South Island Pictures: Golden Bay

Everyone, we are going to look at my hippie beach pictures now. Please also be aware of the following:

Actually when I was looking through these online again I was struck by how many things I didn’t photograph while I was there–admittedly, this is a thing that strikes me quite often concerning my vacation snaps. I am terrible, as you know, at taking pictures, and I always feel weird about interrupting a story or making everyone else wait up while I haul out my laughably ridiculous camera and wait for it to fire up while everyone else taps their feet or gives me the stink eye. I prefer to believe that I am living in the moment by constantly forgetting my camera during fun times–focusing on having the fun instead of recording the fun. That said, there were many cool things about my time at Shambhala in Onekaka in Golden Bay that were beautiful and astounding and that I thin you’d have liked to see, but alas, I cannot help you there. I should just make like the Buddha, I guess, and let go of all that, and get on to the pictures themselves, taken what feels like forever ago.

So this is near the beautiful tea house on the property, which has a little lavendar garden (and really huge bumblebees) and a little tea chest and some nice cushions in case you want to lay down and take a little nap while looking out to the sea, which is an activity that comes highly suggested by me. (I never did make tea there though–I was too busy either snoring gently or attempting to escape the aforementioned bumblebees).

It was full of little nooks and crannies like that, where you could just curl up with your mug of tea or your paper journal or your blankey and forget that the world was going on without you.

This is a little bench looking out to the sea from the beach path.

Speaking of beach path, here is the archway leading thereto, studded with giant snail shells that you could just pick up on the sand wherever you went. Here, let me show you a closeup.

In fact, let’s look at some more mosaics in detail, since I spent a not-insignificant amount of time doing just that.

And here is the beach itself, where I spent multiple hours each day, walking along bent halfway over looking at creatures and feeling very lucky to be alive in a weirdly alert-yet-calm way.

Those are my beloved and ridiculous oystercatchers,, by the way.

Here, if you are interested, is the main house at Shambhala, which I mostly include just so you can see the solar panels. The shower water was heated by wood fire, fascinatingly enough.

And this is how I toasted my daily lunchtime pita bread, over a gas toaster, which…took some getting used to.

But it wasn’t all tea and toast while I was there–although to be fair, there was a lot of tea and toast. A couple of times I roused myself from the subtle delights of the beach or the stacks of 1960s National Geographics and did something a bit more active.

One time I went riding (on a horse, even), making sure to don a fashionable hairnet under my helmet to compliment my borrowed and very sweaty half-chaps. I hadn’t been on a horse for, literally, twenty-two years, but much to my surprise I managed to stay on during the beachside canter.

Another time I went on walk through the rolling hills to the fabulous Wharariki Beach.

I managed to capture this stirring image of the underpinning of the New Zealand economy en route.

Once we got there we ran down the sand dunes and headed straight for the impressive geological formations.

Where I helpfully posed for some stupid pictures…you know, just to give you a feel for the place.

Let’s not worry about me though, let’s concentrate instead on what that might be, frolicking adorably in yonder sheltered tidepool.

OMG BABY SEAL YOU GUYS BABY SEALS BABY SEALS!

(The above is an exact transcription of my reaction to said adorable sight. BABY SEALS. FROLICKING.).

Now that we’re done with the scenery, this is where I should show you some photos of all the lovely people I met there and talked to and went to town with and snuggled up on the sofa in front of the fire with and told dirty jokes to and listened to when they played the cello and went to drink feijoa cider at the Mussel Inn with–Hannah, Sterre, Marko, Donald, Clara, Lia, Peter, John: hi!–but of course, of course, I didn’t. You just have to believe me that it made me love backpacking again and restored my faith in the basic idea that everything, somehow, somewhere, sometime, will be all right. I just wish I could show you how it all worked out.

All I have here is a picture of me making minestrone for twelve, stirring and giggling and feeling generally very pleased with my situation in life. I wish there were more than just me in this one; I wish I could have taken a picture of how it felt to be there.

But you trust me, right? You’re okay with it if I just leave you with a shot of the view I saw outside the bedroom window every sunny morning in time for 8:30 meditation–you know that everything worth telling you about is happening just outside the picture’s frame: in the yoga house, in the tea room, on the beach, in the kitchen by the fire, in my heart, in my heart, in my heart.