This story is taken from the diaries I kept during my solo travels in New Zealand - exactly twelve years ago this week.
I’m lying on my bunk bed at the hostel when my phone lights up. It’s him.
“It’s too late,” he writes. “I’m attached to you now.”
He’s French, so his English isn’t perfect - yet he finds the cheekiest, most romantic ways to express himself.
I met him two weeks ago at a bus stop. We were waiting to be picked up for a group tour of New Zealand’s South Island. The bus was delayed, so we got talking - and didn’t stop for the rest of the trip. We saw vivid blue lakes, rich pine forests and silver snow-topped mountains.
It was like a dream. Until we went our separate ways.
“I will never forget you,” he texts me. I returned to Auckland, where I’ve been staying long-term at this hostel, while he explores the North Island this time. “The glowworms in the Waitomo Caves reminded me of our first evening together. Bisous bisous, darling.”
I picture him sitting in the tour boat, floating along as thousands of tiny turquoise lights twinkle on the cave walls around him. Like the glowworms that lit our dark path through the bushes behind the beach in Abel Tasman. That moment when I grabbed his hand and he kissed me.
