Sadly, we cannot climb all day—everyday—like our chimp fore-fathers, like the primitive primates peopling the trees and rock gardens of the world’s Edens. But the hours of rest have afforded excellent exploring time.
We’ve journeyed to the Waikoropupu Springs: a fresh water sanctuary in the hills above Takaka. Gravel trails lead from the parking lot into the forest. A forest in different stages of growth—most of the native bush having been hacked down during the massive gold rush of the early 20th century. Young Rimu and Totara trees reaching up to the sky, leaving the thick underbrush behind, for these, like their mothers and fathers before them, will be the wood-giants of the island. We pass some of the ancient trees on our way to the springs, their trunk columns holding up the ceiling of the sky, the whole forest seeming to bow before their outstretched limbs.
The springs are an agglomerate of ground openings several meters under the clearest water known to man. The water fools you into thinking that it’s not as deep as it is—but there, printed on a plastic placard and nailed to the fence (keeping human hands out of the spotless springs), are the measurements from rock bottom to glassy top. This is the “clearest spring water in the world,” a pulsing counter-top, revealing below a craggy bottom threaded with colors citrus. And, according to the color-coated placard, Pupu pumps out 40 bathtubs full of water every second. How novel: bathtub as measurement. Though even I, in my limited years on this planet, can be quite sure that his unit will never be standardized.
There are half baths and full baths, antique porcelain and jet-streamed Jacuzzi-tubs. There are television series galore (I’m thinking specifically of Home and Garden Television and the Antique Road Show) chronicling the evolution of the bath. I could even imagine a cartoon series about a kiddy pool who wants to grow up to become a “real bathtub.” The loveable protagonist “Splashy” would adventure episode after episode through the lukewarm waters of the bathing world, battling evil plumbers, naked bottoms, and his arch-nemesis “Uncle Rusty” the wash basin, a tub with a penchant for rendering innocent bathers lock-jawed and silent through a mysterious tub-spell called tetanus.
As for Chester and myself, our only bathtub since leaving Rotorua has been the river and the sea.
A swimming-hole ranked by the authors of the Payne’s Ford Climbing Guidebook as “the best in New Zealand” lies 20 meters from the climbing parking lot on bend in the _____ river. Sprint across the road and duck into the bush. Follow the sound of laughter down a dirt path stamped with wet footprints and: voila: the path opens onto a small rug of sand and what appears to be an ever-expanding expanse of clear blue water below a limestone cliff. The optical illusion created by the river running one way and the wind blowing ripples across, opposite.
There is a ledge that runs the length of the cliff that is capped by stone. A long alcove open to te water and running back into the cliff at an acute angle. Always perched along the ledge are hippies, shirtless and dread-headed, with bottles of booze lounging within the cliff side. High-as-a-kite troglodytes watching sunny day after sunny day sift between their dirty fingers.
Climbers, too, converge on this watering hole, and it is probably they who first scaled the rock face and fixed a line to the jagged point overhanging the river. The line that would eventually become the rope swing to beat all rope swings. This yellow wire—terminating in the upside-down T of the wooden handle—is the only way to become a true initiate of the swimming hole, retrieving the line being a bit of a mission. But after one far-flung yelp into the air SPLASH into the water, a body feels free to lie in the sun, wading into the water, or diving off of theledge whenever the heat-bug bites.
And then there is the sea. The sea.
Close your eyes and picture paradise. Feel the sun through your eyelids, the fire-balloon drifting loose and lazy in a cloudless sky. Listen to the waves lapping at the sand—the waves kissing the shoreline—the rhythm dance of the changing tides. Lean back against a driftwood trunk, sand-blasted and smooth, washed as clean as a bone for the king of the sea.
Yes. Picture paradise and open your eyes: this is it. The water blue-green and dimpled, sunshine glitter thrown down in huge handfuls from above. Across the crests of waves.
Pohara. Tata. Ligar. Wainui.
The backdrop is mountains. Endless. Sillouetes through the heat-haze, they ring round the bay. They are the undying lands. There across the blue, tangible only through the funnel of a dream. In the foreground: an island: rock faces rising vertical from the choppy water, an afro verdant sprouting green across the top. The cut of the land throwing shadows into the angles of the rock. Birds: swoop dive and splash like kites with cut strings. The flocks feasting in a whirling dervish at the base of the cliff.
And at the base of the painting is this: the golden beach on which you lay. Supine and supple, brown beneath the watchful eye of the setting sun.
And, try as he might, Bob Ross ain’t got shit on that.
Our last rest day was a marathon of sight seeing.
First to the Labyrinth Rocks: a maze of limestone where it is all too easy to loose yourself when diving down hobbit-holes, shuffling down ally-ways, or navigating the switch-backs between sharp rocks. There are plastic dwarves perched in rock pockets, rubber mice bating in the dirt pathways, and the myriad skulls of fauna long departed set lengthwise along a shelf of shale: all of them watching to see if you can find a way out.
Then to the Grove: a sanctuary in the farmland, past sheep and cattle and into the shade of massive rata trees, beneath the bloom of fire-flowers. The trunks of these trees sprout from limestone outcrops, their roots cascading over the stone and into the ground—alive like veins—like wood-veins wrapped around the ageless rock. The rock the inanimate pedistool holding the tree toward the sky—toward the sun and glory. Hallelujah.
And finally to Wainui Falls. We wind around the Wainui bay, the southern most beach of the Golden bay, and turn inland. Inland, inland to the gravel parking lot, to the DOC signpost. Then it is up a steep track, over cattle crossings and wooden bridges, up and up into the hills—the river babbling nonsense below, across a swinging bridge: maximum capacity: one person. Beneath the bush and climbing until at last the track spits us out above a deep-blue pool. The falls deafening. It is a cascade brilliant: white-water free falling and the spray is a widening cloud. Rock-hop to the other side and we are cloud-walkers, the loyal laymen of Cloud City and flying free under the banner of Landau Calrissian.
Chester scales and embankment in his swim-shorts and throws himself off of a ledge. A tourist beside me at the base of the falls wondering aloud and distraught “Why? Why is he doing this?”
This morning Chester set off alone. After two more days of climbing we needed rest. I dropped him off at Totaranui in the early morning—a ride by the seaside, around the curve of the coast and up into the hills. Only to cruise, half-hung-over down the dirt to the other side.
He aims to walk the length of the Abel Tasmin track in a day and a half. Down the sand, under the sun, while I chill: laid-back and cool with the Southern Divas Eva and Caro. Will we see him tomorrow night? If not then what?
He tossed me the keys over the hood of the car as we said our good-byes and I stepped into what would normally be the passenger-side door. Observe the car in opposite. It is the mirror image, and it feels all wrong. This is to be my second attempt at driving in New Zealand, my first running afoul on a rainy day last week when I ran off the road and into a concrete drainage ditch. “Gotta watch that passenger side, son!”
But today is different and I am ready. Up the mountain road, dust covered and drifting. One foot on the clutch and one on the gas. One hand on the stick and one on the wheel. The flip-flop. But it is a smooth transition today, and I’m on a road to nowhere: the Talking Heads singing through the static between radio stations, the sun a solid beam at my back.
When my partner returns, there is no more time for rest. We climb.
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