16 February 2016
How to describe these last two weeks? It has so far been a fairly quiet time in Kaiteriteri, and I have no major events to expound upon or words of wisdom to impart regarding any harrowing travel experiences. It has been fascinating to me to discover how little I need to feel at home in a new place: a moderately comfortable bed, a semblance of routine, a few friends, good food. Simple. Because of this, life at Kaiteri Lodge is perhaps best understood to the outside reader through sensory snapshots. Picture an old movie reel, maybe a little scratched and the sound a little static; the film has been yellowed with age and now has the warm yellowy tint of old photographs and childhood home videos. Maybe your favorite quiet song is playing as the clips hitch by (for me – “Atlas Hands” by Benjamin Francis Leftwich, or “Constellations” by Jack Johnson). Here we go:
As with many places like this one, social life is anchored by dinnertime: multi-lingual conversation, everyone talking over and translating for each other; accented English and stumbling attempts at speaking French and laughing to tears over the amount of syllables in the Finnish word for “ice cream cone;” a glorious mess of language shared over the dinner table in the hostel restaurant. Beyond dinner – walking under the stars on a clear night with friends I didn’t know a week ago, through the middle of the street left empty by departed beachgoers, pointing out the Southern Cross and the Seven Sisters and upside-down Orion’s Belt, staring slack-jawed at the thick brightness of the Milky Way; taking a trail into the forest that same night, flashlights held in front of us until we turned the corner into a little streambed and were greeted by the light of a million tiny glow worms all across the trees and hillside that looked like little white-blue LED lights, but even more like the stars we could see through the trees above us, feeling like we were swimming in a pool of fairy light and exclaiming with awe in three different languages. A Sunday market in Motueka on an overcast, muggy day, wandering through the fruit and veggie stalls just to see the colors, trying on sunglasses and browsing through piles of secondhand books, buying mugs of spicy chai and sitting for hours at a little café table talking until our cups were empty and it was time to go home for lunch (“home” – such a malleable word). Lying in companionable silence on the hot golden beach, waking up now and then to shift or reapply sunscreen or jump in the cool, salty ocean; floating with eyes closed on the gentle rolling waves, listening to the sounds of the sand underneath shifting with the motion of the water.
And more, although I can’t remember which day was which anymore because everything here usually feels bathed in that timeless end-of-summer golden sunlight: sitting out back behind the staff trailer in a soft cloud of cigarette smoke, trading favorite songs and quietly singing along to a newly-learned ukulele (“Guaranteed” by Eddie Vedder; “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks; “American Pie” by Don McLean); hitch hiking into town and back again just to mail a few letters, because I had the day off and felt like it. Watching the sun set from a hilltop overlooking the bay and listening to the wind rustle through the grass behind me; walking for twenty-five minutes to say hello to some horses in a field that I saw on the drive in; on the walk back, discovering a hidden little trail that took me up to the highest lookout over town that I’ve found yet and feeling like a little kid again playing at being an explorer or a pirate on a tropical island searching for buried treasure and finding it in the gold of the sun reflecting off the water below; a curly-haired pianist playing classical pieces barefoot on the waterfront; jumping into the river that leads from the lagoon to the bay and being pulled to the sea by the rapidly outgoing tide, scraping over some hidden barnacle-covered rocks and emerging with a bloody knee and too much sand in my swimsuit. Salty hair and sitting, finally, in the dark and quiet outside the trailer after a late-night shower, clean and sleepy and still.
A bit of excessive list-making, maybe – but how else to describe a place and time where the days feel like they pass in a series of warm, slow blinks, punctuated only by meals and periods of rapid cleaning shifts in the kitchen?
I have three more days of work here, and then I head south to Christchurch where I will be living and working with a family near the city center, helping with gardening and home repairs and, strangely, waitressing house parties, something that seems incongruously glamorous relative to the rest of the job description. It will be a big change from life in a hostel (this is the closest I can imagine to living in a college dorm, except that no one is in school, and at 20 years old I am the youngest in my room by six years; an unconventional college experience if there ever was one) – but I’m looking forward to having a little more space to myself and a whole city to explore.
In the spirit of this beautiful little beach town, I hope you all take some time today to watch the sunset or listen to a song that reminds you of a favorite place or memory. And until next time, as always: safe travels.
-Sierra
SGBRSH 