Road Trip!
Trip Start
Feb 17, 2005
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11
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Trip End
Feb 27, 2006
Wanganui,
New Zealand
Thursday, March 10, 2005
After deliberating about it for a couple of days, I had decided that I was going to accept Stuart's invitation of a lift down south. He was only in New Zealand for 20 days and had hired a car. He had some family in Wanganui which was 750 km away from Paihia, but he wanted to do it in one day. Stuart was a bit of a likely lad from Essex, but he was friendly and so I thought I'd take advantage of the offer.
Javier was also tempted by this offer, but he decided to go to Auckland with the possibility of going back to Chile on Friday for his brother's engagement party. His dad is a pilot and so he can get free tickets, provided that there are available seats on the plane. If there aren't any free seats on Friday, then he will be coming to Wellington but will obviously have to pay the bus fare...
Anyway, Stuart woke me up at 6.45am, which was way too early considering I didn't get to bed until nearly 2am the previous night! I had met Nicole in town for a few drinks until 10.30pm, and then went back out again at 11.15pm for goodbye drinks with Jacco, Kioko, Javier and his friend from Auckland. A great night, but I was drained the following day!
So we set off just after 7am and conditions were terrible. It was raining very hard and the winding roads to Auckland didn't help. In the 3 hours it took to get to Auckland, we must have seen 3 accidents, and so it was a relief to see the sun shine through when we got to the city. We had a quick stop in Auckland and went to Burger King, then spent a further 45 minutes in the Auckland traffic searching for the motorway! The traffic is horrendous there, and that combined with the traffic lights every 50 yards does not make a good combination! In the end, we pulled over and asked a woman for directions. She was very helpful and offered to show us how to get there if we gave her a lift to work! So we did, and before we knew it, we were on our way! A win-win situation for us AND the woman...except that she happened to leave her packed lunch in our car!! Nevermind!
A further 7 hours travelling followed, as we headed through kilometre after kilometre of forest. The views were great though and it was the first time that I had seen the 'real' New Zealand. It made a change from the hustle and bustle of Auckland, and this was more my kind of scene.
I spent a lot of the time trying to find a radio station on the completely out of date radio! Stuart had attempted to fix the thing in Paihia with a coat hanger and various other devices, and to be fair to him it was probably the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere that hindered my progress!
The final 100 km seemed to take a long time as we went up, down and around the hills of Wanganui National Park. I looked through my Lonely Planet book and chose a nice hostel to stay at in Wanganui, namely the Tamara Lodge Backpackers (www.tamaralodge.com). It overlooked the river and sounded really nice and relaxed, and for $18 a night you can't complain.
So at just after 6pm, we arrived in Wanganui. Once again, we asked for directions to the hostel (you wouldn't think that I'd got my Duke of Edinburgh Award would you??) and soon enough we were there. I gave Stuart $30 for petrol, wished him well, and I was on my own again!
Not for long though. In my hostel room was a girl from Switzerland and a guy from California. We chatted for a while about New Zealand and compared skydive stories! Obviously my bungy jump pictures came out of the bag (!) and it was good to hear what they had been up to.
Frank and me then went for a walk around town for a couple of hours, and along the river and across the bridge. It seemed like a nice little place. There was one main street where all the shops were situated, and there were lots of hills and trees on the other side of the river overlooking the town.
Obviously my plans had now changed. After a couple of nights here, I am going to head for Wellington and check it out. I have heard a lot of good things about it and I want to see for myself what the fuss is about! After about a week there, I am going to head back up the east coast, taking in Napier and Gisborne before ending up in Tauranga mid-April time ready for the kiwifruit season. Sorted! Of course, things can change in an instant as I have found out in the last few days! But again, that's the good thing about solo travelling - you can be ultra-flexible because you don't have to think about anyone else!
So, next stop Wellington!
