However, he turned out to be precisely the frat-boy/traveling partier I’ve come to NZ to get away from, so I wasn’t sad to see him leave a week into my stay.  But, the bubble has been burst – it seems there are Americans in NZ after all!  After four months of meeting everyone but, I’ve learned to listen for the accents over the breakfast buffet or as I’m taking wine orders during dinner.  It’s always an interesting moment, when either the guests or I can’t stand it any longer and have to find out: “Excuse me, but may I ask where you’re from?”  I’ve met quite a few west-coasters, and one memorable Rhode Islander.  There are Americans here, but they’re not backpacking.  They’re typically middle-aged, well-to-do pseudo-adventurers on three or four or five week vacations.  Most hire cars – I meet very few on the organized bus tours, which puts them a step ahead of the hundreds of Korean and Japanese tourists we serve every week.  The Asian tours are only as long as a week or so – land in Auckland, fly to Christchurch, ride a bus to the Milford Sound and Queenstown, stop off in Tekapo for lunch, then on a plane from Christchurch to Auckland the same night.  Proper whirlwinds, these are.  I can’t imagine taking such a trip and calling it travel, but the tour guides and bus drivers I’ve spoken with say that their clients have a blast.  To each his own, I suppose.  The Americans, however, rent cars, as they like to do things their own way, on their own time.  True to form, I’d say.  Still, five weeks?  I maintain an impressed and interested front as I talk with them, and wish them happy travels, but this, too, seems pale and unexciting compared to the lifetime of a year that I am spending here.

It is quite satisfying, though, to stand and converse with a fellow countryman, thousands and thousands of miles across the world, and to enjoy the sensation of meeting someone with whom I share a background, culture, and history.  The Americans recognize me as one of their own – they spot the accent and ask endless questions about how and why I am here, what I’m doing and where I’ve been, and often leave tips: a sort of acknowledgment of our commonalities.  The million dollar question, though, is “What do your parents think of you being here?” One man, a Mr. Dunn from Rhode Island, seemed to take special interest.  Questions about my accommodation, my expenses, my safety, my ability to travel and communicate with home, my career path, my connections he asked.  Long after he and his wife had finished dinner, he returned to the bar, where I poured him Johnny Walker Black on the rocks and listened to his concerns and ideas and questions in between clearing plates and resetting tables.  By the end of the night he was a bit drunk - more on self-important generosity and the thrill of benefaction than the whiskey – and offered – no, insisted – that I meet him in the morning to use his satellite phone to call my parents for free.  And when he got up from the bar, he announced grandly that he was leaving my tip under his glass, despite my assurance that tipping is neither required nor expected in NZ.  On collecting the glass, I was shocked to also collect a bright pink NZ$50 bill.  “It’ll help with the rent,” he had said indulgently when he pulled out his wallet.  Partly, this was fantastic.  It would indeed help with the rent, and the upcoming inspection for my car.  But a curious twist of distaste settled in the back of my throat, and I lay awake that night wondering whether or how to give it back, before deciding that doing so would likely offend him.  His intentions were good, kind, and helpful, but I wonder whom he was thinking of, me, or him, when he selected the lavish pink note instead of the green ($20) or the blue ($10).  It’s a queer sort of feeling to be on the receiving end of that kind of giving.  Guests from other countries, though less likely to leave tips, are equally intrigued by my accent and the story of how I came to be working here, in Lake Tekapo.  My favorite thing in these encounters with Kiwis, Aussies, Europeans and others is the Accent Guessing Game.  Some are spot on – “American?”  More often - ”Canada?”  Once I served a couple who were convinced that I was a Kiwi, and on another night I couldn’t contain my disbelief when a couple from Oz (Australia) said I talked like a Texan, but the best, and most unexpected is, “Irish?”  This is the guess I hear at least once a night, making it the most common response, and one that gives me no end of pleasure.  Irish?  Reckon this means I can stop worrying about feeling as if I’m wearing a huge sign that says “GW-Loving American” on it.

The real excitement, and the thing that’s made Tekapo feel more like home, has been moving out of the cold, dirty staff quarters and into a bright and cozy flat with Anja.  We live in a three bedroom holiday house (like a seasonal condo at a ski area up north in NH), a ten minute walk from the hotel, with three rooms downstairs and an open concept second story with the kitchen, bathroom, and living room.  It’s clean, it’s warm, and it’s all ours.  It’s my first real apartment!  The best part of it, though is the sundeck and the glass sliding doors that keep the lounge filled with heat and light nearly all day.  The view from the deck is what I love the most.  To the west, a wicked (if a bit distant) view of the Southern Alps.  To the very near east, the mountains of Burke’s Pass.  The alps are usually snow-covered, and as the best spot in the house to see them is the upstairs toilet, I often spend a bit longer than necessary sitting on the pot in the mornings, just staring out the window.  The mountains to the east are like the edge of a large, rocky bowl separating Tekapo from Fairlie and all points east.  What fascinates me about them, though, is the way they hold the clouds.  These thick, white, fog-like clouds condense and collect on the other side of the pass, filling up the earthen bowl until they begin to overflow and spill into the Tekapo valley like a waterfall or the wraith-like tendrils of liquid nitrogen.  On my mornings off, I spend hours curled into the couch in front of the large sliding door with my cup of tea, reading and watching the clouds spill over the pass.  It is, I’ve learned, immensely satisfying to live in a place this beautiful for a long enough period of time to begin to know the landscape and the weather patterns, to be able to recognize landmarks, little valleys and hills and mountains, to wake on sunny mornings and be able to accurately guess whether it’s snowed in the peaks at the end of the lake during the night.

In my spare time, I read.  I hike, a little, when a recently pulled muscle in my leg isn’t holding me back.  I’ve visited Mt. Cook (the tallest peak in NZ) twice, once with Anja and once on my own to do a steep but rewarding hike to the Mueller Hut.  The last hour or two was spent in the clouds, canceling any opportunities to see Mt. Cook from somewhere other than ground level; I could only hear the ice calving off the sides of the mountain in front of me rather than see it, but this was still a new and terribly humbling sensation: hearing and feeling something moving near you like a roll of thunder or the sound of an eighteen-wheeler moving at full speed, but not being able to see where it’s coming from.  We’ve had a few days of Indian summer (apparently not unique to New England), where I’ve lain outside to soak up the heat against the cold of the nights.  Went biking along the edge of the lake with Anja, and even attended a Catholic mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd (do a Google Image search) – perhaps the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had in a proper religious setting.  Every other night after work I usually stroll across the driveway to Moni’s flat.  We share a love for Bombay Sapphire and can usually find something to argue about over a couple of drinks.  Other nights I drink tea or hot chocolate with Anja in the cozy warmth of our kitchen/lounge and munch on whatever dessert we’ve managed to snag from the buffet (creme caramels, ice cream, fruit salad) or found left behind in one of the hotel rooms (fruit, milk, cheese, the occasional half a bottle of wine).

For the last few days, I’ve been catching up with old friends – Anne and Kathrin!  They are, sadly, less than five weeks away from their return flight to Germany, and have begun making their way north to Auckland once more.  Stopping over in Tekapo for several nights, they were a more or less permanent fixture at my and Anja’s place, baking bread, hanging laundry to dry across our bedroom, telling stories and reminiscing with me over our last five (five!) months in NZ.  I had this past Tuesday off, and we celebrated with a fantastic luncheon; Stephen came over to cook us a long-promised meal (spinach and mushroom risotto with greek salad), and the Germans and I tackled dessert: homemade ice cream.  Though the recipe was entitled “Easy Ice Cream,” we soon learned that “easy” is only the correct adjective when the ice cream is prepared in a kitchen equipped with an electric or at least manual blender.  Though, we also learned that it is, in fact, possible to whip cream and meringue egg whites with only a whisk and a couple of forks.  All it takes is determination, the correct stance, and people to relieve you when  your arm feels like it’s going to fall off  And about sixty minutes.  This, we decided, was a dessert that we earned.  Apple, cookie, and mango ice cream, hand whipped, hand mixed, and all-natural.  Mm mm mm.  I need never buy ice cream again!  I haven’t slept much this week, between early shifts and wanting to catch up with A and K, and this weekend looks to be equally jam-packed (going south to Queenstown with Moni for a day and a half), but it’s been a good one.  It is very strange to think that I was with these two girls the beginning, when we had no idea about NZ, where we’d go or what experiences we’d have.  Departure, then, was a distant and impossible event – and yet here we are, saying goodbye to each other with hugs, sad faces, and words of encouragement and friendship, after what surely couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.  Am I that close to being home myself?  Better not blink…