Going to Sail o'er Hawke Bay Shores

Alright. Where the hell am I?

You know that feeling when you wake up in a different room than you're used to, and the window is in the wrong place and you have an existential freakout for about 3 seconds before you reorient yourself? The last six months have been something of that – you expect to reach over and get your cellphone from the bedside table, only to find that you grab the handle of the backseat door of a car and the ache in your back suddenly makes sense, but you're no closer to figuring out where you are.

I woke up the other day, on the floor in front of a fireplace. The curtains were drawn, but the shapes of shields and dangling horsetails were distinguishable in the gloom. Where am I? Oh, right, Eketahuna . . . wait a minute, where am I?

Eketahuna, population 579. East of the Tararua Range, north of Wairarapa, on the road to everywhere but nowhere in and of itself. From the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia:

“New Zealanders colloquially refer to the town of Eketahuna the way other English speakers refer to Timbuktu, i.e., the middle of nowhere, 'the sticks,' the end of the world.”

Deadly. How I ended up sleeping on the floor there that night is surprisingly mundane and uninteresting – Linda had a friend who has lived here, as she says, far too long, and Eketahuna is on the road back to Wellington from Alfredton, where we were planting trees for a third time. Eketahuna is also on the road to Hawke's Bay, where I was bound in the morning, so it made a heap of sense to lay my head down somewhere I'd never heard tell of before.

I made for an early start in the cloudy morning – 190 km to Napier, just over a 2 hour drive on a good day. I wasn't driving though, not anymore – it was my first time hitching in over a month, and the last time wasn't exactly optimal, waiting for an hour and a half by the side of the Inland Scenic Route on a very un-scenic afternoon. So I had no idea how it would go, but the first ride pulled over about three minutes after I started, which is my world record at least.

They were going so far as Pahiatua, just down the road. Good enough for a start, anyway – the second ride with Ray, jack of all trades, went much further along, to where Highway 50 turned off the State Highway. More of the middle of nowhere than Eketahuna, but the sun was coming out now – this area gets some 2,200 hours of sunshine in a year (Newfoundland gets about 1,600), so even though it's winter here, it felt a lot like summer all over again. Pretty soon, a farming family pulled over, and brought me to Hastings, a twin city of Napier, my final destination against the sweeping shore of Hawke Bay (Hawke's Bay is the geographic region, Hawke Bay is the chunk of the Pacific Ocean that runs up along it).

It was just past lunchtime, and I made a detour here, lugging my stuff to a bench in the cemetery. I figured that was the quietest place to take a call from Jim Mora with Radio New Zealand, the national broadcaster in these parts. At the start of his weekday afternoon program, he always talks to a listener about what they consider to be the best song ever written – it's a cool chance to not only hear different music, but to hear the personal stories that go along with them. I heard it a few times in Wellington, and knew right away I had just the story to share – so, taking a break from hitchhiking, I chatted about mince pies, bungy jumping, and a folk ballad from Newfoundland all about leaving the most important one behind to go off to the other side of the world.

I ended by begging Jim's listeners (and I found out after that that's something in the vicinity of a quarter million people, so if I sounded calm, cool, and collected, it's because I sure didn't know that) to stop and give me a ride the rest of the way to Napier. A guy from the Cook Islands blasting Pacific music offered me a lift, dropping me at Anderson Park in the Napier suburb of Taradale. I knew that that was close to where I was supposed to be, but I still had to figure out how to get to Westminster Avenue – I was about to ask someone in the parking lot, when a guy rolled down his window. “Are you Canadian? Were you just on National Radio? Are you looking for a ride to Napier?” Yes, yes, and I thought I was already in Napier. Thus go my fifteen minutes of fame as an E-list celebrity.

I was close – we just had to drive over to the other side of the park, and I got to unload my bags in yet another bedroom, this one adorned with an All Blacks duvet with a piece of chocolate on the pillow. This is suburbia, wide avenues flanked by palm trees, front lawns garnished with statues and orange trees, and bungalow houses reminiscent of a modern Spanish residence – I feel a substantial shift from the world of the South Island. Somehow, skydiving, climbing mountains, and hobnobbing around quirky little towns seems a long ways away already.

The seaside city of Napier is notable in New Zealand for its art deco history, and it'd be a glaring omission not to go into it (even if I was already sick of hearing about it, months before I ever came to Napier). Back in February 1931, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit (the biggest in recorded Kiwi history – the big one in Christchurch was a 7.1), leaving Napier devastated. The city rebuilt, in the style of the day – nowhere else will you find somewhere so representative of the art deco mandate. Right now, you're probably not asking, “Gee Ryan, can you tell me more about art deco?” but I'll tell you anyway. The style is an eclectic mix of bold geometric shapes, flashy colours, and a Great Gatsby essence tat has an authentic, vintage feel to it.

I took a bike through town today, past ordinary shops in these glitzy buildings, down the pedestrian mall of Emerson Street, and, as all roads eventually go, to the ocean.

According to Maori legend, it was here that Karitoki chanced to meet the sea maiden Pania of the Reef, and the two fell in love and were married. She had to return to the ocean each morning, but her new husband tried to trick her into staying on shore – his treachery put her life in danger, though, and she ended up leaving and never returning from Hawke Bay. There's a reef offshore, and it's said that she can still be seen out there – whether that's true or not, a bronze statue of her sits along the side of the beach, and the local icon has been seen by plenty of people passing through Napier.

Neon signs were coming to colourful life as I pedalled back to suburbia. “I might pretend it's Friday night and do a jigsaw puzzle” – well Mom, you don't have to worry about things getting too out of control here in Napier. No cold, no danger need be feared, as a great songwriter once said.

Cheers,

rb