Don't Surf in Places Named Cannibal Bay

The next stop was the Caitlins, a national park on the coast of the southwest part of the South Island.  I was real excited.  We'd only have a few days there but it was supposedly really beautiful, and with good surf!  Woohoo!  I couldn't wait to get back in the water.  This trip had a lot of unforeseens to it, and not surfing very much was definitely one of them.  Especially after lugging 4 surfboards half-way around the world.  

Trying not to stay in Invercargill again, we went one town past it into a very small town named Wyndham.  After talking briefly with the Kiwi owner we settled on a room and a price, and then we were met by his wife.  She seemed very out of place from the start, with bleached blonde hair, and outspoken demeanor (kiwi women were usually quite reserved and soft spoken), but then she began talking.

"Vwhat vwould yew lik vor breaKfisT?" she asked in the thickest Russian accent I had ever heard.  The guy mentioned that she had just come over from Russia a few months previous.  It was so thick, that if you had heard it in a movie, you would tell the actor to take it down a notch.  I actually thought she was messing with us.

She then began trying to up-sell us on everything from a better room, to a gourmet dinner.  The husband actually had to tell her to chill out, that we were travelers and trying to save money.   They were just such an odd couple.  They were the same age, but what was this woman fresh off the boat from Russia doing in a po-dunk town like this?  

When I got back to the room, it hit me.

"She's a mail-order bride!" I said to Mariel. 

"Oh, absolutely!" she laughed, as we both started doing our best Russian accents.  

The Caitlins were undoubtedly beautiful, but I have to say it was a bit overshadowed by the magnificence the Milford Sound seemed to boast.  It did have some gorgeous little bays, including this one with an ultra-photogenic lighthouse.

We went to "slope point", which is the southernmost part of the South Island, dead inbetween the Equator and the Antarctic.  

It seemed fitting that the land "sloped" out into the ocean, like a long finger jutting out from the land.  

Of course it wouldn't be New Zealand without its share of gorgeous little waterfalls.  There were two main ones.  One of which we checked out late in the evening of our last night.  We had decided to treat ourselves and stayed in a small cabin in the National Park's only Holiday Park.  

Early the next morning we hiked up to the other waterfall.  It was hard to leave the warmth of our cozy beds (bed) and heated room, but once we got there I was happy to take advantage of the good light and absence of crowds.  

We had to leave that day and I still hadn't surfed.  It had been cold, windy, and flat the previous days, and I just had to get in the water before we left.  A quick right hand turn led us down a long dirt road that turned into a bay called Cannibal Bay, due to the skeletons they found on the beach when the first westerners arrived.  

I have actually had some inner debate on what I'm about to tell you all next, as the experience has become quite personal to me, and writing about it on the internet seems to take away from it in some way.  But after some thought, I've decided it was a good idea to write about it.

It was a pretty good sized day, definitely overhead.  It was glassy with a slight rain falling, and cold, clear water.  It wasn't that great, but I hadn't surfed in so long, paddling into a few sounded like a good idea.  I put on my wetsuit and paddled out, slowly getting used to the low water temps.   A set came.  I caught one, it was a screamer but it ended up closing out quite quickly and forcing me to go straight.  Not ideal, but it felt so good just to be out there.  On the paddle back out, I got caught by a wave that was quite a bit bigger than anything I had seen so far that day.  It broke right in front of me, leaving me wrestling my surfboard underneath the surface for a bit longer than what was comfortable, and made me question myself out there as it was clear it had been awhile.  I remember saying to myself, 

"That was a worst case scenario.  You're all good."  

Nothing was going to happen that would be any worse than that, and that was a comfortable feeling.  I sat up on my board out the back of the breakwater and waited for another set.  Just then something caught the corner of my eye, and immediately had all of my attention on alert.  There was no mistaking what it was, and a bolt of fear ran through me the like of which I haven't felt in quite a while.  A large, dark outline slowly swam beneath the surface, and was coming in my direction.  There was no doubt about it, it was a shark, and it was big, about 10 feet long.  I immediately pulled my feet up and watched him as he swam underneath me, paused for a bit, and then made a slow but sure circle around me.  I stared intently at the ominous shape.  

I know a little about sharks, and I knew that most likely he was at least coming up for a real close inspection.  I stayed ready, hands on the rails of my board in order to try and get my surfboard inbetween us.  My heart was pounding in my chest, alarms going off silently in my head.  I lost him underneath me for a second, and searched diligently until I saw him again, just off to my right.  But, he didn't come up.  He just paused again, as if to think about me for a while, about what I can only guess.  He then slowly turned, and headed away from me, out towards sea.  

"please be a wave, please be a wave, please be a wave," I whispered outloud.

Flat.  I very slowly started to paddle in, sticking my face in the water and looking behind me every few strokes, knowing that seeing the shark coming back, and with speed and intent was a very real possibility.  I tried to paddle smooth and slow.  Sharks love splashes and movement.  I didn't want to tempt him, wherever he was.  Stroke by stroke, I paddled to the beach, and before I knew it, I was there. 

Surfboard under my arm, and heart pumping fast, I was in somewhat disbelief at what I had just witnessed, like after a car crash or something.  We drove to Queenstown from there, and I couldn't stop thinking about it the whole way there.  I just kept replaying it in my head, over and over and over again, in some sort of quiet disbelief.