Flattie’s Travel Blog – Heading South!

The following account is provided by ‘Flattie’ – an intrepid traveller, on his journey round the South Island of NZ with his wife who has Motor Neurone Disease.

About Me: Flattie

An ex Trucky who is now “A Gentleman of independent means.’This means that I have opted to arrange my life so that I can spend quality time with my darling wife, who now has Progressive Motor Neuron disease & probably only about 2 years left. Grief is not an option at this stage. We celebrate every day, because we can spend it together & we love each other

Friday, August 13, 2010 

Paddington on Patrol, part 1, The preparation.

I lost my car keys today, along with my patience & half my hair. You see, I’ve been packing. We are off on Walkabout, Hikoi of happiness, trip of a lifetime, call it what you will. There has been a lot of preparation & planning for this trip. Really, it started over a year ago when we had this vague idea that we would like to do a big road trip to meet all our online friends & catch up with family & see country that neither of us have seen before. As Jude has now got limited mobility, this has started to assume more importance than ever in our lives.

One of the reasons that we wanted to drive down is that I have a store of family heirlooms & memorabilia that I want to pass on to my sons. Another is that I haven’t seen the majority of The South Island other than what you happen to see from the air on the way to Dunedin, what you see from hoofing it round Queen Charlotte Sound & the Rae Valley at Outward Bound & also Dunedin & its immediate environs. Hence the road trip.

Other reasons include a brand new grandson to meet, my 60th birthday to celebrate, and the whole of the West Coast to explore, so it’s a biggy.

There has been substantial preparation involved. Aside from ransacking the house for the stuff that I want to take down for my sons, there is stuff like enough library books to read, (substantial) enough medication to last us both for about two months, making sure that Jude has sufficient hardware to keep her PEG functional and most importantly, enough Fortisip to keep Jude well nourished. You see, 95% of her food intake now is Fortisip via her PEG. What we have is two months worth carefully packed in Sherman plus a prescription for an extra months worth that we can get filled in Dunedin when we have the room to get it in.

Its been quite a mission to organise everything. Friends & rellies to bludge a bed from, working out an itinerary, getting my own stuff packed & most importantly, getting Sherman ready & packed to go. Taking out the back seat has given us a lot of extra room. Just enough to ensure that we have enough room, with careful packing & the wheelchair on the roof, to get everything in.   Oh Yeah, The wheelchair on the roof. That involved a major. Mu’s, which is what Sherman is, aren’t really designed to have roof racks. However, a bit of lateral thinking, more than a modicum of patience & a day & a half’s fiddling have produced very satisfactory results.

So we’re all packed, ready to depart for Hastings about the time that the sparrows are considering breaking wind in the morning. We are staying with one of Jude’s cousins for the weekend & they have organised a get together with some of Jude’s other cousins in the area. Trust us. The weather is turning to big sockfuls of cold custard as of tomorrow, but never mind.. We are on holiday….

Monday, August 30, 2010

Well, here we are aboard the good ship Santa Regina at the Aotea Wharf in Wellington waiting for the off for Picton. Rob assures me that the North wind is good juju for a smooth crossing. He works for Blue Bridge so I guess he would know. Jude is asleep in our cabin, with strict instructions to wake her before we cast off. I don’t think she will want to miss any of the trip. For that matter, I don’t want to miss any of it either.

It’s been an eventful trip so far. I have been fighting a running battle all the way to stop the tiedowns for Jude’s wheelchair drumming & making an unholy racket. I think I’ve beaten it. The secret would appear to be to put a few twists in the straps. It seems to stop it. One of my biggest problems so far has been finding time to jot anything down here. Every time I think I’m OK, someone comes out ready to talk. Not that there is any problem with that.

I should have realized that we were in for a hard time when I found myself packing on Friday the 13th…. Never mind…We got everything in OK, & although it works out that we end up having to take a lot of stuff in at night, I have it to a fine art, with us having one smaller bag each with our day to day needs & another bag with our reserve gear & another bag with our warm gear.

The next leg was a difficult one for Jude. You see neither of us have ever really had much to do with other MND sufferers, & after a very windy trip over the Rimutaka’s, we arrived at Moira Anne’s place. We came to know her through quite a circuituitous route & our life is richer for it. Moira Anne is a fellow MND sufferer. One who not only has the disease, but who also nursed her Mum through it. She arranged for some friends of hers to come round to meet us, among them, a husband & wife of whom the wife not only has MND, but also has early Alzheimers as well. A most difficult path for them to tread , with her being at a very similar stage of MND as Jude is. Jude found this a little scary, but they are a lovely & much devoted couple & a fine example. Moira Anne is just as lovely in person as she is to talk to via Skype. Thank you my dear for opening your home & your heart to us.

Paddington makes a new friend

We stayed last night with Heather & Rob. We got to know them via the same route as we did Moira Anne. They nursed Heather’s Mum through MND. Ever since I first spoke to Heather on the phone, I knew we were going to be friends & that was confirmed when we met them. Staying with them was a bit like coming home for us both & we enjoyed our time. It was really great to be able to talk to someone with a carers perspective. I think we both found the talk therapeutic. Another tough goodbye, but eased by the knowledge that we are going to have another night with them on the way back.

So, here we are about halfway across Cook Straight. It’s not particularly rough. Just enough up & down motion to let you know in no uncertain terms that you are actually at sea. Tonight we stay with Peter alias Cwnda, in Picton. Yet another net friend that we have talked to a lot but never actually met.

Monday, August 30, 2010

GREAT SOUTHERN LAND

After soothing ruffled feathers & restowing luggage & doing a couple of other bits & pieces, we continued our merry way.

If ever a strech of coastline deserves to be called “stunning,” it is certainly the Kaikoura coast line. Sadly, the cloud was a bit low & we couldn’t see the Seaward Kaikoura mountains for the full effect, but the coastline more than compensated. Wild rocky coastline with ocean rollers crashing in always makes for dramatic scenery. Add to that the thrill of seeing our first wild seals & you had a perfect afternoon. We had a little scare there that drove home to me how frail Jude is getting & how much I love her. I convinced her to walk down a little rough track so that she could better see a colony of about 100 seals. She managed that OK, but on the way back to Sherman, she caught one foot in some long grass & fell, landing on her knees first & couldn’t get up again.

It was a scary few minutes until I managed to get her up again, all the while wondering what the hell I was going to do if I couldn’t. Truly, adrenaline is a wonderful gift. Turns out she could have safely stayed in the wagon, as a couple of Km’s down the road I was able to pull off to the side close to the fence & all she had to do was lean out the window, look straight down & there they were about 2 meters away.

We had to stop at “Nin’s Bin.” That’s the little blue caravan that sells the best cooked crayfish on the coast. While there, Paddington insisted on having his photo taken with a crayfish, even though it was very scary.

Once we got to Christchurch, our priority was a motel. We were both very tired & a little shaky., We followed the signs to the center of town & basically picked a motel at random, The Salerno. Lady luck smiled on us, as we couldn’t have picked a nicer place. Once I had made our requirements know, the manager showed us a lovely ground floor unit that had a full disability walk in bathroom. Although we didn’t go out for tea, Jeff came to see us & we had a lovely catch up. If you do stay there, & you order breakfast, bring your appetite. They serve bloody good feeds. As for Christchurch ? I would hate to try & find my way round there without my Navman. So endeth the first of the two consecutive longest legs of our journey.