After dinner, Sarah asked if I wanted to go snorkeling with Mike and some of his friends. I accepted the invitation eagerly, as I had heard Mike making arrangements on the phone before the meal, and was hoping I might tag along. Mike had an extra snorkel set, but I would be be without a wetsuit. I threw my trunks and camera in my bag, and waited in the garage.
Lance, the man I could thank for the mussels I had just eaten, arrived at the door and introduced himself. He was tall with fair hair, and looked to me as if he could pass for a youth minister. I knew he was not: he distilled his own rum and was inventive with four letter words. After Mike appeared with a paint scraper and a backpack full of gear we went out to the drive and loaded our stuff into the car. Our driver and fellow snorkeler was a friend of Lance’s named Jason. He worked at a custom car audio shop; the electric blue Subaru GT was fitted with dual amps in the trunk and a monitor next to the dash. He drove fast, with hands at ten and two. As we wound our way to the beach, I began regretting the mussels.
If you’ve never driven in New Zealand, you need to know that the roads are invariably beautiful and stomach-testing. Even the main highways between cities are two-lane jobs that slalom between hills, swerve around forests and hug the banks of rivers. The speed limit is low by American standards – 100 kilometers per hour, roughly 60 MPH – but you feel the necessity of that limit after a couple of hours of driving. Jason, however, had lived in the area all his life and knew the straight sections, the blind corners and the potholes of Opunake road. He also had a radar detector mounted to the wind shield, and made good use of it at 120 KPH.
Along the way, I managed to learn the true nature of our expedition. We weren’t going to be snorkeling per say, rather we’d be hunting for a prized crustacean called the paua. I’d seen paua shells before, beautiful iridescent things that Tricia had put in with the landscaping rocks in her back yard. They are about the size of your palm, and have five small perfect holes running on the outside edge. Pauas, when flattened by a roller and fried, are a delicacy and many kiwis hit the rocky beaches at low tide with a mind to catch a meal.
After a left turn, the road terminated at the beach. Across the road, two men accompanied by a humongous black labrador were loading up a quad bike with large fishing poles. Once my companions were outfitted in wetsuits and snorkels, we made our way down the black sand and out into the ocean. It was low tide, so we crossed over black and white rocks covered with small crustaceans and seaweed. I stopped to tighten my sandals, and looked up to see Jason and Lance had covered twice as much distance as me. I sped up and reached the sea in a few minutes without incident, but they were already wading into the deeper water. There was only an hour or so of sunlight left, so I yanked on my flippers and snorkel and went out into the surf.
Before this night, I’d never snorkeled in anything other than a swimming pool. Pulling myself over rocks and seaweed, I peered through the water, kicking my legs to keep my knees from being smashed into the stones beneath. The waves sent blasts of saltwater down my pipe, but I cleared them with blasts of my own and continued to search for the paua.
After several minutes I found a small cache of paua at the bottom of a pink rock. Their shells were crusted pink as well, but their imperfect oval shape gave them away. I tugged at the creatures with my fingers, wary of the sharp urchin centimeters below, but they wouldn’t budge. I flagged Mike over and clung to the rock as he made his way. The waves, stronger now, tumbled me from my find, abated long enough for me to recover, then doubled their efforts. When Mike reached me, I pointed to the paua and he went to work with the scraper. He popped one from its stony purchase as a wave came and threatened to whisk it away; I let go with both hands in order to snag it, and was sent back a few yards.
Standing up, I removed my mask and inspected my prize. About half the size of my palm, the paua’s black underbelly pulsed and contracted as it searched for a grip where none could be found. It closed in on itself then, and I looked out to the ocean to see the other divers making their way methodically down the surf. Forgetting what I held, I was surprised to feel the paua clasp my hand. It was soft and warm, pleasant even. In that moment I felt great sympathy for the thing, a creature fully dependent on something to hold to; an anchor to weather the tide.
I hauled myself over to Jason and asked him to stow the paua in his bag. He examined it and told me it was too small, and that I should probably just leave it. I hadn’t known that paua must be at least 85 millimeters in order to be fished legally. I placed it underwater at the base of a large rock, and turned back to the shore. After thirty minutes in the sea without a wet suit, the cold was getting to me.
By the time I got back to my bag, I was shivering and had lost much of my coordination. I was thankful that my companions had their heads under water, I can only imagine how helpless I looked. After changing as quickly as possible into dry clothes, I sat on a large rock and took in the sunset – my first clear view of one since I’d arrived in New Zealand. With shaking hands, I took photograph after photograph. Soon after Mike and the others returned with their catch. Apparently, it was not a good night for pauaing. Many of the paua were too small, and we made out with only thirteen. Back at the car, we talked with the fisherman we’d seen earlier. They had not caught anything, but admired a snapper another man and his son had caught.
Driving back to Stratford, Lance, Mike and Jason shared stories about eels and oil rigs. The perfect cone of Mt. Taranaki, silhouetted in blue night, served as a backdrop, while Jason moved us up, around and down the road home.
