Making "Her"story

Our trip is winding down. Tara and I are near tears most nights as we realize that this adventure is starting its last chapter...or perhaps even the closing lines. Epilogue please? New Zealand has been a balm for our souls. We spent heaps of time with each other in the car, trying not to fall off any of the treacherous mountain roads. We went through all of our playlists, often picking songs for each other that made us shout with road weary enthusiasm or bring us down to reflective debriefing moments. From Nelson Bay, we drove (stay left, stay left!) to the Abel Tasman Forest area. It was raining and we were quite disappointed since we wanted to put on our hiking boots for once (admittedly we are a bit too posh and had only our stylish city boots to climb in but that wasn't going to deter us). Our plan B was to just drive into the area until some sort of inspiration came along and that's where our next adventure begins...

I was driving along, trying to see between the raindrops, when we turned a bend in the road. Tara pointed dramatically at the ditch and I followed her finger to behold a male backpacker with his thumb stuck high and mighty. He had a goofy grin and seemed so content to be in the drizzly Kiwi weather. In the the matter of ten seconds Tara and I had this conversation...

"Joy. Pull over."
"Tara this is exactly what our dad's told us we should never do."
"Whatever you think."
(long pause)
"I can't believe we're doing this."

I slammed on my breaks and made it over to the non-existent shoulder (there never seems to be those in New Zealand...more sheep traffic than people traffic) about fifteen feet after the backpapcker. Tara and I shove all of our luggage to one side in the backseat. Besides, the quick stop that was the second amazing feat in the last 30 seconds. We soon welcomed Paul from Paris in our little white Toyota Corrolla (fondly named "her"story...because we're making "her"story in it). Paul turned out to have a remarkable story of being born in France, growing up in Boston, and living his adult life in Paris. He fell into fashion photographer assisting and entertianed us with stories of the rich and famous. One of the most vivid tidbits of his stories involved him meeting the main guy from Nine Inch Nails in a bar by happen chance and when Paul asked him how he stayed inspired over the years and so many musician changes in the band, he replied,"Love man. What else is there to make music about." Paul was escaping a series of unfortuante events and needed sometime away. He booked a flight a day before he took off and had been backpacking around New Zealand for about a week before he flashed his goofy grin at us. We found a lovely cafe called the Naked Possum in the middle of the New Zealand wilderness, pulled up to an outside fireplace, ate homemade soup and pies, and finished it off with some flat white coffee. All in all, a very risky decision. But apparantly this time the risk paid off with a beautiful new friend.

From Abel Tasman, we went south to Franz Josef....a very long trip that brought us into some of the most stunning moutain meet shoreline scenery. We found little tourists places along the way, including seal colonies and pancake rocks. We came into Franz Josef at about eight at night and everything had shut down. We could find no place to stay except a motel that had a cabin for way way too much. But we had learned our lesson about sleeping in the car at the "Cork and the Keg" so we gulped down our bitter loss of precious funds and did the only thing we could do.....use all the resources we paid for!!! We used all the blankets, all the pillows, all the towels, all the coffee, all the hot chocolate, all the tea, all the channels of on the TV until three in the morning, all of the hot water, all the time we wanted in the bathroom, and all the heat we could absorb from the cranked heater. Take that Franz Josef. In the morning we did a glacier walk. I would tell you it was a breathtaking two hour walk but all Tara and I did was phase out and talk about men. Don't worry we took heaps of photos once we realized that there was a very large block of ice swooping down toward us.

From Franz Josef we made it to the thrilling mountain city of Queenstown. This is where Tara benevolently agreed to go on a Lord of the Rings tour. We did it the only appropriate way...on horseback! Tara even had a movie star of her horse. Trevor the Brave was used in "Prince Caspian" in the scene where Caspian is running away from the bad guys through a river. Like most movie stars, Trevor was a bit of a dunce. He kept nearly falling but Tara told me one of the nicest things about how she came to roll with the punches. "Joy. When I realized how clumsy Trevor was I stayed calm because I realized through you that clumsiness doesn't mean something bad IS going to happen but rather it NEARLY happens. Everything is ok in the end."

Also in Queenstown we learned that no matter how many Kiwi's are parked on a broken yellow line that does not mean it's ok to park there as well. We had our first criminal offence in New Zealand. Sixty dollars later and we were cleared. There goes a few Starbucks coffees.....

Also, ran into our friend from Noosa Heads, Craig. Once again, we exist in the smallest of worlds.

From Queenstown, we zoomed over to the student riot capital of Dunedin. We arrived late and the hostel lady was absolutely not impressed with us. Our roomies were a little bit more pleased. We stayed up until one in the morning playing the tried and true childhood game winner...Guess Who. Really tore up the town....but we did find our Starbucks before heading on highway 1 to Oamaru, the home of penguins. We saw one...........thus our decision to move on.....

We stopped at a cheese factory. The nice man told us about a small French style village called Akaroa on Banks Peninsula. We had fueled up with plenty of gas to make it there but we didn't count in the fact we'd be climbing the most hair bending turns up into unknown heights (it was pitch black). The fuel light started blinking on and all of the five person towns along the way had dark petroel stations. As we started our descent from the hills, Tara and I were inspired to put the car into neutral and coast to save gas. This was a quite fun activity that made us burst into nerotic stressed out laughter (our food stores also were depleting...stress eating...) until I switched the car from drive to neurtal to reverse (the "you are a hazard" sound came on!!!). Don't worry I switched it so quickly back that "her"story didn't even flinch. Just like Trevor the Brave....NEARLY catastrophe. More stress eating.

From Akaroa we made our final journey home through Lyttleton to Christchurch, where our friends Andrew and Toni picked us up from Jucy Rentals. We are living in the lap of luxury (Internet access, chef prepared dinner, and a warm place to rest our heads). Tomorrow Andrew, the pilot chef, will be taking us for an all day scenic flight over the majestic mountians, sounds, and whale waters. I reckon it will be a very good day.

Saturday we're back to home...Sydney. Then our birth home, the States. And our epilogue begins....