Long Cloud Ride Read online

  Jacquie, who was plonk in the middle of her forties, lived with two cats. One was a grey fluffball called Jemma who didn’t like the look of me and my clobber at all and had scarpered out of the back catflap and not been seen since. The other was a short-haired and playful tabby called Milly. Jacquie was a bit loopy when it came to cats. Along with sleeping with her real ones, there were various catlike ornaments dotted about the flat. Framed pictures of stately felines lined the wall of her bathroom and attached to her fridge were two magnets. One was of a cat with the words: CATS LEAVE PAWPRINTS ON YOUR HEART. The other had a picture of a rotund cat sandwiched amidst the request: PLEASE GOD IF YOU CAN’T MAKE ME THIN, MAKE MY FRIENDS FAT!! I felt like taking Jacquie aside and having a quiet word with her about her feline fetish, but as I barely knew her and as she had kindly offered to put me and my mountain of bags up in her home, it was probably best to keep my mouth shut. At least for the first night.

  During an exploratory cycle this afternoon, I came across a number of corner stores (run by Chinese families) known as dairies or superettes. Sounds more like the name of a sixties girl band to me. I also passed gardens that frothed with colour. Jacarandas, with their trumpet flowers, and the tall nodding heads of blue and white agapanthus sprouted from every corner. Each block was a complete mixture of houses. Some were of utilitarian ugliness, many with corrugated iron roofs, others quite attractive weatherboard constructions with verandas and trailing vines. It seemed the rich could live right next door to the not so rich. One minute, grand house, big car, neat garden. The next, a home (usually a Maori’s) of peeling paint, battered car, weedy flowers waving along the edge of a yard containing a dented deflated football and a bashed-about child’s bike dumped on its side.

  And everywhere, birds. More of those honey-toned ruff-necked black ones that Jacquie told me were known as tuis – or, on account of their white collar, the not so mellifluous-sounding parson bird. Mynahs were forty to the dozen too. At one point I counted eight mynahs making a major racket with their range of gurgling, squawking, clicking and harsh bell-like calls. With their cunningly fearless antics and yellow eye-patch masks, they resembled cat burglars hopping furtively about the roof of a low-slung house.

  Down at Bayswater marina a swag of pied shags, perching stock-still on top of a row of sea-lapping piles, resembled scarecrows as they held out their bedraggled wings to dry in the frisky wind. A pontoon, open to the public apart from in high winds when big slappy waves off Waitemata Harbour flopped across the top, curved its way around a tidy sum of boats with names like South Pacific Sunrise, Dividend, Yehudi, Samurai, Tintagel, Dream Chaser, Random Access, Sea Runner, LadyBird, Iconoclast, Elbow Room and Twice As Much. The only people on the pontoon were a huddle of well-hooded Vietnamese fishermen. We got as far as exchanging ‘harrows!’ but conversation went no further as none of them spoke English. There were lots of big toothy smiles, though, and holding up of landed fish. These fish were not your normal Joe Bloggs fish to those of us who dwell within the upper reaches of the globe. An information board at the entrance to the pontoon bore etched pictures of some of the various fish likely to be hauled from these waters. Fish like kingfish, butterfish, blue cod, moki and tarahiki.

  *

  Across the road from Jacquie’s flat lay a cemetery. A path led down the hill through the cemetery and on to a boardwalk that crossed a marshy finger of Shoal Bay swamped with mangroves – the sort of place you might imagine finding killer crocs if you weren’t in New Zealand. But fortunately, as I’d discovered earlier, New Zealand doesn’t have any crocodiles. Just lots of possum traps. And Christmas wrapping paper surplus to requirements.

  Although this pathway was popular with dog-walkers and joggers and children on bikes, the whole area was something of an ornithological madhouse busy with all sorts of birds, including herons and kingfishers fishing and flitting about their business. There were also parakeets, or kararikis, as the Maori call them – their word for bright green. I was more used to coming across these birds incarcerated in cages in people’s front rooms mimicking the theme tune to EastEnders. Seeing these parrots flying free was like watching an electrical storm. The yellow, blue, green and red streaks seemed to scorch the evening sky.

  On the path back to Jacquie’s I was overtaken by two stick-thin lycra-encased women speedwalking, their elbows pumping like chicken wings. Shortly after this I noticed a pair of trainers, tied together by their laces, dangling from the telegraph wires on the road in front of the cemetery. I took a photograph of them for the sake of posterity. Peering through my telephoto lens, they looked very lovely silhouetted against a sky burning red from the sunset.

  2

  Near Amodeo Bay, Coromandel Peninsula, 31 December

  Well, that’s Christmas done and dusted. And a good thing too. Saying that, I had a fine feast at Jacquie’s uncle’s house. I didn’t so much have seconds as fifths. But then I was feeling a bit half starved after two months bobbing about on the ocean wave. Not that the food on the freighter was anything to cause a rumpus about; it just wasn’t up to my usual cyclist quantities. Here, though, there was a quantity of food and a profusion of tastes that were hard to say no to.

  A large crowd of people in buoyant Christmas spirit gathered around the long table at Jacquie’s uncle’s. I tried my best to be full of festive jollity, but my heart and head felt on another planet. Have done ever since I received the news on the ship that my nephews’ nineteen-year-old cousin Jonnie was killed in a car crash six days before Christmas. I can’t quite take in that the happy strapping lad I hugged merely days before I left home in October is now lying in a coffin in a cold wintry graveyard. His funeral was yesterday. I spoke to Mel, my sister-in-law (though she’s a lot more sister than law), who is Jonnie’s aunt. She said the church was packed, mostly with Jonnie’s school friends. Mum and dad and my brother Dave, Mel’s husband, were there too. It was a freezing cold dark and drizzly December day. Which makes it seem even more unreal when I’m sitting in dazzling light bombarded by sweltering sunshine and busy summer birdsong.

  Because of this terrible happening, I don’t feel I’ve been particularly good company for Jacquie. But we’ve still managed to have a laugh. Especially at the amount I eat. On my first day with Jacquie I was well behaved and politely ate my food off a plate with a knife and fork. By the second day I had taken over the cooking (Jacquie was more than happy about this) and was eating out of her largest pasta bowl with a spoon. Over the next few days I rapidly progressed from pasta bowl to small mixing bowl to medium mixing bowl to deep bread-making bowl. Jacquie likes to tuck into her food while watching telly (usually Corrie, as Coronation Street is known over here) on the sofa. As I’m more of an eating-while-reading-person I sit at the table directly behind the sofa. The moment I plonk myself down at the table with my giant mixing bowl of food, Jacquie swivels round and looks at me in a state of shock. It’s always most amusing.

  Last night as I was packing my panniers ready for an early getaway this morning, Jacquie, who was watching the 6 o’clock news, called me in to come quickly and watch: one of the main news items was about how touring cyclists were being targeted by motorists throwing bottles at them from passing vehicles. The latest to fall victim to this missile-hurling pastime were two Swiss cyclists. The boyfriend had a bottle thrown at him from a car travelling at speed, and fell off. Apart from being a bit shook up he was uninjured. But his girlfriend, who was also the recipient of an airborne bottle, suffered a slashed ankle and a badly broken leg. They said how they had just spent the past few months cycling 5,000 km across Europe and the USA, but by far the worst drivers in their experience were Kiwis.

  Jacquie was a bit concerned for my welfare. She thought maybe I should delay my departure until well after the New Year, as drink-driving is a huge problem in New Zealand and it would only exacerbate this sport. ‘There’re enough maniacs on the road as it is,’ she said. But I was ready and rearing to go, and when I’ve got my sight set on things I don’t tend to
like to back down. Dogged stubbornness, my mother calls it.

  So at dawn this morning I rolled up my sleeping mat and compressed my sleeping bag into its stuff-sack (Jacquie had offered me a sofa bed, but I prefer sleeping on the floor). After polishing off a substantial breakfast I loaded up my steed, gave Jacquie a big hug and was off, rolling into a dazzling early morning sun.

  My original plan for leaving Auckland was to cycle south out of the city through the sprawl of traffic-laden suburbs. But the more I looked at my map of mile upon mile of mangled roads, and the more I heard about the undesirable driving antics of New Zealand’s motorists, the faster I went off this idea. One of the surprising things about Auckland is that, though the population stands at around the one million mark (precious few people by world city standards), in terms of area it ranks as one of the largest cities on earth – a low-rise urban sprawl, straddled by the harbours of Waitemata to the east and Manukau to the west.

  With a city surrounded by so much water I decided there must be a boat that could cart me out to greener lands. So one morning last week I cycled up the short but steep twisting road to the top of North Head, one of Devonport’s two volcanic cones. From here I had a view of the whole harbour with its constant flurry of boats. Across the way lay the docks and downtown Auckland, dominated by the giant hypodermic-syringe shape of the Sky Tower piercing the sky. Over in the Hauraki Gulf floated a wide assortment of green-carpeted islands. Beyond them, sketchily purple in the east, rose a range of mountains. Peering at my map, I worked out without too much trouble that these were the backbone of the Coromandel Peninsula, a fattish thumb of land that extends northwards from the Hauraki Plain. Although the mountains looked a bit worrying for the likes of my legs (two cycle-free months on board a ship was not the recommended training for tackling the undulating topography of New Zealand – a country that is 70 per cent mountain), the Coromandel looked like a perfect spot to reach by boat.

  Back at Jacquie’s, I asked her if she knew of a ferry service from Auckland over to the Coromandel. She didn’t, but said that it would be worth asking down at the wharf. So I did. After several enquiries among the flotilla of ferry booths on the waterfront I came across Glenys, who was manning one of these booths. She told me of a passenger ferry service that operated only over Christmas and the New Year and Easter and only on sporadic days and at sporadic times. As it was New Year there was a boat running, so I handed over $40 for me, and $10 for my bike, and booked myself on the 9 a.m. Fullers Kawau Kat ferry on New Year’s Eve.

  On board the Kawau Kat I strapped my bike on to the back railings outside the toilets. As I did so a man in a baseball cap, aviator sunglasses, shorts and flip-flops (or ‘jandals’ as I overheard someone refer to them), leaning against a railing while nonchalantly dangling a bottle of beer between his fingers, looked at me and said, ‘That’s some shit load of gear you’ve got on there, mate. I’m guessing you’re either going to end up fit or fucked. There’re some bastard big hills over there.’

  With these encouraging words ringing in my ears, I climbed up the steps to plant myself on the open top deck in the wind and the sun. The ferry’s engines grumbled into action and we took off out of the harbour past islands bushed in green and a yacht called Stamp Machine heeling over in the wind. An American man called Hank sat down next to me. He told me he was from Jackson, Mississippi, and asked if I had ever been to America. I told him I had cycled down the west coast a couple of times and across the country. ‘But I never got as far south as Mississippi.’

  ‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘That’s some ride. Have any problems?’

  ‘Not really. The worst thing was riding across the Prairies in tornado season.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ he said. ‘You know what we say in Mississippi? That divorces and tornadoes have one thing in common – somebody’s gonna lose a trailer!’

  We landed on the Coromandel at a place called Te Kouma. Te Kouma consisted of a wooden jetty. That was it. One or two of the passengers were met by friends or family and driven away in four-wheel drives. The majority were scooped up in a waiting air-conditioned bus for a day tour of the local delights. Before long I was the only one left, standing with my bike beside a couple of battered pick-ups parked up on the side. I presumed they belonged to fishermen. One had a tailgate sticker stating: FISHING IS FOR LIFE – THE REST IS JUST DETAIL. The other one’s sticker suggested that:

  IF YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY FOR:

  A DAY – GET DRUNK

  A WEEK – GET MARRIED

  LIFE – GO FISHING

  I set off bumping along a track that soon gave way to a sealed road not two cars wide. A cliff face of jungle full of exotically whooping birds reared up on one side. On the other a languorous sea flopped on to the rocks. Soon I passed a sign that said: SUGAR LOAF LANDING. But despite having a good look around, I couldn’t see any sugar loaves landing. All a bit disappointing.

  I had managed a good five minutes’ cycle (exhausting it was too) when I came across a beach. At the near end, beneath a shady tree, sat a simple plank for a bench. A perfect spot for a picnic. I leant my bike against the plank before noticing a fat knotted rope hanging from a wide bough off a big old tree nearby. On the spur of the moment I took a running leap at the rope, swung out widely into an admirable arc before narrowly missing being knocked out cold when I was flung back at speed towards the trunk. What fun that would have been: five minutes into my tour of the Antipodes, only to kill myself by an ill-timed Tarzan-style lunge on a rope. I don’t think mum would have been too impressed.

  After this rush of blood to the head I decided to take things a little more calmly and sat down on the bench to eat a bag of food. Moments later a big Toyota Land Cruiser pulled up with a bumper sticker that said:

  EAT RIGHT

  EXERCISE

  DIE ANYWAY

  Two men with two small boys clambered out of the vehicle. One boy chased after a football that his dad had kicked along the beach. The other boy made straight for the swinging rope. Both men made straight for me. One said, with a rising intonation that turned his declarative sentence into a question, ‘Apologies for shattering your peace, mate! Looks like you were having a cruisy time before us buggers arrived!’

  The other said, ‘If you don’t mind me saying, that’s one fuck of a load you’ve got on that bike.’

  They asked where I was going, so I told them I was heading around the peninsula.

  ‘You be careful,’ said the bloke who had a splotched face like a burger in a bucket of beer. ‘The roads are a bloody madhouse this time of year. Not that I want to worry you, but you know this country’s got the worst record for driving in the world. And being alone and all that too …’

  His mate, who liked to start his sentences with ‘If you don’t mind me saying/asking’, said, ‘If you don’t mind me asking, doesn’t a girl like you have no boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why’s he not out here with you?’

  ‘He might be by May.’

  ‘May? Jesus! You’ll have another one by then!’

  ‘Or had another few!’ laughed the burger-face bloke.

  Soon after this promising encounter I hit State Highway 25, also marked on my map as a ‘Heritage Trail’. Heritage of what? I wondered. Road-kill victims?

  Rolling into the ‘township’ (as it seems quaintly to be called) of Coromandel, I read a roadside sign informing me that: COROMANDEL LION CLUB WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS. WE HAVE TWO CEMETERIES, NO HOSPITAL.

  Coromandel looks a bit like something out of the Wild West. The sort of place where you could imagine a gun-slinging cowboy suddenly flying through the swinging doors of a bar to land in the gutter. This probably has something to do with it being an old gold-mining town. There was a lot of kauri milling round here too. The township took its name from the storeship HMS Coromandel, which sailed from the Bay of Islands into this harbour in 1820 to take on kauri spars for the Royal Navy. The tall, straight kauri pine trees were greatly valued by marin
ers and the densely forested hills around Coromandel made ripe pickings for the timber mills to plunder. Despite the kauri, the town really only became famous in the 1880s when gold was discovered and people flocked to the area, pushing a virtually non-existent population up to a soaring 10,000. Some of the old Victorian and colonial buildings still line the short and slightly ramshackle main street.

  These days Coromandel doesn’t so much attract people to gold as to an alternative lifestyle. The place was full of conservationists, galleries and craft stores, pottery shops, woodcarvers’ studios, furniture workshops and bumper stickers proclaiming NUCLEAR-FREE NEW ZEALAND – MAKING A DIFFERENCE. There were a lot of crystals and spiritual healing and vegetarian cafes too. I took a short spin around the town, riding past places like Fowl and Fancy Art and Craft, Kowhai Watercolour Studio, Kapanga Krafts, Gold Diggers Liquor Store and Furey’s Creek Motors. As I leant my bike against the wall of the small Four Square grocery, with its green and yellow fascia and fifties-style logo, an anxious-looking man came up to me to warn that it wasn’t a good time of year to be on the roads because of the amount of drunk drivers, who apparently like to get ‘as pissed as a Sheila on a glass of wine’.

  ‘We’ve usually got about a thousand, say, two thousand people at most, living up around this way,’ he said. ‘But come Christmas and New Year that number swells to around forty thousand. It’s the kids and the hoons you got to really watch out for.’

  ‘Hoons?’ I said, thinking it was the way he pronounced hounds. ‘You mean dogs?’