well i’m on my way…

After the six day walk, and before I arrived in Wellington, I drove.  I drove all the way from just outside of Queenstown to Chirstchurch.  I’m not sure how far that distance is, but it took somewhere between five and six hours.  We rented a relocation car-which means ‘free rental’.  Since it was automatic, and Naomi had done all the driving for the last month, I decided to finally get behind the wheel and brave the left side of the road.  It wasn’t as hard as I’d expected!  Although I haven’t been driving, I would like to think I’m pretty acclimated to the left side of the road.  When I cross the stree, I look ‘right-left-right’ like my English friends were taught growing up.  (Can’t wait to see how that affects me once I’m back home in the States!)  The hardest part for me was staying in the center of the lane.  Since I’m used to the wheel on the left side of the road at home, I’m used to aligning the wheel up with the side of the road…which doesn’t work well when you’re driving on the left side of the road and the steering wheel needs to be aligned with the center lane.  Most of our conversation went like this:  Naomi-“Sholder!”  Me-“Sorry, but there was a truck/car/semi/sheep!” or Me-“How am I over there?”  Naomi-“On the line.”  But we made it to Christchurch, safe and sound, without any damage to the vehicle.

So I hung out in Wellinton for a day and a half, wandering around town, and pretty much doing nothing.  I did see Slumdog Millionaire, after months of hearing about it and wanting to see it.  Yes, it is still in theatres in New Zealand.  I believe In Bruges was being shown in a cinema in Christchurch the first time I was there, around St Patrick’s Day. 

I got out of Wellington headed for Turangi, the closest town with a supermarket to the Tongariro Crossing, or the Tongariro Northern Circuit, the day track, or the 3 to 4 night tramp.  This place is where Lord of the Rings Mordor was filmed.  If the weather was good, I would have been able to walk though Mordor, without any fear of orcs or the ring weighing me down.  But the weather was foggy, with ten meters visibility and winds up to 50 km an hour.  The DOC pretty much was advising everyone against it. 

I stayed one night in Turangi at A Plus Lodge (I think?) where the owner was super excited to have all five (?!) continents represented in the hostel that night.  There were only four of us staying there, including him, so Ian, the owner, represented Oceania, I represented the Americas, a Japanese guy living there for the last few months represented Asia, Roxy from Germany represented Europe, and the guy who called himself “Prince” was from Zimbabwe, obviously representing Africa.  So we all prepared a sit down meal together: roast lamb, roast potatoes, pees, salad, and pavlova for dessert.  Pavlova is pretty much merengue, but lighter.  For most of us, it was our first time trying Pavlova.  I was the only one who didn’t think it was ‘too sweet’. 

When I got up the next morning I turned on the TV, looking for the weather.  The entire forecast for New Zealand was rain, except for Napier, on the east coast of the North Island.  I went to the DOC office just to verify that there was no way I could do the tramp, either of them, for the next few days.  Once the woman told me that no, there would be no point going up/out there, since I wouldn’t see anything, I promptly went and booked myself on the next bus out of there, headed for Napier.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 10:08 pm and is filed under New Zealand. 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.