Tonight will be my last night in New Zealand, so this will also be my last entry. I fly tomorrow to Los Angeles, spend a night there, and then fly home on Friday. It's been an important thing for me to write here, and I suspect this might be the best souvenir I bring home. It's also been a pleasure to hear from people who have read bits and pieces, or all, of what I've written, and I hope that it's been an interesting read most of the time.
Perhaps Auckland isn't the best place to end a trip in New Zealand, because, for me, it is nothing like the rest of the country (and many Kiwis don't even like to acknowledge that it's part of the country!). I've exhausted the activities here in the city that are of interest to me, so I more or less walked around aimlessly today, wandering through the university in the city center and through the parks and main promenades. The mood at the hostel this time of year is lacking in excitement; most people are staying a night or two in Auckland just to wait for a flight home now that the tourist season is coming to a close. Also, it's a bit underwhelming to shoot the breeze outside as I'm now surrounded by cars and city streets rather than towering mountains. I have lots of time tomorrow, but the owner of the hostel here wanted to charge me 10$ to hold my bag past check-out time tomorrow, so I may wander over to the airport well before my flight and read to pass the time.
Of course I don't think my last entry should be a complete rant as I've really enjoyed my stay here, so I'll attempt to wrap things up here and try not to be sappy about it. I wish I could write that one thing that I learned from throwing myself onto an island for three months where I didn't know a single person and had few plans. One certainly learns common sense and self-reliance in a way that is impossible when friends or family are a shout away. But the real learnings I suppose are best kept to myself, as when one travels alone he learns most about himself and clarifies, refines, and (most importantly, I think) expands the inner dialogue that we all have.
I suffered from loneliness on very few occasions and to a much lesser extent towards the end of the trip. I found the times I felt most lonely were precipitated by struggle, usually physical. Simply, I needed someone to complain to! This, I think, was the greatest aspect of solo travel. With no one offering a sympathetic ear, I had no choice but to be self-reliant, and eventually the urge to complain went away altogether. When I had no one to speak to but myself, I realized that I didn't want to hear about the troubles I thought I was having after all, and they ceased to be worries.
For those who have read most of the blog, I thought it might be interesting to rate some of my best and hardest moments to wrap things up. The hardest moment - and this has stuck in my mind for the entire trip - was a particular hour I spent walking around Mt. Taranaki in the rain through a section of trail that was full of ditches but completely overgrown with sharp flax to the point of the track being invisible. Compounded with the fact that I wouldn't see anyone the entire day, falling over and over again while being scraped by the flax became almost too much to handle. To choose a best moment or day seems much more difficult, but it was certainly when I was tramping when things became simple, people became their friendliest, and the land had a magical feel about it. I made far closer friends on the trail than in any city or hostel. Okay, that was a cop-out.
This, then, is the end. A bit sad, but fulfilling like the end of a good book. And I have a feeling that, once caught, the travel bug is hard to get rid of. I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends very soon, so please prepare some juicy gossip.
(As the kiwis would say)
Sweet as, bro,
-Brian
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