Four Months In New Zealand
Part 1: Good Vibrations
It started as a tiny buzzing in the center of my chest. A vibration that grew and spread until I felt it in my bones and throughout my entire body. It’s stayed with me constantly since I’ve arrived.
I notice it at odd times. When a gust of wind blows my hair into my face; when I’m walking home alone after work and the streets are dark and silent; when I hear the sound of rain pounding down on the roof.
I’m actually here, aren’t I?
And then I notice it at times that aren’t odd at all; swimming off of white sand beaches that stretch for miles; climbing down into hidden coves and jumping into the bluest water I’ve ever seen; looking up at snow-capped mountains towering over volcanic landscapes and craters larger than a house; sinking into hot rivers running through green forests.
I notice it when I’m walking to the liquor store on a rainy Auckland evening to share a 12-pack with people I’ve just met and will never see again; while in the middle of a drive with a new friend from one beautiful beachside campsite to another; watching dumb TV shows with my Rotorua roommates; saying sad goodbyes to people I only knew for a few hours but felt like I should have known my whole life; when I share a bottle of champagne and a tent and look up at the stars with someone who had not been in my life a month prior.
This is it.
This feeling, this vibration, it’s what I search for. It’s why I left. It’s familiar to me even though it manifests in the unfamiliar. It’s grounding, it gives me a sense of who I am.
I’m 24 years old and just now feeling like I’m getting to know myself. I remember once, about five years ago, I was on a walk and I had a moment in my head that went like this:
“I’m confused. I’ve been inside my own head for my entire life; it’s always just been me, no one else. But every single day I discover something new. I’m like a fucking onion whose layers are just endless. Is this going to go on forever? Will I ever fully know all aspects of myself?”
And then I had an existential crisis. But that was the catalyst for me beginning to realize that life is not about doing things because we have to but instead about doing things that allow us to know ourselves more deeply until we run out of time. I think we’re too complex to ever fully understand, even though we’re the only ones inside our own heads. Life is just about doing things that peel back those layers little by little to reveal our true selves.
The more authentic we are the happier we are, and sometimes we have to dig deep to reach that authenticity and sense of self.
Being in New Zealand is bringing all this back up to the surface for me in a way that traveling hasn’t before. I think it’s because this trip is not finite. I don’t have a return ticket to bring me back to my “regular life” on X-Y-Z date. I left without the intention of returning. This is my regular life now. I suddenly feel good about my decisions. I feel like I’m living my own life, not a life that other people have projected onto me as to what I should be living.
I’m experimenting, but in a far more intentional way than I did when I was younger. I’m digging deeper into different aspects of myself; my sexuality, my emotional intelligence, my coping skills, my anxiety. I’m looking at the past, the things about my old life that shaped me into who I am, and I’m picking them apart to see what was really going on, and what I need to change or let go of.
I’m testing and pushing past where I would normally stop because it gets difficult or uncomfortable. I’m facing the scary things. I’ve spent so much time pushing things down, ignoring them in the hopes that they will fix themselves. It was easy to ignore hard things when I could just regress into the comfortable. Now? I have nowhere else to run; no more routine or familiar schema to get lost in. I must face myself, because that’s all that’s here.
I’m really here.
Part 2: The Part Where I Tell You What I’ve Been Up To
I didn’t wake up in New Zealand on February 2nd with all of this in my head. It came to me slowly, as I adapted to the changes and worked through the logistics of moving to a new country alone. What I did wake up with was a sense of purpose and peace and an eagerness to explore. And also six roommates in the 7-bed dorm that I called home for one week.
The hostel I stayed at for the first week I was in NZ is called Ponsonby Backpackers. I recommend it to anyone who visits Auckland; it feels like home right away, and the atmosphere is really friendly. There were a group of long-termers who were so open to making new friends, even with those who were just passing through. I met some people there who I still talk to and am planning to meet up with again.
During the week prior to my arrival in NZ, my anxious mind had started to calm, at least for a while. My year of being 23 had been one of the worst for me in terms of dealing with my anxiety and paranoia. I felt bogged down, trapped, one stray thought away from mental breaks where I would just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling, wondering what the point of anything was.
I’ve found through my travels that when I’m thrown into a new place and left to sink or swim, I switch into survival mode and my anxiety takes a step back. I was really excited to leave to finally get a bit of a break. I left Ohio on January 24th, flew to Portland, Oregon to see my friend Victoria and spent five days just having pure fun with her. We hiked, danced, watched Mamma Mia 2 and had our typical amazing time diving deep into each other’s minds, just like the old days.
After that, I flew to Los Angeles, California and spent two days with my cousins. We saw dolphins at the beach, thrift-shopped and ate great food. Sophie and I drove through Topanga Canyon and watched Shane Dawson’s newest conspiracy theory video the day it came out. It was a beautiful exit to my time in the states. I felt so good.
I had purposely searched for a ticket to New Zealand that left on my 24th birthday. It felt poetic to me, a new year of life in a new place.
I moved on from Auckland after a week, spent a few days up north in Paihia and then did some work on a farm for several days. In those days at the farm, for whatever reason, my anxiety flared up and I left early. I’m still trying to work out what triggered it so bad that I had to leave; it was a beautiful and peaceful place. Maybe it was just too soon for me to be anchored to one area; I still had some moving around to get out of my system first. Also, it could just be my brain.
After leaving the farm, I reconnected with a hostel friend, Vanessa, and we met up in Whangarei. On Valentine’s Day we swam under a waterfall and said we felt like mermaids. We laughed about it like little kids. We set off on a 7-day camping trip up to Cape Reinga.
We had, to put it simply, a fucking ball of a time. We would camp in her car, wake up to the ocean. Take a couple hours’ drive to the next beach and do the same thing again. It was pure paradise, and when I finally began to scratch off the next layer.
I let a lot of things go during that week. I didn’t think about my usual stressors: money, time, checklists, whether or not I was doing something productive. I just existed in nature with a kindred spirit and did whatever the hell I wanted to do.
After Vanessa and I parted ways I had the confidence to get my own car. I knew that I would want to do this kind of traveling again. I returned to Auckland and stayed there until I found one.
After a few more days at Ponsonby Backpackers, I said goodbye and set off on my own once again. For some reason, it was emotional leaving Auckland the second time. I think it was because I was leaving someone who had now become a good friend, and the second part of all of this was unfolding. Transitions are sometimes difficult, even when they lead into good things.
I stopped to pick up some camping gear and spent two days at Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel. I slept in my tent, feeling so safe and relaxed, waking up with the sun and taking hikes to the beach. I went to Cathedral Cove and had a picnic on the sand and swam in the crashing waves.
Speaking of waves, a pivotal thing happened while I was on the Coromandel that changed what I would be doing for the next few months. It’s funny how sometimes you can pin-point the exact moment that a new path was set in motion. This was it for me:
I was at Hot Water Beach and had set my bag down on the sand. The bag with my cell phone in it. Suddenly, as they do at the beach, a wave swept up and nearly carried my bag out to sea. I caught it in time, but everything inside was drenched, including my phone. It wouldn’t turn on, wouldn’t charge, even after some attempts at drying it out. I found out that saltwater basically kills phones, so I knew I was in trouble.
It was at this moment that I also felt a flare up of anxiety again. I feel pretty good when I have a way to communicate with people. Even if I choose not to, it’s the option that is important for me to feel okay. I had no real way to talk to people with a dead phone, and there’s not a lot on the Coromandel in terms of used phones or phone repair, so I had to leave. I could’ve stayed for a few more days like I had planned, but I just felt like I was being pulled away. I asked for a map from the campground office and verbal directions to Rotorua, the next stop on my list. I was planning to spend 3 days there before going to Wellington. Spoiler alert: that changed.
I took a breath, oriented myself and began the google-maps-less drive to Rotorua.
I made it. It really wasn’t that hard to find.
Part 3: Baptized in the Hot Springs
Maybe it was because Rotorua was my oasis; the place I would fix my phone, where I would regain communication and the ability to Instagram again, but I felt something the moment I drove into town.
I just knew. This was going to be my first long stop. I wasn’t going to make any farther south for a while.
You could call what I’m doing here in New Zealand slow-traveling, backpacking, semi-permanently-living –all would be correct. Basically, I’m just slowly moving from place to place. I like to spend a few months at a time in one spot, so I can get a job and save a bit before traveling again. I had taken the first month in NZ to travel as I wanted, and now I felt ready to make Rotorua home for a while.
I can sum up my time in Rotorua by speaking about a few key things:
BREW
Brew was my first sense of community in Rotorua. It’s a craft beer pub where I got my first NZ job. I worked as a waitress/sometimes a bartender and it was one of the best jobs I’ve had. My coworkers and managers were all amazing, and I’ve never laughed so much while on shift. I learned some of the nuances of Kiwi culture, how to properly use the slang and how much I actually love beer. I made friends with the regulars and had nice experiences with customers who were just people passing through.
One of the highlights was serving a table of six elderly Swedish folks, and upon talking found out that they were all from Trollhättan, the small town I called home for four months in 2016. They were so thrilled that the entire table erupted in shouts when I said that I’d lived there once.
Another highlight was me catching sight of a woman at the bar and just knowing that I knew her from somewhere. I clumsily asked if she was from Findlay, Ohio and found out that she had gone to the parish where I used to attend church growing up. I hadn’t seen her in years, but somehow remembered her face. I felt so awkward approaching her, but the conversation ended with us taking a picture together.
The world is small.
People come and go at Brew, and I’m lucky to have been one of them. I made some really nice friendships with people that I think I’ll see again someday. If you’re ever in Rotorua, have a pint of the Volcanic for me.
THE FLAT
Brew wasn’t my only job in Rotorua. I also worked in the mornings as a hostel cleaner. For everyone wondering where I’ve been living since I’ve been here, the answer is a backpacker hostel called Rock Solid. I worked for accommodation, so I’d been sharing a 6-person flat at the top of the hostel with the other 5 members of the cleaning staff. A few have come and gone in the few months I’ve been here, but four of us stayed together for the three(ish) months that we were all here.
Corra, Sebastien and Dale were my best friends here in Rotorua; we’ve seen it all, been through the shitty cleaning days and fun late nights watching Riverdale and playing games. We’ve made hundreds of beds and scrubbed probably the same number of toilets, sometimes wondering why the hell we decided to stay here. I think, though, at the end of it all, we’re happy with our choice and how this place brought us all together.
HOT SPRINGS
This region of New Zealand, called Bay of Plenty, is home to a lot of different natural hot pools. Within a 20-minute drive I can go to Kerosene Creek, a river that feels like a bath, complete with waterfalls and lush green foliage in the middle of the forest. There’s also Hot and Cold, an off-the-beaten-path spring that is the joining point of two rivers, on that runs hot and one that runs cold. If I leave town, I can get to even more, all of them so peaceful and in beautiful locations.
The springs are important to me, not only because it’s so fucking nice to just sit in hot water in the middle of nature, but also because of what they represent in terms of me peeling apart the onion that is myself. For me to illustrate what exactly that is, I need to go back into my childhood and tell you a little bit about me.
I’m a small town, Midwest gal. I grew up in Ohio in the middle of a cornfield with flat brown and green land in every direction as far as the eye can see. I spent most of my time as a child either inside my family’s house or out in the yard, the same house and the same yard for more than fifteen years. I was my own best friend, because I was home schooled and spent a great deal of time alone.
I had these habits, these things I would always do when I was bored. I would re-arrange the furniture in my bedroom. I would listen to the same CD on repeat and look through mementos and pictures in a box under my bed. I would sit at my desk and draw.
I would write lots of different stories that were about an average girl living an average life, who got swept away into a wild adventure; someone would show up and pluck her out of her bedroom into a magical land where she would save the day. I would dwell on these themes of journey and adventure all the time. I enjoyed disappearing into my room for hours, isolating myself so I could be alone with my thoughts.
My childhood was very cyclical. Every season was the same; frigid winter and blistering summer, but a pleasant spring and autumn. Every holiday had the same traditions. My family would vacation to Florida for 10 days in May every year. We never went anywhere different. Sometimes I find it difficult to remember specific years or periods in my early life, because they’ve all sort of blurred together. I was also raised Catholic, so tradition and repetition were basically all I knew.
All of this is totally fine for some people. But I think you already know that I was never one of those people.
Though I might paint a negative picture, I think that, as I was living it, I liked my childhood. I don’t recall being unhappy. I was comforted by the knowledge that Christmas Eve was always spent at my Grandma’s house, and I really loved Florida. But sometimes I felt so trapped in the sameness of every day, every season and every year. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it as a child, but I would sometimes feel like I needed to run as far as I could and hope that I would end up somewhere new.
I couldn’t very well run away as an 11-year-old, so I escaped the sameness by reading. A book that was my favorite for a long time was one of the Chronicles of Narnia books called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
The reason I felt so connected to this book was because it was different than the others. Unlike the other books in the series, this one does not take place in the land of Narnia at all, but entirely on a ship. The crew is setting off to sail across the sea far as they can to find either some missing people or the end of the world, whichever comes first. It’s about a journey with no real end.
(Don’t worry, I promise this ties into the hot springs.)
In the story, there’s one character named Eustace who’s really shit, and he’s nasty to everyone and causes a lot of problems. It’s clear that he doesn’t like himself and he doesn’t appreciate the people around him. He cannot understand how people could be nice without wanting something in return. At one point in the story, he does something selfish and accidentally turns into a dragon. During the few days he lives as the dragon, he realizes that he missed out on the authentic kindness of his companions by pushing them away. Even though he sometimes self-isolates, he still feels estranged from everyone since he cannot communicate with them. He is disconnected from his sense of self, as he feels trapped in the body of this monster.
One night, Aslan (the important. God-like Lion character) wakes Eustace and brings him to a bubbling hot pool on the island. All Eustace wants to do is get into the water, but he understands that he needs to shed his skin before he can do so. He scratches off some of his scales, peeling away at the outer layer. Aslan says that that isn’t enough, and he needs to take off another. Eustace then experiences great pain as he pulls off another layer, but he describes it as a good pain, like peeling off a scab, and he does it because he knows what awaits him after the layer is gone.
Aslan throws him into the hot water. He emerges from the pool as a boy again, someone reborn. He isn’t perfect; he’s still not the nicest person ever, and the essence of his personality remains. He’s a bit of a know-it-all and still kind of a shit sometimes. But the difference is that he knows himself better now, he is self-aware of the impact that he has on situations. He has a greater understanding of what it is important to be, in order to love himself and open himself up to others. I’ve always thought that was a beautiful part of the story.
This is what the hot springs remind me of. They remind me of this moment of letting go of anger and pain and peeling away at the person you were before.
Maybe that seems like a lot – I mean, yeah, they’re just springs of hot water coming up from the earth and they exist in many places across the world. It’s not a crazy phenomenon. But for me, after living so long in the sameness, in the middle of flat fields and plain landscapes, the existence and accessibility of these hot rivers running through the forest, pools of water that just bubble up out of the ground that I can go sit in – I’m just blown away by it all. They represent another step forward, a step out of the same.
I never thought of myself as a dragon, but I’ve been a bit like Eustace before. I’ve often felt disconnected with people. I’ve self-isolated. I’ve been a kind of a shit. I’ve felt not at home in my body, seeing it through a distorted lens and not understanding it’s beauty. But while I sit in these natural hot pools, lean back and look up at the sky, I think of that little girl who felt like running. She got away. She plucked herself from her bedroom and dropped herself into her own exciting adventure. I’m not trapped anywhere anymore.
Some Rotorua Honorable Mentions
Whitewater rafting (something I once said that I would be too scared to do)
Going to a tattoo festival with Corra
Climbing to the top of Mt. Manganui with Megan and Ellie, climbing back down again, and then accidentally swimming with a shark
Drunkenly dancing in Lava Bar and always regretting going to Lava Bar
Eating pad Thai from Amazing Thai way too often
Going to Raglan and camping on a hill with Sego
Going on a nice date
Late-night tours of the city with Danny
Meeting three interesting strangers in their yellow van on the way home from work, and ending up drinking G&Ts with them and talking for an hour
My lone walks at the Putaruru Blue Spring
The caramel donuts at Brew
“Nahyou’reallright”
Jumping off a cliff into Lake Taupo
Hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing with Sego
Adding “bro” and “sweet as” into my everyday vocabulary
Getting my septum pierced and almost passing out
Crying and watching Rent
Crying at weird and unexpected moments because I’m so happy
Corra and I’s late-night-post-work and long-drive conversations about literally everything
Sebastien beating everyone at chess and that phase where he made pizza all the time
Dale and I having full conversations in only Vine references
Building a blanket fort and all 6 of us crawling inside to watch Goosebumps
The whole Brew Crew
Basically living off hummus and crackers
Finding half-drunk and forgotten bottles of wine in the hostel fridge
Learning how to be scavengers and also how to be generous
Another layer came off in the last four months. I feel more like myself than I ever have. I’ll look back on this little pocket of time, this short span of a few months in my 24th year, with a lot of fondness.
I wanted my life to be different, to be lived on my terms, that’s why I left Ohio. I rechristened myself with that choice, boarding that plane on the morning of my birthday, and I’ve been born again in these waters. Maybe there’s a reason this place called to me when it did.