South Island Rhodes Trip

Over the past six months, The Tandem Bike has hosted a few guest pedallers, and Melissa Rhodes, one of my all-time favorites, was back once again for a week-long spin around the South Island. It was a bit of a spur of the moment trip—the result of a weird confluence of events—but planning is for the birds anyway.

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“Melissa, you’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”

“Why, yes. I am.”

This happened about two or three days in, when we both were starting to zone out due to our ever increasing, though completely unfounded, feeling of comfort with driving in a flip-flopped version of reality. So when I said “wrong side,” what I meant was “right side” because here the right side is actually the left side. Got it? Good. Anyway, she was driving on the wrong…er, right side, which could have rendered us both dead no matter which way you looked at it. However, everything was quickly righted (you know what I mean) and thus passed our one and only mishap in what was otherwise a marvelous week.

So, what all did we see? Well, despite being a copywriter, I’m having a hard time describing the landscape here. Insanely beautiful? Spectacularly lovely? Incredibly epic? Supercalafradulisticexpialadocious? Melissa and I usually just settled on any combination of the following:

Beautiful
Dude
Amazing
Totally
Wow
Shit
Holy
Crazy
Unbelievable

For instance, an entire conversation could go something like this:

“Shit, dude.”
“Totally amazing.”
“Unbelievably beautiful.”
“Wow. Just wow.”

Or:

“Holy shit!”
“Crazy, dude.”
“Beautiful.”
“Totally beautiful”

I think the two that I would like to eradicate from my vocabulary are “shit” and “dude.” They make me sound vulgar and American—both of which I am—but just like Madonna, I can pretend otherwise. Besides, I’m trying to be a positive ambassador to the rest of the world—an effort that also includes losing the word “like,” though that one is proving exceedingly difficult.

Anyway, we saw mountains, valleys, waterfalls, beaches, cliffs, plains, forests, pancake rocks, glaciers, pastures, lakes, seals, sheep, birds, cows, flowers, sand flies, vineyards, ducks, rivers, and deer. Want to know what we didn’t see? People. There aren’t very many of them here. I heard a statistic that helps illustrate this statement: New Zealand is two-thirds the size of Germany, yet Germany has 83 million people to New Zealand’s 4.4. No, not 44—4 point 4. So, two-thirds the size and one-twentieth the population.

The thing is, I actually really enjoy this aspect of New Zealand. People are highly overrated. This isn’t to say I don’t want to meet people—because I desperately do (New Zealanders, if you’re reading this, let’s talk! I have so many questions!)—it’s just that it’s nice to have a bit of breathing room—and to not have that breathing room contaminated by the collective filth of a bazillion other worker bees.

Bottom line: one campervan trip in, and I am completely sold. Dude.