It’s not all instagrammable days. Some days it’s a yearning for space: a second of solitary time or a place to completely unpack my things. It’s a wish for a predictable routine. And sometimes, it’s literally a slog to get from one place to another. The twenty-four hours from Guangzhou to Christchurch was one of those times. We left Guangzhou after a makeshift Halloween in our airport hotel. This hotel is just ten minutes from international check-in but still a drive along a dirt road through fantastic, hand-watered vegetable plots. As we leave China, we will transit through two more countries to reach our terminus, traveling through continents, customs, climate and histories through and beyond language and human priority.
The morning view from our airport hotel – so far from those villages of chain hotels near our major airports.
In transit, we must look like a modern Partridge Family traveling with a guitar, cello, viola and violin. Each leg of the flight begins with an unknown answer as to a nation’s weight limit of a carry-on or how they will work with a cello. First, we had a forty-five-minute flight to Hong Kong, but it’s still considered an international flight… kind of. (I will never understand how Hong Kong is part of China, but also not part of China. There are some very arbitrary lines there.) We had an eight-hour layover in Hong Kong so we left our carry-ons and stringed instruments at left luggage, hopped on the train into downtown, walked and gawked, found the BEST vegetarian restaurant called Mana! and then retraced our steps back to the boarding gate for an eight-hour red-eye to Brisbane, Australia. There we had a two-hour layover and then a four-hour flight to Christchurch.
Double decker street cars in Hong Kong from one of the many raised walkways that crisscross the city.
Our first night in Christchurch, after finding a gorgeous kids’ public park and a fantastic Mexican restaurant with a real margarita, we all slept for fifteen hours. Those three days in Christchurch are a blur, like something I dreamed about but didn’t actually live through. More than the exhaustion, was the culture shock. For three months, we have lived between Nepal and China. For three months, no one has stopped for me at a crosswalk or followed the driving norms we have in the States. That first jetlagged morning in this new country, that claims more sheep that people, I realized, after more than a minute, that a car was stopped and waiting patiently for me to cross the street. For the better part of three months, the air has been thick with smog and trash on the street standard. That first day in Christchurch, I stood stock still on a walk through the city’s central park to stare at the clarity of the stream. You could see the contours of the rocks at the bottom of the stream. I could not have predicted how that would shock me, that I would grow accustomed to traffic, smog, trash and pollution.
Kaikoura, NZ and clean air and beaches!
Back to the slog: travel between countries for us includes five large suitcases, five carry-on suitcases, five daypacks, one guitar, one cello, a viola and a violin. When we arrive in a place, we sort, repack light and store the remaining stuff until it’s needed somewhere else. One suitcase is filled entirely with sleeping bags. Another would be filled with roadschooling books, but then the weight has to be redistributed to keep all the bags within the weight limit for flights, causing it to all jumble. So, the sorting and storing days are intense. And I’m reminded how much lovelier “the days of few things” are to us both in travel and life.
Math work at the departure gate in Hong Kong. Traveling light.
While still exhausted, we repacked ourselves, ventured to the campervan office, moved our few things into our moveable new home, moved the other things to a storage room, downloaded the appropriate new NZ camping apps, plotted our route, learned how to operate this new home, drive on the left, shift with the left, loaded up with groceries and away we drove. We didn’t get far that first day, but instead drove less than an hour, exited the highway and aimed towards the beach. We parked and slept at the end of a lane, fully self-sufficient, to the sound of the waves. The locals walked by and wished us a nice “Guy Fawke’s Day” while we enjoyed the sunset and some fireworks.
And that’s the slog from Halloween to Guy Fawke’s Day and from space-limited Guangzhou to crystal clear beach-sleeping in New Zealand.
