by On Monday night Mum and Dad went to Geraldine’s most famous restaurant with some ex-neighbours. I had my Romanian lesson so I stayed at my parents’ place and saved them over $30. (They’re paying for everything while I’m here. There’s no point trying to change that.) In our lesson we covered serious and heavy subjects like last week’s LPG plant explosion near Bucharest – it killed three and injured dozens – and what happens to homeless people when they are discharged from hospital. My brother, still in crutches following his knee operation, called later that evening. Then the next morning we were off to the West Coast.
After briefly catching some action from day one of the US Open, we set off at nine on the inland route. It was a glorious day; the sunny weather would follow us for most of the trip. There was remarkably little traffic. Mum and Dad shared the driving – there was no chance of me getting behind the wheel. Springfield, at the foot of the Arthur’s Pass, seemed to have lost its Simpsons doughnut since I last went over the pass in 2009. We passed Lake Lyndon, then the Castle Hill Range. We then stopped at Lake Pearson which was gin clear. Maybe my brother and I swam there 37 years ago. An Emirates A380, minutes away from landing at Christchurch, was flying low overhead. Unbelievably for somewhere so beautiful, nobody else was there. In the UK, a spot like that would be rammed and it would cost you a fiver just to park your car. In Romania, it would be rather less crowded, but there’d be rubbish everywhere including at least one mattress and maybe a fridge. On a late winter’s day in New Zealand, however, it was pristine and deserted.
At Arthur’s Pass village – strangely the only placename in the whole country not to have been stripped of its apostrophe – we saw a group of very tame keas, or maybe kea’s, ready to wrench off our wing mirrors. (Outside the village you’ll have a hard time spotting one of those native parrots. And I know, the plural should just be kea.)
Once we’d gone through Otira and had made it over the pass, the landscape changed markedly. There were far fewer pine trees and more natives, such as the punga. We were greeted by wild goats on the roadside, reminding me of my adopted home, and a solitary weka. We were too early to check in to our motel at Paroa, which is basically a suburb of Greymouth, so we went down the coast a little way first, taking advantage of the sunshine. I’d almost forgotten what a Kiwi tradition these motels are. All those weird and wacky Aaltons and Aamiras vying for prime position in the phone book. I have fond memories of Mum buttering our toast with a toothbrush in a knifeless motel in Hamilton which featured bunk beds. I’m sure we were too stingy to stay at any of the (many) places that boasted waterbeds. Our motel this time was very cramped. Mum somehow put together a meal of sausages, beans and spuds, then we played two games of Skip-Bo on one of the beds. Mum and I each won one, cutting Dad’s lead to 4-3-3.
