Day 17: The end of our journey
For the last time, we boarded our bus in the morning. This morning was gray and overcast, perhaps reflecting the sorrow that had started to rise up in our throats at the impending end to our journeys together.
We stopped first at what I believe was a water processing plant, though I don't really remember anymore. I neglected my journal these past few days of the Connections tour in the interest of spending time in the company of new friends, and all I remember are experiential snapshots, enhanced by some of my slides.
I remember stopping at Lake Tekapo. Most of us strolled over to the Church of the Good Shepherd, supposedly a trendy wedding setting. The water of Lake Tekapo was a surreal and pale milky blue, by now recognizable as the color of water flush with minerals gathered by moving glaciers.
Living up to its name, the Church was hosting a wedding of an English couple who were taking photos nearby in front of a famous sheep dog statue (1). Unfortunately for the couple, by choosing such a popular tourist destination as the setting for the wedding, they had attracted the attention of a pack of Japanese tourists, all of whom decided suddenly that each of them would like a picture with the bride. Clearly uncomfortable yet too polite to be rude, the bride tried to manage a brave smile while reluctantly accomodating one tourist after another.
And then another drive to some nondescript town where we stopped for lunch. By now it was raining. Ali and I had collected donations from everyone on the bus that morning to grab gifts for Johnny, Ange, and Susan. This town was our last stop before the conclusion of the trip that afternoon in Christchurch, so the two of us spent most of our lunch hour scouring the town for gifts. For Johnny, our first choice was a bottle of Bushmills©. We found a liquor store, but they didn't carry Bushmills. Nor Jameson©! We had to settle for some other whiskey. We grabbed bottles of wine for Susan and Ange, and Ali had previously purchased a necklace for Ange in Queenstown. With just a few minutes left in our lunch hour, Ali and I dashed off to a Subway and made it back to the bus just as it was leaving.
When our bus pulled up in front of the Cathedral Camelot Hotel again, Ali and I took the mic at the front of the bus and thanked Ange and Johnny and Susan for being our gracious hosts. We presented them with their gifts, and then Johnny addressed us one last time as well. With his typical wry Irish humor, he wished those of us who were continuing on in our journeys happy travels, and for those of us returning to the work world, “tough shit.”
With that, we deboarded the bus. About twenty of the group were joining me for the Valentine's Day dinner, and I shook hands with those who weren't. And then we were off. A few people were staying at the Camelot that night, but my travel agent had booked me at another hotel a few blocks away. Corinna walked me over as she was staying at a hostel near my hotel.
Dinner that night was at The Mythai. It was one of the few places that hadn't been booked far in advance for Valentine's Day and which could accomodate a group of twenty. I grabbed the group from the bar in the lobby of the Camelot where we bought Johnny and Ange a few last drinks. We made plans to meet them later that evening at the Holy Grail.
The
Mythai was packed. The restaurant wasn't air-conditioned, and thanks to
body heat from all the customers, the heat from the kitchen, and the spicy
Thai food, dinner was a sweat-inducing affair. We were a loud and lively
bunch, running back and forth along our long side-by-side tables to snap
photos in all the various permutations of camera and people, much to the
dismay of the various couples seated around us, trying to grab a romantic
dinner out.
Afterwards, we had one last dance and drinking party at the Holy Grail, a huge multi-level bar/sports bar/dance club. The joint was packed on every level, the music was loud, and videos were projected on a massic screen on the wall at the back of the bar, above the dance floor on the ground level. The crowd was perhaps too amped up; at one point, while I was dancing with Laura and Corinna, some drunk guy came up, shoved me aside, and did a quick crazy dance in front of Corinna. Before I could react, he grabbed me and pushed me up against her, as if showing me how to dance. His buddies nearby whooped with delight. Asshole.
The evening ended with drinks up on the second level. And then we all headed back to our respective hotels.
Day 18: Farewells
Many of us were staying an extra day in Christchurch, and this time we were on our own. Johnny and Ange were enjoying a well-deserved day off for them before they grabbed another tour group and reversed direction.
Laura,
Corinna, and I grabbed brunch at Dux
de Lux. We strolled through an outdoor crafts fair and on through
city streets to the Canterbury Museum. Inside we ran into Ali, and we
spent an hour or so strolling through the somewhat compact museum. Then
we stepped outside into the Botanic Gardens where we ran into Rachel,
Kerryn, Olav, Kjetil, and Kim. We joined up for a walk through the park.
We smelled the roses, watched a feeding frenzy of ducks along the river,
and stopped to just soak in the sun and each other's company for one last
time. Everyone even acquiesced to pose in some goofy pictures for me,
though I can't say my heart was in it.
Back in town we watched an outdoor chess match played on a giant chess board carved into the town square and grabbed coffee and waffles at a cafe across from Christchurch Cathedral.
And then it was time for Olav and Kjetil (and Laura?) to leave. They were headed off to Australia, and we made plans to meet up in Sydney. They hopped into a cab and whisked off.
I tried to get the few of us left in town into Winnie Bagoes Pizza Bar for dinner, but it was full. We ended up dining at a restaurant along Oxford Terrace. Most of us said our goodbyes later that evening in the darkened lobby of the Cathedral Camelot Hotel. It was awkward, as such partings often are, especially between those of us who were unlikely to ever see each other again. The world which had been so small for us would suddenly become enormous again.
I had a flight to catch early early the next morning. A shuttle would pick me up at 4:30am. I had to pack, and ultimately I decided just to stay up the whole night. Corinna came back with me to keep me company, and we spent our last few hours together sharing personal histories, stories of our families and childhoods and past loves, all the details we'd failed to flush out while dashing all around the north and south islands drinking and dancing and adventuring and living in the present.
Her company helped to keep me awake. Otherwise I would undoubtedly have passed out and perhaps missed my flight. She would head back to Brisbane in another day or so, and I thought she might be able to come down and join the crew in Sydney. But when we parted ways, she confessed that it was unlikely given some problems she had with securing certain classes in school that she'd be able to come down and visit me in Sydney.
And so, in a moment, I realized that this was goodbye, so we hugged, and it was tough, and then she was gone.
I fell asleep one brief moment at about 4:15 in the morning. I awoke as if electrocuted, in a panic, heart pounding, and it took me a good 10 seconds to be able to read my watch and understand that I hadn't overslept. The cab came at 4:30, as promised, a van towing a separate luggage compartment on wheels. As the cab drove me to the airport through darkened city streets, all shadowy shapes, I felt once again like a stranger in a strange land.
Next: The sauna that was Cairns; scuba duba doo
1 The dog's name was, so Ange or Johnny told us, Friday. Way back in the day, an ambitious Scot named James MacKenzie and his dog Friday, who couldn't bark, worked together to steal hundreds of sheep. MacKenzie trained Friday to herd sheep several hundred miles through a mountain pass. MacKenzie himself would hang out at public destinations the whole time, giving himself an alibi, and then later he'd sneak away to meet Friday with the stolen sheep. Eventually MacKenzie was caught, and the legend goes that the dog Friday ran to his side in court, proving their complicity and sealing MacKenzie's guilt.
Bushmills Irish Whiskey: Johnny's favorite. Not as smoky as Scotch whiskies, and smoother because it's triple distilled whereas most Scotch whiskies are twice distilled.
Jameson Irish Whiskey: my favorite whiskey. Also triple distilled.
Dux de Lux: tasty vegetarian/seafood restaurant and brewery in Christchurch.