Melbourne Street Art

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Melbourne, Australia

Marvelous Melbourne.

It was clear from the bus ride into the city that we were on an older, drier continent now. The bush was dried up on either side of the road. Tall eucalyptus trees stood out as solitary providers of shade, the horizon was now a far-off, distant concept. Australia is immense. New Zealand is like a necklace. Australia is a rug.

The tall modern skyline of Melbourne appeared through the bug carcass-mottled windows and a balloon of excitement inflated in my heart as I fingered the guidebooks for things to do; but the words were meaningless, squirming around on the page like ants on meth, because before me the city grew in size and reality and I couldn’t concentrate on anything but looking out the window and pinching myself.

I was here.

We took the connecting bus to the hotel and before we knew it we were hunting through the suite’s bathroom for freebies.

The bathroom was small and decidedly fancy, for there was no shower door, only a single plane of glass to protect the water from heading everywhere. You had to place a towel on the floor to prevent a stream from gushing out towards the drain in the middle of the room, and, unless I’m some freak barbarian in the shower, water splashed everywhere, over the toilet and towel racks and toilet paper. If someone had to go poop real bad, then they would best to wear their bathing trunks.

However smart the design looked on paper or in photographs, in the real world it was really quite stupid.

Thumbs down.

Flooded bathrooms would appear to be the norm for us in Australia. (more on that later)

Our time in Melbourne was action packed, alcohol-soaked, a whirlwind, I don’t much remember what happened, when and where, I just remember slices, portions, juxtaposed snapshots.

So here goes…

The streets were calling so we took the camera out to explore them.

Melbourne is laid out real simply in a grid, every major street, it seemed, had a cute trolley running down them, kinda like the ‘B’ line in Boston. A free tram also encircles the entire CBD, stopping at most tourist spots, and the river front has a bunch of shopping/restaurant venues to gather and eat. It’s a town you can easily conquer on foot. Our hotel was located right next to the river and across from the train station. Most of the CBD lay just uphill. The weather was moody, cool and crisp and always seemingly on the edge of raining. Of course, with the temperature always in Celcius, just hearing that it was going to be 19 degrees sent a shiver down my spine, whatever 19C means.

Federation Square is a modern meeting place for the city, surrounded by right-angled architecture, museums, a giant projection screen, and St. Paul’s Church, it’s a stylish public area for multi-purposes functions, something I wish Los Angeles had. (Come on, Antonio) That night they kicked off an arts festival with a folk/kid singer. Some dude with wild hair and a bright yellow suit and wacky reverence for song, or something like that…

Within the first hour of walking around Melbourne I noticed something striking: everyone was immaculately dressed and gorgeous. Serious, Melbourne is like one very large soap opera set. Every individual I saw looked like they must have their own stylist. Even the dude jackhammering in the middle of the street looked like someone quickly tussled his hair and powdered his cheeks before he began work. It truly is a stylish city.

Walking around the prim and good looking denizens of Melbourne in my Colorado thrift store tweed coat, I felt like the new kid, wearing last year’s hand-me-downs. It’s like the entire city could be the fifth member of The Strokes. (Or would that be sixth? How many Strokes are there?)

This seems like the time to mention that The National’s new album is a perfect fit for Melbourne.

Small Apartment Song, especially, for some reason, comes to mind.

Also, Mistaken For Strangers.

Melbourne has a ton of great street art. I recommend cutting down some trash-strewn alley and getting yourself a peep. It’s the stencil capital of the art world. If you know where to look, you shouldn’t have to pay to see art.

The restaurants… damn, there’s just not enough adjectives at my disposal. We ate like heathens, I’ll tell you that. Lip-smacking, belly-rubbing feasts.

Italian. Vegetarian. Seafood.

Every meal seemed to best the other. Sushi on a conveyor belt. Pasta with prawns overlooking the water. A tomato soup in a sidewalk cafe. A perfect steak in a candlelit Italian bistro.

Queen Victoria Market is a bustling hive of activity. A must-see. Even on a slightly rainy day, the smells and sounds were rollicking. They had all sorts of fruits, nuts, souvenirs, clothes, meats and other things for sale… pets, for instance.

We sampled the olives, the olive oil, cheese, bread, anything with a toothpick sticking into it.

All the food on display made us hungry even though it was barely noon, so we ordered pizza and a polish sausage with sauerkraut and, maybe it was all the freebies, they both were damn good.

We sat and ate them and put our feet up to take in the scene.

Australia in recent years has made strides on the world culinary stage. It has a long history of mediocrity at best and local cuisine used to have the texture and flavor of a cooked boot, they say. But that’s the past. The future is here.

Walking down the Chinatown streets with duck carcasses hanging in the window, I saw myself giving a tour of the area to some out-of-town guest who was visiting. I saw myself at home, showing off.

A quick note to explain why I love Melbourne: We wandered into a free art gallery that was part of MIT, Melbourne Institute of Technology. It was an Elvis exhibition with all sorts of trippy homages to the king.

Elvis dressed up as Napoleon. Blueprints of Graceland. A spooky video with his image morphing in and out while a monotone note played for 45 minutes. (we didn’t watch the entire cycle). His rings and jewelry in a glass box (talk about bling!). Elvis and Richard Nixon in front of a Hindu Temple.

I wondered about the histories of these pieces. They were all done by different individuals in different parts of the world, they all probably premiered at some local institution where they saw some attention, but over time they gravitated together into this collection. In this sense art is like flotsam, like the giant swirl of debris that supposedly exists in the Pacific, the size of Texas. Like people too, I suppose. We seem to gravitate into groups of similar compositions; hang out with people we work with, head home for the holidays. Out there in the world right now is a collection of art pieces about trains, animals, buildings, all living out the rest of their days in a sort of art retirement home with other such pieces.

These art pieces seemed like they were conceived during one long heavy acid trip in the early 70’s, but to my surprise their dates ranged from the 60’s to the contemporary. We strolled through the white-walled rooms, loading up on culture, hands thoughtfully clasped behind my back the whole time, then squirted back out into the streets in a hunt for a pub.

I like my art in a nice quick shot on the go, like an espresso. I like it unexpectedly.

But about that bar…

It was bustling with Friday, after-work, merry-makers. Rich, warm red walls created a cozy vibe along with the old portraits of probably-dead people. We drank Coopers ale and eavesdropped on nearby conversations; twenty-somethings talking about work and dating and people they know that drive them crazy.

Melbourne was a real comfortable place, familiar and tidy, yet free to express itself. San Francisco with less stoners and trash, more boomerangs.

The next day we even felt daring enough to explore the old gaol. (jail – I learned after pronouncing it GAY-OLE for 24 hours.)

It’s where Ned Kelly met the noose, his last great act, and where many others had their unfortunate lives ended in such sudden fashion.

It was a touristy thing to do, but by this point we were unabashed tourists, and we were lucky to visit while a performance of the Ned Kelly saga was taking place, because of this we had a blast. The performers asked the crowd at one point who was British and a small amount of hands went up and the actor made a joke about the Brits, something about them being swines and screwing over the Irish; and then he did the same for the Irish and people raised their hands, the actor then complimented the Irish (Ned Kelly being, of course, Irish). Then he asked if there were any Yankees in the room and no one raised their hands. I looked around and didn’t see any of my fellow countrymen, or at least there was no one that copped to it. The actor then cracked that he had a special room for the Americans in the back. Everyone laughed.

I found it interesting that there were no Americans there, and doubted that to be the actual, factual case… in fact, I know there was, me.

I bet I wasn’t the only Yank who didn’t raise my hand.

Thanks Bush.

Every time I was asked where I was from on this trip, I answered, simply, “California.”

I guess I fashioned that response in order to admit to being American, but clarifying that I’m no hillbilly. Of course there’s plenty of hillbillies in California, gutter-snipes, rednecks, scurvies, automatons, and the like… but they don’t know that.

Walking around I tried to imagine the jail back in its day: the torment and anguish that had lived in the very walls and rooms I was now exploring in my Gap jeans and Urban Outfitters sweater. It’s spooky to think of the place as an actual jail, that the souls of those criminals might still be housed in the building, but not as spooky as the truth. You’d think you would be freaked out exploring such a place. But everything blending together these days, tragedy and entertainment, the mass media maze being that dizzying place that it is, it’s hard to be freaked out. One day they’ll make Abu Ghraib a museum and you’ll pay some amount of currency to walk around it, inspecting the stuffed dogs in the exhibits, on a Baghdad vacation. I hear the time to go is in the Spring. Maybe it’s the Disney Hall of Presidents effect, but it’s hard not to see everything these days as some sort of simulacrum, even the real thing.

We had laundry to do and found a backpackers up the street from the hotel with machines in their basement. I spent a surreal morning reading George Saunders’s Pastoralia, ignoring the Canadian Music Awards on the TV while a young Japanese girl eating a bowl of Muesli gave it indifferent glances, in a stone basement, on a ripped leather couch, with the width and weight of the world making itself heard in the tossing of the washing machines as they spun and up above Melbourne growled to life.

That’s how it felt anyways.

We were about halfway through our trip and all the way through our clean clothes.

We’d seen a lot, experienced a lot, ate a lot.

I’d found a second home in Melbourne, if only for three days.

Just before we left for our bus tour of the Great Ocean Road we met three guys at the bar who sent us out of town with a humorous story about the dangers of dance. The sun had finally decided to come out, and it was a glorious noon in Melbourne, a large city-wide scavenger hunt was underway, teams with numbers on their chest walking the streets. The scene lured us out onto the balcony. This sounds like a bad joke, but it’s true, it was an Aussie, a Canuck, an Irish dude, and later on a Scotsman. We struck up conversation easily as a bush fire and pretty soon the Aussie related to us that just this morning, a lo’ five hours ago, they were finishing up their shifts at the bar and were having a dance-off to liven things up. Apparently, the bartender, a lesbian, the one that just served us our stubbies 5 minutes prior, was pissed at our new friend because her sister had jumped into the Aussie’s arms during the dance-off and he had dropped her, causing a sour trip to the hospital and a few stitches in her forehead. “Not a true dance-off until a little blood is spilled,” I cracked in response. The Aussie looked at me blankly and sucked down some of his drink.

At least that’s what I think he had told us, but honestly, with his accent, I could have some of the crucial details wrong.

They were a cheery, sleepless, possibly drug-fueled bunch who proclaimed themselves, “the three most handsomest men in Melbourne,” and insisted we take their picture… so we did.

The Great Ocean Road coming up next…

Coromandel, Stretched-Out Road to Heaven

Ridiculous!!!

That squiggly, skinny line on the left is the road — the one that brought us a sort of automotive, spiritual, elastic joy.

Rotorua

Rotorua is the north island’s most popular tourist destination and home to New Zealand’s most intense thermal activity. It has mud pots, sulfur streams, steam vents, and a rotten smell wafting through the entire region, and, I would discover to my chagrin, a vast void of decent restaurants.

The further south we drove the more rain we hit. It might have been beautiful country out there, but from inside the car it just looked like a gray, wet lump of earth. We were tired of being stuck in our metal cage, hurtling 100 kph on the wrong side of the road, so when we finally arrived in Rotorua, let’s just say, we were far from unbiased. Speaking for myself, unbiased was a galaxy away from where my opinions were currently housed.

Under these conditions our arrival in Rotorua didn’t inspire any oohing and awing. It isn’t the quaint lake front town I was expecting. Rotorua has an American suburb feel to it: busy traffic signals, a large Woolworth’s, Dick Smith’s electronics, a KFC, even kids hanging out in the mall looking bored.

And the smell…

If you have ever been to Yellowstone you know the smell.

Like Fatty Arbuckle’s sweatsocks boiling in a pot of monkey piss.

Like the smell of Richard Simmons’s ejaculate. That bad!

Christians say sulfur is the smell of the devil, so everything was named Devil Something. Devil’s Home. Devil’s Playground. Devil’s Bath. Devil’s Concession Stand and Toilets.

Rotorua isn’t like Yellowstone, where you pay $20 to get into the park and then everything is free. No, each attraction in Rotorua is a different entity, requiring $25 or more for the pleasure of walking around, holding your nose, nodding at the comments of strangers and trying to think of something witty to say back, and, of course, taking pictures that won’t come out right anyway.

Confession: I wasn’t feeling it.

We did one of the hikes, Wai-O-Taupo, and that was enough.

There’s only so many steaming vats of emptiness you can stare into without becoming bored. (is that some kind of metaphor for reality TV?)

Only so many rust-colored lakes you can squint at.

We finished the loop in record time, probably, speeding through like we were being chased by hungry dogs.

Here’s another picture anyway…

After the hike we went back, drank some beers at the backpackers, studied our options, and figured out the best place to be that afternoon was the Polynesian Spa overlooking Lake Rotorua.

Ah, yes, the spa. A wise choice.

They pipe hot spring water into heated baths that overlook the lake. The baths were set at various temperatures from 38 degrees to 41 degrees. Ever so often a woman would come out with a thermometer attached to a long pole and test the water, to assure us that they were on top of it. The baths were filled with mostly older folks that sat relaxed in the milky water, soaking up the heat and steam and view, smiles on their rubbery faces.

We eagerly plopped in and leaned our head backs too. The weather was still disagreeable, but in that position I could care less, even when it started to rain.

I was already wet, so what? The contrast felt good. Even the noisy flock of gulls that were mating incessantly in front of us couldn’t have diminished the experience. You’d think that with the entire lake open they would take their private stuff elsewhere, but the birds carried on like we weren’t there, god bless them. It was fun to watch new bathers take a seat in the bath and then slowly notice what the birds were up to that was causing all the squawking and all the fuss, no matter the nationality, a tickled grin would appear on their face.

Perhaps it was placebo effect, but the water was making my body feel good – it even cleaned out the dirt in the crevices of my wedding ring.

We went from bath to bath to bath, testing out the temperatures, picky as Goldilocks, and probably stayed there for over two hours, as the tightness in our muscles gave up and our bones turned to jelly. Eventually we lugged our bodies out of the water, pruned-out and exhausted.

A busload of Japanese tourists pulled up and a group of about 40 stood in the doorway surveying the terrain, preparing to invade. It was a good time to get out, or maybe an awful time, because when I entered the locker room to shower and change I was confronted with the shocking sight of a dozen older, naked Japanese dudes standing around chatting nonchalantly.

The puritan-in-me cringed.

After the spa we took an expedition through the local supermarket and were thrilled to discover exotic cans of spaghetti and a shelf of foreign yogurt drinks for the missus. Looking back, the trip through the supermarket was more enjoyable than the morning hike. More fascinating. Especially the cans of yeast for home-brewers. We spent a good hour picking foodstuff off the shelf and turning it around in our hands like an archeologist unearthing a skull, finally selecting items that we could bring with us the next day to save some cash on the road, then returned to the backpackers for pasta and wine.

The next day was saved for Zorbing.

The deal with Zorbing is you give them a pile of cash, say your mortgage payment, and they throw you inside a giant rubber ball filled with a few gallons of warm water and roll you off the top of a hill. Before any of this happens, though, you waive off all your rights in case of death, and they take a picture of you to assist the morgue later on.

The ride only lasted about half a minute, which comes out to $2 dollars a second, but it was worth every cent. You toss back and forth like you’re in a dishwasher, shouting like a kid in a moon bounce. You’re unable to tell the ground from the sky, up from down, your breakfast from last night’s dinner. It’s an exhilarating experience. One that makes you feel like a kid again.

When you get to the bottom and they let you out, you sort of squeeze out with a flush of water, the ladies in line compared it to a birth. Whoosh! Out you pop with a stupid grin on your face, they tell you to put your hands in the air and you comply; they take your picture, looking wet and confused, and then it’s all over.

That’s Zorbing. I hear it’s coming to America. There’s hope for us yet.

After that we were on the road north again because we had to get close to the Airport for an early morning flight. The good news is we had all day to kill.

At one point we ventured off the main roadway to track down a park. The road led pass palatial horse farms, the area being known for equestrian sports, and eventually climbed into the hills till it ran pass a narrow strip of grass, I suppose, that constituted the park. A small stone edifice marked the spot where a sanatorium used to operate around the turn of the century.

The view was quite fetching, I wondered what the crazy kiwis 100 years ago used to think of it?

After the park we didn’t stop again till Hamilton, a large college town and New Zealand’s most populated inland city. The dude who came up with Rocky Horror Picture Show dreamed it up while working in a B-movie theater here… they tore down the theater but erected a statue to mark the spot.

That’s kinda cool. And unlike Rotorua, where finding a decent watering hole beguiled us terribly, finding a proper establishment to consume some suds came quite easily in Hamilton, the main road through the CBD containing bar after bar, restaurant after restaurant for our needs.

We drank a few pints, trying new local beers every chance, at a half empty sports bar in the lobby of the Sky City Hamilton, (our attachment to the hotel was very strong after Auckland), and ate some Mongolian BBQ; but really, it was nothing to write home about… so I won’t.

And I won’t even begin to tell you about the Budget Motel by the airport, with the bolted down remote control, and the alarm clock we had to borrow from the proprietor so it wouldn’t get stolen, and the shrieks we heard at 2 in the morning.

But at least we got some sleep…

Because the next day we were at the airport at sunrise. We didn’t yet know it but we were to share the plane with Australian Boy’s National Choir, a tired bunch who fell asleep in their blazers. They were on their final leg of their flight from Los Angeles, after touring the States.

When the plane landed, the pilot pointed out the Airbus sitting on the runway to the left side of the plane. Marina asked me, “what’s the airbus?” The little red-headed kid next to us who had slept the entire time from Auckland, even missing out on breakfast, finally showed some sign of life when he piped up, “it’s a very nice plane,” in a polite and adorably perky Aussie accent that the missus would imitate throughout the remainder of the trip. Australian school kids all wear tidy uniforms, it’s very easy to make fun of them.

But he was right, the Airbus is a very nice plane.

But this isn’t about him, or the Airbus, it’s about me, dammit.

We made it. We were in Australia.

Even though it was the pilot who did all the work, I feel like just getting here is some sort of achievement.

Now… where are those dang kangaroos?

The Coromandel Peninsula #2

I can’t tell you how nice it felt to be driving up the West Coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, with our Ipod plugged into the Subaru doing 50 kmh, with the windows down, the sea gulls swooping, and the sheep just eating lazily, and it was heavenly the way the sun shone on the scene so lovingly.

All the world’s worries and our worries felt as far away as they really were.

The road followed, like an unfolding mystery, the curves of the ocean north, actually the Hauraki Gulf, on the other side 100 kilometers or so sits awkward Auckland. We let cars pass us and took our time, engrossed with the story of Coromendal being told by the asphalt.

The pinnacle of the drive was cresting a green as the-dollar-in-your-pocket hill that spilled down into a meandering creek, spilling tenderly into a clam-shaped bay, swans hanging out down in the gully, cows mooing somewhere, out-of-sight, even a crashed and burned-down auto wreck didn’t do a thing to spoil the scenery.

Not just an excuse for my poor photograph but an absolute gospel truth: pictures don’t do it justice.

A storm was moving in, grayness moving in. Dog turd clouds moving in. Well not that bad, but pigeon sky poop-pellets might not be a stretch.

They didn’t do nothin’ to damper the mood though. So peaceful, so content and in-the-moment, I was near illiterate, see. Yada-da-mean!

As a Los Angeleno, driving comes naturally. Even on the opposite side of the car and road. To have the wheel in my hands and the beautiful countryside drifting by, a little rain would have even been enjoyable I might venture to say, say if I was feeling adventurous, and I was, so was my wife. My wife and I kept commenting, New Zealand is ridiculous.

We’d round a bend and a new landscape would paint itself on our windshield. “Fucking ridiculous,” one of us would shout.

The road wound and coiled, and other cars were sparse and more like abstract thought than traffic, through fishing villages and sheep farms and a stray Buddhist temple, and I couldn’t have been more impressed with New Zealand than I was on that drive; giddy with myself, absolutely giddy.

We rolled into Coromandel shortly before the sun bedded down, checked into a charming hostel/motel tucked against the bush, cozily cross from the bay. A bag of fresh coffee for the morning quickly won over the missus. Traveling down under makes you call your wife missus for some reason. A dinner of pizza and wine capped one of the best drives of my life. Up there with the PCH through Big Sur.

Watching Snakes On A Plane from bed was just too delicious.

Giddy, I tell you!

In the morning we treated ourselves to an amble through the bush behind our room, a small stone bench made for an excellent book-reading spot, then we set out for a small hike up the hill overlooking the town and the bay and a tip-toeing creek – creeks were everywhere – and the light was soft enough to convince yourself that you were still dreaming.

We had a 5 hour drive down the east coast of the peninsula to Rotorua so we didn’t spend much time kicking around town, just enough to pick up a croissant and more coffee – the packet in the motel only got us two cups.

They don’t have regular coffee like up here, coffee has a whole different nomenclature than in the States. Long black. Short black. Long white. Flat white. It’s a challenging prospect that I avoided by just ordering lattes. Waking up early every day with a plateful of things on the to-do list really gave us a caffeine addiction and put money into the coffee industry’s pocket. We sat on our balcony for ten more minutes.

Then it was back to the road.

From Coromandel we headed over the hills and across the peninsula to the east coast, than headed south, stopping off to play in tide pools and for pictures. Again, driving at a leisurely pace and taking it all in. We devised a plan to have lunch and then go check out Cathedral Cove, a popular and scenic beach, that’s a 40-minute hike from the parking lot, and if I may say so, it was a solid plan.

We found a cafe for paninis and organic juice and consumed them both slowly and thoughtfully. I read the paper.

Big news. The entire first dozen pages devoted to the tragedy. New Zealand was devastated by their rugby team’s upset loss in the World Cup. The All Blacks, as their team is endearingly called, were favored the win the whole thing but France outplayed them all game and shocked the island nation silly. The All Blacks have a tendency for choking and it’s a dark stain on the country. They were blaming the referees, the coach, accused the French of cheating – in short they were acting like poor losers, like a country of Red Sox fans.

There was even a column with tips for how to deal with the depression, stuff like: go outside and toss the ball around, continue to watch the cup, reconnect with nature. A blurb about the economic losses, all the merchandise that will go unsold now, the bars that expected to host large, rowdy rugby championship parties; all the black flags expected to be wedged onto car windows, the silver fern emblem expected to flap proudly in the breeze.

It made for good reading material, I must say.

I was curious about rugby, figured since the World Cup was going on, I should learn the rules a little bit. So I watched it in Auckland, I mean four of the 9 stations that the T.V. got was broadcasting sports of some kind, most of them rugby, you’re somewhat forced into watching it. I caught chunks of various games and got the basic rules down, the flow of the game; but I was still at a loss at why they had a leaf for a symbol or called themselves the All Blacks.

So I did some research, asked some questions.

All Blacks comes from some linguistic slip-up by announcers in the early days, saying the kiwis played like All Backs (the strongest, most crushing players), because apparently the New Zealand players were bullies, bad-asses; somehow it got twisted to All Black and the name was adopted belovingly ever since.

The logo is a Silver Fern, New Zealand’s national tree. The hills are covered with them, giving New Zealand’s forests their own special look.

The pre-game taunt the All Blacks perform comes from a Maori War dance.

It’s the best part of the game in my opinion.

Without a doubt, Cathedral Cove was worth the 40 minute hike, and then some. The hike alone was a treat, rambling through cow pastures, under cottony clouds floating gently overhead – brushed soothingly against a blue backdrop like a Bob Ross painting, and along bluffs that looked out on an ocean that is almost completely empty until Chile, save for a few small islands filled with people praying desperately for a cold spell.

The beach splayed out finely, golden, against bleached-white limestone cliffs; and speckled-at-sea, verdant islands of birds assumed Tetris-like shapes; and the water and the sky were dueling to out-blue each other.

If we had some with us, we could have filmed a Corona commercial quite easily.

NERD NOTE: Limestone is a type of rock made mostly of crustaceans and fossils piling up over thousands of years and breaking down, and then the earth shifts and it’s uplifted above water.

And it’s pretty light rock, easily eroded into spectacular shapes by the wind and the ocean. Limestone is cool.

It was a good place to play with my cannon.

After indulging in the beach and the sun we were all business to Rotorua.

We still smiled at the views and squealed at kiwi farm signs like kids on a sugar rush – because we get down like that – but it wasn’t the same as the west coast. My Westside love applies to New Zealand too it seems; who knew?

The road ran inland and we hit the rain and a bunch of confusing rotaries in Taraunga, a drab working class town with murals of Biggie Smalls and rush hour traffic, and it forced us to come out of the clouds, the picturesque beauty of the Coromandel Peninsula had a spell over us.

I now have a happy place.

You smell Rotorua before you see it.

It smells like a fartbuger with rancid meat, topped with a rotten egg, transported in a truck driver’s armpit.

That’s coming up next…

But first, the All Blacks Haka:

The Coromandel Peninsula #1

On the road to Coromandel, the missus and I stopped at a private garden walk/ waterfall hike, some private sanctuary a German hippie couple set up in the 60’s, mostly to get off the road, but also to be relieved of that burdensome twenty dollars that was weighing down our wallets.

The guy at the counter testified that the garden walk was worth it alone.

It’s worth repeating. New Zealand is expensive.

But it is worth it.

See, happy flower…

A happy duck…

Another happy flower…

And, of course, the waterfall….

I lost my sunglasses trying to get a close-up of the water, while balancing on the rocks they slipped from my pocket, and I watched them float to the bottom in stupid slow motion. I tried to get them out, with a long stick I trawled the bottom and almost had them within reach but then they shifted ever-so-slightly and drifted under a rock forever.

Or… till… one of the workers scoops them out. Or maybe an intrepid skinny-dipper.

I wanted them back for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to be a heel and leave litter at the base of a beautiful waterfall. And two, I really liked those glasses, they’ve seen a lot with me.

But they couldn’t ask for a better resting place, I tell ya.

We still had a couple of hours of driving before the town of Coromandel. We wanted to get into our lodgings in time for dinner somewhere in town. So far it seems that the trip rotates around meal times. They serve as destination markers in which to guide our travels.

The east coast of the peninsula rates as one of the world’s best drives so we felt obligated to pull over by the beach and gaze out over the water with awe, pick up plain white sea shells and look at them dumbstrucked.

“They’re so many of them.”

“Yeah, the beach is made of them.”

I’ve sat on many a California beach and played with the sand, and looked at the water, and had those cosmic, wondrous thoughts… but it’s not the same as when you’re 10,000 miles and half a day away.

The immensity is humbling. The thoughts are super-super wondrous. And the shells were plentiful.

Once we soaked it all in, got our fill of the Pacific and the shells, we headed back on the road.

It was calling us like the ocean through a conch…