travelogue: boat life in new zealand

Toward the end of van life on South Island we found ourselves in a park trying to make pancakes. Keyword trying. Conflict broke out and I’d run away on a trail to get some space. So pancakes were not being made.

At some point another car pulls into the park and a woman comes over to ask T if we have a lighter.

She’s an older woman with a child in the car. They’ve come to the park to take a nap. The car is littered with McDonald’s wrappers though the young kid pays them no mind. When we exchange hellos you can tell they’re a precocious one.

She asks us about the van, about our travels, how we’ve been liking New Zealand. She congratulates us on the engagement and says we’re adorable. Look at us making pancakes.

Tells us it’s a shame people treat those who are different so poorly and that now is the time to “leave it behind.” That’s what she did anyway, at some point, with the wrong man. Then she moved to an island with her baby with no electricity. It was hard but it was the best. The most freedom anyone could have.

Presently she lives on a boat docked at a harbor an hour away. Pays a monthly fee for electricity now. She stops by this park after making the long drive to clean houses in another city. There’s an older kid in the picture as well. Her first who has since moved out. I lose track in the story timeline. She tells us to stay in New Zealand. We can visit her boat, meet her community. Says everyone is the nicest and that we’re beautiful souls who’d fit right in. Where else would we want to go?

We tell her about the ferry ticket, about returning the van, about our flight out after New Zealand and loose plans to travel Asia.

She waves her hand at all this. If we don’t cancel the rest of the trip now we’ll never come back to New Zealand. We’ll never have this chance again. There’s amusement and sadness on her face. She knows we’ll move on regardless of how this goes. We exchange Tim Tams and Facebooks (I can no longer find her, as mysteriously happens in these encounters) and promise to think about her advice.

Before departing she gives us two fist-sized quartz rocks out of a bag in her car. I can’t tell how many she has in there but can tell they carry significance.

We drive with the gifts on the dashboard until they slide off. I hold them for a while then tuck them neatly into the cup holder. That evening at our campsite I search for a secluded spot and leave them on the grass. It doesn’t seem right to take rocks off an island.

I think about what she said.