The Great Trip

When Staring at the End of the World, You Pray it Dosn't Stare Back.

“Go north young man!” is what I wanted to tell you an old Kiwi said to me as we left Auckland. That is what we did, but I would be lying if I told you an old man said that to me. Anissa is the young vibrant beauty who said that to me. If I were even to allude to her as an old woman I would spend the coming months as celibate as a priest, as celibate as a priest is supposed to be, modern examples excluded. Our drive took us along the scenic west coast of New Zealand, by scenic I meal pastoral, by pastoral I mean — white man chop down all the trees to feed sheep. If you press aside the thoughts that the beautiful rolling hills are the product of a destructive colonization by the same folks that gave us the American Colonies: I have never seen more beautiful rolling green farmland hills anywhere else in the world.

As Anissa and I drove north we would pass pastures filled with cows, bulls, calves, sheep, more sheep, deer, then sheep, then sheep, and… Wait, yes I did say deer. New Zealand is the largest exporter of deer in the world. In addition to the meat, New Zealand exports over 450 tones of deer velvet antler for use in the world vitamin supplement market. Deer velvet has long been used in traditional Chinese herbal medicine and is beginning to have a large impact in the US markets as an alternative treatment for arthritis and nearly any disease related to inflammation of joint or blood vessels. The jury is still out as to the effectiveness of the treatment, but you can have faith that no wild happy deer were harmed in the process of making the supplement.

Our northward destination was the furthest tip of Nez Zealand, Cape Reinga, only ninety kilometers from our accommodations the previous night; sixty-eight of them were spectacular. The remaining twenty-two were on an unsealed road, which appears to be a Kiwi euphemism for: dirt-road with pot-holes that swallow small cars. Traveling an unsealed, hard-traveling road for over an hour did provid the perfect preamble to the spectacle we were about to witness

We were at the end of the world! Here is the reinga, or the leaping place, the ultimate entrance to the Maori underworld. This is the sacred place where the spirits of the dead leap off the cliff and descend into the underworld. It is easy to see why this site has been venerated and held sacred. Cape Reinga is where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide. This joining would usually pass without notice were you to be in a boat at sea, but here, at this scared point at the end of the world there is a reef that allows these great bodies of water to express their displeasure at the meeting. Like freight trains full of powdered sugar colliding side-long into each other, these powerful waters surge up into waves as tall as a house then crash, face to face, into each other sending white whirling wisps of spray into the air.

Anissa and I held each other tight, with my jacket wrapped around us both to stay the whipping wind, as the final rays of sun dipped into the western horizon.

Cheers from the end of the world.

Rion and Anissa 

posted by Rion and Anissa @ 12:26 AM