Love affair with Turangi on hold

HBT130539-04.jpg Eva Bradley, columnist for Hawkes Bay Today. Photograph Supplied NEWS ***Please Archive

Over the years I've dedicated a lot of column inches to quoting people far more brilliant than I in order to push my point with polish.
A little while ago, however, I found myself in the unique position of having my own words quoted back to me while being introduced for a public talk. Apparently, all on my own, I came up with this little pearl: Life is like a fine-cut diamond. The stone never changes, but its beauty and brilliance is defined by which facet you choose to look through at any one time.
As I stared out of the rain-streaked window of a timeshare stuck in an 80s time-warp (as timeshares are inclined to do), I thought to myself that Turangi, like life, is just like a diamond.
Depending on who you are and what's going down, the small service town tucked between the western edge of Lake Taupo and State Highway One is either the most exciting or most boring place on earth.

Heavily pregnant and accompanied by a two-year-old and his elderly grandparents, I was finding it extremely hard to see or appreciate the finer facets of Turangi.

Having spent large swathes of the first few days beside the toy box in the public library and information centres, the highlight appeared to be a trip to the indoor heated swimming pool complex, where Edward's trepidation around water saw us restricted to the three-foot-deep baby pool. The less-than-attractive sight of my beached body flopping about in the shallows almost certainly ensured we had the pool to ourselves.

Our days consisted of dawdling round trips to the playground, which was only a block away but took an hour to reach given the necessity to inspect every stone, puddle, stick and grimy bit of well-trodden chewing gum en route.

Edward, meanwhile, was so excited by this new world outside his own familiar one you'd have thought we'd taken him to Disneyland. He and I were quite clearly looking through different facets of the diamond.

Expectations also define how we see a place. In Turangi's defence, mine were exceptionally low. Any place that featured the helping hands of grandparents and the prospect of an afternoon nap sounded like heaven.

But I'm a fickle human and prone to looking past what I've got and wanting more. After wondering why on earth anyone in their right mind would want to stay in Turangi, I tried to see it through the eyes of the youthful backpackers constantly spilling out of buses at the bus stop just beyond the window.

To them, Turangi was a launching point to adventure and adrenalin. The gateway to the Tongariro Crossing, bungy-jumping, rafting, skydiving, fly-fishing, skiing and every other awesome thing you can't do when you're pregnant.

The closest I got to the beating heart of Turangi was when I discovered the town's adventure tourism operator sold great coffee and offered on-loop footage of rafting adventures on wall-mounted TVs - all that was required to light up my son's eyes and have him jabbering about his "rafting" adventure for the rest of the day. It was also half-way between the timeshare and the playground - a route no mother should attempt to traverse without caffeine.

As the rain continued, my fear of seeming ungrateful for the break eventually won out over my desperate desire to escape. Amazingly, my mum turned out to be harbouring the same small-town lassitude.

The next morning, our bags were packed and we were on our way home early.

The hoped-for love affair with Turangi had failed to float. But as we sped away, I vowed to return another time when I could be the person Turangi needed me to be; wild, baby-free and hungry for adrenalin.

I'm sorry I couldn't make it work for us, Turangi. The timing was all wrong. It wasn't you, it was me.