My whole trip in new Zealand has been threaded with one unbelievable coincidence after another, so much so that I’m not even sure were to begin this story…

Serendipity?

I’ll start it in wellington, with a man sitting in the rain outside of the museum. This struck my curiosity but I was too shy and too unwilling to get wet to start a conversation. Only after I ran in to him again inside the huge museum did I muster the courage. He was from France, just back from the south island while I was heading that way.

“What is the one place in the south island I can’t miss?” I asked him.

“Curio Bay,” he said a name that meant nothing to me.

“I swam there with dolphins. It’s the best place.”

I wrote this down in my very random ‘to visit’ list.

Three weeks later I find myself in Dunedin being hosted by a couch surfer I actually saw in the Kiwi burn festival, meeting a friend of his friends, who just 5 days earlier appeared out of nowhere at a lake I was camping out with my climbing friends. Back then this guy, Charlie, had sung us his song, “a dollar for a pie”, and we joked about this becoming the next great hit. 5 days later I hear Charlie, singing it in open mike night and by the end of the song the whole crowd was singing the Corus.

On with the story… on the phone the women at the Curio Bay backpackers told me it would be nearly impossible to hitch hike to the place because it was so remote, needless to say there were no buses. Knowing that this time I was really stretching my luck I decided to try it anyway.

Sun Set in Curio Bay

Not that I ever trust my good ‘fortune’, in fact I always prepare and expect the worst. Stoking up with emergency rations and a map I created with accommodations I could spend the night in I head out with the bus to Balclutha.

From there it was on to hitching. At the junction I met a guy that was on the bus with me. Anyone that has hitched knows that this is a big predicament. If I stand with him we both have a lesser change of being picked up. If I stand before him I’ll have a better chance, especially being a ‘girl’ but I’ll be ‘cutting’ in line. So being the gentle women that I am I headed on further down the road giving this guy a fair chance. He was nice enough to say that if someone picks him up he’ll try to get me on board. Sure enough 25 minutes later a car stops for me. Dan, the other hitchhiker, is inside it.

The driver is heading to Owaka, my backup plan for Owaka is to stay with a Couchsurfer, but he has two profiles which seemed a little fishy, so paranoid me wasn’t sure if to try and keep on going. Then Dan says he’s heading to that same exact Couchsurfer! So off we are, our ride taking us straight up to the farm.

Steven, our host, turns out to be an ‘old style’ new Zealand farmer, who’s just not very good with computers so he lost his password for his CS profile and created another.

My ride to curio bay

Next morning I have to hike back to the main road, more than 6 km with all of my bags. Not one of the 5 cars that passed me by even slowed down. Not a very good sign. Finally I get into town. The only café I was hoping to have a break in is closed. At least they had a public toilet I could use. Coming out of the bathroom I noticed a car with a caravan standing on the curb of the road so I used a little ‘Hutzpa’ and asked them if they are by any chance heading my way. Turns out that they are on holiday going all the way to Curio Bay! I shared the back seat with their parrot which was in a huge cage because, they couldn’t find him a parrot-sitter.
So here I am, at one of the most remote places in New Zealand and definitely one of the most beautiful, and that means a lot as this whole country is so fucking stunning.

Of course  the backpackers was fully booked and because I wasn’t sure I’d make it I didn’t have a reservation so I had to pay for a private room and the dolphins never appeared… but what can I say, you win some, you lose some. I don’t think this is where the story ends but i’ll pause it here for a while…

Can you spot the penguin in the petrified forest? Sorry bad camra

No dolphins but did see sea lions

Attacked by a massive herd of sheep on the ride I got out of the bay (first people I asked in the backpackers… got to invercargil in time for a free concert my host was performing in)