We finally arrived, a little downbeat, at about 3:30. I was staying at a place about 4km short of Franz Joseph and I dropped my gear off with mine host, Jerry. It turned out that I was the only guest and so he upgraded me to a double room with en suite shower, at no extra cost, which suited me fine. The only problem was that he seemed decidedly odd and Paula refused all his offers of a cheaper room.
That was fine and so, in pouring rain, we drove into town (if that's what you can call it) and eventually found Paula a place in a shared room in a hostel. We stopped at a number of places, including the Information Centre, the YHA and the hostel that Paula finally booked into. At each stop, I mentioned where I was staying and they would all say something like "With Jerry?", with a disbelieving look. I couldn't get anyone to say anything other than one guy who would just say that "he's hetrosexual, at least" which I suppose was some relief.
Eventually we ended up in the pub for something to eat and to get warm. When I asked the barman about Jerry, he wouldn't say anything, but he just hummed the music from Deliverance! This was all getting a bit freaky, especially when he added that Jerry came from California and that that was where Bates Motel was located. I'd already been having visions of Antony Perkins in Psycho, so this didn't help much.
However, I reckoned that someone who'd just jumped out of an aeroplane at 15,000 feet had nothing to fear from a podgy little American (who actually turned out to be a Kiwi). The pub offered a very good service whereby they would drive anyone who was over the limit back to their own homes, so they wouldn't be faced with closure for having served people whe were intoxicated, an offence in New Zealand. After they took me back to Jerry's, I thought I ought to find out what he was like. I also needed to sort out what to do for breakfast, so I banged on his door and went up to his private quarters. He turned out to be quite an unusual man, but nothing like the weirdo the people in town had indicated.
According to Jerry, he worked as a pilot for a small airline for many years, then moved to helicopters, which he flew commerically, mostly crop-spraying. I'm not quite sure of the timeline, but somehow he ended up being engaged to a Thai girl and hopes to marry her later in the year, once he has saved enough for the wedding. As is common in Thailand, they take the wedding photos well before the wedding so that they can give them to the guests at the wedding. He showed me his pictures and she certainly is a beautiful women, much younger looking than the fifty that he says she is supposed to be.
After retiring from flying helicopters, Jerry went to Thailand to tap rubber, which he has now been doing for some years. That is where he met his wife-to-be, as she also taps rubber on the same plantation, although her main job is as a specialist Thai masseuse. I say no more, except that I ended up quite liking Jerry, despite all the insinuations I'd heard.
The following day, I had breakfast with him and it turned out that he also has a wealth of knowledge about the local flora and fauna, the geology of the area and of weather forecasting, which I think he learnt in his time as a pilot. All in all, I found him to be an excellent host.
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