What's to Say About Hamilton?
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Hamilton,
North Island,
New Zealand
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Our first morning waking up in the van!
We had decided our first van-dwelling breakfast would be of an indulgent and celebratory nature, but as the layby we had ended up in didn't have all that great a view or much space, and, more importantly, as most of our cooking gear was still smeared with Nick and Sabrina's grime (honestly, who sells a van without washing up the crockery?!), we drove down to a nearby beach which had a toilet block.
Kirsty chiselled the filth from the kitchenware while Jacob fried stuff. Bacon, eggs, black pudding and sausages, with lashings of brown sauce, all washed down with tea, Earl Grey, hot. We began to discover a problem with New Zealand cuisine. A sausage should be made of pork. If it's not, it should be called a beef sausage, a lamb sausage, or whatever: a basic, common or garden sausage is made of pig. The great sausagey nations of the world (the Germans with their millions of different varieties, the British with their classic banger of 'and mash' fame) will testify to this. A sausage is made of pork. Simple as that.
Not here.
New Zealand contains many many sheep, and many many cows. Sausages are therefore made, usually, of beef and lamb. Some are called 'pork flavoured' sausages, with a small percentage of minced pig added, which makes a woefully inadequate attempt at disguising the beefy sheepy flavour. The same seems to be true of black pudding: in New Zealand it's cow based. Kirsty, having recently returned to the carnivorous fold and still not much of a fan of lamb, was not at all impressed with the sausages. Jacob, although finding them edible, was rather disappointed. Neither of us had much time for the black pudding. The brown sauce...well, it wasn't HP, so we only have ourselves to blame.
Whilst Jacob had been frying, he had had an audience. A small, collie shaped audience, which had sat, looking wistful and occasionally licking its face, in that way that only hungry wistful dogs can. We gave up on the sausages and black pudding, checked with the dog's owners, and watched her inhale the plate of leftovers. At least someone appreciated them.
We washed the dishes and ourselves at the toilet block, then drove into Raglan, had a look in the little supermarket-cum-hardware store for bits we needed for van improvements, gave up and went to Hamilton.
The outskirts of Hamilton had, as the outskirts of larger towns always do, large, new superstore complexes. In the car park, Jacob got himself into trouble with a security guard. We noticed that one of Lucy's sliding side windows didn't have a catch to keep it closed: it could be opened from the outside which basically meant anyone who was so inclined could nick all of our stuff with minimum effort. Improvising, Jacob trimmed a small branch from a tree in the car park, intending to cut a section from it to wedge the window closed.
"I'd be interested to know just what you intend to do with that sir" said the large but very quietly spoken Maori woman in the security uniform. Bugger. As apologetically as possible, he explained that we'd just bought the van and not noticed its easy access potential until just now. We were allowed to keep the branch, as long as we took all the trimmings with us. She did her best to sound upset about the tree, but we all realised it was easily big enough to survive a minor pruning. She drifted laconically away.
We then spent quite a while poking around in K-Mart (kind of like Woolworths in the UK) and Warehouse (cheapo Woolworths...maybe more like Makro - a clearance department store) looking for storage boxes of a sensible size to be lashed along the small shelf behind the seats. Most of the afternoon later, we had some boxes, bungee cords, poles to convert the tarp we had found into an awning, gas for the stove, shuttlecocks to go with the bent badminton racquets and the piece de resistance...a shower! A large vinyl bag with a length of silicon rubber tubing fitted with a watering can type end, to be filled with water, left in the sun to heat up and then hung from a tree. Ingenious.
Jacob also found a pair of blue Converse trainers which, at size 12 and the only pair of that colour left, were only $20 (about £8). Kirsty was quite jealous, especially as there were size 4 ones in the same sale, but only in pink.
The afternoon largely dispensed with, we still hadn't done any laundry. Unable to find a laundrette, we asked in a supermarket where we might find one, and they produced a Yellow Pages whereby we could find out. Armed with addresses and a map, we drove round the closed laundrettes of Hamilton until Kirsty hit upon the idea of asking at the campsite if we could, although not intending to stay, pay to use their facilities.
The chap on the desk said we could, so we set our washing going and set about organising the day's purchases into the back of the van. As we looked like we were just going to stay in the car park outside the site, a group of Israeli tourists (who thought Kirsty was Israeli because of her sandals...?!) came over and asked if that was indeed our intention. As we explained what we were doing, the campsite owner, a small, savage, terrier-like British woman came over and started laying into them about how they were wasting her time, they'd asked if they could look around half an hour ago so were they going to stay or not, dammit?
Somewhat taken aback, they were very apologetic, but she was having none, and basically chased them away, turning then to us, all smiles. The sort of smile which normally fades at the sight of a crucifix and a whiff of garlic. She informed us that we were very lucky, as if she'd have been there when we asked we most definitely would not have been allowed to use the washing machines. The coin-operated washing machines which we were not, therefore, getting as a freebie, so what her problem was we weren't quite sure. After her behaviour with the Israeli guys, it seemed safest not to ask.
A little while later, her husband came over to the van, and said it was time we were leaving. Given that we had already cleared it with his staff and then his wife that we would be waiting there until our drying was done, this seemed like just another example of the lack of hospitality on offer here. We were glad we weren't staying.
As we left, with bits of still damp washing hanging around the van (the bed linen was dry, thankfully), we thought to ourselves that it was shamefully telling: the Kiwi guy on the desk had said "Yeah, no worries!" but the British owners had been extremely unpleasant, and not just to us.
No matter, we had clean bedding, and we were on the road again.
