#51
The sign read “I’ve got a car, looking for people to share fuel costs. Headed south”.
I wrote an email to the address attached to the flyer and met the owner and another girl who had already agreed to come along on the trip. It was early fall in downtown Christchurch and we met at a cafe where we all had bowls of coffee.
“I want to end up in Wanaka”, he told us, “but I don’t really care how long it takes to get there or what route we take.”
We were in agreement, and decided to leave in two days time from the same cafe.
When we met up again, the sky was steel grey and there was a sharp wind. I had packed a small backpack with my things, along with my camera and all the film I had left. The rest remained at the house of the friend of a friend, where I had been crashing on a sofa for far too long. We took off — direction, south.
In New Zealand, once you get far enough from the towns, radio stations are few and far between. We had conversations. The owner of the car was from Israel and didn’t want to go home. The other passenger, a girl from Virginia, seemed to be nearing the end of what was a long journey through the Pacific. I was on a trip from Sydney for about a month, using up what little savings I had in a country that I had fallen hard for.
Halfway through the trip, we parked along a dirt road in the middle of a sheep paddock, jumped a wooden fence and walked against the wind, dodging sheep poop to Slope Point, the southern most spot in New Zealand. The wind blew so hard, the open ocean was furious, the waves enormous, and the lack of people fantastic. The sheep were calm and docile.
I took some photos and we stood in silence at the end of the earth realizing that it might be the only time any of us ever get this far, but I knew it was just one instance of many to come for me.
Back in the car, the heat on, we filled plastic cups with tea we’d made that morning in the hostel. As we drove on, towards the early evening light cresting over the green and rocky hills, Wanaka was still a few days in the distance.