I needed a few days to come back, not only physically, in Italy. It wasn't easy to get used once again to the habit, to the house, to the polluted and gray sky, to the mountains that surround me, to the cold winter and ... to the usual italian political discussions and wars! After two days I already regretted to be returned: a glance at the television had been enough to understand that nothing had changed in a year of absence: tits and ass first, our policy at home then and occasionally flash from around the world. The only solution has been to shut the video down, leaving home and meeting old friends and relatives: pleasant days that have reported myself with mind in Italy.
To leave behind, at least for the moment, this splendid years down under and the last two months cycling, I wrote down what i remembered about New Zealand without reread kilometres of the diary i wrote. Just to see what remained to me about these opposed islands. This below is the result ...
Kia Ora... Welcome:
Pronounced features, olive complexion, sculptured bodies and garish tattoos to cover their face. They, the Maori, the first human beings to have reached these islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean and having colonized them. Today they welcome me with a smile on the face and shout a greeting: Kia Ora-Welcome! The dance has an important position in their culture and even warriors before battle staged a dance to demonstrate their virility to the opponent tribes. Today the "Haka" is the battle cry of the national rugby team, legendary all black New Zealand (yet again defeated prematurely in the world cup the past year). And it, Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, which has revealed its beauty to me, its hilly landscapes framed to isolated marine views.
Ciclists paradise:
Four million people in an area approximately equal to Italy, New Zealand roads are the ideal ground for lovers of the two wheels and that's why in recent years it has become a paradise for travel-ciclists. You meet tens of them, from the most prepared to the most unorganized and relaxed. With new bicycles or old irons struggling to stand. In the evening in the camps we become a group, we informe each other on the road and there are four laughs together. During the day you pedal, you greet, you help if necessary, but you're often alone and immersed in the peace of nature that prevails in these lands.
Earth power: The rocks were painted a thousand different colors depending to the mineral inside the water that springs from many sources. The white steam that rises from thousand present craters merges with the white clouds to create strange imaginary figures on the background sky. Te Puia, Pohutu, Te Wairoa, Wakarewarewa, Waimangu, Wai-o-tapu... complicated names, twisted, sometimes unpronouncable. Names of mysterious places where the gods of the earth, water and fire have created one of their greatest works. Fumaroles, boiling mud pools, hot springs, gayser. Mirrors water colored like a painter's palette who is preparing to design a Neorealistic framework and the sunlight lighting everything through the smoke that sails and attenuates the background: flowers, leaves, shrubs, water, rocks illuminate preciously.
Imprisoned in the web:
Morning awakening: the humidity could be cut with a knife. The sun, earlier timid and later more and more strong, slowly melt the fog that envelops everything. A spider's web, the drops of dew deposited at night, the oblique rays to strike them splitting the light in primary colors: a work of art that makes me remain imprisoned among its spirals for hours.
The Pearl of Te Urewera:
The asphalt ends suddenly, behind a curve, a small road sign to alert the beginning of an odyssey: "Gravel road" there's written. But it hides more. From here you enter a different world, isolated and happy to be. The Te Urewera National Park can to be crossed only on foot or trough this artery of rocks and dust: ninety kilometers between hills and coniferous forests to arrive on the shores of Lake Waikaremoana, a pearl set in the heart of the park.
From cone to cone:
Volcanoes, perfect cones and undefined slopes. Perennial mist and snow, black lava rocks such as pitch and unbelivable paths that climb on the slopes of Tongariro National Park and more to the west the Taranaki, isolated and imposing, also hidden by low cloud blanket. Among them chilometers by bike, the Whanganui valley and the joy to be immersed in complete solitude, in a kind of spiritual washing, a meeting between me and nature ... mine and everyones.
The south island:
The streets without traffic link small and warm towns, everyone with buildings with one or two floors. Among them the forest seems to swallow the road, the rivers seem to want to sweep away at any moment the bridges that cross them and rain makes the landscape brilliant green and the advance icy and hard. Birds unable to fly and furtively possums cross the streets following each other in the eternal struggle between prey and predators. The often unaccessible bays of the south coast are the ideal shelter for animals such as shy penguins and preferred field games of the most enterprising dolphins and sea lions.
Tribute to Sir Edmund:
The high peaks of the Southern Alps were for years the training field for Sir Edmund Hillary, who in 1953 conquered first Everest with Tenzing Sherpa companion. The fate wanted that I got the village at the foot of Mt. Cook only a couple of days after the death of the great scalator, a national hero not only for its businesses in the mountains but also and especially for his social commitment to help the people guardians of those white giants that have given him so much. I'm hiking between these peaks with the thought to him and to them: honour to Sir Edmund.
Haere mai Aotearoa!
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