Akaroa

It's been a few weeks since my last post and there are a couple of reasons for this: abundant school work as well as lack of inspiration and motivation. And although it's Monday and I should be doing homework and working on the essay that's due in a week, I'll take the next hour or so to answer the pleas of my most loyal reader.

Two weekends ago, my friend's flatmate, Hannah, invited us to her parents' home in Akaroa, a town located on the Banks Peninsula south of Christchurch. Once a former French settlement, this small town has a year-round population of a couple hundred and functions mostly as a holiday destination for fishing, dolphin swimming, diving, and boating. We piled into Hannah's station wagon on Saturday morning without any real plans or ideas for the rest of the weekend, only with the anticipation of having a relaxing and comfortable stay in someone's bay-side home.

Again, the drive through serpentine roads made my stomach turn. On Kiwi roads, the landscape is immediate and commanding, and never is it compromised for the benefit of straight, leveled asphalt. It's always difficult here to look straight ahead and ignore the peripheral countryside that sweeps by the car window, so I suffer. Once our wagon crept up and down the rural hills, we arrived at her home at the top of a steep driveway, high above the water.

The Bedfords' home was incredible even at first sight. The incline on which their home was built is such that the main (second) floor can be accessed at the ground level at the back, and by a couple dozen stairs from the front. Their home has a rustic warmth where local native woods of varying caramel hues frame deep brown leather upholstery, and the aromas of freshly made aoli, pesto, and warm wholegrain bread fill the open floor plan. As Hannah went straight for the fridge, Gil and Trev welcomed us to their home on this easy, warm Saturday morning.

Noshing on homemade bread, pesto, and cake, and marveling at their glass walls overlooking a post-card view of the bay, we chatted with Gil and planned our day. We learned that Trev had designed and built the house himself (including the plumbing)--just the first of many amazing facts about this family. While all their hot water is heated by solar power, most of their produce comes from their gardens, which yield salad greens, lemons, grapefruit, tomatoes, corn, and garlic among many other crops. They have hens for eggs, the bay for fish, and neighbors who readily share the excessive yields of their fruit trees. Now I understood Hannah's distaste for the city and weekly retreats home.

Unsure of what to do with our Saturday and content with lazing around their comfy home, we decided to hitch a ride on their 40-something foot sailboat to town (about a 15 minute ride away). Although Hannah joked that giving sail-boat tours would be her dad's retirement job, Trev was a seasoned sailor, having navigated for weeks through the Pacific to Vanuatu in Melanesia, to Tonga and back again to Akaroa. Beneath his quiet demeanor, there was an adventurer, and later that evening, we huddled over his photo albums, listening to his stories of the sea and exotic far-off islands.

Once we disembarked at the one-dock harbor, we strolled into town, passing cafes, fish and chips huts, and tour guides. After browsing several galleries, we sat for a cup of coffee at one of the dozens of cafes in town. After relaxing and chewing the fat in the garden, we drove back home where we read, napped, and listened to Trev's ipod, the contents of which ranged from reggae- and jazz-inflected Kiwi jams to Cat Power and Norah Jones.

Following a rousing game of Headbandz, we had a family dinner of fresh flounder that Trev had caught the day before, accompanied by salads from the garden. It was the last long day of the year (we were to turn the clock back for winter time that night), so we lingered on the deck overlooking the bay, talking long after our last servings of chips and courgette croquets. After tea and biscuits, we walked on the beach, and after attempting a fire with some driftwood, returned home to enjoy the extra long night of sleep.

Sunday morning, after a bowl of homemade toasted muesli, we packed up the car, and planned our trip home. We decided to stop by a haphazardly arranged and rather bizarre museum at Okain's Bay. While we checked out the colonial and Maori collections documenting the history of the peninsula, the weather turned suddenly: blue skies became gray, rain followed, then hail. By the end of our visit, the skies were blue again. I have yet to get used to the erratic and extreme weather patterns here.

Following the museum, we visited the most important destination on our journey: Barry's Bay cheese factory. After buying three different kinds of cheeses--a rinded aged cheddar, aged maasdam, and a port wine--we headed back to Christchurch. I was sad to leave the quiet, scenic, and sleepy town of Akaroa and Gil and Trev's incredible home. While Christchurch is hardly a booming metropolis, it's traffic, noise, and flat, sprawling suburbs were an unwelcome sight.

Next week begins our three week long Easter break, during which I'm going hiking in Fiordland, touring the west coast, and then traveling to Sydney for a conference on Somatechnics (bodies, technologies, modifications, etc.).





Cheers,

D