In my case, over fulfilling.
Over the past weekend I spent about 33 hours in the company of nine, eclectic, friends. We had a sleep over night on Tiritiri Matangi Island. A wildlife sanctuary to be put on everyone's 'Must Visit' list.
However, apart from us ten meandering anthropological dullards, there is not a lot of actual 'wild life' (that one can visibly see) but there is a plethora of fantastical native bird life that has one stand in awe and wonder.
The island's length would be approximately three kilometres and at it's widest would be, perhaps, a kilometre. It is truly a little treasure island on our coastline.
Our trip, being an over-nighter, had us catch the Saturday morning ferry to the island and return the next day on the afternoon ferry. A mere 32 to 33 hours of togetherness of ten friends.
Our only planned activity was to walk the island with our own personal guide who kindly gave up her weekend to spend it with us; this was due her being an extra-mutual friend of two in our group.
There was a loose plan of some in the group rising on Sunday morning and enjoying a jog over the various island tracks and circumnavigating as much of the island as we could, whilst pretending to be the adept off-road athletes we once were.
However, on alighting from the ferry on Saturday we did enjoy walking as a group over all the tracks and ascents and descents along the coastline over the whole island, with the detailed guiding from our personal guide; so come Sunday morning there was noticeably no mention of heading off for that athletic jog that some had envisaged. Mind you, that could have been due to some individuals choosing to rise before dawn to head down to the bush and shoreline to listen for the dawn chorus of bellbird, riroriro, kokako, stitchbird, tui and saddlebacks that are in abundance.
We all slept in the very well equipped bunkhouse on the island and were fortunate to be the only occupants, thereby having the bunkhouse to ourselves until Sunday morning.
Thus, in the weeks prior to this weekend it seemed that little had to be done in terms of preplanning or pre-packing for the mere 32 hour sojour.
At least, that is what I thought. Silly me. This is a group of people who have the ability to rally around at short notice and be able to provide ample food and drinks for over two hundred people and still have enough over to feed many of the extended whanau for numerous weeks.
Some in this group began the pre-weekend planning weeks in advance by sending out general emails to each individual to let them know there would be a 'shared' dinner on the Saturday night to which each person would contribute their share of culinary and spectacular delights.
Before long there were emails crossing the city with precise instructions on who was bringing what and for how many and what colours their contributions would be. Along with the instructions on the style and types of foods each would take, were strong instructions about the most important colours being the whites and reds of the confessional grapes that would accompany the evening repast.
Seems friends were ensuring friends were to never go hungry.
Therein lies the story behind the opening sentence to this scribe - friendship can be a very fulfilling thing..
It belies explanation how just 32 hours of over-imbibing on the fruits of others' love and labours could possibly cause the weighing scales to spin another circuit on the Monday morning to let one know - that friendship may be a fulfilling thing, but the gob should be kept shut throughout.
We began like this:
We left like this:
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