* * Day 6, Akaroa

Day 6, Akaroa

The Banks Peninsula juts into the South Pacific like a bulbous, dissected thumb at the base of the plain south of Christchurch. In reality, it is the caldera of an extinct volcano, with Lyttleton Harbor nearly splitting the peninsula from the mainland on the north and Akrora Harbor doing much the same from the south. On the eastern shore of the latter is the village of Akaroa, spilling upwards from the shallow waters of the harbor onto the nearby green hills.

The entire peninsula has a Scottish feel to it, with deep green fields of grass interspersed with even deeper green forests. Akaroa is one of New Zealand’s earliest settlements, founded by the French in 1840, as remote to Europeans as any place on the planet. The streets in town are all named “Rue”, the French word for street, thus Rue Lavaud is Main and we’re on Rue Jolie. Our habitation this night is a summer cottage of Tracy and David Fisher, friends of a friend in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, where they own another home as well. It is an older one storey wooden frame place, with a rustic, uncomplicated charm of mismatched doors, salvaged furniture and antique wiring and plumbing. There are ‘for sale’ signs about, as if we’ve arrived just in time.

The access road is a curvy, tight affair, with lots of cars and busses, all of the seemingly going slower than I wished.

But I digress.

The day began at the home of Libby Gairdner and Tim Anderson in Hamilton, where we’d shared Christmas dinner the day before. After an emotional, heartfelt farewell to them and their son Jared and daughter’s boyfriend Israel, we drove to the airport in Auckland where we put another $100 worth of petrol into the mid-sized rental car before turning it in. The domestic terminal was exclusively, or almost so, served by Air New Zealand. At the security check, we were never asked to take off our shoes or empty our liquid containers by the staffers, who were the friendliest I’ve ever encountered. Our trip to Christchurch was on the Airbus equivalent of the Boeing 737, a small, two-engine jet. I had a window seat but there was nothing to see outside except clouds. Instead, I spent my time chatting with the older woman, dressed in red, who sat beside me. She was a widow who moved from Auckland when her husband passed away 7 years earlier to the quiet, remote Bay of Islands, three hours north. She was on her way to see her son in Christchurch. Like many Kiwis, she had traveled extensively, including a lengthy Mediterranean cruise earlier in the year. She said, “New Zealanders like to travel, but almost every trip for us is a long one.”

Whitney successfully navigated us out of the Christchurch area and onto the Akaroa highway. It swept across the plains and onto the peninsula, where it hugged the shoreline of the various bays. Then we climbed over the mountain separating Lake Forsyth from Akaroa Harbor, giving us a splendid view to the latter as we descended out of the summit fog on the cool, overcast day.

 After settling in, we walked through town and uphill towards what was billed as the French cemetery. We were expecting a collection of weathered headstones, but found instead a single monument, an obelisk with an engraved explanation that the earlier ones were in such disrepair when the town fathers finally got around to restoring it that they couldn’t be used. Whitney was testy and disagreeable; Jane and I knew it from Whitney’s youth that she was exhibiting obvious signs of being tired, but she refused to take a nap. Her mood improved when she entered a gift shop and bought a couple of gifts for her friends.

Much to Whitney’s disappointment, for dinner we eschewed the restaurants and instead bought makings for spaghetti and meatballs, which I cooked in the tiny kitchen. It was actually pretty tasty in spite of the antique three-eye electric stove and of the makeshift nature cooking implements. Jane wants to eat the left-overs for breakfast.

Afterwards, I went for a walk on the shoreline of the harbor. Someone was shooting skyward some fireworks from the village, with colorful sparklers flashing overhead. Two children swam in the clear, dark, presumably chilly waters. A white-faced, grey heron strolled the dark sand. Across the bay, low clouds still shrouded the hilltops. I was reminded by the old joke by Twain, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” and thought much the same about here.

As I write, the sky is darkening outside and the sun is setting somewhere, but not where we can see it. I’m reading a paperback book from the shelf, a novel by Leon Uris, which appears to be one of the newer books in the small library, while dozing off intermittently. The book was copyrighted in 1964. It is over 600 pages of small print. My novels are half that and I’m counseled that they’re too long. Attention spans must have been longer 50 years ago. A bare naked lightbulb hangs from a goose-neck fixture imbedded in wall above me and provides my reading light. There is no internet service here, not even a detectable network for my laptop to tap. So I’ll need to upload this entry later.

On our itinerary, tomorrow offers a long driving day. Before we depart the peninsula, there is reputedly a hilltop somewhere around here that provides amazing views. But with tonight’s clouds and the likelihood of more in the morning, we’re not likely to find it.

Thus, Phase II of our journey is underway, with our arrival in and upcoming exploration of the South Island, in the world’s most appealing nation.