“I don’t get it,” I say, watching as the last of their group quickly scampers out of sight. That might have been the cutest and weirdest thing I have ever seen.
“You never head of them?” she asks. “They probably have a burrow under the house. It’s actually quite common for beach houses.”
“Look, I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t do a whole lot of research about the country.”
“I can see that,” she says. “Well, how about that, then.”
“How about that,” I say, sitting back down. The penguins’ magical appearance has somehow taken Gemma’s heartbreaking story to another place, and she’s quick to jump on the transition. She tells me all about the interesting birdlife in New Zealand, from yellow-eyed penguins on the Otago Peninsula down south, to the kea—cheeky green parrots that live in the snow-covered Alps. She’s animated as she tells me all she knows, and I absorb it like a sponge. I drink my beer and she goes back to drinking hers, and before Nick, Amber, and the Irish show up all sloshed, she’s painted a beautiful picture of what’s to come. I can only hope I’ll continue to be part of the picture.
“So how is the art coming along?” Vera asks me, her voice sounding so crazy clear over the cell phone. It’s nuts to think that not only is it eight p.m. where she is—yesterday—and eight a.m. here, she’s literally halfway across the world. Yet I’m able to talk to her like she’s right beside me.
“It’s picking up,” I tell her. “I didn’t start sketching until we were in Abel Tasman Park, but it was like I couldn’t stop myself. I wish I brought more than my watercolor pencils though.”
I breathe in the fresh mountain air and look around me. If we weren’t leaving in ten minutes, I’d be trying to paint this place as well. We’re in Makarora on the South Island, a place by an area called Haast Pass, sort of the halfway point between the resort towns of Wanaka and Queensland and the Wild West Coast that we were just on. There’s nothing to Makarora except maybe the holiday park we stayed at and farms scattered about, bastions of civilization trying to survive among the encroaching wilderness. But shit, is this place ever beautiful.
I’m sitting on top of a picnic table, the air sweet with morning dew while the sun slowly starts to heat up. I’m still amazed at how strong it is down here and how quickly you can burn. I learned that all too well during a kayak trip, though the burn on my upper body has turned into a deep tan.
Everywhere you look are mountains—big, ridiculously hefty mountains, like someone has placed sugar-dusted anvils at the sides of the valley. What I like most about them is how bare they are. Though the valley floor is green, green, green, with grassy fields of sharp-bladed flax and palmlike cabbage trees, the foliage peters off halfway up the mountains, leaving their upper halves bare. They’re brown and tan and nude, covered in what Gemma calls tussock grass, and because of this you can see every little cranny and crevice. It’s like looking at living velvet, and I can literally just stare at them for hours.
Vera clears her throat. “And is that the only thing picking up since we last talked?” she asks, trying to hide her curiosity.
I last talked to her the morning after Paekakariki and the little blue penguins. I bought a calling card at the ferry terminal to the South Island and spent the majority of the rough and wild voyage across Cook Strait filling her in on the trip so far.
That was ten days ago. Everything since then passed by in a dreamy, hazy blur. Sometimes it felt like a good dream. Other times it was a nightmare.
“Well,” I say hesitantly before launching into it.
After we left the North Island, Nick and Gemma’s relationship became a bit strained. Normally, that would have made me happy—I wanted nothing more than for them to break up. But it only made things awkward and Gemma miserable.
Somewhere during our Abel Tasman trip, though, things went back to normal. At least it seemed that way. That’s when the dream got nightmarish again. If anything, they seemed closer, more affectionate.
By day I was sharing a double kayak with Amber and slowly paddling through pale turquoise waters occasionally peppered with dolphins and, yes, little blue penguins. The sun was hot and heavy and we were navigating ourselves through the shallow coves of what looked like a tropical paradise.
By night, we were hauling our kayaks up onto soft, golden sand beaches and camping out between the sea and the forest. Gemma and Nick had picked up an extra tent in the eclectic city of Nelson, a place I wouldn’t have minded spending a few days in, which meant I had to share with Amber.
At first this wasn’t a problem. But by the third night, Nick and Gemma were back to their horrifically loud fucking, and Amber started to get ideas of her own.
Naturally, being a hot-blooded male, I didn’t quite have the energy to fend her off. Not that she was doing anything more than snuggling against me as we fell asleep, but I started to fear that if she did start getting horny, I would be powerless to stop her. Powerless, as in, I was getting pretty fucking horny, too, but not for the reasons she’d want.
After our tramping and kayaking trip was over, we gladly piled back into Mr. Orange, filling him with sand and the smell of salt water. We made our way to a place called Nelson Lakes for a few nights, a place of sublime alpine scenery and a lake so still you’d swear it was holding its breath. It reminded me of back home a lot, particularly the area around Lake Okanagan, and for the first time I felt a twinge of homesickness. I sketched and painted my way out of it.