Kiwi Tracks by Lonely Planet Page A

quaint scenes depicted in coffee-table books. Our guide, a retired schoolteacher, leads us into Christ Church Cathedral and proudly points out a stone plaque dedicated to the memory of one of the original ‘Canterbury Pilgrims’, who arrived in 1850. She pulls her frame up to its full diminutive size and says: ‘I was fifteen years old when that original pioneer died.’ The anecdote puts the short history of New Zealand in perspective. Even the Maori, in their giant canoes, arrived in these islands from Polynesia as recently as a thousand years ago, which is nothing compared to the Australian Aborigines’ claim to be the oldest living culture at fifty thousand years. The Maori named their new homeland Aotearoa: the land of the long white cloud.
    I look forward to starting another track, hopefully one not thoroughly soaked with rain and snow. In the late afternoon, I step aboard the Akaroa shuttle bus.
    The driver greets me: ‘How you going, mate?’
    I show him the brochure. ‘I’m about to do the track across the farmers’ fields.’
    ‘Your name Stevenson?’ I nod. ‘Well, somehow they’ve cocked that up. Got you booked on the wrong track. It’s going to be a bit of a case sorting that one out.’
    He starts the engine. There are no other passengers.
    ‘Is there a big difference?’
    ‘They copied ours.’

    ‘Ours?’
    ‘Yeah. I’m one of the owners of the land that the track goes through. The other track people phoned me up to see if you were coming on the four o’clock shuttle. If so, I was to drop you off at the church in Little River.’
    ‘Can I get on your track still?’ I want the original, not a copy.
    ‘Sure, but you’d better sort it out with them first.’ He smiles as he puts the bus into gear.
    We drive out of Christchurch towards the volcanic hills to the south-east. All the instruments, dials and instructions on the bus are in Japanese. A ‘new-in-NZ’ used bus.
    ‘How’s your Japanese?’ I ask the driver. ‘I mean, how do you know what knob does what? Everything’s in Japanese.’
    He looks at the dashboard. ‘Tell you the truth, I don’t. My wife usually drives this bus. I’m a farmer.’
    ‘Your wife can speak Japanese?’
    He laughs.
    I am dropped off at the church in Little River. The church door is open and I walk in. A woman vacuuming the carpet sees me, turns the machine off and smiles radiantly. ‘Andrew!’ I smile and nod encouragement. ‘We were expecting you at one.’
    ‘Well,’ I say, pleased that someone should actually know who I am, ‘I think there’s been a mistake. You see, I was in Te Anau when I booked and they didn’t know that there are two tracks around here.’ I am prepared to walk this one even if it is a copy, all things being equal. ‘Have the other trampers already started?’
    ‘There are no other trampers.’
    Bad sign. I was hoping to break out of my solitary routine and tramp with a group of others. ‘Would it be terribly disappointing if I cancelled?’ The thought of doing another track on my own has lost the appeal it had weeks ago.
    She almost looks relieved. ‘No problem.’ They are not going to charge me a cancellation fee. ‘What are you going to do instead?’ she asks.
    ‘See if I can still get on the other track. Is there a phone here?’
    She points. ‘There’s a phone booth in the village, that way.’
She packs up her vacuum cleaner, then asks: ‘By the way, when did you find out about being on the wrong track?’
    ‘On the bus on the way over here,’ I answer, not appreciating the internecine politics of competing private tracks.
    ‘Ah yeah, well I sussed that one out correctly,’ she says abruptly. The smile gone, she ushers me out of the church like a chicken out of the coop.
    I walk the few hundred metres to the phone booth, look up the telephone number on the brochure and dial. When a man answers, I explain: ‘I was in Te Anau about two weeks ago and thought I’d booked a four-day trip on your track.