Maori perform the Haka

Lakes

Being a traveller for 10 weeks changes a lot of things in life. First, I start to forget things. I forget the name of the motel I'm staying at, certainly the roomnumber. I'm starting to forget to take my stuff whenever I leave, such as my flashlight. I forget where I took that beautiful picture or the name of the town I slept in last night. Then, the things I worry about become more and more trivial. I get annoyed when I can't find my socks in my backpack, when my pictures won't upload on this blog, when I can't figure out which direction to drive in.

Third, I start to get bored. Bored by doing the same things over and over again, such as driving into another town and trying to find all its important landmarks; restaurants, post office, supermarket, motel. Bored by the sameness of all the motels (and elated when there's something new; we nearly got ecstatic when we found out that there was a horse in our backyard once), bored by the conversations of people who want to know where I'm from and where I'm going.

And then I feel guilty for being bored, or irritated, or upset. Because look at this place! How can you ever get tired of all this? But I decided to find a way out of this dilemma. Maybe it is actually good for me to be bored for a change. To have the privilige of fussing over trivial things. And isn't the boredom and frustration only the space in between the big periods of being stunned from all of this?

And then I catch myself thinking too much about all of it and I try to stop and do nothing but watch it all float by, watch this world move and me being in it, without the weight of a business on my back and all of it feels light and how can you do anything but look at that and smile?

Te Puia National Park

Mudpool.

Travelling with your mom - excerpts from the movie

Setting: the taxidriver picks us up at the hotel to take us to the car rental.

Taxi driver: So you are Teresa?

Me: eh, Thessa?

Taxi driver: Right, like I said, Teresa. I'm here to take you to the airport. Shall I bring your bags to the car?

The taxi driver brings our bags to the car.

Taxi driver: wow, that's a lot of bags! Are you bringing all your belongings?

I smile politely. The taxi driver now sees my mom next to me.

Taxi driver: Oh, I see you've brought your older sister!

I smile politely, brace myself for the next 30 minutes in the car.

Setting: mom and me in the car driving through the mountains of Tongariro National Park. Every view is more spectacular than the previous one. My iPod is playing 'Stand by me' from the acceptable-songs-with-mom-in-the-car-playlist. We both sing along. Simon & Garfunkel, Acda & de Munnik, more golden oldies are yet to come. I know she will love the Nina Simone one. Mom is concentrating very hard on the road. I'm the one driving, but she's a bit of a control freak. She tries making a picture with her new digital camera, like I asked her to. She lays it on the dashboard and points it at the sky instead of at the road, pushes the button. Click. I look at the sky. It will be a nice picture.

Me: We are two lucky bastards, aren't we, mom?
Mom: Lucky yes, but bastards no.

I say it at least once every day. Her answer is always the same.

Setting: motel reception

Context: searching frantically for a motel, my mom & me enter the minuscule village of Hawera only to find all the motels without vacancy. The only hope left is the one motel we can't find. We drive around the village for 30 minutes, entering it, exiting it, turning around, and repeating this a number of times. We both get irritated. Some bad words are said, blame is laid. Finally we find the place, mom goes in to ask for a room, then waves from the reception for me to come in: they have a room.

Motel owner lady: Hi! .....Yes, I do have a room, but it's a double bed. You will have to share it with your mother

Me: that's no problem, I've done it before

Motel owner lady laughs hysterically at this, though it wasn't a joke. I smile along.

Motel owner lady: how old are you?

Me (suddenly stopped laughing): .....thirty....something

Motel owner lady: really? Wow!! I wouldn't have said that at all!

Me (thinking): well, you would if you could see all the grey hairs I managed to pull out during this vacation!

Me: Thank you, that's very nice to hear!

Motel owner lady: so you're travelling with your mom?

Me (filling in the motel form): yes, I am

Motel owner lady: oh, that's just so lovely. I would loved to have done something like that with my mother if I had ever had the chance.

I look up at my mom, who has the same look on her face as me. Guilt.

Middle Earth

New Zealand looks a lot like it did in all those Hobbit movies. The thing that really amazes me is that it actually keeps looking like that all the way. We see a beautiful view, then go round the bend to find another one. The grass looks bright green and soft, the air can be a fierce blue colour or a menacing grey a few minutes later. The water changes colour with the amount of clouds that float by. I'm not a nature person (whatever that means.... let's just say I'm not the hiking-in-the-woods/get-up-and-dawn-and-watch-the-sunrise/know-your-plant-names type of girl), but this country is simply breathtaking. So if I were a hobbit, I'd want to be here, too.

We are currently travelling through the North Island. We won't make it to the South Island. I'm travelling with my mum right now, who would be mad at me for saying she's a senior, so I won't... but anyway, we decided to take it slow. We have driven a lot, though, because the north Island is still quite big.

Driving on the left side of the road has become almost normal by now, except at moments when I have to do a bit more than the usual. When it starts raining hard, I suddenly mix up the wiper-lever with the direction-signal. So everyone thinks I'm going right, when I just want the rain to get off my windscreen. Oh, and a small advice: NEVER use your left foot when driving a car with automatic shift!

My mother IS a nature type of lady. She likes: collecting shells, looking at plants, stealing plant seeds, naming plants out loud, looking at birds, sheep, horses, and all kinds of other animals. She's not into cockroaches (do you write it like that? Instinct tells me I might be making a mistake here.... :-) though. We had one in our hotel bathroom the other day and I had to barricade the door with books. I didn't mind doing it, because I wouldn't have slept either. Call me a whimp, I don't care.

Along the NZ Coast

Aquarium #2

Auckland, New Zealand!

Brisbane

People tell me Sydney is just like San Francisco, but now that I've been there, I think it's more like Boston, actually, with a little bit of Seattle in it.

People also told me I'd find Brisbane boring, and I did, but that was more due to my impatience of going to New Zealand than because of Brisbane. For Dutch people: Brisbane is a bit like Eindhoven. :-)

A lot of people just don't like it, but insiders know that Eindhoven has got a great vibe for young people and a nice shopping area. Brisbane is a bit like that. It didn't have any of the energy I felt in Sydney and I had to work at keeping myself busy, but there were a lot of nice shops, a nice photography museum, and - what I loved best - an artificial beach built near the riverside that was free. When I found it, it felt like a discovery.

I watched the people and the street artists for a while, then had to escape the heat in the cinema. Slumdog Millionaire. Another big city.

Nimbin

I stayed at Byron Bay for a few days. It's one of the nicest towns on the east coast of Australia, I heard. And it was indeed a really nice place. Surfers mixed with old hippies and young tourists. But I had the feeling that the real hippie feel to it has kind of vanished with all the tourists and backpackers like me going there. So I drove to Nimbin, a small village up in the hinterland of Byron, in search of true stoned, peaceloving, long-bearded, sixtysomethings who still didn't know what to do with their lives.

And I found them! From the moment I got out of the car, I knew I had. It was the smell of weed that gave them away. I walked the strip of shops and cafes, which were all very flower power, and had a coffee there and sat in the sun. All around me were people with very bad skin but with a twinkle in their eyes, sigaret in hand, hanging out. The atmosphere was very relaxed, bit touristy, but in a fun way.

I wondered if my generation will ever get its own village that people will go and check out in thirty years. And what it will look like.

Then I drove on towards Brisbane with a small late lunch stop in Surfers Paradise, whose name is the only nice thing about it, actually. I read a Bill Bryson book that said it used to have another name, this village, but when the city council wanted to change the name, everybody could send in a name, for a contest, and this name is the one that won. Now it's a huge beach vacation spot, so businesswise, it was a great decision.