At the rate the dead rise, I slowly awake. My cabin survived the gale and thankfully my companions under the bunk didn’t mistake me for a large fleshy moth. Judging from my newfound mosquito bites, I think the spiders had their eight little legs busy last night. There was a 5am tour to the East Cape Lighthouse that some little part of me was planning on getting up for; I missed it by three hours. The lighthouse is via a rugged 4-wheel drive road, where you then watch the sunrise on the world. It was the singular purpose of my trip, my goal, my raison d’être, but 5am? Who are they kidding?
Two nights of sub-standard sleep are beginning to take a toll on me, which leads to a problem when you’re traveling alone, there’s no one to snap at when you’re feeling particularly nasty. So I grumble at myself, which begets an even more serious concern, I’m beginning to talk to myself…out loud. I gripe as I pack, grouse as I start the car, and air grievances on my way up to a lookout point to check the surf. And then, all is forgotten.
The surf is of legendary proportions, whipped up no doubt by the storm last night. The wind has completely died away leaving these looming monsters to roam unfettered. Their dark shapes grow larger as they approach the shore, and then in a fury of energy that could power my car for the next 1000 years, they break and I shudder. I experience a combination of dread, fear, and excitement; dread and fear because I’m considering going out surfing amidst those giants, and excitement for the same reason. Fear wins out, my surfboard is too short to handle those monstrosities, and surfing in a place where they wouldn’t find my bloated body washed up on shore for weeks on end discourages me further.
I jump back in my car, afraid that I may suddenly decide to tempt fate, and lurch onto highway 35. I have now officially rounded the East Cape of New Zealand and I’m heading south. It’s four hours to Gisborne, which if you concern yourself with these things, is the unofficial surfing capital of New Zealand. If surf is to be found, that’s the place.
I’m driving with all the determination I can muster, the scent of surf is in the air, nothing can stop me, be it an endangered kiwi on the road, wayward sheep, or car wreck victims scattered across the highway, but in Te Puia Springs another one of those dastardly faded yellow golf course signs comes into view and I succumb, like the siren call of a mermaid. I put my life at risk with a U-turn maneuver on a blind curve and follow the sign up a dirt two-track road.
My muffler biffs against a rock and I begin to have my doubts. The road to the golf course is taking on 4-wheel drive qualities. I pass a farmer on a horse with his three beagles running rampant. He tips his hat and gives me an odd look. The creases in my brow deepen. Five minutes later, when I’m fresh out of creases, I crest a hill and the Te Puia Springs Golf Course comes into view.
If you were out to strike it rich in the golf industry, Te Puia Springs wouldn’t be your ticket to a six-figure income, or even a five figure one for that matter. It’s a beautiful day and yet the lot is empty, the flags on top of flagsticks are the only movement. The clubhouse and pro-shop are two trailers attached at their ends. The course drops down into a lightly forested valley, the holes disappearing and reappearing between copses of trees and knolls. The South Pacific can be seen off in the distance. The greens look well kept. I fetch my putter and a ball from the trunk of the car and putter around the 18th green; they’re fast and true.
Next to the first tee is a small green box, known in New Zealand as an honesty box, where greens fees are inserted when no one is about. Greens Fees $10 ($US5.00), states the sign in black marker, to be inserted prior to playing your round. I stand there on the first tee box looking out over the course, putter in hand, and wage a battle; it’s Yin vs. Yang, surf vs. turf.
I don’t know that I ever actually arrive at a decision on a conscious level, but I slowly turn and walk back to the car, stow the putter in the trunk, and leave Te Puia Springs for the birds to enjoy. Perhaps Te Puia is best left to nature, or maybe the mana of the course rebuffs me, my game has been known to scar landscapes, if you’ve ever been privy to my prodigious wedge shot you’ll know that a back-hoe is not necessarily the most efficient excavation machine.
Once free from the clasp of Te Puia Springs, my dash down the coast resumes. I have one last scheduled stop as I sprint down to Gisborne, and that is at New Zealand’s longest pier in Tolaga Bay. The countryside still bumps and lumps, the one constant of the East Cape. The Pacific is my intermittent companion to my left as I crest hills. A sign for Tolaga Bay comes into view, I follow it.
Moments after my turn-off the wily cape throws me one final twist. Up until now I’ve had it easy, old-timers would marvel at my lack of ill fortune around the cape, they would tell tall tales on benches in front of bait shops about that Yank who outsmarted the cape. But like my cat to a three-day-old dead bird in our back yard, the cape isn’t done with me yet. I bring the car to a stop and look down the road with horror. Hundreds of sheep, a white fluffy mass, are barreling down on me with surprising speed.
Give me a broken down car in an East L.A. alley with Crypts and Bloods on either side of me, that’s something I can identify with, but this! I have no experience dealing with marauding sheep. Their inhuman beady eyes speak of trouble, their bleats the stuff of future nightmares. Thankfully they’re not armed.
Where in God’s name are the shepherds, the sheep dogs? Then it occurs to me that this is a rouge band loose on the countryside. I thought sheep were normally placid creatures that busied themselves with dotting hillsides and munching grass. I cringe as they charge me, the Honda Concerto ain’t gonna like this. But then fortune smiles on me again; just before destruction and mayhem are imminent they part like the Red Sea around me. Their wooly coats lightly buff the outside of the Concerto, giving her an impromptu cleaning. Moments later I look back at them through my rearview mirror, their minds set on other quarry no doubt. I sigh and drive the short distance to Tolaga Bay.
The Tolaga Bay pier is indeed long, and looks to be supported by divine intervention more than anything else. Sections of the pier have fallen away into the sea, concrete railings and support posts have disintegrated in spots leaving wild rusted rebar. A little sign,
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