radioHe drove us to Moeraki, speaking in rapid, incomprehensible Kiwi (which, at that point, I had yet to decipher). He would pause from time to time, which I took to mean he was waiting for a response, at which point I would uncertainly mumble the stock responses: I was from Texas, studying Cognitive Science at the Uni of Otago, and so on. On occasion he would point at things I couldn’t really see, and mumble something utterly unintelligible. The man fiddled up and down the radio dial, unable to settle, and I quietly planned escape maneuvers in my head. As I schemed and Christa lolled in half-sleep, we arrived in Moeraki. He turned down our offers of repayment and sped off nervously, though without incident and after many, many more thankings from my flatmate and myself. At last, we turned to Moeraki—the beach, the Boulders, and our fellow travellers.
No one was there. Later, Alice and Mandi insisted that they had nailed a message for us to the telephone pole, but as I recall, that particular telephone pole was covered with many hundreds of shreds of paper, and Christa and I only had eyes for the café behind the telephone pole. We dove in, where Christa had tea and I, inexplicably, satisfied my sudden craving for ice cream. The two of us looked out over the windswept beach, and spotted them. The Moeraki Boulders. A collection of large, natural, curiously spherical rocks that are half-buried in the sand. Some have been broken open or taken away by tourist and ocean, but plenty remain to this day. After thawing ourselves out by the heater, our recent sojourn fading to a chuckle-worthy memory, we asked the café staff where a bus would normally come to pick up passengers.
They debated amongst themselves, but could not decide whether the bus would stop just outside the café or in the city of Hampden, two kilometres back up the road. A middle-aged man with the look of a manager stepped into the argument and said clearly that the bus always stopped in Hampden, but that we could reach Hampden by walking along the beach for those kilometres, rather than the road, which Christa and I had long since grown weary of.
We made our way down to the beach, where we immediately discovered the definition of the word “windswept.” The wind was without mercy, as it sought out any bits of exposed skin and attacked like we had done it some great wrong. We had three hours to kill until 7:30, and after fifteen minutes, we had taken pictures, walked around, stood on, and leeched every bit of majesty out of the Moeraki Boulders that we could. So we began our walk towards Hampden, the beach desolate and abandoned except for us and a few squabbling seagulls.
Rocking out (no pun intended) atop the Moeraki Boulders.
Christa trying desperately to be as cool as me. And for the record, you’re not supposed to stand on the rocks, but as an addendum to that record, we didn’t know that until after these pictures were taken.
Two very windy hours later, we at last came to the end of the beach, the Moeraki Café a distant speck behind us. We hunted for the bus stop, asked around, and found out that it would appear just past this particular light pole at 7:30. We whiled away our remaining time inside the Hampden Tavern, the regulars drinking and laughing uproariously around us.
At 7:00, Christa insisted that we go outside to wait, so we bundled up and marched purposefully to the light pole. We waited, me singing out the time every five minutes to Christa, who then inevitably went into some sort of dance that I hope was to stave off the cold. Seven-thirty came, and seven-thirty went. Five minutes late. Ten. Fifteen. The two of us began looking at headlights in the dark distance with some anxiety, listening to the faint engines, hoping to hear something like a bus.
Ten minutes to eight, the bus roared into Hampden, and roared right back out again.
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion of this hitchhiking trilogy.
