Moon over Martinborough

Palliser Bay before a storm

Rain had been falling all night and throughout the morning when we climbed into the trusty little Nissan Pulsar.

I threw four pairs of gumboots into the hatchback, started the engine, and headed for the coast.

I crossed my fingers that the road wouldn’t be washed out.

Sitting next to me as I drove was Rick’s Aunt Charlie – a retired nurse from Iowa who, at nearly 70, still has a passionate enthusiasm for life and the boundless energy of a 16 year old.

In the back seat were Titou and Gabby, a delightful European couple.

Titou is a wiry Frenchman with a quick smile. Gabby is a petite Polish woman whose traditional Polish potato dumplings are so delicious that they’ll make you wish you grew up in Warsaw.

Rick’s promise

Rick had promised our three guests that he would drive them 46 miles (74 km) down rough, narrow, and sometimes nonexistent roads to Cape Palliser that day. On the way they’d stop first at the fishing village of Ngawi, then at the local seal colony, and finally at the Cape Palliser Lighthouse.

I had planned on staying home. Why then was I driving the car? And where was Rick?

Rick, as it turns out, was the one at home, relaxing on the World’s Most Comfortable Couch.

He’d slaved on the property all morning and then, battered and exhausted, came to me with a rather impassioned plea.

“Would you drive everyone to the coast instead?”

He’s cute when he’s tired. I’d had a relatively easy morning, so I foolishly said yes.

It was only afterwards that I thought of the how the road to Cape Palliser requires you to ford several streams. Normally the streams are a trickle and our Nissan Pulsar does fine, but what about in this rain?

“Maybe they got less rain out there,” Rick said. “It may be fine.”

Around this time I should have remembered that one of my nicknames for Rick is ‘Tom Sawyer’ – the boy who famously fast-talked his friends into doing his chores.

Seal at Palliser Bay - on a good day

But alas, I did not remember this until we were out on the road, driving toward the sea, as the rain got worse and worse.

The farms to the right were lost in grey watery sheets and the Aorangi mountains to the left were covered in mist.

In the backseat Titou and Gabby were talking to each other in English, their only common language. Their thick accents filled the car.

Aunt Charlie was busy staring at the landscape, soaking it all in.

“Oh, just look at those mountains,” she cried out, to nobody in particular. “They look like Chinese paintings!”

Not even a drive in torrential rain towards certain doom could stop Aunt Charlie from having a good time.

The turnoff

There’s a point on Lake Ferry Road where a sign points to the left and says ‘Cape Palliser.’ This is where you leave the good, flat roads behind, and the madness begins.

At first the road seems fine, but that’s just to lull you into a false sense of security. Before you know it you’re turning and twisting through the hills that edge the coastline like a fortress wall.

There’s a particular point where the view opens up and you catch your first glimpse of the sea in the distance. On this day, however, the only thing we saw at that point was a vast, thick blanket of grey.

It was as we descended down the hills that we came across the first rock slip. A tumble of enormous boulders lay across one side of the road, and I carefully drove around them.

“It would not be good to be under those rocks when they fell,” Titou said.

Everyone heartily agreed, and from then on we watched the cliffs carefully.

At the second slip we came to, the rocks totally covered the road, but they looked smaller.

Cape Palliser Lighthouse

I slowed and drove towards the spot where the rocks looked smallest. As we passed over them I heard a large “CURRR-RUNCH” from underneath the car. I imagined a hole in the gas tank, causing us to lose fuel in a slow and insidious way, so that we’d become stranded. I was certain we were going to die.

I considered turning around, but doing a U-turn in the rain on that narrow, curving road – with a rock face on one side and a shear drop off on the other – would have been impossible. I drove on.

Just then the view finally opened up, and Aunt Charlie screamed, “The sea! The sea!”

Titou and Gabby craned their necks from the back seat. “Where!? Where!?”

Seeing the sea

Directly in front of us, down a steep precipice, the wide expanse of Palliser Bay threw giant white waves at the shore. The churning seabed had turned the water brown. The wind and rain swept the coast from the west and pushed at our trusty Nissan Pulsar.

We descended down further and suddenly the sea was to our right, thick and angry and close. Waves crashed on rocks and threw foam to the sky.

“Why would anyone build a road so close to the sea?” Titou asked.

Nobody answered.

It was near the entrance to the Putangirua Pinnacles Scenic Reserve that another car approached us coming from the opposite direction. They rolled down their window and yelled out over the sound of the wind and the sea.

“Tourist or local?” the man driving the car said. He had a beard and tousled hair.

Although I’ve been living in Martinborough for three years now, we were out on the coast, and it’s a very different world out there.

“Tourist,” I said.

After all, who else would be out there on a day like that, driving a two door hatchback?

“The road’s gone,” the bearded man said. “You should turn around.”

“Can we get at least to Ngawi?”

He looked down at the wheels of our car. He was driving a big 4 wheel drive utility vehicle and ready for anything.

He shook his head. “That car will never be able to cross those streams.”

Our trip was over. We hadn’t even made it to Ngawi.

I thanked the man and he drove on.

Pulling over

In order to salvage something out of our outing, I pulled over at a place where a gravel access led down to the sea. Out of fear of getting stuck, I stayed up near the road.

I turned off the engine and all four of us sat in silence, watching the sea as it raged. The wind rocked the car.

Gumboots at the back door

It was Aunt Charlie who said, “Can we go outside?”

“Outside?” I said.

“Please?” she added. “It’s just so beautiful.”

I looked back at Titou and Gabby.

Titou smiled. “Why not?”

Gabby nodded and shrugged.

That was how we ended up, moments later, standing out by the sea on a remote stretch of rocky coast at the bottom of the planet, wearing gumboots and raincoats that did absolutely nothing to keep us dry as we laughed and shouted at the sky.

The rain and seafoam hurled towards us like tiny pellets of sand.

We stayed a respectful distance from the water. Nobody wanted to be swept away. But even at that distance, the power of the crashing waves reverberated in our chests.

It was so ridiculous to be there. So fantastic and so ridiculous.

Aunt Charlie’s grey bob blew across her face and off to the side. She flicked back her white scarf and it trailed alongside her in the wind. She leaned into a strong gust and screamed.

Gabby nearly fell over and Titou held her. We all howled and laughed some more.

Later, on the way back to Martinborough, we would take a detour to the Lake Ferry Hotel, where we would sit and drink hot chocolate, feeling our soggy socks squish disgustingly between our toes as our cold, wet jeans stuck to our legs.

But for now, we were out there in the elements. We were wild, and we were happy. And we were utterly and totally free.

____________________

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• rivers and the sea
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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 11:10 am and is filed under Family, New Zealand, River & sea, Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.