Shambala

is a name of a magic place hidden in the coast of a wide bay called Golden Bay in the north part of New Zealand's south island. This is the name of a backpacker, which you can find in Zealand, this distant traveller's destination, countless number. But Shambala is the only one. I do not know if this wanderer's shelter took the original name of the place. I would say, however, that it was the owner of the ground who gave it its name, the owner who we asked for one- week asylum in May 2002 and whose personality is hard to describe. I do not remember exactly how we learned of Shambala.

     Approximately 40 minutes of driving from there, we should have been picking kiwis in team for one week and have lived together with our teammates - other three Czech guys. However, when we were asking for the accommodation which our teammates booked, owner of the backpacker unhinged us: "You have to wait for the arrival of some Romanians, who prebooked rooms here, before that I am not going to let you inside." The point was that the booking was made by our team mate whose name was Roman. As we didn’t want to wait until the misunderstanding will be solved, we set out for another option and we found Shambala.

    Me and Eva were following the only main road towards the north to the Golden Bay and trying to find something acceptable consulting the list of backpackers we got. After one hour of moving on a bit and asking for a vacancy, someone advised us to turn right and go ahead until it will be possible. The road full of boulders, winding like a serpent, without end. Once we even went back almost to its beginning and after couple of moments of arguing we headed forward again, this time really as further as it was possible. And just like this we arrived at Shambala.

      A nice house with view of the sea, with fireplace in its entrance hall, couple of young people around. We had to wait for a while before the owner appeared. He took us to the end of a wooded slope above the house, where he introduced us an oblong wooden bungalow with five rooms inline, sharing one kitchen together. Each room got one entirely vitreous wall with a terrace without banister, heading the sea.

The house had disappeared, a small parking lot in front of it had disappeared and the beach had disappeared as well. Below the terrace and on its sides only bushes and flowers everywhere, in front of you only the sea and the sky. Just you, the sea, clouds and smells. We smiled to each other and didn't move from the terrace any more. The owner just said: "This is Shambala," and disappeared.

If you focused enough when looking at the horizon of the sea, you could catch a spot of the lighthouse in the end of an enormous sand tongue - a 30 km long sweep the land of Tasman Sea, called Farewell Spit. "Onetahua" in Maori, "heaped up sand" in English, I don’t dare translate it into Czech.

Sleeping there was excellent. If I could choose a place where I would like to fall asleep forever, this would be the place. In the interest of objectiveness, however, I have to admit, that picking kiwi all day long, a few bottles of great XGold beer, joint of an outstanding New Zealand's weed, the sea-breeze soaked with a salty sea drift and splashing of breakers made their deal.

After ten o'clock in the evening, everything disappeared in a total darkness. The stars of the southern sky spread over your head and only fizzle of the sea helped you maintained your ground in the space. No light spoiled all the night beauty. No electricity reached the place. A solar panel on the bungalow roof, lantern in porch next to the door and only 12 volts little bulb in the room. Nothing must interrupt this divine place, the "Himalayan Paradise."

Next day, we got up early to be in orchard at eight in the morning. We felt like we took bath in living water. We went down to our car, where in a meadow in front of the house stood a statue of ancient horse covered with hoar frost. He stood there as a phantom. Maybe he waited for us when passing by on our way to work. He probably wanted us to take pictures of him. Next days we were seeing him at various distances from Shambala, closer or further along the path.

Mornings in New Zealand are very beautiful, in general. Then, it was even harder to go to tiring graft when the dawn fill you up with energy and you feel like running to the horizon to welcome new day. That week, when we used to get up in Shambala at dawn and return after sunset we didn't perceive work very much, it even didn't tire us so much. Eva loved the hammock in a hillside, even higher above the bungalow, my favourite place was a chair in the terrace.

Just next day we drew our teammates to move with us, might be, they even visited the place. We were probably too romantic compared with them and they stayed with the guy, who considered them to be Romanians. The beach, we reached through the vegetation one day, was absolutely perfect as well, so that it could help the place to maintain its peace and quietness.

An idea has came into my mind to add a photo from Google maps with the coordinates, but I intend to visit the place once again and find it as it was, in its original form. Who will really want to find the way, is going to find it and who has something special inside, the way is going to find him or her.

Tomas,
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translated by Eva

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