My first couchsurfing experience

22.10

I'm a bit late again with my writings but here's something I wrote two days ago.

My second morning here in the Playhouse Cafe started when the first beams of the sun woke me up. I took my coffee to the deck with me and now Cheeky, the owners black cat purrs next to my feet and plays with my jumpers sleeve. But before telling you more about this place, I have to go back a bit.

So I arrived in Picton couple of days ago, after a 3-hour-long ferry trip from Welly. The sea was beautiful, bright turquoise coloured and calm. When arriving to the terminal I waited anxiously for my back and kept an eye on my connecting bus, hoping it to wait there just for a little bit longer. Finally I saw my pack, the Little Big Planet character Sackboy hanging on the side, smiling to me. I rushed to the bus and found myself a place next to a window. The midday sun was shining bright hot and luckily the bus was pretty empty. Our first stop was at Blenheim and from there we continued our way to Nelson. My eyes were glued to the window the whole time, stunned by the view. Huge wine fields that continued as far as the eye can see, blue snowy hills forming a border far away in the horizon. We climbed up to a hill reaching 380 meters and then slowly started making our way back down. Huge pine trees and beautiful native bush surrounded us from every direction. Everything was just so green that I couldn't get my head around it. Shortly after the hills we arrived in Nelson. I texted my couchsurfing host and couple of minutes later he helped me to toss my stuff at the backseat of his car. The house was near to the centre, a shabby dark place on top of the small supplement store my host owned. The place is waiting to be renovated in couple of months so I guess that explains some of the wholes and broken pieces of wood here and there. Anyway, I'm not too fussy about things like that so I just tossed my stuff somewhere and went exploring the city of Nelson. Later in the evening I tried to keep up some kind of a conversation with my host, asking things and getting to know the guy better. But pretty soon I realised how little we have in common and there seemed to be only two things that he was interested in. His supplement store and weed. Both which kept him going everyday. Soon I also discovered that the sofa I was promised to have as a bed was occupied by the Malaysian flatmate who watched movies throughout the whole night. So I curled myself tightly in my sleeping bag and slept in the far end corner of the bed, hoping that my host was going to stay on his side. I did see a well-read Bible on the side of his bed so that kinda brought me comfort. And luckily I wasn't disturbed during the night.

The next morning I woke up before anybody else and packed some maps and water in my back. An apple as a breakfast and I was good to go. I climbed to a hill that is said to be the centre point of whole New Zealand and the view was pretty spectacular. From there I followed a small path into a forest and found a field buzzing with hundreds, maybe thousands of bees. I was in the middle of eating my second apple so I ran past that point, worried that the sweet scent would attract the busy honey-makers. After a while I found a Japanese garden by the seaside and huge parks full of soccer players. I slowly made my way back to the apartment and convinced the guys to go and explore some beaches with me. We drove to Rabbit Island where a lot of people were still enjoying the sun and having picnics. The tide was low and we found some starfishes drifted on to the sand. From there we made our way to the golden beach of Kaiteriteri and we sat there talking about the differences of men and women. I couldn't help but to laugh when the guys were asking me tips "how to impress a white woman". The flatmate and I collected some shells and I noticed that I can also use them as earrings, ha! The perks of having stretched ears. As the sun started to set behind the hills, the boys gave me a lift to my next destination, the Playhouse cafe in Tasman. I wished the boys better luck with women and made the flatmate promise that he will come to the next tattoo-fair in Helsinki (he's a tattoo-artist). And so here I am. I'll post another text about this place, with some photos too so you can have a better idea of the place. But if I'd have to discribe the place with one word, it would be "super-relaxed". Says it all.