Departures: New Zealand 2004: Abel Tasman National Park

On this trip, I was a tourist, and Participated in Planned Activities. One of these turned out to be my favorite thing in New Zealand: kayak and hike in Abel Tasman National Park with Abel Tasman Wilson's Experiences, a guide and lodge company.

This turned out a lot swankier than I expected. It won't win me any rough-traveler credibility to tell you about it. Yeah, if I was really hard-core, I would have booked lodging at little lodges and humped a full backpack from lodge to lodge each night, arranging for water taxis to bring me to out-of-the-way spots. But I'm not that hard-core, and this turned out well for something I could set up from far-off California.

Fri Dec 3 2004

The road from Nelson to Motueka passed through sprawl and apple orchards and vinyards. The van from Nelson to Motueka held me, Colin, and Sylvia. Colin and Sylvia were a couple. They claimed to be from Somerset, and from the way they said it, I figured out that Somerset was probably in England.

I'm not sure how to describe Colin and Sylvia. They enjoyed just about everything, so it's tempting to define their personalities by the borders--the things they didn't like. But that would distract from what amazed and pleased me about them--they liked just about everything. Sylvia was not so healthy, but was doing a lot of walking to get stronger. Sylvia called things "lovely." Colin walked along beside Sylvia, clucking encouragement at her, making jokes which he'd obviously made before, savoring them. The tour was actually two parallel simultaneous tours: Colin and Sylvia would spend the next five days on land; sometimes I would hike with them, but for two days, I would kayak while they hiked.

We arrived at the Motueka headquarters of the Wilson's Experiences tour company. In the headquarters, there were various officely types running around, shuffling papers, answering telephones. Some teenybopper was standing around in the waiting area for no good reason.

Then the teenybopper straightened up and a look of competence settled upon her features. She was no longer a teenybopper, and it was not clear how I ever could have mistaken her for such. As it turned out, this was Sally Rogers, our guide. She introduced hershelf and started checking with the tourists to make sure we were properly prepared. She seemed like just the sort of person who could keep an incompetent kayaker (such as myself) alive. And that's what she turned out to be.

We got back in the van for the drive to Kaiteriteri. There, we caught a boat.

Boat Ride

Kaiteriteri is at the Southern end of Abel Tasman national park. Abel Tasman has a beautiful stretch of coastline, and there are a few ways to enjoy that coastline. You can hike it, kayak it, sail it, or take a boat tour. Sailing is dicey--there aren't any well-protected harbors in the park. There is a so-so protected harbor. Hiking is pretty in its own right, but often takes you a ways from the coast. Kayaking involves effort and time.

So many people enjoy the boat tour. Our intrepid band hitched a ride north to Totaranui on a big boat. There were rock formations to look at, pretty little islands, fresh air.

There were also plenty of outdoorsy tourists. When they found out that I was enjoying this boat trip, that a ferry ride across Japan's inland sea was one of my favorite experiences ever, they recommended the Alaska inland passage ferry. Multiple independent people recommended that Alaska inland passage passage ferry. There were cruise ships that went the same route, but I was told that one met a better class of people on the ferry. So I added that to my lifetime to-do list.

The coast was amazing. I was used to the arid California coast. The growth close to the shore tends towards the small, sparse, and dusty-looking. The coast at Abel Tasman was green, spilling over with green trees and giant ferns.

A ways behind us, I spotted... a Risso's dolphin? During that whale-watching jaunt in Monterey, I'd gotten better at spotting marine mamnmals, but was still pretty shaky on identifying them. The critter did not approach.

At Totaranui, the ferry dropped off Sally, Colin, Sylvia and me. The boat headed back south, but we would head back to Kaiteriteri under our own power. Uhm, except that the motor boat ferried our luggage around. Oh, and to say that I was kayaking "under my own power" is misleading... but more about that later.

Aside: New Zealand Nature Worth Knowing

Over a picnic lunch, we learned that Sally Rogers had spent a lot of time in the park. As a child, her school class had gone on a camping trip to Abel Tasman; she had not enjoyed this. Her mum reminds her: Sally had said "I'm never going back." But she had been back, and had grown to like the place, and now worked there, guiding hapless tourists.

She started telling us about the natural features of the place--the local plants and animals. Fortunately, she was a tour guide, not a nature book. Thus, she only told us about the interesting bits. As she talked, we finished our lunches, sat a bit, then picked up our packs and started heading South. As we walked along, she pointed out some of the notable plants.

We seemed to be walking through a forest, and we were. Except that many (most?) of the "trees" in this forest were not really trees, but giant ferns.

Silver ferns had bright green fronds, so green that they made the trees back home seem drab by comparison. (And you couldn't help comparing them to trees. You wouldn't think to compare them to ferns of, you know, regular size.) The silver fern is the symbol of New Zealand. No, really. If you're blazing a trail through the woods, you don't need to chop tree trunks--instead, fold over a silver fern frond. The frond's underside is silverer whiter than the green top, so a folded frond stands out. Silver ferns grow up to about 10m.

The other main big fern is the Black Tree Fern. The trunk and curled-up fronds look dark, as you might guess from the name. But when the fronds open up, they are bright green. The fern forests of New Zealand are vivid and verdant. The fronds of the black tree fern feel tough, like plastic.

There are plenty of regular-size ferns around--kidney ferns, houndstooth ferns, and more and more.

Tea trees have spindly trunks, needles, and pretty little flowers. If I spent more time in body-oil boutiques, I would have known plenty about "tea tree oil"--these trees are where it comes from. Perhaps because their trunks were skinny, those trunks were often gracefully curved--a stand of tea trees looked like something half natural/half geometric which Escher might use as a bit of decoration in one of his works.

I had seen pohutukawa trees (New Zealand Christmas trees) before, with their red bottle-brushes. It's pretty dramatic to see a stand of these trees poking through some fog.

The rata vine grows all over the trees. It's an epiphyte, growing in little bits of dirt that gather in elbows and crotches of trees. It has red flowers, like bottle brushes. Not to be confused with the NZ Xmas tree red bottle-brushes. Though I suppose I probably did confuse them.

Several trees had black trunks. If you looked closely at the black trunk, you could see white "whiskers" growing out of it. These were scale insects. The scale insects burrowed their heads into the tree trunk. They drank sap. They left their tails poking out of the trunk--these were the "whiskers." They pooped sugary water. It tastes OK. Yes, I went out of my way to eat insect poop. Get over it. Anyhow, most of this sweet sticky insect poop is not eaten by tourists, but instead drips down the outside of the tree trunk. Then moss grows on the sweet, nutritious poop. The moss is black--voila, the trunk is black.

The local palm tree is the nikau, which means "no nuts". Its name may point out the disappointment of the pioneer maori first settling New Zealand.

What is the cycle of forest formation in New Zealand?

• If there is a clear patch of ground, the first thing that grows up is gorse, and bracken. Gorse is an unfortunate import. Gorse is a thorny hedge. After you have stepped barefoot onto a thorny bit of gorse, you may start calling it "$&#*ing gorse". I know I did. Bracken has a starchy root, a favored food of pigs, another unfortunate import. Pigs leave a swath of destruction in their wake, wide game trails that turn into creeks. You learn to spot "pig erosion" in the woods.
• Gorse and bracken give way to tea trees and -~^~^-. (I have terrible handwriting) If you're a tea tree farmer, you might get some clear ground and plant tea trees, but that often doesn't work. You might do better to get some gorsey ground, despite gorse's unpleasantness, and wait for it to turn into tea trees.
• Then the full-on forest: big ferns, big trees, etc.

The hooded orchid traps insects and digests them, poop and all.

Oystercatchers are very territorial birds. If you walk towards one, and hear it call, do not say "oh how cute" and keep walking in the same way. It will fly up and peck you on the head. Give the oystercatcher all the space it wants.

The plant known as "bushman's friend" earned that name because it has large, soft leaves which function well as toilet paper. However, beware: there is a similar plant which has little thorns on the stem. It's easy to overlook the thorns if you don't look closely, but you'll notice them later.

Ice plant has made it to New Zealand. Lupines abound, but they are not from around.

I asked Sally about the pine forests I'd walked through in the Maitai Valley around Nelson. Those pine tree species were all imported by forestry companies. The only tree good for lumber in New Zealand took too long to grow. I was surprised that these forests were all artificial--I hadn't noticed any clear-cutting on the flight in. Sally assured me that there was plenty of clearcut. And a few days later, when I flew out of Nelson, I would see that she was right. But let's not skip around in the timeline too much. Let's get back to Abel Tasman national park.

New Zealand flax is gorgeous. The Maori used its leaves for fiber to make clothes. You hear about "grass skirts"--in New Zealand, the local grass skirts are made out of this flax. I'd seen this stuff growing in California as a decorative plant. Now I finally found out where it came from.

Fri Dec 3 2004 continued: Awaroa Bay

We hiked to Awaroa Bay. You can't hike across Awaroa Bay when the tide is in. The tide was in, and there were a couple of hikers sitting around, waiting for it to go out. As pampered tourists, we did not need to wait--Sally got out her radio and called to the Meadowbank Homestead, the lodge where we would stay the night. She asked for a boat and soon John showed up, piloting a boat. The hikers were no longer around--too bad, we could have given them a ride.

Who's "John", you ask? Dale and John ran the Meadowbank Homestead. They were our host and hostess, cook, gardener, straighter-upper, friendly face.

What's the "Meadowbank Homestead", you ask? The Meadowbank Homestead was a trampers' lodge, but that suggests something spare, scraped, and plain. Really, this place was a swank bed-and-breakfast that happened to be in a beautiful spot in a national park. It was decorated with antiques; there were mementoes of the family which had historically farmed the area. I was not used to this level of fancitude. I told Colin and Sylvia: "If my friends ask, we slept under the trees in tents, OK?"

After getting settled, I went out to explore. Awaroa, depending on who you ask, means "two rivers" or "long river". Most people think it means "long river". Two rivers flow into Awaroa Bay, and at least one of those rivers looks pretty long on the map, so I can offer no resolution of this ambiguity. But I did do some wading in a high-tide flooded estuary, and watched the flow of a fresh water channel through salt water. I walked on golden-colored sand, and picked up orange-brown pebbles which would eventually become more golden-colored sand. I steered around some oyster catchers.

Dinner was great. Colin ordered a bottle of wine, and shared it with our hosts. It occured to me that Colin was a pretty classy guy. When Sally said "estuary", she said "ay-stew-erry", not "eschew-wary". My brain could just barely understand her accent. It would be a while before New Zealanders would make sense to me. Maybe that's part of the reason I was so glad for Colin and Sylvia's company--their accents was easier to penetrate.

I woke up in the middle of the night, on purpose. I stepped out the door of the Homestead, and looked up at a sky full of unfamiliar stars.

Sat Dec 4 2004

This was a relaxing day of puttering around Awaroa Bay.

We headed over to the Awaroa Lodge. This was a luxury hotel out in the middle of nowhere. If you were a tired hiker, this place must have seemed like heaven--swank accomodations, ice cream sundaes, fixtures Designed by Artists, a patio... Celebrities and rock stars would occasionally fly out. I couldn't help but think "But what is this place doing here rather than in some more accessible spot?" I didn't even buy anything while I was there--what little cash I'd brought with me was still back at the Meadowbank. Why hadn't I thought to bring cash with me on this "little jaunt to drink coffee over at the neighbors'"?

We did a little kayaking to visit an old steam-engine. Sylvia started to feel sea-sick, so we didn't go farther than that.

Colin and I went for a stroll along the beach. Colin was an engineer. He talked about the difficulties the USA had had with their helicopters, trying to adapt them for the desert war in Iraq in the 90s. Sand had clogged up the filters--I'd heard about that. What I hadn't known is that the people who'd built the original filters were all in their 80s by this time. No-one else remembered how to make the filters. Colin had talked to some of these "tin-bashers", found out how to make and repair the filters, and then educated some younger engineers so that the USA could keep their helicopters in the air. Colin had worked on other things--on tintanium pins for artificial legs.

I watched giant ferns blow in the wind. Trunks were stiffer than stipes; stipes were stiffer than fronds. In the wind, different parts of the tree bent at different rates. I think I could watch a stand of fern trees blow in the wind all day; as it was, I think I watched it for half an hour.

Back at the Homestead, I helped trim the Christmas tree. There was an angel to put on top, made out of heat insulation. As the tall guy, it was up to me to place the angel. "Careful, that might be asbestos." I held my breath. There were Christmas tree lights. I was accustomed to lights arranged in series--but this was a rectangular mesh with lights at the vertices. Some of the lights would not turn on. On a serial strand, I knew how to find the bad bulbs. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to do this on the mesh. No-one knew how. Colin tried, too. Two trained engineers couldn't get those lights working. Oh brave new world that has such mysteries in it.

Sun Dec 5 2004

We hiked south to Onetahuti beach. There we sat and soaked up the sunshine. Sally made hot tea. While the tourists were carrying light daypacks, Sally carried a heavy pack. Why was it heavy? Because she was carrying a camping stove. Why carry a camping stove on a day hike? So that everyone could have hot tea. This made no sense. I am glad that the British Empire spread the English language around the globe, but some of the lingering habits are totally insane. It was too hot on the beach. No, really, it was too hot. Yet here were these insane people drinking hot tea. I watched Colin and Sylvia drink hot tea and wondered why they weren't collapsing. And this was of course totally normal--Sally was carrying that camping stove because people expected hot tea on their hike.

Water taxis dropped off hikers. Water taxis picked up hikers. The Explorer (the big boat which had ferried us up to the start of our trek) dropped off Lucy Hodgson, our hiking guide. You will recall that there were just three tourists on this trek: Colin, Sylvia, and I. Colin and Sylvia were going to hike south from Onetahuti to Torrent Bay, but I would be kayaking. Thus, we needed two guides. Sally Rogers would prevent me from drowning. Lucy would hike along with Colin and Sylvia. I suppose that Lucy was carrying a camping stove to make Colin and Sylvia their afternoon tea, and I suppose that it's very un-British of me to give that a thought. I would not see much of Lucy Hodgson over the days to come. However, I suspect that she would be a good person to have on your side for a puzzle hunt game--she solved crossword puzzles and was in great shape.

Assisted Kayaking

When I'd booked this tour, I thought of kayaking as something unpleasant that would improve me. I am not a skilled kayaker. Kayaking the distance called for in this tour would exhaust me, would frustrate me. I would lose ground as I snaketailed my way obliquely towards some goal, wastefully splashing my paddle, cursing my weak arms.

But I was the only paying kayaker on this trip. If there is an odd number number of kayaker tourists, the weakest of them shares a double kayak with the guide. As the only kayaker on the trip, I happily admitted to being the weakest.

Net result, I shared a kayak with Sally Rogers and it was wonderful. Sally steered, and thus our course was straight, not snakey. Sally did most of the paddling--when we started out, I was paddling to keep up with our movement rate. Then my arms got tired and I didn't paddle so hard--and yet we kept moving at the same rate. This did nothing to force me to improve my kayaking skills.

Except now I understood the joy of being a skilled kayaker. You could point the kayak at something interesting and paddle over to look at it--paddle without getting distracted about how tired you were.

I roll my eyes when I hear about rich folks who hire guides to push them up the sides of Everest. And yet I cannot deny that it was glorious to be in that kayak moving so effortlessly across the water. Except that it didn't happen "effortlessly" of course. It just wasn't my effort.

We paddled past the Tonga Island seal colony. Sally told me something impressive about the local seals: they would climb the steep sides of the local island shore to get up above the treeline before birthing their pups. That didn't happen while I watched, though. I wasn't so interested in the seals--I'd seen plenty of them a couple of weeks before while in Monterey.

A storm blew in. There was rain. There were waves. Somehow, none of this led to me panicking and falling in the water. And by "somehow", I mean "Sally kept the kayak and me under control".

If any mosquitoes had approached us at Mosquito Bay, the rain would have wiped them out. We stopped at Mosquito Bay and ate lunch while the rain poured down. Rain dripped off of the visor of my disreputable blue cap and into my gourmet greek salad. Sally said that this picnic spot was favored by kayakers because it was only reachable from the water. Perhaps because it was pouring, the idea of lingering in a hiker-free area didn't appeal.

Sally wisely asked me if I wanted tea before she went to the trouble of unpacking the camp stove. I said no thanks, but she should make some for herself if so inclined. She was not so inclined. I'm not sure how one gets a campstove started in the middle of a rainstorm. Probably Sally knew. Thus I squandered a chance to learn.

Soon we were back out on the water.

It stopped raining by the time we reached the Falls River inlet. It was close to high tide, and thus we could paddle right in to the Falls River inlet. This was my favorite part of the trip. It had been raining; now it was not raining. Out in the bay, it was windy; in the inlet, it was still. It was lush and green. I've already said that the sea coast was spilling over with trees and ferns, haven't I? It's too bad that I already used that phrase, because now I don't know what to say about the Falls River inlet. Its sides were spilling over with trees and ferns... moreso!

Eventually we made our way back out into the wind and waves and paddled to our destination for the day: Torrent Bay. There, at the Torrent Bay Lodge, there were more Wilson's Experiences guides. With their help, we got the kayak up the steep rise to the lodge without even unloading it.

Another spoilicious thing about traveling with a professional kayak guide: Sally cleaned off the kayak and wouldn't let me help. I'd like to say that I was disappointed to spend the next couple of whiles sitting around and watching the sun glint off the water, but really I was happy to be lazy.

I did eventually hoist myself up and set off on a little hike, heading north, hoping to reach Falls River and be back in time for dinner. I wasn't fast enough, and had to turn back. I did see that this was a pretty hike...

Mon Dec 6 2004

...so the next morning I woke up at 5:00 to make another try at that hike. By 5:20 I was out the door, and a few minutes later I was at the edge of the woods. How long does it take a city boy to nerve himself up to walk into the dark pre-sunrise woods? About two minutes, and then he goes in quietly mantrafying "Probably no monsters today." The water was tinged rusty, reflecting the dawn-orange sky. Insects and birds buzzed. Eventually the world got brighter and I took advantage of the visiblity: I started jog-walking. I had to be back at the lodge in time for breakfast, and I wasn't going to miss the Falls River again.

Nor did I miss it. That's how I got photos of the Falls River inlet. You think I was crazy enough to fumble with my camera while I was sitting in that kayak? No way.

Over the course of that jog/walk, I picked up three discarded candy wrappers. We were closer to the park entrance now, closer to the realm of day-hikers and litterbugs. I was not happy to see those candy wrappers.

Back at the lodge, it was time for breakfast. Then it was time for a mini-hike around Torrent Bay and Pitt Head. We clambered up to Cleopatra's Pool, where a creek flows over a flat stretch of rock forming a water slide. The hardy guides went sliding, and encouraged the wimpy tourists to join in. I put a toe in the water. H((^ f&#**^% s^*% that was cold--I looked over at Colin and Sylvia and decided not to say "H((^ f&#**^% s^*% that's cold!" and just gasped and demurred. Colin and Sylvia weren't up for watersliding either. Perhaps they'd interpreted my gasp as the early stages of hypothermia instead of the restraint of potential cussing.

After Sally and Lucy were dry, we headed out for more hiking. We were moving through a popular area, so I wasn't so surprised when I saw a big paper wrapper on the ground next to the trail. Jeez, more litterbugs? I picked it up. It was strangely wet--I looked at it more closely. This was no food wrapper. This was marked with a skull and cross-bones. It was poison put out to kill some non-native critters that were chewing up the trees. It occurred to me that my hand was probably now dripping with poison. I put the wrapper back down, made my way to a river bank, rinsed my hand, scoured it in sand. I'd be more careful before picking up any more wrappers in New Zealand.

We made our way down to the beach by Torrent Bay, theoretically a nice place to sit and relax in the sun. It was plenty sunny; it was plenty hot. This was the cue for the children of Empire to unpack cookstoves and prepare hot tea. I didn't last a minute in the sun; I fled to a shady spot under a tree. I watched them drink steaming hot beverages; I thought about air conditioning.

After a while, we headed back to the lodge. Back at the lodge, it was cool. Back at the lodge, I perked up. The others had somehow forced themselves to eat under that hot sun. Back at the lodge, it was cool enough such that I could eat my lunch. I was such a delicate flower.

Upper Falls River

After a rest at the lodge, the plan was to go on a hike up to the falls that give the Falls River its name. This would be a short but steep hike. Sylvia decided to sit this one out. Lucy also decided to sit this one out--so that Caroline, the lodge's caretaker could go outside for a while. Caroline was running the lodge all by herself, and always had to be close to the radio in case someone called. She'd been in the middle of one of the world's great parks, and had hardly been outside. Caroline was coming with us.

Caroline was coming with us and was going to do most of the hike in her bare feet. This shocked me. I came from a background of California yuppie outdoorsmanship. The whole point of going outside was to buy gear, wasn't it? To go hiking, one was supposed to wear hiking boots carefully chosen to match the user's hiking style and the upcoming hike's terrain. This was the most foreign concept I'd encountered in New Zealand. So I took off my shoes.

This was soft terrain; walking barefoot was fine. I noticed variations in the ground more than I otherwise would have, sort of like walking through Mountain View before dawn. But now instead of hearing differences, I felt them. There was soft shifting sand, crunchy sand, flexy leaves, spiny leaves, roots, very small rocks, cold mud, warm mud. Close to the top, we reached more rocks. I put on my Californian hiking sandals and Caroline put on her house slippers.

At the waterfalls, there are eels. It is of course wrong for humans to gratuitously make wild animals depend on them. I would never, ever tell you that the eels at the top of this waterfall will swim to you if they hear you bang rocks together underwater. I would never tell you that these eels love bacon. I have no idea what's going on in those photos.

Back at the lodge, I washed off my feet with a stiff brush usually reserved for sandal-cleaning. I'd learned about a new way to hike. I tried to think of hikes close to home that never hit rocky terrain. I was coming up blank. When would I get a chance to use this new-found technique?

At dinner, there were no takers for Colin's offered wine. Lucy had a friend who was dying of cancer. Trying to prolong his life, he was following his doctor's advice: he'd stopped eating meat, stopped drinking alcohol. Lucy wasn't turning into a teetotaller vegetarian... but maybe she was going halfway there. Colin and Sylvia looked in astonishment at this table full of people drinking water and eating stacks of vegetables. "It seems you have fallen in among hippies and freaks, sir," I commiserated; Colin shrugged.

We played a game called "Speed Scrabble", but it wasn't what you might think; that is, it was not like speed chess. Lucy was rather good at this game. (I found these speed scrabble rules if you'd like to give it a try.) Lucy had been surfing around San Francisco. A lot of the surfing around San Francisco is tough. I suspect that Lucy was pretty tough.

Caroline was a world traveler. She told me the places she'd visited, but there were so many of them that cataloging them all would miss the point. The point was: she had been to many places. What was her favorite place in all the world? Well, this lodge is where she'd spent the most time. That was a few months. Had she always been a traveler? No--she'd started out working in IT. Huh. How about that.

I hurriedly added Caroline to my list of role models.

Tue Dec 7 2004

A snippet from my notes for the morning of this day:

Last day. Nerving myself up for longest day of kayaking. I'm so puny. I'm glad for the lodges. After paddling for a couple of hours, I would be in no shape to set up camp. Or to cook. (Of course Sally, after doing most of the paddling, helps out in the kitchen and waitresses and cleans the kayak and who knows what all else.)

I would paddle a lot on this day.

For breakfast we had blueberry pancakes. I don't know why we didn't have bacon. We certainly hadn't given all of the becon to the eels in violation of the nature-visiting non-interference prime directive. I don't know why we just had pancakes. They were good, though.

Sally and I paddled out of Torrent Bay and around Pitt Head. Once again, I experienced the joy of being in a kayak paddled by a skilled guide. The kayak steered swiftly towards interesting sites, regardless of my weak strokes, regardless of whether I'd even realized there was an interesting site to steer towards.

We stopped off at Observation Beach for a stretch on land. Thus, I was able to read an interpretive text sign about D'Urville, a French explorer. Sally gave me a leaf from a tree called kawa-kawa and told me to chew it. As I chewed, she told me it was a medicine. Uh-oh. "Not like kava, I hope?" I'd read traveler's tales about kava, unpleasant tales of numbness, drooling, giggling, and vomiting. The plants were related, but Sally assured me that one kawa-kawa leaf would not knock me out. She was right, of course.

Sally revealed a tour idea she'd had when she'd seen my surprise at the idea of a barefoot hike. Her idea: the native walk. For the first couple of days, the tourists would sit around making clothes out of flax. Then they would wear the flax and hike barefoot. If their feet hurt, they could chew kawa-kawa. This idea needed some development before it would be viable.

We paddled the "Mad Mile", a stretch of water which is often rough and goes past some scary looking rocks. It was calm when we were there, though. Still, if I need to impress someone I guess I can tell them that I paddled the Mad Mile. That sounds good, doesn't it? I don't have to tell them that Sally did most of the work, do I? Anyhow.

We stopped for lunch at Stillwell Bay. Colin, Sylvia, and Lucy had been hiking, and they caught up with us there. Stillwell Bay featured another hot sunny beach. Cool shady trees beckoned, but I forced myself to stay out in the sun and be sociable, if I can call heatstricken smiling and nodding "sociable".

We paddled to Astrolabe Roadstead, so named because the explorer D'Urville had anchored his ship the Astrolabe here. (To me, "roadstead" was an unfamiliar word. It means something like "anchorage". You might think that the "road" in "roadstead" refers to an anchor, and should thus it should be spelled "rodestead". You'd be wrong, though.)

(The more I heard about D'Urville, the better I liked him. He had charted the area and done a great job--when more high-tech surveyors came through many decades later, they only had to correct D'Urville's observations by a meter here and there. Eventually I read a translation of his exploration memoirs--fairly standard tales of dodging disease and making nice with natives.)

After that, Sally and I paddled off again. Sally pointed out Adele island, which D'Urville had named after his wife. The island, Sally pointed out, looked sort of like a woman sleeping on her side. I wasn't so sure about that. Sally pointed out that the Adele penguin was named after the same woman, so perhaps the island was aptly named and the historical Adele had been of a twombly mien. Or perhaps lonely sailors have overactive imaginations.

We saw some dead cormorants, hanging by their necks from trees. Apparently cormorants, while graceful swimmers, are not so good at flying. Sometimes their long necks get caught in the forkings of branches, and the bird can't get loose. We went past a few of these, a spooky sight.

And then we were at Kaiteriteri, pulling the kayak up out of the water. The trek was done, we had nothing to do but sit on the beach, watching the tourists and waves while waiting for the van to bring Colin and Sylvia from the end of their hike at Marahau.

I asked Sally Rogers if she was a guide all year. She wasn't--there was no business during the winter. Then, she found odd jobs. She'd been a nanny a few times. I thought about how many plants she'd taught me about over the last few days. She was probably a good nanny; she probably had enough energy to keep up with active kids; I reflected on this while resisting the urge to collapse into exhaustion.

I fell asleep on that van ride. I woke up in a vehicle on the wrong side of the road. But of course, it was on the right side of the road; but in that instant, my consciousness was on the wrong side of the world.

Back at the Trafalgar Lodge, I slept and dreamt that I was leaning back in a bobbing kayak.

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