Ferry experience far from strait forward
FROM
consequences because when we get on determines whether we can sit together. The Holy Grail is four seats together around a table.
We split up and roam the ferry, hunting for seats, texting updates, possibilities, trying to find some suitable patch of empty seats we can converge at. We know the ferries well so we hunt well.
We are up against the foot traffickers and lane 1 car passengers who got on early. Some are now claiming three seats with a foot on one and a bag on another. They have headphones on and stare straight ahead or pretend to sleep to deflect our hate looks.
It’s ugly and primal but something usually works out. Two here, two there and slowly we inch closer as the tide of seat ownership changes. The family bonding is also beginning, because we are hunting as a pack.
Packs eat together too, and that’s another story.
Ferry food is ferry food. We always start the holiday promising no more bad food. We take fruit on board. Then we always buy fries, deep-fried things, pies, snake lollies, hot chocolates and more coffee in a frenzy of putting something in the mouth, rather than just sitting still and doing nothing.
Two of us tend to get seasick. Two of us don’t and can’t understand the drama of the two that do. Here’s a conversation that’s been repeated over and over on rough sea crossings for a decade:
‘‘I feel sick.’’
‘‘Look out the window into the distance, that helps. Stand on the deck, get some fresh air.’’
‘‘No. I feel too sick to look out. Don’t want to go on the deck.’’ (Eyes shut, hunched over trying to keep still.) ‘‘But it works.’’
‘‘No. Leave me alone. Actually, don’t leave me alone. I need a sick bag – now.’’
But another thing that never changes is the chance to stare out at the Sounds and the sea. On good crossings, we play cards, read a book and chat. It’s a good way of slowing everything down and getting the mind into holiday mode.
If we spot the Bluebridge, we say ‘hah, this is half-an-hour faster, so much better’. If we are on Bluebridge and spot the Interislander, we say ‘hah, who cares about speed and that’s a cattle truck compared to this’.
I think everyone stares way down at the cold blue-green ocean and wonders what it would be like to fall in. When younger, the girls liked to think about this with lots of gory detail about hypothermia and so on, then finish up by being reassured that we’d throw one of those big red rings down and jump in and save them if they fell. But don’t jump, seriously.
When the land that has Wellington on it comes into view, the getting-off countdown begins. We will have forgotten what deck our car is on and go by memory or the smell of the ripe sheep truck we always seem to get parked near.
There will be far fewer fluoro-vest people waving us off and often the cars almost seem to sort it out ourselves. Strangely, being late on often means getting off quickly so then we congratulate ourselves on getting it right at this end. We rattle down the gangplank on to foreign land, where the folks are odd, the customs are strange, and the grass really is greener. By O¯ taki, we have become New Zealanders and stopped wondering how they do that grass trick without irrigators.
The big trip north is on again this year and this was written before it happened. Sadly, there was a mini-coup by the two who lean toward seasickness and we are flying over the ferries to Auckland instead, then using a rental car.
It’s a shame because I had a good feeling this would be the year we’d make that early start, arrive in plenty of time, get a high lane 1 spot and only eat fruit on a fast, calm trip. But there’s always next summer.