We exchanged phone numbers with Amanda and Daniel, thanked them for their time, and left them sitting hand in hand beneath the kowhai. We bumped and juddered for a half mile before either one of us spoke.
“No wonder Bree was a mess when she left the Copthorne,” I said. “The poor kid had her heart broken, all right, but not by Daniel.” I gazed forlornly at a clump of long-stemmed lilies growing along the side of the road. “I understand why she needed to leave the Hokianga, but I wish she hadn’t. I don’t know how we’re going to track her down in Ohakune. Angelo-who-runs-a-café isn’t much to go on.”
“Ohakune isn’t Las Vegas, Lori,” said Cameron. “It’s a very small town. If Bree’s still there, we won’t have any trouble finding her.”
“If . . . ,” I said, sighing.
We lapsed into a thoughtful silence and didn’t speak again until we were seated at Morrell’s Café in Waimamaku, where we stopped to grab a quick bite of lunch.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, after I’d swallowed my first mouthful of a scrumptious vegetarian quiche. “How do we get to Ohakune? ”
“We drive to Dargaville and fly south,” said Cameron.
I paused with a forkful of quiche halfway to my mouth. “How far south? ”
“Far enough,” he said.
I lowered my fork and eyed him suspiciously. “Are you telling me . . . ?”
“That’s right, Lori,” he said cheerfully. “You’re about to visit one of New Zealand’s most active volcanic regions. Won’t it be fun?”
“Oh, joy,” I said, pushing my quiche to the side.
It seemed to me that, between snarky lows and active volcanoes, I’d be lucky to survive my trip Down Under.
Eleven
We pulled in to the Dargaville Aerodrome at half past two. While Cameron made a few phone calls, I chatted with Toko Baker, who’d come to collect his car and who cheerfully accepted a handful of Anzac biscuits from Donna’s tin. When I offered to pay for any damage the dirt road might have done to his vehicle, Toko responded with a hearty laugh and a carefree wave of his hand.
“It’s my boy’s car,” he said. “It’ll do him good to repair it. How else will he learn? ”
After tossing our bags into the plane’s cargo compartment, Cameron conducted a thorough flight inspection, boosted me into the cockpit, climbed into the pilot’s seat, and waved good-bye to his friend. Toko stuck around long enough to watch us take off, then puttered slowly away in his son’s underpowered and much abused car.
Thanks to calmer weather, my second flight in New Zealand was less lively than the first and I was able to appreciate the beauty of the landscape unfolding beneath me. The small villages, the farmsteads, and the intensely green, sheep-dotted fields surrounding them reminded me forcibly of the Irish countryside, which came as a bit of a surprise, as I’d spent the morning in a subtropical rain forest.
When a small cluster of snowcapped peaks came into view, I began to understand what Cameron had meant when he’d said that his country was “many things.” New Zealand, it seemed, packed a lot of variety into a relatively small number of square kilometers.
The only spine-tingling moment occurred when we swooped in to land on a runway that appeared to end mere inches from the edge of an enormous lake. I held my breath until a few hard bumps on the tarmac assured me that we’d made a touchdown instead of a splashdown.
“Lake Taupo,” Cameron informed me, as we taxied to the airport’s modest terminal. “The largest lake in New Zealand. Its waters conceal the crater of a volcano that erupted twenty-seven thousand years ago.”
“Must have been a big bang,” I commented, squinting to make out the lake’s distant shores.
“Compared to it, the Mount Saint Helens eruption was a kitten’s hiccough,” said Cameron.
“How far are we from Ohakune?” I asked.
“About a hundred and twenty kilometers,” he replied. “An old friend of mine lives near Taupo.”
I cocked my head to one side. “Does your old friend happen to have a car we can borrow? ”
“You’re catching on,” he said, grinning.
Cameron’s friend, Aidan Dun, was a professional trout fisherman who made a living by teaching his craft, participating in fly-fishing competitions, and guiding enthusiasts to well-stocked local streams around Lake Taupo. Aidan’s car, a hunter green Jeep Cherokee, was in much better shape than the one we’d borrowed from Toko, but its interior had a distinctly fishy aroma.
“I’ve always wanted to smell like a dead trout,” I said, opening my window.
“The angler’s perfume,” crooned my irrepressible companion.