#047: Lackadaisical

Back to the matter at hand: me moving around New Zealand.
I've come over all lackadaisical. For some reason, up to now, this trip once (and a bit more) around the world has felt like it holds some purpose. Like I am doing it for a reason. Like I am in pursuit of something. Straining.
Yes, I am visiting places that I set out to visit and am loving doing so. But in New Zealand I've dropped a gear or two and am quite content to merely amble around the countryside, travelling a short distance every day or two, taking life at an incredibly slow pace. Which is kind of ace. No need to chalk up another 300 miles on any one day. The antithesis of hard work.

I headed to Napier next, a town on the east coast of the north island with a long stoney beach on the doorstep of the hostel there. Before the waves I was met by an incessant sun and, with relish, set about the task of trialling the malaria pills I had been prescribed. These daily tablets may intensify my susceptibility to sunlight and this thinned-ozone region of the world is as good a place as any to test just how much I fry under their influence.
A night in Wellington came next, a short stopover ahead of the sail across Cook Strait to the south island.
The final hour of the crossing sees the ferry navigate Queen Charlotte Sound, a long fjord created during the last ice age. This northeast corner of the south island is dominated by similar waterways, and I spend the next couple of nights in the small town of Havelock, upon the banks of one of them. The first thing that strikes me about the south island is quite how lush everything is. I know it is the height of summer down here, but the flora looks positively satiated; thick bush jammed with bright greens cover every inch of the hills which punctuate the intersecting waters. It looks almost tropical such is the volume of plant-life and, upon leaving the car to explore on foot, I am met by a crescendo of chirruping and chattering; crickets and their ilk sounding off from every direction.
Next destination is the town of Takaka, in the region known as Golden Bay. I stay at an associate hostel - I guess you could call it a franchise, a privately run hostel affiliated to HI (Hostel International) - run by Allen and Miyuki. The place is buzzing with people, from the dorms in the house to the tents on the lawn to the summer house rooms at the bottom of the garden. The weather has remained gorgeous and, on Miyuki's recommendation, I visit Pupu Springs (reportedly the clearest spring-water on the planet) and Tata beach - a thin strip of sand lining an impressive bay on the edge of Abel Tasman national park: a Saturday afternoon (I think it was a Saturday) in the sunshine watching the gathered locals with their private motor boats and their varying levels of water-skiing competence.
Onwards to a night in Westport as I head south along the west coast. En route I swing past Cape Foulwind with its' resident seal colony. Pups somehow clamber over the boulders at the edge of the sea, defying the crashing waves and their own tiny forms, overachieving paddle-hands.
Another short hop, this one to the town of Greymouth, along another of these so-called "Top 10 drives in the world". The highway sticks close to the shoreline the whole way, passing 'penguin' warning road signs - a first for me for sure. I keep a keen eye out but don't see any on my way, but there is still time - the east coast, which I will reach in a week or so, reputedly houses more. The drive is impressive, but I have indulged this year and SH6 fails to make my own personal top 3 lengths of tarmac from the last four months.
The drive south from Greymouth sees the weather match the river there, thick and damp greys coating the landscape from the seas to the skies. The Southern (Misty) Alps (Mountains) are mysteriously shrouded on my journey to Franz Josef. Looming; dark shapes in the gathered gloom. The call of Gondor would surely have failed had Pippen chosen this day to ignite the beacons.