Old Friends and Studebakers

With Easter weekend at hand, I even had the car started as Chris coiled the hose after dousing the new plants before taking off for 4 days to the West Coast, and a guy in full bicycle regalia comes cruising down the road, looking up our driveway. It seemed he had found what he was looking for because he makes a sharp left turn and made right for me and stops his bike 2 feet in front of us. So, I’m looking at him with a, “May I help you…do I know you?” look on my face, while he’s straddling the bike shifting his shit-eating, grinning glance between Chris and me, clearly enjoying our senior moment. Remember, he’s got not only reflective, wrap-around shades but the helmet and the whole deal. After a few seconds, he says, “Marty…Marty Leichtung.” Holy crap, talk about out of context. Of course it was Marty, but 10,000 miles from home. After several seconds of, “…what?, oh my god, how did you find us?” and such expressions of confusion and lack of anything coherent to say, we shut off the car and had him in for coffee. (For our non-Alaska friends, Marty & Barb are Homer friends.)

He and Barbara are traveling around NZ in a rented motorhome with their middle daughter Ellen and her husband and, of course, whenever they stop for much more than fuel, Marty hops on his bike for a few K’s (that’s kilometers). He’d ridden the 15 miles from their campground to our house on the off-chance we’d be around, knowing we were in NZ but had only managed to get our address, not our phone number. Unfortunately, we already had our Easter weekend trip planned and had reservations at “backpackers” for the next 3 nights, so were committed to going ahead with it, but not before stopping by the “caravan park” where they were staying and had a good chat with them all.

This trip was the 1^st chance we’d had to get very far away from Takaka, so decided to go west to see the other coast. We only had one particular site in mind…Punakakai…where there is a local geological feature they call Pancake Rocks (see photos). Other than that, the trip was pretty much planned using darts and a map. The west coast of NZ is known for its rain, rugged coastline and the independent streak of its residents. One sign outside Westport said, “Want England, visit Christchurch. Want New Zealand, visit Westport.”

As I guess should be expect from an older car, the Subaru developed a growl in the rear end, which was diagnosed as a wheel bearing being returned to dust, so we decided to abort some of the side trips and go for the most direct way home. Short story: we made it, got the car fixed back in Takaka, increasing our vehicle investment to $2900.

I have to digress here and define “Backpacker.” These are low budget accommodations, much like we would define hostels in the US, except they are virtually everywhere, unlike hostels in the US which are actually nowhere. We’ve stayed in several and found them all to be (usually) comfortable, clean and cheap….cheap, meaning $12-24 USD’s per person. Backpackers on Easter weekend were quite full, a last-of-summer fling for Kiwis…much like Labor Day in the US. We couldn’t get a private room in Punakakai, so we ended up in a dorm-type room with 4 roomies. Being the social sorts, we hung out a fair bit with a couple of our new mates, 2, 20-ish guys, one from Belgium and one from Germany. As fate would have it, one was Tommie, the other was Christian. This made it possible for both of us to remember their names for more than 5 seconds. The weather was a mix of sun, clouds and rain, but comfortable temps, though.

One of of the stops was the town of Greymouth, which coincidentally is at the mouth of the Grey River. And talk about coincidences, when wandering through this mostly deserted town (it was Easter, after all), we stumbled on a huge gathering of old Studebakers. I’m including a couple photos, which I expect you’ll want to print out for yourself. I think Chris was pretty stoked by the whole experience, but managed to keep it to herself. I was pretty psyched too, not only as an appreciator of old cars, but as a former owner of a ’47 Studebaker. (Both Chris and our kids are pretty sure I have owned one of every kind of car, having grown a bit weary of hearing various versions of me saying, “Look, a ’32 Plymouth coupe. I used to have one of those.”

Wouldn’t you know my one regret related to this trip also had to do with a car? While we were wandering around in Westport, we saw a beautiful, 1960’s, bright orange Morris Mini, which I’m sure you all will recognize as the forerunner of the new, copycat, Mini-Cooper. Morris’ are the real deal, and this one was a bargain, but before I was able to talk myself into it, we were gone and I hadn’t written down the contact phone. Sigh! The photo is a reminder for the Mini-deprived reading this.

Being Easter, the only thing open in Greymouth, strangely enough, was a jade shop. Another coincidence! It was Chris’ birthday and she had decided (long ago, apparently) that she would get a piece of jade jewelry while in NZ, which she did. It’s green. She browsed, I drank coffee. (See photo. The jade, not me drinking.)

Last stop on the trip was the Old Nurses Home in Reefton. The ONH is now a backpacker and Reefton is a place not many Kiwis can even find on a map. It’s a place that sometime in the 1800’s was expected to grow into a major hub because of the gold and coal, which explains why there was a nurses home for 50 nurses in a town which is now, maybe, 500. It never developed into a center of any kind, but there’s lots of good fishing, kayaking and exploring to do in the area, none of which we did. This particular night the Home was inhabited by a couple old Alaskans and 50 old fly fishermen and spouses. After several bottles of wine, a few of them had to be carried up to their rooms…the fishermen, not the Alaskans.