Coromandel Hotels
|
  | |  |
The rental car experience
Entry 4 of 5 | show all | print this entry |
On Sunday, we got up early (which is starting to be a trend) and headed into town in Auckland. We were looking for a used bookstore to buy a cheap Lonely Planet New Zealand book, but since it was Sunday most places were closed. We walked around for a bit, and did a lot of window shopping ok "K" street, which had tons of funky boutiques and used clothing stores. The Vest seems to be a big trend here. I haven't quite convinced myself to buy one yet-not sure if I could pull it off. Maybe if I got the fedora to go with it. After "K" street we headed down Queen Street, which is the main shopping street in Auckland. We were both trying hard not to spend money, but I apparently wasn't trying hard enough-I bought a few shirts and a dress. Oops. One of the stores we went in had a huge neon section-everything was ridiculously bright. It made me reminisce back to elementary school. So, of course I had to buy a shirt there. In the early afternoon, we decided to see about renting a car. We had heard that there was a street with a ton of rental car places on it, so we figured we'd walk there and walk around scouting out the best deal. Our plan was to rent a car that day in Auckland and drop it off two weeks later in Christchurch. As it turned out, this turned into an absolute nightmare. We must have gone into about 20 different car rental places, only to be told that there were no cars left to rent for a few days, that we couldn't rent a car for as short two weeks, that we couldn't rent a car in Auckland and drop it off in Christchurch, or that it would cost us at least $60 per day to rent a car, which was out of our budget. We were disappointed since we had seen advertisements for car rentals for as little as $19/day. A man at one of the rental places had told us that he could rent us a car for $35/day, but that we would have to pay a $250 drop off fee if we wanted to leave the car in Christchurch. After walking around in the rain for 2 hours, we decided to go back to this place and beg the man to have pity on us. He seemed like a nice guy, so we figured we had a chance. His name was Ross, and as it turned out, he was nice, but he was also completely off his rocker. He was very scatterbrained and all over the place, and kept taking people out of order, jumping back and forth between people, and getting very distracted. We got there around 3pm, and although he was supposed to close at 4pm, and we ended up staying there until after 6pm. He kept taking people before us because "it was just a quick thing," and kept taking people in after his "closing time," all the while complaining to us that he wasn't even getting paid for over time. We wanted to scream at him to stop letting people in! It was quite the experience. We ended up agreeing on a $40/day Subaru, with no drop off fee. Once everyone had gone he insisted he clean the car up for us before we could take it, even though we insisted it was fine (we just wanted to get out of there). He started vacuuming the car, then 2 seconds later stopped and told us he wanted to turn on some music (which as Kristin pointed out, is always very important to have when you're vacuuming). We were getting hungry, so while we were waiting for him to hose off the outside of the car, we decided to get candy out of a $0.20 coin operated candy machine. He stopped hosing off the car and ran over to us, where the following conversation took place:
Ross: (Motioning to the candy machine and speaking very fast and excitedly) One time, I saw this Brazilian guy, and I thought he was getting sweets for free!
Jess and Kristin: Uhhh, ok?
Ross: He was just getting them so fast-I thought it was some crazy Cherokee trick!
Jess and Kristin: ......
After numerous other similar events, we finally got out of there in our awesome maroon Subaru (which Ross pronounced Su BAA roo-kind of like the pronunciation of sudoku-and which we soon realized is constant throughout New Zealand).
Kristin started our drive to Coromandel, which ended up being about 4 hours, most of which was on ridiculously windy mountain roads. On the left side of the road. In the dark. Coromandel turned out to be a pretty tiny town, but we found a hostel to stay in and crashed for the night. In the morning, we drove about an hour and a half across the Coromandel Peninsula to the Hot Water Beach. The beach was filled with holes in the sand that people had dug, because there was natural hot rocks and water left under the surface from an ancient volcanic eruption (or something). We sat right down in the sand and began digging and soon were feeling scaling hot temperatures, just inches below the surface! We headed out from there to Cathedral Cove, a gorgeous bay-like area that is only accessible by kayak, boat, or by hiking. We opted for the 45-minute hike down to the beach, where we sat for a while and enjoyed the serenity of the atmosphere before heading back up the path. I took the wheel and we drove from there to Rotorua, which is the north island's "Adventure Capital." This drive was a little unnerving, as it was also on extremely windy roads in the dark, only this time it was pelting rain and there was tons of fog (or as Ross called it, "road foam"). We made it to Rotorua alive, though, and crashed at a hostel for the night. The next morning we headed into town, where we finally found a used bookstore to buy a Lonely Planet book, and invested in a ipod converter so that would could play music in the car. The static-y mountain radio stations just weren't cutting it for us. Next, we decided to go check out the "Zorbing," which is a popular tourist activity here. Basically, you are put inside a giant plastic ball, and you roll down a hill. When we got to the Zorb place, however, we decided it wasn't worth the money, and after taking some pictures, moved on. Our next stop was one of the area's many areas of natural geysers, hot springs, and mud pools, located about half way between Rotorua and Taupo. On our way there, we saw a guy and a girl by the side of the road with a sign that said "Taupo." Since we were headed in that direction, we decided to make some new friends. They looked friendly and safe, and as it turned out were very nice. Mike, the guy, was from Poland, and Psycho (that's not how you spell it I'm sure, but that's how you pronounce it), the girl, was from Japan. They said they had met in Ireland and were traveling together. When we got to the geyser, Mike decided to buy a ticket with us to walk around, and Psycho met up with us afterward. The hot springs were very cool, with many areas of bubbling mud, and all different colors of water pools, caused by the different minerals in the area. It was a very interesting area, but after the hour long walk, we were all ready to leave-the whole place smelled of sulfur! In Taupo, we dropped Mike and Psycho off, got lunch, and headed to a hostel. After booking a room for the night, we went grocery shopping at a local store. Hopefully this will help us save money on food! We got enough stuff to stock up the car with excellent road trip snacks. With our new food, new tunes, and a little more experience driving on the left side, we feel as prepared as ever for wherever our trip will take us next.
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries from New Zealand or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
2 votes 
