(written on the 15th from notes)
Today was a migraine day complete with the headache and the nausea.
Why couldn’t I have just stopped to drink water at reasonable intervals instead of pushing myself until my saliva was a sticky paste before opening My backpack to get my water bottle?
🙃
It’s my own darn fault.
I brought a lot of water. And I brought some food. And I had eaten a whole bunch and had a fair amount to drink right before I started the hike.
I thought I was super well prepared on the food and water front.
I thought the only thing that was working against me was time, having started so late.
But my body doesn’t just need the water at some point, it wants it at regular intervals. If I don’t drink enough to stay hydrated during my adventurers, it doesn’t matter if I make up for it afterward.
It’s like some sort of switch gets tripped, like there’s some sort of point of no return, and if I get sufficiently dehydrated, it doesn’t matter if I manage to rehydrate myself 15 minutes later, there’s some kind of chain reaction that’s set in motion.
And it can keep me down for days.
Hoping I’m not down for days. 😕
I never know exactly how to resolve the issue once I’ve hit that tipping point. It’s some kind of combination of hydration and nutrition, whereas it seems as though only the hydration portion is necessary to trip the circuit.
I can drink and get myself back hydrated, peeing regularly, but I’ll still feel thirsty.
And often it takes really solid meals to recover.
It’s just weird.
So the headache and nausea dominated my morning, but it was also raining outside. A storm had rolled in, and it was raining pretty good, And I knew that I needed to leave soon because the “road” that I’d come in on had spots that could easily turn into mud bogs.
The longer it rained, and the longer I waited, the more the ground would become saturated with water, and the more the ruts in the road would fill up with water.
And for whatever reason last night, I’d lost signal, so I couldn’t check the weather to see if it was going to stop raining anytime soon, so I knew I needed to leave or risk being stuck up there for days.
So I fired up the van, mentally prepared for the escape effort, and headed out–a race against water and mud.
The first part of the drive was relatively safe and simple, there being enough gravel to keep the road solid without my tires sinking in.
Muddy parts were the biggest challenge. There were sections of the road where it looked like there weren’t really any rocks at all, the ruts were deeper, and it seemed like just soft dirt and grass, which would make for a muddy mess and the most likely places to get stuck or fishtail right off of the road and into the bush.
One of the other dangers was that the bush on either side of the road was often made up of whatever type of vegetation is all over the South Island that’s made up of many branches absolutely covered in inch-and-a-half-long thorns.
Many of those bushes were taller than the van, which meant that if I fishtailed too far to the side, I’d like to get thorn branches scraping against my bug screen window coverings. 😬
So as I drove around the bends in the road, navigating the ruts in an effort to avoid smacking the bottom of my van on rocks (I did hit hard a couple of times), I worked hard to avoid the thorns.
Eventually, amazingly, gratefully, I managed to make it all the way back to the main road having done no noticeable damage to the van. 🥳
With the rainstorm, I figured I was pretty well done with my adventures in this specific part of New Zealand, so I pointed my van south, heading down the west coast of Lake Pukaki.
I stopped off a couple of times to take pictures as the rain cleared and the colors of the lake began to vivify. (can I use that as a word here? 🤔 I don’t have reception, So I can’t verify word usage.)
Unfortunately, I forgot that I had my headlights on, so after stopping in a gravel pull out for a good little while to look at maps and whatever else, when I went to start my van, it was dead is dead could be.
Man, I’ve done this so many times. 😅
I’m used to vehicles that let you know that your lights are still on.
And I’m also not used to turning my headlights on in the daytime, so I don’t even think to turn them off because it’s still daylight outside.
Gratefully, there was a car parked behind me, and I went over and asked them for a jump.
I think they were from China and didn’t really speak any English at all, but they had their translation app available, so I was able to speak English, and it was able to translate into Chinese for them.
Wednesday understood what I needed, they were totally willing to help, gratefully.
I connected the jumper cables to my vehicle and then directed them around my van to get their battery as close to my battery as possible, and then 30 seconds later, my van was all fired up.
I think the Chinese couple enjoyed the experience, as I could see them smiling as they drove away.
Many thanks, folks. 🙏
I noticed that the clouds were starting to lift all over, Mount cook even appearing in my rear view mirrors in the distance.
Mount Cook really is an impressive mountain to behold. It reminds me a bit of the Canadian Rockies.
From Lake Pukaki, I decided to continue my little theme of driving up each river valley. I’ve been doing that with pretty much every river valley South of Christchurch (if one were to draw align on the map from Christchurch west to the mountains and then south).
The Dobson River valley was the next one over, with Lake Ruataniwha coming first, followed by Lake Ohau.
I didn’t Make it to either the River valley or Lake Ohau, veging out pretty much the entire rest of the day at Lake Ruataniwha, first near the long drop and then, when the sun fully came out and started baking me inside my van, on a skinny little mini peninsula that went out into the lake a little bit with gorgeous turquoise water on both sides and shade from some small trees.
I vegged out there for a while, fighting the migraine and nausea and overwhelming exhaustion.
I napped for a good little while, too, before recognizing that I needed to get to a freedom camping spot.
Gratefully, there was a freedom camping spot super duper close by, maybe just a kilometer or two up the road from where I was, so I drove over, verified that I was good to go there, and then picked out a spot and parked.
I noticed, however, that my siblings had been sending a whole bunch of messages on a sibling text thread, but I was only getting the heart reactions and thumbs up reactions to messages and not the original messages themselves, so I didn’t know what was actually going on.
Recognizing that something serious had happened but not knowing exactly what it was, I decided to leave my freedom camping spot and drive down to Twizel (the nearest town) where I hoped to get reception.
I definitely could have used a trip to the grocery store as well, but the grocery store was closed, and it was after 9:00 here, which meant that it was super late in the United States.
I sent some messages to siblings separately asking if they could catch me up on what was going on, and then, not getting answers right away (most likely everyone was asleep), I drove back to the freedom camping spot and crashed.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 