Multiple Beaches

It had been a while since I’d got out of town, even for a day. I’ve been trying to save as much money as possible, of course, as I’m very aware (very very very aware) that I’m leaving soon I feel like I want to do as many Wellington things as possible with as many Wellington people as possible. I walk to Island Bay, I walk into town, I have dinner with friends, I have coffee by myself, I go out on weekends wearing dark jeans and a series of tight shirts, I do my errands and pay my bills and try to soak in it, into being here, as much as I can for the little time I have left. I’ve been really enjoying the ordinariness of life these last couple of weeks, the quiet hours and beloved patterns.

That said, I’ve been feeling really restless lately—the more I love it here, the more I get ready to leave—and so when I was invited by two separate groups of people to spend time outside the city on two separate occasions I jumped at both chances. Several things in my mostly happy and silly little world remain a little difficult for me and it sounds dumb but it was amazing to see what even the tiniest change of scene did for my mood and general outlook on life.

Saturday I went up to Raumati beach in Paraparaumu, which is about an hour up the Kapiti Coast and to which I’ve been in a couple of different contexts: to visit a local health clinic for my old job, with my friend Steven last year when he came to visit, and in September to visit the bird sanctuary with my friend David. Danica and her daughters were staying in a little beach house there for the week and she invited me to spend the day. I happen to like the train ride up there very much—you go through some rather dire industrial bits for a while and then all of a sudden you’re right on the coast looking (if you have chosen your seat correctly) at the long low waves and it’s pretty great. I am a huge fan of Danica and her little girls, and we had a great time building sandcastles and making “butterfly cards” and having dance competitions and going to the playground and gathering shells and all the other things you do when you’re a little girl.

This isn’t a great picture and it reminds me that the sea was pretty dirty that day for some reason, but there’s the island over there, full of beautiful native trees and all sorts of awesome birds, most notably the wekass who follow you everywhere and try to steal your lunch.

Dan and the girls get started on preparatory sandcastle preparation.

Running down the beach to find shells to decorate the castles; they were both a little scared of dogs so right after this picture was taken they came tearing back to hide behind our legs. They speak Maori at home so later when I got a slightly sunburnt nose despite my near-obsessive SPF application, I learned the word “whero” which means “red.”

Mariekura and Hinemaea are about the same age apart as my own sister and me, and they reminded me very much of us playing on the beach at home in the early eighties, before they rebuilt it and covered up all the tidepool rocks by the walls of the old Sonesta Hotel. We’d all had a discussion about My Little Ponies (Dan has kept all hers from when she was a kid and they are her daughters’ pride and joy) and I had a sudden image of Beck and I visiting my dad in New York or Colorado or Ft. Lauderdale, playing hours-long make-believe games with ponies and mermaids and troll dolls. I hope my life always has little girls in it.

Okay, so the previous weekend I’d had plans to visit Castle Point with some of my Italian friends. We’d had to cancel the trip at the last minute that time, so I was pretty excited to get a text from her when I was still at Raumati on Saturday from Giulia saying that the trip was almost certainly BACK ON! and did I want to go on Sunday? And Sunday turned out to be a sort of cloudy day and I had some brief thoughts in the direction of laundry and housework and maybe staying quietly at home, but then I remembered that the whole point is to be awesome, and that when it’s a Choice between Fun Road Trip With The Enticingly Accented and Plain Old Chores, Road Trip wins awesome every time.

Giulia and Filippo picked me up, and then we picked up Luis (not Argentinian Luis who was with us for Christmas and has sadly had to leave New Zealand but an entirely different Luis), and then Sapo and Alessia followed us in the other car, and then we spent a happy hour or so listening to the iPod and determining how old we were when various songs came up, which always ended up with me going “I was in high school” and Luis going “I was in kindergarden.” We stopped at a fruit stand once we got over the vomit-inducing Rimutakas and that’s when my buddies really let themselves go, yelling at each other in Italian over the cherries: “What do you mean, only one kilo each of peaches, plums, strawberries, and apricots? We’re going to be gone all day. We might get hungry.” One rather bemused Kiwi lady was all “Where are you…from, dears?” as we were all shoveling as much fruit as we could (“Che pensi, fragole di piu?”) in our bags and getting ice cream to sustain us for the punishing thirty minute drive to Masterton, where, of course, we stopped for more food.

It had been cold in Wellington and we’d all cheered when we got over the hill to see all the clouds over town and to see how bright and sunny and beautiful everything was where we were. I ate my lunch and drank iced tea and shuffled my feet in the warm lagoon water and climbed around on the rocks and thought about how just pure and simple happiness can be.

I told the boys that I was going to exploit them crassly and make money on my website off their topless photos:

And of course there is my beautiful Giulia.

Did I ever tell you how I met her? Super random: she Skyped a former workmate of mine who’s in med school at UW when she was looking for information about Seattle for another friend. Melissa said she had a friend who had just moved to Wellington, and next thing I knew I was getting an invitation to have dinner at Giulia and Filippo’s place in Hataitai—the first of many over-the-top fantastic dinners I’ve had over there because this girl is the kind of person who, when a bit at loose ends about what to do with her afternoon, will as likely as not decide to make spinach ravioli or baci di dama or profiteroles from scratch. Her family is like mine in that her mom is American and her dad is Italian, but reverse from mine because she grew up in Italy; she introduced me to the Italian community in Wellington (almost everyone either works at the awesome Caffé Italiano or at Weta) and it’s really the first time I’ve ever been around Italians and got to speak what little I know on any regular basis. I generally identify as very American, culturally speaking, but one time I was over there for lunch and out of nowhere Giulia went “You don’t even know how Italian you are!

Luis at the top of the lighthouse staircase.

Looking down from the top of the hill.

It was super low tide that day so the water was almost warm enough to make me regret not bringing my togs. Almost.

After one of the twelve times in five hours that we had a little something to eat, I climbed up onto the cliffs and found some rockpools. One of the guys fishing there started telling me about all the accidents that have happened there (“Never turn your back on the sea, eh?’) and then ran off and brought me this lovely sea star for no reason I can ascertain. I thought it was looking a little unhappy so after its photo shoot I put it back in a pool and when I looked for it again it looked much more relaxed and ready to self-eviscerate.

We could have walked along the sand here but for some reason we still went on the bridge.

I left my backup sunglasses and my water bottle in the car and I was pretty tired when I got home and covered in sand and bug bites and I didn’t actually get to do my laundry (or write this entry, for that matter) for two days, but oh man. What a good weekend I had, spending time with some of my favorite people doing some of my favorite things. Oh man, do I love the beach: all beaches, every beach, multiple beaches.