The road abroad is, like, WOW.

En route to PUNAKAIKI and NELSON, NZ. 

                It wasn’t the best night’s sleep due to the heavy rain, nearby crashing waves, freezing temperatures and potential fear of being caught by the cops.  We had seen several cars pulled off to the side of the road so I’m not sure if it’s illegal but I thought it could be.   My feet and face were the only cold parts throughout the night.  I found my niche in the sectional beds we had pieced together around 3am.  Maria turned the heat on around 7:15am- so Russians DO have a breaking point.  Interesting.

Sleeping in the car

                We enjoyed waking up to an ocean view despite the frigid sea wind and continued on to visit the highly anticipated pancake rocks and blowholes of Punakaiki.  They were so cool!  The water must have been close to high tide because we got some great pictures of the water swirling within the rock formations before crashing and spraying high into the air. 





Punakaiki



Crash! Pancake rocks and blowholes of Punakaiki

                After a 3 hour hike in Punakaiki and a terrible dinner, nighttime was among us and the temperature read 1 degree Celsius.  I convinced Maria to keep driving in hopes that the weather would improve. Fifteen minutes outside the small city of Nelson, we found two bunnies on the road of small farming fields that hopped toward a plot of land we would call home for the night.  We wondered whether we would be the object of some farmer’s desire the next morning but exhaustion convinced us that this was as good of a spot as any. 

                As expected, I froze that night despite my many layers.  We woke up at 9:00 to a very sunny rural setting with lots of tractors going by the dirt road.  We collected ourselves just long enough to come up with a game plan: SHOWER ASAP.  We checked into the hostel at Nelson and were sad to discover that they had blocked their network and we wouldn’t be able to hack free internet.  After feeling like a million New Zealand bucks from our first shower in 2 days (ok, fine, 3 days), we discovered some wonderful cheese scones at Yaza Café- very funky, very fresh.  The café was funky, the scones were fresh.

Maria wanted to check out the World of Wearable Art Museum (WOW) and I was hesitant since I had vowed no more stupid museums.  Luckily, this one was not stupid!  There was a fashion show that started in Nelson approximately 20 years ago that encouraged people to design art that could be worn.  Kind of like what Lady Gaga does for a living now.  The show quickly gained popularity and soon relocated to larger quarters in Wellington but the museum remained.  They had some outrageous outfits, mostly for female models, as well as a special bra competition.  They had amazing boulder-holders for all women- enticing compilation of fruits for the hungry yet sensual, stacks of pancakes topped with blueberries for those that were flat chested and some thorny cactus for those…that know men.

                Strangely paired with the outrageous fashionable art were some gorgeous antique cars.  The stunning displays of Jaguars, Cadillacs, Studebakers, Fords, and BMWs made me think of my family and my grandfather, in particular, who had always loved them.  It was also interesting to see how much America was responsible for the evolution of cars.  New Zealand relies on Japanese automobile imports since they are located much closer but most cars on display were clearly from America based on the location of the steering wheel and model year.  I got some nice pictures inside the Delorean but Marty McFly was nowhere to be found.  The museum was really cool and just large enough that I fulfilled my cultural intake for the day.    

A Prince Charles bra at the W.O.W. Museum

W.O.W. Museum

Dear boss, We quit.  -Kerri and Maria

1937 BMW 328 at W.O.W. Museum

                That night I couldn’t ignore the uneasy feeling that had been in my stomach since we arrived in Wanaka a few days earlier.  Somewhere inside of me I wanted to skydive but wasn’t sure if it would ever play out in real life.  When I booked my ticket here I thought that it would take some heavy convincing from other travelers to have me join them in a jump.  Then I realized that I was strong enough to take this trip on my own and I was more than strong enough to jump out of a god damn airplane by myself.  I had been disappointed when the weather wasn’t good enough for skydiving in Wanaka, which only made me realize how much I wanted to do it.  I made a call and five minutes later I had made an appointment for 1:00 the next day.  That was that.

We made our way into the impressive tv lounge to watch the end of Moonstruck before watching The Lord of The Rings. So cliché!  What dorks!  But we were the only two people in New Zealand that had either never seen it or weren’t impacted by it so we gave it another try.  Seven people started out watching and I was the only one remaining.  I couldn’t wait for it to end. 

                I was more than ready when Kris, the skydiving van driver, arrived.  He had arrived with his 80 year old mother in tow.  Normally I wouldn’t mind talking to an elderly woman but this one was very difficult to hear.  She was trying to tell me about the recent tornadoes in America but I had no patience while reading the damn liability waiver from the skydiving company.  Wait, I could die from this?  Who’s my emergency contact?  Well, my parents but they were sure to be shocked by a call saying I died while skydiving since I didn’t tell them I was going.  Plus, I didn’t know the US country code so I had to put their MA number and hope for the best.  At the last minute, I put Maria’s NZ number on there as a backup.  But she was a backpacker (and Russian!)- She might just rob my pockets of any two dollar bills and leave me to the NZ government.  There is a NZ government, right?  We have yet to see any officials on this trip.

                We arrived at Skydive Abel Tasman and things moved very quickly.  They quickly rushed me inside and threw a jumpsuit on me before I could say, ‘I don’t know if I should do this.’  I met my tandem diving instructor, Scruffy (why wouldn’t his name by Scruffy?), was interviewed by my cameraman and boarded onto the plane all within 5 minutes.  The cabin space was tiny so all 6 of us basically straddled each other as we climbed up to 16500 feet.  Finally I asked, “So what do I do?”  I was expecting some kind of safety instruction, maybe a run-down of rules, possibly some regulations but there was nothing.  The drone of the airplane engine, as well as their thick NZ accents made it difficult to understand all the rehearsed instructions they were spewing off.  I didn’t freak out until they started handing out oxygen masks at 12,000 feet.  WTF was this for??

                We were high.  REALLY high.  I had no one familiar to me to share my anxiety!  No one up there was going to talk me out of it- these guys jumped up to 20 times per day.  Scruffy did some last minute strap adjustments and then the cabin door opened.  The cabin filled with thin, screaming air and the camera man hung out the side.  Scruffy and I scooted up til only Scruffy was sitting on the edge and I was hanging out of the plane.  We smiled for the video camera, smiled at the wing camera, and then rocked  1-2-3 before we jumped out.  I lost my stomach for just a tiny bit since we weren’t moving from an inanimate object.  It was my breath and my mind that I lost instead.  When you are in such shock that you don’t breathe, you don’t really think either.   And therefore, there were no screams. Just an inner monologue repeating, “Oh my god.” 

                The camera man came closer but I wasn’t really sure what he was doing.  He was making all kinds of gestures and I wasn’t sure if there was some instruction that was lost in translation or if he was giving me ideas for the camera.  I was good at giving the thumbs up and rock and roll signs but really wasn’t sure what to do after that.  I knew I was going to look really unattractive in the pictures as it was.   My round face, plus wind rushing at 120mph, plus that ugly weiner cap they make you wear.  It wasn’t going to be pretty.  I still couldn’t catch my breath and my mouth was drying up so I stuck my tongue out to try to lick my lips.  Captured on camera, this was a whole new level of ugly that I wasn’t even expecting.  I held onto the camera man’s hands and we did tight spins on a few occasions.  The sixty seconds of free fall was so long that I eventually did wrap my head around the situation because I had finally remembered that a parachute was supposed to open.  It was well received and we started to float over the town of Matueka like Willy Wonka in his glass elevator.  I finally began to breathe and my brain functioning returned.  Scruffy loosened up the straps ‘to make things more comfortable’ but I reassured him that was unnecessary and he really shouldn’t loosen them too much!  He asked if I got motion sickness before he started doing spins in both directions.  We slowly drifted toward Middle Earth again and Scruffy calmly debriefed me on the landing procedure.  It was a very safe landing and there were lots of smiles and high fives when we were safely on the ground.