East Cape
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2003
1
63
87
Trip End
Jan 24, 2004
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Te Kaha, New Zealand
Tuesday, January 6, 2004
We're catching travel fatigue. For the first time since Hawaii, Emma has a teary moment about her mom. It's a fleeting emotion and soon evaporates, but she has an eye on our return date.
We get the last room at the Te Kaha Holiday Park. Since we left all our camping gear in Wellington, we opt for a tourist flat, a cabin without linens (which you rent for an additional fee). Many Kiwis, like their Aussie cousins, view camping as a stationary and civilized event. When they go away for holidays, they travel to the destination and stay put, either in well-stocked flats like this or in marvelously vast tents which resemble a Medieval pitched army camp.
We wander down to the bay for a swim. The shore is coated in baby jellyfish with many more in the surf. Despite the fact we're told they are harmless, Emma refuses to swim. Eventually I piggyback her past the surf line to clearer water where she can see there are no more jellyfish. We get yummy burgers from the takeaway store then Emma and I hack around the playground until dusk. We come inside when my butt hits the ground through the bottom of the trampoline during what I thought was a particularly good L-sit.
I lie awake tonight mourning the limitations of my writing, trying to discover a better way to capture the odd, magical things we see. Will words convey the feeling at twilight of the tired wooden buildings in this old whaling town? How do you properly describe the idle chatter of some Kiwi school girls, climbing to the top of a slide to find a signal for a cellphone, while the sky glows purple behind them?
