My few glimpses inland reveal the rugged Raukumara Mountains, their tops lost in mist. The skies threaten rain but never deliver. The road cuts inland for a while before finding the sea again at an outpost of a place called Hicks Bay at the top of New Zealand's East Cape. The road drops down from a steep hill, and my first view of Hicks Bay is enough to inspire even the most jaded traveler.
It’s the thundering surf that first steals my attention and excites my salivary glands. Mountains in the background and steep cliffs on both sides of the cove outline Hicks Bay. The surf rolls up to brown sugary sand. Accommodation first, and then surfing!? Oh joy!
Securing accommodation you think would be easy, but it continues to bedevil me. Hick’s Bay Lodge has all the makings of budget lodging, but it’s on a cliff side overlooking the bay and views and price tend to work together.
I pull into the parking lot determined to stand my ground and not shirk in the face of adversity. The lot is nearly empty; the chips, it seems, are once again in my corner. I step into the modest lobby and after but a moment examining postcards in a round display a middle aged woman emerges from the back room.
“G’day, can I help you?” She asks.
“Yes, how much for a single room?” I state, brimming with confidence.
“Singles are sixty-five dollars a night,” she says with equal clarity.
And that’s all it took. A price more than double my thirty-dollar limit and my confidence mutinies and leaves me in an oar boat. “Hmmm…is that the…ah…cheapest room you have?”
She gives a quick nod, her eyes sparkling. I’m at her mercy and she knows it. If not the Hicks Bay Lodge then what? Unlike the town of Whakatane, my options here are Hicks Bay Lodge or backseat Honda Concerto. I consider the wisdom of my thirty-dollar a night maximum. Perhaps I was a bit overly thrifty when I set down that road rule.
She breaks the strained silence. “There’s a campground just a bit further down the road. They rent cabins for around fifteen dollars a night. Might be more what you’re lookin’ for.”
The look of constipation on my face vanishes. The fool, she had me in her clutches. She gives me directions and I’m away in a flash.
Hicks Bay Holiday Park has everything a budget traveler could ask for. Tidy showers, a general store, beach access, cozy cabins, and…a GIANT SCREEN CINEMA! Or so declared the sign, it’s actually a Quonset hut with a larger than TV sized screen against the far wall.
The woman back at the Hicks Bay Lodge was wrong, the cabins are not fifteen dollars a night, they’re twelve. It seems a surreal price for my own cabin, but the plump ten-year-old girl behind the general store counter reiterates the price in response to my raised eyebrows. My very own cabin for twelve whole dollars, I feel almost guilty. The feeling of culpability lingers until I walk the muddy path to the cabin and discover that twelve dollars doesn’t get you the lodge-pole-pine chalet in Aspen I envisioned, it gets you twelve square feet of clapboard construction, four of which are dedicated to the outside foyer.
The one-size-fits-all skeleton key reveals a room just big enough for a bunk…just. A glance under the bunk uncovers several arachnid companions…at least I won’t be alone tonight. But given all that I’m still content with myself, I’m well under budget, and just think I could have been stuck in the back seat of my car, which although roomier and perhaps more comfortable, is still a car and not a cabin.
The first order of business after unpacking is to check out the beach. The weather looks daunting but I still have it in mind to go surfing. I decide to amble down to the beach first to check it out. The holiday park map the girl gave me has directions to the beach. Out in front of my cabin I get my bearings, orient the map with the giant screen cinema to my right, and proceed.
Where the holiday park ends, just past the barbecue facilities, I reach a paddock full of cows. Confusion sets in. The map makes no mention of paddocks or of cows; it shows only a hand drawn arrow with the words ‘TO BEACH’. There’s a grated bridge over a ditch to the paddock and what could qualify as a path beyond.
I like cows at a distance or on a dinner plate, but up close they spook me. Well, they’re big, and if properly agitated, who knows what they’re capable of. I cautiously go forth, my flee instinct on high alert. They regard me through narrowed eyes and look more intelligent then I’ve ever given members of the bovine family credit for. Can they sense my fear? Fortunately they part like the tide as I approach, and I go from a state of fear to the stately air of Lord of the Cows.
Three paddocks, a lot of tip toeing, and checking of shoes later I arrive at the beach. The sand looks slate gray under the darkened skies. I don’t appreciate the full strength of the wind until my face feels the weathering effects of air borne sand at gale speeds on the open beach. The surf is out of control. Great South Pacific rollers break in a clap of thunder well offshore and roar into the beach. I imagine myself out there on my surfboard, and then I imagine myself drowning. Driftwood clings to the beach and appears to age by the moment. In both directions I see not a soul, not a house, nothing. Just me, the wind, and a forest of driftwood piled up on the beach.
I walk south along the beach fearing that at any moment the skies could open up above me. I should head back, but I like the idea of walking down a beach without footprints. Great eddies of sand rise and fall around me, at times forcing me to turn away from the wind with hands over eyes. It reminds me of a blizzard. A great tree now gray, gnarled, and stripped of most of its branches lies on its side cast upon the beach. I climb amongst it and marvel from whence it came. My only indication of humanity is a plastic fuel-drum half full of water…or fuel. Time slips away, the first glance at my watch shows that an hour has passed and an uneasiness creeps over me. Loneliness. I briskly turn about and purposefully head home, no longer drifting, now much concerned with dinner and other matters of the practical world.
While I have preset price limits for accommodation, I have no such harsh guidelines for meals and as the dinner hour approaches I feel a certain degree of freedom. Last night’s paltry dinner of popcorn will be supplemented with tonight’s feast. Dinner in Hick’s Bay consists of two options: the general store at the holiday park, or Hicks Bay Lodge. The Lodge it is. They may have spurned my lodging attempts, but with God as my witness they’ll have no such luck with my appetite. The girl in the general store is kind enough to phone and make a reservation for one. I begin to wonder if she owns the holiday park.
A shower and an hour later I’m back up at Hicks Bay Lodge. The same woman I encountered earlier guides me – points really – to a little table pushed up against a wall with a reserved sign on it, which I shove to the side, I mean really, the place is maybe a third full.
The restaurant is perched on a cliff overlooking Hicks Bay and the crashing surf. My view is a wall and an acrylic painting of a mountain scene that assaults my senses. The back of my head however takes in the panorama.
I can’t resist the fresh East Coast lamb on the menu, probably culled today I imagine. A wiser decision was never made. At the table next to me is another loner; he’s also having the lamb. Together we sit there staring at the wall not quite knowing what to do with ourselves. Dinner arrives, cutlery flies, the view and other concerns are forgotten as lamb and gravy dribblings run freely down my chin, fresh kumara (sweet potato), parsnips, and carrots. The lamb is so tender and delicious it incites a taste bud orgy, even the paint by number mountain vista before me takes on Monet qualities. A couple pints of Speights Lager, raspberry cheesecake for desert and I slip into a food coma, happy a man as there ever was at that moment in time.
I return to my cozy outhouse and settle in for a night’s peaceful repose…or so I thought.
At one o’clock in the morning my cabin shimmies. I awake with a start. I lie there staring up at the ceiling wide-eyed, outside a tempest rages. Howling wind and driving rain hurl themselves against the sides of my tipsy accommodation. The storm that threatened all day has arrived. The elements test the foundation of my hut and from the sound of it I think the storm has the upper hand. I burrow deeper into sheets and contemplate what to do in the event the roof disintegrates, can’t go under the bunk, the arachnids already claimed that spot. But then things get worse. Lost in my fears I begin to feel a tingling sensation in my lower quarters, a sensation that can only be associated with a full bladder.
I ignore it. I roll over and focus on the storm. I shut my eyes tightly and will sleep to come over me. I count sheep. I pray. I speak in tongues…and then…I give up, get up, step outside onto the covered foyer and look the twenty meters across the holiday park to the toilets, the entrance is lit up beneath a single dim bulb. The ground has become a lake, the rain lashes and whirls. I consider my options, and then stand there on the edge of the foyer and do what anyone of you would do in the same situation…females included.
Copyright 2000 Douglas S. Sassaman
About The Author:
Douglas Sassaman is a freelance writer, aspiring novelist, and self-described humorist (who some think should be self-committed). He writes the humor column, 'Life in the Cosmic-Burp' on the web at http://CosmicBurp.com.
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