We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  Words fail me as I try to describe my excitement. I began taking photos as fast as I could shoot: thirty or forty shots from every possible angle. The kiwis paused to feed, pecking at the ground. I changed lenses and took more pictures. I hugged Katrina and then went back to taking photos. What could be more perfect? Here we were—on the island to the east of the island to the south of the South Island—and we had spotted not one, but two kiwis. And we had encountered them during the day, which is highly unusual.

  As I snapped away—the kiwis were still right in front of us—a group of people came over the bluff. I held up my hand to slow them down. “Kiwis!” I whispered. The group approached slowly. One of the guys said, “That looks like a weka.” He came closer. “Yeah, those are wekas. Sorry, mate.”

  Let’s just say that a weka is to a kiwi as a seagull is to a bald eagle.

  “So you’re still going to do the kiwi safari tonight?” Katrina asked.

  “Yeah,” I said forlornly.

  “You got a lot of good weka pictures,” she offered.

  Katrina had no interest in hunting kiwis after dark. I would be alone: the final survivor in the Wheelan family kiwi hunt. My adventure began at eight o’clock at the ferry terminal. It was the solstice, so the sun was still bright. A naturalist gave a brief introduction during which she told us that there is no shame in confusing a weka for a kiwi—she really said that, unprompted by me. The group boarded a boat that wound through various channels on a calm, beautiful evening. We disembarked around dusk and hiked for an hour along forest paths, pausing periodically in response to noises in the bush. Nothing. We made our way to the beach. (At night, kiwis eat the bugs that eat the seaweed; I learned this at the orientation.) Still nothing.

  We walked for several more hours in complete silence, six or eight of us in a single-file line. The temperature was falling, and I was starting to shake from the chill. I tried to reconcile myself to the fact that I would likely leave New Zealand without seeing a kiwi. I ticked off rationalizations in my head: Stewart Island was a lot of fun; Katrina and I had enjoyed a great meal at the local pub; the boat ride and the hike were memorably beautiful; the other birds were interesting; the tour company offered our money back if we did not see a kiwi; and we had made it to the island to the east of the island to the south of the South Island. We had done everything we wanted in New Zealand, other than seeing a kiwi.

  The money-back guarantee meant that the organizers had an incentive to stay out as long as possible. The hike stretched on; the temperature continued to fall. I was now shivering uncontrollably. And then, somewhere around two in the morning, a kiwi walked across our path—a real kiwi. It was a strange-looking creature, like a rodent with bird legs and a bizarrely long beak. We were not allowed to take pictures—the flash would spook the kiwi—but that was no matter. I was like a fisherman who lands a giant catch and then immediately tosses it back. The joy was in the quest, which had been made all the more glorious by the long, dark, cold hike through the night. A few minutes later, another kiwi scurried across the trail in front of us. That was just extra frosting.

  Katrina and I caught the morning ferry back to the South Island. No one else in the family seemed distraught that they had missed the kiwis, though Leah was mildly suspicious as Katrina and I described our dinner in the Oban pub.

  “It was so good,” Katrina gushed. “We had mussels and salmon and a really nice sauvignon blanc.”

  “And only twenty-three dollars for the both of you?” Leah said.

  “You wouldn’t believe how funny-looking kiwis are,” I said quickly.

  Our New Zealand adventure was complete, but New Zealand was not done with us. We had an eight-hour drive north to Christchurch, where we would catch our flight to Australia. Christchurch was also where Sophie was planning to get the semicolon tattoo. Katrina, a fount of free parenting advice, told us that we should call Sophie’s bluff. Katrina insisted that if we did not drive Sophie to the tattoo parlor, she would be too lazy to get there on her own. Katrina’s logic had two flaws. First, Sophie was plenty industrious when it suited her needs—even if online chemistry and pre-calculus were not among those needs. Second, the last thing we wanted was for Sophie to end up at some sketchy tattoo parlor. A tattoo is permanent; so is hepatitis C. Before we left Invercargill, Leah and I used some of our fun money to go out for dinner, where we discussed the issue. We opted for a “consent without approval” approach: We would continue to discourage the tattoo, but if necessary, we would make sure she had it done safely.

  The drive to Christchurch was one of the most enjoyable legs of our road trip. We stopped frequently: for chicken peri peri (on my New Zealand bucket list); at the gift shop of a Cadbury chocolate factory; at a great used bookstore. Katrina and I discussed the role of institutions in economic development. As this scintillating conversation stretched into its second hour, Sophie exclaimed, “If this conversation goes on any longer, I’m going to jump from the moving vehicle.” She persuaded us to play a sex education trivia game instead. Each child competed to answer age-appropriate sex-related questions. The questions grew steadily harder with each round. CJ began weeping when he lost all his points on a menstruation question.

  Sophie did not relent on the tattoo. In Christchurch, I was assigned the task of driving her to Jolly Octopus Tattoo. The tattoo artist was a chatty guy originally from Minnesota. Sophie was on her best behavior. The semicolon tattoo was so small that I had trouble seeing it without my glasses on. It was, all things considered, an anticlimax. Meanwhile, Katrina had noticed a round sore on her calf that was nearly identical to the one on the top of her foot, which was still not healing. While I was chatting up the tattoo artist, Leah went with Katrina to a health clinic to have the sores inspected. The doctor diagnosed a staph infection and prescribed a round of antibiotics.

  The South Island had been the beautiful adventure we had hoped for. We saw and did many of the things Leah and I had missed on our first trip. We hiked one of the most scenic trails in the world. We had pointed to Ulva Island on the map and then made it there, all with me driving on the left side of the road. We had a diagnosis for Katrina’s strange sores.

  And I even saw a kiwi.

  * Complete Family Meltdown #2 was as the result of Sophie’s protest in the Quito airport. I noted Complete Family Meltdown #3 in my journal but not the details, and now I can no longer remember anything about it.

  † Martin Luther King, Jr.

  ‡ There are rumors that CJ’s puerile behavior sometimes prompted a “Code Red” in which I would subtly tap my chest, giving Sophie a signal that she could pummel CJ while we looked away. I will not dignify such rumors. I will acknowledge that whenever I look at Sophie and tap my chest, CJ runs screaming out of the room. You can draw your own conclusions.

  Chapter 11

  The Exploding Penis

  The crew warned about seasickness and began passing out pills to ward it off. Because Team Wheelan gets motion sick on any moving vehicle bigger than a donkey cart, we eagerly took the medicine—except Sophie. “I don’t get seasick,” she declared.

  OUR PLAN FOR AUSTRALIA WAS to make our way to the scuba mecca of Cairns, where we would stay long enough for Sophie and CJ to do a scuba certification course. (Leah and I were already certified.) After that, we would head out onto the Great Barrier Reef on a “live aboard” dive boat for three days and two nights. Katrina had plans to travel separately with a high school friend, Bevin. She and Bevin would do the same scuba course as CJ and Sophie, but a few days behind, so that they could have their scuba live aboard experience unencumbered by the rest of us.

  It was during the scuba certification class that CJ became concerned that his penis might explode on the ocean floor. For several days, CJ and Sophie spent mornings in a classroom and afternoons in a pool getting used to diving with equipment. Scuba is dangerous in part because of changes in pressure underwater. Gases are compressed as one descends; they expand as one returns to the surface. The first ho
urs of the scuba certification course are full of warnings. If you hold your breath while ascending, your lungs may explode. If you do not properly pressurize your ears, your eardrums will blow out. And so on. Hour after hour on contracting and expanding gases, with CJ dutifully taking notes.

  I was sitting in the back of the room doing other work. At the end of the first day, I sidled up to CJ. “They probably won’t tell you this,” I said, “but if you get an erection on the bottom of the ocean and then ascend too quickly, your penis will explode.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” CJ protested, but I could sense a glimmer of doubt. “You’re joking, right?”

  I kept a straight face. “Fine. Don’t believe me,” I said. “It’s your penis.”

  The next morning, I pulled aside the course instructor, Adam, who was a young guy with exactly the personality one would expect from someone who teaches scuba to beginners: fun, enthusiastic, kind—and with a great Australian sense of humor. I explained what I had told CJ about the penis pressure problem (which, if you are wondering, is not true). Might Adam mention this pressure issue to the whole class? “Absolutely, mate!” Adam replied enthusiastically. At the beginning of class, Adam explained “for the benefit of the guys in the group” what might happen if one gets an erection on the ocean floor and then ascends too quickly. The adults in the class recognized the joke. CJ did not. He came home that night and said, “Wow, Dad, I thought you were joking about the exploding penis, but Adam told us the same thing.”

  And then both Adam and I forgot what we had told him.

  Our Australian adventure had begun several weeks earlier in Melbourne. We arrived from New Zealand on December 23, just in time for Christmas. All five of us wanted to do “a real Christmas,” even if the ninety-degree weather felt more like the Fourth of July. We spent Christmas Eve shopping for stocking stuffers and Secret Santa gifts. Each of us was assigned to buy a gift for another family member with a ten-dollar limit. We joined the hordes of last-minute shoppers and admired the Christmas windows in the big stores, complete with snow scenes. I bought Leah a Nalgene water bottle. She got me four airplanesize bottles of scotch. Katrina got CJ a pouch of freeze-dried Mexican food. And so on. That night in our Airbnb apartment, we made holiday cookies with homemade frosting, a family tradition passed down from my grandmother to my mother and now to us. Leah bought food coloring at the supermarket and made different frostings, which the kids used to make a flag cookie for each country we had visited. We had cheese fondue for dinner and opened a bottle of white wine. Katrina had two glasses and started dancing happily around the apartment. We played Christmas music on portable speakers we had bought in some airport along the way.

  I found myself thinking nostalgically about the rituals of the holiday: visiting my grandparents as a young boy; decorating the tree and sledding in their backyard; putting out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer; and then, decades later, doing the same things with our children in my parents’ home. Leah and I made stockings using bags recycled from the Secret Santa shopping and filled them with practical odds and ends: Band-Aids, ibuprofen, antibiotic cream. We gave the kids each a Swiss Army knife and reminded them repeatedly to put the knives in their checked baggage on all future flights. (The first knife would be confiscated by airport security roughly two weeks later.) Our splurge for Christmas Day was an afternoon buffet at the InterContinental Melbourne. We cobbled together the nicest outfits we could conjure from our packs. The temperature was close to a hundred degrees at mealtime; we were bathed in sweat after walking to the hotel. Once we arrived, however, we were transported from our low-budget world to someplace far more elegant.

  The InterContinental has a beautiful Gothic stone façade, redolent of an earlier era when hotels represented the height of luxury. On our travel budget, it was not a place we could afford to have coffee, let alone a meal. But this was Christmas. The dining room was enormous, with a high ceiling and a skylight that bathed the tables in natural light. And then there was the buffet, or, more accurately, the buffets: a seafood line with oysters, shrimp, and lobster; a carvery station with roast beef and lamb and ham; a long line of salads and fresh vegetables; and an entire room of desserts. As we settled at our table, Santa Claus stopped by to pose for a photo with the children. The meal was the travel equivalent of a snow day—a glorious, if fleeting, escape from a routine to which we would soon return.

  The only affordable flight to Hobart, Tasmania, left at six a.m. on the day after Christmas. Tasmania (an Australian state) is an island south of Melbourne about the size of Ireland. We awoke in the dark and caught a bus to the airport for the short flight. Upon landing, we filled out paperwork at the rental car desk and then walked out to the lot to pick up our “SUV.” The vehicle was so small that it was physically impossible to fit our five modestly sized packs inside and still have room for passengers. Obviously, this did not stop us from trying. The family, having awakened at three-thirty in the morning, was not in top form. I fit four of the bags in the cargo area but could not get the hatch closed. I kicked one of the bags in frustration. “Maybe if you kick it harder,” Leah said.

  “The bags need to go sideways,” Katrina declared.

  “It won’t make any difference,” I said.

  “Try putting the big ones on the bottom,” Leah instructed.

  “It’s physics,” I yelled. “These bags will not fit in this car in this universe.”

  “Not with that kind of attitude,” Sophie said.

  “It has nothing to do with my attitude!” I yelled. “It’s a space constraint!”

  “Somebody didn’t get their coffee this morning,” Sophie replied.

  As we were squabbling, another family loaded up a larger vehicle and drove off. “Why didn’t we rent that car?” CJ asked.

  I went back inside to the rental counter and threw money at the problem. We had been consistently missing our daily spending targets since arriving in New Zealand. The upgrade to a larger vehicle was more bad budget news. I managed to save a few bucks by declining the optional insurance coverage. This gave me even more incentive to drive carefully—still on the left side of the road. The only thing worse than driving this expensive SUV would be crashing it.

  The weather in Tasmania, which is cooled by winds blowing from the South Pole, was blessedly more pleasant than in Melbourne. We stayed in a small town outside the capital of Hobart with a charming main street and a stone bridge across a meandering river. There was a monument in the center of town to the soldiers who died in the Great War (World War I). I never saw a corresponding monument for World War II, which contributed to the feeling that the town had somehow been frozen around 1920. The cool weather and the idyllic town screamed out for a picnic. We bought bread and cheese at a small shop and settled on a knoll overlooking the stone bridge and the river. I could envision the same picnic in the same place a hundred years earlier, except that the girls would be in fancy hats and hoop skirts, nibbling at fruit and cheese while waiting for a suitor to invite them on a stroll.

  For all Tasmania’s sleepiness, Hobart is home to a delightfully provocative modern art museum: the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). I will admit that I am a modern art skeptic; I find a lot of it incomprehensible and silly. Why is it art if you put a knife in a bowl with two live goldfish? On the other hand, we were captivated by the “fat car”: a life-sized obese Ferrari. Rather than the sleek lines of a sports car, the flabby Ferrari’s frame was bulging and inelegant, like an obese person or animal. “Is that supposed to be us? Like our culture?” I asked Leah. “Overindulgence?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. We stared at the bizarre car for a while and then wandered over to where a live man with a bare, tattooed back was sitting on a pedestal.

  “That’s what he does every day?” I whispered.

  “It’s performance art,” Leah explained.

  “He’s just a guy with a lot of tattoos sitting on a pedestal,” I said.

  “He can hear you,” L
eah reminded me.

  “Isn’t that part of the job?” I said. “He’s the one who decided to be a museum exhibit.” Eventually the tattooed guy went on his hourly ten-minute break. “Do you think he has a union?” I mused as he walked away.

  It was the Great Wall of Vagina that rendered CJ speechless. As the name might suggest, the exhibit was a wall of four hundred vaginas: plaster molds of vaginas made from volunteers, young and old. All were displayed along the wall of a corridor, vagina after vagina. CJ wanted to talk about this, but he could not formulate a specific question. “That thing with the vaginas . . .” he began. “Like, who . . .” Still, no complete thought. He stared in silence for a while and then went back to the flabby Ferrari.

  We took our second vacation from travel in Tasmania. We made our way to Beauty Point, several hours north from Hobart on the opposite side of the island. There we would have a large, lovely estate to ourselves for a week. One of our college friends, Pam, married a guy from Tasmania, Mark. The two of them arranged an invitation for us to stay in Mark’s parents’ home while they were away for a stretch. We followed the directions and eventually found ourselves outside an electric gate. We entered a code and the gate swung slowly open.

  “Is that a tennis court?” CJ exclaimed as we drove up the driveway. It was. There was also a pasture with cattle, lovely flower gardens around the house, and a meadow overlooking a river. We had arrived in the lodging equivalent of the Christmas buffet: a lovely, comfortable house with big bedrooms, a full kitchen, a living room, and another sitting room in a distant wing of the house. The books I had mailed to myself were waiting for me on the dining room table, along with a welcome letter and a bottle of wine from Mark’s parents.