I'm back on the bus again, headed down the west coast of the south island. I was sad to leave the trailor park as I met a lot of good people and shared quite a few laughs but alas all good things must come to an end. Take for example a friendship of mine that had deteriorated over the time I spent apple picking. I didn't have a working visa, so I met this girl who shall remain nameless and she told me I could use her visa/New Zealand bank account since she would be working at the same place I was. I now believe in God. For if in the last two weeks I have lived next door to Satan, then surely God and Heaven must exist or else this is all just one big cruel joke. I'm pretty sure that by the end of our time at the camp our hatred had grown to such extensive proportions that the only thing that surpassed our loathing for one another was the effort we were both putting in to save face and pretend that we didn't want to stab each other in the throat with a rusty screwdriver. By some bizarre set of circumstances we were able to maintain some basic form of communication that would enable us to understand each other while using the shortest words we could think of in order to minimize that amount of time that we actually had to spend in each other's company. If you took the words "pretentious" and "twat," melted them down into a ball of clay and then molded that ball of clay into a human form with hair you will begin to enter the realm of what I am talking about. It is over, I have the cash, I am moving on.......however I must be cautious as she's still behind me, possibly stalking me like a hunter would stalk their game and I am scared to fall asleep.
One final anecdote before I put this chapter to rest. After a long day of picking fruit I was tired but my mind was clear and I had a purpose. I hadn't eaten well in about 5 days and fate be damned I was going to cook a big spaghetti dish and then freeze some of it for another night. It was beautiful, you should have seen it! There were peppers and mushrooms, onions and ground beef with all the right spices. I was just about to dig in when I thought to myself, "why stop now?" I had an extra can of tomato sauce back in the cabin so my first instinct was to pour it into the already simmering sauce and stretch this meal out even farther. (This was my first introduction to some of the differences between the Kiwi culture and that of the Canuck.) For you see, in Canada "Ketchup" refers to the stuff you put on a hamburger and "tomato sauce" is the stuff that you make pasta with. But lo and behold the Kiwi's have it all mixed up! They call ketchup "tomato sauce" and tomato sauce "pasta sauce!" I realized the error of my ways after the second bite and gagged quite profusely. I had just spent 45 minutes cooking a $20 hot dog condiment. You know, there's a lot to be said for take-out pizza......as long as they make it with "pasta sauce" that is......
Here's some pics of my last night in Nelson. That's my buddy Beede after we had just hiked up to the center of New Zealand in Nelson.
