The Great Loop-Dee-Loop: Part III

Now I am a full-bellied boy in the Mazda.  After waking to blue skies and the snow-capped ranges.  After waking to blue skies and the Fox Glacier.  After ripping down the morning road and chowing down on fried rice camp-cooked by the Hasst River.

Now I am a full-bellied boy in the Mazda.  The Mazda zooming up the Haast Pass.  In the backseat the sun shining through the back window on my neck.  Full-bellied and a full-bellied killing machine.  Finger pressing the swarm of sand flies.  One by one.  Each and every one bloody.  Bloody popping—pop pop—their full bellies now smeared across the seats, the floorboards, my skin, the window.  The window like the bathroom mirror of an acne ridden teenager—bearing the carnage of a pimple popping spree.  And how unexpectedly satisfying—pop pop.  Call me the sand fly dermatologist—pop pop—the exterminator.  Pop.

And through the window smeared with blood, smeared with the carcass scatter, I watch the ranges roll past.  Toward the pass.  Haast.  Through the rain forest ranges.  Jeff Buckley on the storm speakers.  And it is Halleluja down the winding road.  Tour Guide Caroline pointing out where we would see the peaks were they not cloud shrouded.

The waterfalls white and pouring forth as if someone came thorugh and poked holes in thes mountains.  The puncture wounds deep.  Deep to the liquid core.  Deep to the water heart.  And the white froth spewing forth.

Roaring Billy.  Thunder Falls.  Fantail Falls.  The white froth pouring forth.

Through the pass and onto the flat valley bed.  The mountains still towering ragged-toothed to our right.  But to the left—to the north—they shrink shyly to the shallow hill-dome.  Or is it only a problem of perspective?

Lake Wanaka sprawled blue at the collective foot of the Mountains.  The mountains sloping into the water blue.  So blue and the wind chopping across in white caps.  And cut inland.  Here is another Lake.  Lake Hawea blue-gray blue and gray like a Picasso painting.  The water calm like a painting with a sheet of glass laid over the top and left lying on the ground. 

To Wanaka to bask in the sunshine for short minutes.  To Queenstown to sip beers in a bar and sleep under the southern stars at a clearing by the lake. 

To Christchurch the following day.  In the morning it is neutral on the downhills.  The great race to make it to a gas station on an empty tank.  Done.  Out of Queenstown and onto the town of Twizel to finish off the tomato and the avocado in the sunshine, the storm clouds gathering north.  Gathering, gathering, but not before we get our picture perfect view of Mt. Cook rising.  Rising out of the waters of Lake Pukaki. 

No photographs can capture the scene.  Can capture the being there.  And no word-pictures either.  So I will leave it alone in its majesty, and show people the fuzzy photos from my Sony digital.

And on to Lake Tekapo, the aqua blue intensity.  Like chlorine water stirred for children in swimsuits.  And on and on.  Geraldine, Ashburton, north to Christchurch.  Complete the great Loop-dee-loop.  North to Christchurch.

Away.