Kia Ora - Discovering New Zealand
ADVENTURE
More than a month has passed since this new adventure began.
Travels are much more than mere entertaining vacations. Heading into the unknown, uprooting yourself again and again, is an invitation to explore not only a new world, its landscapes, fauna and flora, culture, but also yourself, your inner worlds.
We all need to feel safe, stable, balanced, at home (Muladhara, the first chakra, is there to make sure of it). However, when deprived of any external reference, you're left with no other choice than to seek this home elsewhere, in the only place that will always be there: within yourself.
Not always easy, eh, to return to your centre and accept to look inside, to listen to your own needs and desires, and to assert your personal power. Especially when you are in constant motion, allowing yourself little respite to catch your breath. But this is an incredible opportunity to grow and evolve more quickly, like an accelerated training.
Anyway! New Zealand:
It's vast, it's empty, it's cold and it burns, it's very green and very blue. The country is sparsely populated with its five million inhabitants for an area slightly larger than that of the United Kingdom (which currently has sixty-seven million inhabitants, for comparison). You literally come across ten times more sheep than humans. Which, in reality, feels good. Walking, driving for hours and hardly encountering anyone, surrounded by green, lots of green. Hills as far as the eye can see, no buildings, just vast shining meadows blending with the blue sky and only giving way to the turquoise of a river or the ocean. Really, the water is always turquoise blue here; it's crazy. Whether fresh or salty, calm or rough, in clear or overcast weather, the water maintains its Caribbean colour. Cold, very cold, but azure.
It's very hot and very cold at the same time; it's strange. The air remains practically always cool, but when the sun comes out, it instantly burns. Apparently, this is due to a hole in the ozone layer just above us (yay).
The most incredible thing is being in daily contact with nature and its inhabitants. Birds sing (or make UFO-like sounds, as in the case of the charming tūī), rabbits frolic (there are supposedly too many, but I'm quite happy to see them hopping outside my window), and sea lions sunbathe. Because yes, there are wild sea lions casually chilling in the sun on certain beaches.
For me, that's the real magic of this country. You drive peacefully, watching the trees go by, then you see a little sign that says "scenic view," so you decide to take a short break, and boom, giant waterfalls surrounded by virgin forest. Okay, you continue your way, take another short break, and bam, a monumental pine tree. We continue, and in the end, we find ourselves along the coast, and oh! Sea lions! What if we stopped? But it's full of babies! Oh, look, that one has just been born; it's still covered in placenta!
Normal.
Even the bumblebees bring me joy here. Even the little mice that I try to protect from the cat I'm taking care of in exchange for free accommodation are adorable with their tiny ears. Majestic hawks constantly soar over the country, and kiwis hide in the forest.
After two years in a large Spanish city filled with the noise of cars and football fans, the song of birds represents a significant change.
Of course, perfection doesn't exist. After the initial weeks of joy in the midst of all this soothing green, I realised that only two or three centuries ago, the country was covered in virgin forests, and Nature was even more powerful. These beautiful valleys that I admire while doing my daily yoga are not actually natural; they were created after mass deforestation to make way for pastures for livestock. Ah.
Then, one day, as we were driving towards the South Island, a bird crashed into our windshield. We were going about 80 km/h, so I don't think it survived. Well, I didn't take it very well, as you can imagine. After guilt, anger showed up. You have no idea how many dead animals I've seen on the side of the road in such a short time. Sure, it's a sign that there are many more frolicking around, and it feeds the hawks, but it's not fair. Not fair that we take up so much space. Not fair that we choose which species deserve to live and under what conditions. And not fair that a poor bird that was gracefully flying around is dead so that we can enjoy beautiful landscapes. As someone with wanderlust in my blood, it affected me even more. My conclusion is that if you can't get somewhere walking, biking, or sailing, maybe you're simply not supposed to go there. I know that if I want to be aligned with my beliefs, I'll have to change my way of positioning myself in this world even more. Not easy, but doable.
As I mentioned, perfection doesn't exist, but New Zealand remains a beautiful country that I savour a little more each day and that I'm eager to continue discovering.
For now, we've done Madrid-Shanghai, then Shanghai-Auckland in two days. Upon arriving in the country's largest city, we met a friend of a friend of my brother's who sold us his camper van (and it turns out I was in fifth grade with his older sister; the world is truly tiny). After that, we drove to Havelock North, where we took care of two dogs for two weeks and enjoyed a breathtaking view of the pastures. We then hit the road, briefly explored the south of the North Island following, the landscapes of The Lord of the Rings, and took the ferry to the South Island. A short visit to my friend Juliette, whom I always meet in distant lands even though her parents live an hour away from mine, then off to Roxburgh for a month and a half of house-sitting amidst mountains and orchards.
We should hit the road again by mid-January for a few weeks of van life in the deep South.
❂ Meanwhile, take good care of yourself ❂
