On-the-Road Tales

I had only a vague idea of what I had gotten myself into when the big green Kiwi bus swung by to pick me up. NZ is made up of two islands with a good distance to cover on land never mind the expanse of water to across in between them. Many people rent sleepervans or RVs to get around but for a more economical approach, there are private bus services catering to younger people and single travellers to help explore the country. You buy a pass and get on and off the bus as you wish, having up to a year to complete the journey. The drivers act as tour guides along the way, will prearrange all accommodations and book activities so it is carefree way to see the country especially on a short time frame. The downside – copious amounts of young, mostly English, gap year kids who are intent on partying themselves into a tizzy along the way.
If you wanted to do a study on binge drinking, this would be your research target right here.

The north island bus was not crowded so with penty of room, we headed out to check out the volcano outside Auckland, Mt. Eden. We continued onto Cathedral Cove, a beach with some rock cave formations where I found out the water temperature on the Tasman Sea is not the same as on the coast of Tahiti. As the New Zealanders say “it is fresh”, ie chilly. The driver, Jimmy, was a good humoured lad. In his other life, he was a skydiving camera man so he is a bit of a nutter but you would need it to drive 50 raging kids around the country. This was his 73rd trip over his 7 year career with the company. Each trip takes about 26 days so many of the drivers do not even have a house they just crash between trips!

I had some annoying youngsters sitting behind me, giddy from the first day on a bus and they were talking rubbish. I thought – what an intellectual shift to go from talking about Pinochet’s effect on the military mentality of Chile to who is shagging who on Eastenders. Lovely. We stayed the evening in at Turtle Cove Backpackers in Whitianga, lovely little fishing town in the northeast corner of the New Zealand.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.