“Smile, weirdo,” Josh says.
My frown deepens and that’s when he takes the picture. He glances at the screen and shrugs. “Well, at least it’s accurate,” he says before shoving it back into his pocket. “Shall we see a man about a tractor and a boat?”
I make a humorous grunting sound and follow him to the water’s edge where Hamish is backing up the tractor.
“Need help?” I yell at him.
He shakes his head and keeps backing up until he slams on the tractor brakes and the whole boat goes sliding backward off the trailer and into the water where it lands with a splashy thud.
Hamish hops off the tractor and gestures to the boat with one arm. “All right, everyone in!”
Though I’ve known not to expect a dock in places like this, I also wasn’t thinking about having to wade through water. I take off my jandals and hold them in one hand, glad I’m wearing shorts as usual.
Josh, on the other hand, is wearing jeans and his skater shoes. He takes the shoes off and rolls up his jeans to the knees.
“You look like Tom Sawyer,” I tell him.
“I love Rush,” Hamish says, hopping on the boat and flipping through the radio channels, as if he expects to find the band and song playing right this minute. “Canadian band, aye?”
Josh and I walk up to the boat, the water reaching to mid-calf on me, before it starts to float away. Josh gets in first and I’m quickly hauled up by him until I’m sitting down on the cold metal seat that stretches across the boat’s middle.
Hamish lowers the propeller into the water. He gives us some quick info on the bay and the surrounding environment, though I’ve heard of most of the birds and sea creatures before. Then he slams on the thrust and we propel forward over ice blue waves that mimic the color of Josh’s eyes.
For the most part, the boat ride is a bumpy trip. The Southern Pacific Ocean rushes into the bay and we bounce around, the cold spray coating my bare limbs. At one point the boat really slams down after a sharp swell, as if we’re landing on a turtle’s back, and Josh’s arm goes around my waist, holding me tight and close.
I don’t protest. He can hold me all he wants here because I have this feeling that if I even move, I’ll be swept overboard. Partly because it’s wet and windy and wild out, and partly because it would be ironic. The girl who’s trying so hard not to drown would literally drown in the end.
Hamish takes us past the white, ribbed walls of the sea cliffs, and all the cormorants and gannets and other seabirds that lodge there, perched precariously. I wonder how they can even survive living on the absolute edge, in danger with every breath of their lives.
“Here are your dolphins, Gemma,” Hamish suddenly says, and the boat guns it further into the open ocean. That thing that Josh feared, that unending emptiness and loneliness, well, I’m finally aware of it, finally fearful. The waves are so big and the boat is so small. We could keep going and going and going until New Zealand was just a dot on the horizon, and we’d be alone forever.
I suck in my breath, trying to calm the panic rising at the bottom of my throat, and Josh instinctively holds me tighter. Maybe he can tell. But he’s just letting me know he’s there.
Suddenly gray and black bodies are shooting out of the water to the left of us and then to the right of us. The smallest dolphins I’ve ever seen are propelling themselves out of the water while others are racing us just below the surface, a stunning contrast against the thick, aqua blue of the water. They ride the waves and the current like underwater surfers.
Josh may have been making fun of me for being a dolphin hipster, but I’m sincerely impressed by these tiny, quick guys. I wonder if I should let him know that or keep up my reputation.
“Ah, dolphins,” Hamish remarks earnestly. “The llamas of the sea.”
Josh and I exchange a look at that.
When we’re cold, a bit wet, and utterly enthralled, running on delicious adrenaline, Hamish turns the little boat around and we head back toward the sharp, guano-stained cliffs of Le Bons Bay. After we make our way past the sharp hills and toward the wide beach, he runs the boat into the sand and then ushers us off.
As far as tours go, this one was utterly rudimentary. But that’s part of the charm. It was personal—just Josh and I, getting to experience the little Hector’s dolphins and that terrible taste of the open sea. It was real to the bone, and I knew because of that it would stick with me for a long time.
With Hamish in the background trying to hook up the boat to the tractor trailer, we make our way across the beach and back toward the road. The sand is extra cold beneath my feet and I’m trying to walk faster because of it.
I look beside me at Josh. He looks pumped, elated, yet when he meets my eyes I see a thread of darkness in him.
“So, what did you think?” I ask.
“You actually care what I think?” he answers. My smile falters for a moment but he’s already looking back at the hills in front of us. “I thought that was pretty fucking amazing.”
“A bit of a low-budget adventure,” I say, feeling as shy and unsure as a girl at her first school dance. What the hell is wrong with my head?
Once we reach the end of the beach, we slip our shoes on. Hamish seems to be taking his time. He’s actually abandoned the tractor and boat and is walking to a shed on the opposite side of the beach. It looks like we’ll have to walk up the hill without him.
Together.
On our own.