It's a Small World After All

Sorry that the image of Disney's disturbingly cheerful, blank-eyed animatronic multi-cultural children are firmly rooted in your mind, but Walt was right. We met this lovely woman named Sue, who graciously offered to rent us a room in her house. She invited us over for wine and a chat. As we were walking up, sketchily checking for a house number, a large van pulled up and the people inside scowled at us. Like deer in headlights we froze, having been pegged for inept voyeurs or worse, malicious home invaders. We smiled and tried to act as cool as possible under the circumstances, when who emerged from the van but our fabulous German neighbors from the holiday park. They explained that last night while they were at the house, somebody broke into their van and stole a bunch of their stuff, hence the stink eyes we got moments earlier. So what, you think, it's a small town, you are bound to run into someone. Later, as Sue was talking about her lovely friends in Gisbourne, its began to ring some bells. We had been looking into Wwoofing there with a family that sounded remarkably like the one she was describing. Turns out, they are the same, and now we have a connection and pretty much a guarantee for a free and amazing place to stay on our next leg of the journey. Admit it, it's weird. Tonight's happenings serve as a paradigm for our collective experience here. People meet you, people offer you things and introduce you to other people who can help you and so on. It's like a brilliant little club, where everyone is invited and everyone helps out, it's a bright shiny spot on the often tarnished surface of human interaction.