"Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me"
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Totoranui is in the middle of the Abel Tasman Country Park, up in the northern tip of the south island. It is accessed by another terrifying road, sandy and cliff winding, which we navigate with some squeaking from me, having the bad luck to be on the cliff edge side of the van. M, thankfully, is a careful driver, and he manages to keep from strangling me for the soundtrack I am unable to prevent myself from providing, along the lines of 'eeek' and 'I think we are a bit close' and 'there's a big bend coming up. Maybe we should slow down just in case' and 'eeeek' again. We crawl our way into the campsite with palpable relief and find ourselves a space.
Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless
"Any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."
Totoranui is another Department of Conservation campsite, which are typically cheap, beautiful and very basic. Totoranui is one of the largest of these and has a recycling station, toilets and showers which are designed to really test your mettle. I shower diligently for both of the days we are there, though wimp out on the morning we leave in favour of paying the price in being a little smelly for the wonderful reward of a steaming hot shower in our next, less beautiful, but rather more facility - laden, site.
Showering in Totoranui requires a specific method.
1) you never attempt a shower first thing in the morning, when you might be a bit cold. Instead you put in hours of preparation, seeking patches of sun and sitting in them wearing a few too many clothes, or indulging in some form of sweaty activity. Only when you have achieved something nearing an uncomfortable level of 'hot', do you head for the shower.
2) you don't hang around. We are not in New Zealand in the summer. This is autumn in the south. As soon as you enter the shower block, which is of course unheated your temperature plummets and the last thing you want to do is stand around for very long, in all your goose pimpled glory. You yank your clothes off, grit your teeth, turn on the water and leap in before you can think better of it.
3) Jog. The shower is a freezing battery of shockingly cold water, so cold and so fast as to leave you gasping in shock. I discover in my first day that your body never acclimatises to this, so you are in danger of having a shower in which you cannot actually breathe pro per. The only workable solution is to stand under this assault on your senses, and jog as fast as you can on the spot. If you can get your body temperature up enough for you to be able to breath, you are winning. You look a sight, jiggling up and down in the nude, simultaneously shampooing your hair, but no one can see you - and it's life or death.
4) Drink. Get out of there as soon as the necessary is done. Get to your van the quickest way you know how, throwing some clothes on, haphazardly first to avoid upsetting the neighbours. Open something alcoholic. Brandy is the obvious but the probably don't have a proper drinks cabinet in your van and we all know that cannot possibly be drunk without a crystal decanter and bowl shaped glasses the size of your head. So, at a push, that cheap bottle of red wine will do.
As you may be able to tell, the 'hardship' of the basic facilities added quite a lot of fun to the proceedings. I stand by my stance that the best sites were the most basic, and Totoranui was no exception. Where else is a shower such an event?
"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons."
One of my favourite things about our time at Totoranui, is the flora and fauna. The flora because there is a beautiful sandy beach (though sadly invaded by voracious sand flies), cliffs with views over glittering waves, and forests of green. We walk on our second day, on a day hike over the cliffs, and walk through green meadows that remind me, with a little pang, of England, through little windy paths amid trees, stepping over tree roots only to be sniggeringly tripped up by the next one, alternately hot and cold and wet as the weather tried to make up its mind whether it was summer or deep winter (I think autumn confuses it). That reminded me of England too, though with less of a pang. It is beautiful though, and we conclude that at least to some extent it is the exercise itself that is beautiful. We have spent four days in a car. Our bodies are restless and want to move. The moving is great.
As for the fauna - well that is the best part, because there are Wekas. Wekas are now my favourite bird. They are quite large, about the size of a large hen that has got a little out of shape and put on weight in her old age. They have round brown bodies and feathers which look, like the Kiwi's, so soft as to almost be fur. They do have tiny little wings but these seem to be mostly inoperable and so, as they run about, heads down and a comically determined look on their faces, they look a little as though they have their hands behind their back. They are curious creatures, (in all senses but particularly with regard to wanting to poke their nose into anything lying around, ans u an told they have a particular penchant fie playing with white plastic bags, though we are warned not to to leave these around as it might harm them. They like to play a dangerous game, these Wekas. I first encountered them when a mother and daughter (I assume) poked themselves out of the bushes to inspect me on one of the rare occasions when I was actually being dedicated enough to lie on a mat and do some pilates. They nosed around me with no fear and a vague sense of amusement, which I must admit I don't blame them for. After that I realised they were everywhere, in place of sheep or cows, these were my companions as I slipped out for the obligatory frozen toilet trip in the night, my cheerful morning greeting and my agents, monitoring my every move in the day. I have huge affection for Wekas, and rather suspect that, like dolphins, they have got it right about life and are simply amazed by the general pointlessness of human antics.
"Space,"..."is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
The other wonderful thing about Totoranui was watching the eclipse, followed by a blood moon. I can't guarantee that by going to the Totoranui campsite, you will always get this - I don't think it's a feature they lay on, and if it was they could certainly raise their prices a little. But we happen to be there, on a fantastically unlit campsite, with a perfect view of a perfectly clear sky, just on the night that the blood moon was due. It starts late, And its cold so we soon change our original position, sitting outside shivering and looking up, for laying down inside the van under a duvet, looking up through the window.
Of course we immediately fall asleep.
But the moon commands rather more attention than that, and so it sends some kind of indignant cosmic message so that I wake up just in time to see that a tiny sliver of its previously bright silver orb, has been obscured. I wake M and we open the door of the van, bundle ourselves up, and stare upwards. It's eerie and beautiful. Once the eclipse has started, it seems to go faster, so that it is possible to watch it with the naked eye and in real time. As the shadow passes over more and more of the moons surface, the obscured part is coloured a sinister, horror film kind of red. It's beautiful. And we are getting to see it now. Over this trip, I have grown more and more convinced of the vast superiority of the moon to the sun. After the majestic yellow moon rise in Thailand, numerous crystal clear skies, providing enough light for a torch to be entirely unnecessary, on toilet trips in New Zealand and later (as I can reveal because I am writing these after the event and thus have the power of hindsight), the bright moon, its perfectly defined craters visible through a telescope in the desert, and its rays colouring mountain ranges in a dusky pink, colouring the line where earth meets sky in a bright indigo, it is hard to conclude otherwise. Gemmy, back in Langkawi, was quite right to get excited about the moon in its fullness. The moon deserves to be toasted. Take a proper look at it some time. And you'll see.
"Arthur looked up. "Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
No. There's no possible way I can make that quote fit anything.
I just like it. It's my favourite bit out of the whole book. So I put it in anyway.
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