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My Summer Vacation
It's not often I get to go on a real vacation. When I say real, I mean a vacation where you get to be lazy, sleep in, have fun, spend some money and not feel guilty. I think my problem is that I always feel guilty when I spend money. It doesn't matter whether it is on myself, on my family or on my beloved. I've been brought up with the "You must save!" mentality - thanks to my Mum and my primary school savings plan - and it's usually for something big. The big thing that I've been saving up for lately is to be able to spend time with my favourite boy, and yours, Ben Brown. So anyway, Ben is finally arrived in the same hemisphere as me, and I took a week off work to traverse the North Island of New Zealand with him.
I've always enjoyed road trips. It doesn't really matter exactly where I am or where I am going, but I've always liked driving around. My fascination with driving started when I was young, when I "borrowed" my parents' car when they weren't home. My Mother had an olive-green Holden Sunbird, and oh boy, was it a beaut. All I ever wanted when I was in school was to get my driving license, buy a big van, pack my stuff up and drive around New Zealand and live out of my car. Now that I am older, a little more wiser, and not so flippant when it comes to my living situation, I am quite content on road-tripping around the North Island, which does not involve sleeping on an old mattress in a rusty truck.
We sleep in late, which always happens, and as often as I tell myself that we'll get up early and start off in the morning, I know that this will never happen. Ben and I drove to my parents' house, which is thirty minutes away from my apartment in town, to pick up my Mother's car because my car is old and crusty and will never make a journey that involves kilometres in triple digits. Although my Mother's car is nicer than mine, newer than mine, cleaner than mine, it is an automatic with an AM only radio that also has no tape player. This means driving is likely get very boring. This also makes me a little sad. My car is older than me, is blue and rusty with dents from reversing accidents and is also called "Betsie", but at least it has a tape player. A week with no music is something that one learns to live with, but never wants to experience again. As I drove away, I saw the look on my Mother's face, and I knew that she was worried. I had never driven for longer than about 2 hours at a time, and she had never, ever, ever lent me her car before. The fact that she actually said yes to my borrowing request perplexes me still, but as long as I don't run over any animals, I figured I should be fine.
We planned to drive all the way to Rotorua on the first day, but we left late it was already 10pm and we were not in Rotorua. We stopped in a town called Taupo for dinner, and we decided to get a hotel for the night. I was tired and I had been driving for ten hours, so after dinner (a delicious meal of Subway I must add) we drove around for around 30 minutes in the dark looking for a hotel or motel that didn't have a big, ugly, red NO before the word VACANCY.
Sorry! We don't think we'll let you stay here tonight! We don't want you and your American boyfriend! Be gone, small, pale, white girl!
We found not one red no, not even ten red no's, but one million red no's. There was not one single free room in the entire city. It was not peak season, it was not student holidays, it was just a plain old weekend. I was tired, getting shitty and I just wanted to sleep. We drove just out of town and went into a resort to get a room, but they were $130 a night for a stupid, old resort room. I said no thanks. I was still tired and getting more shitty, but we kept driving. I ran over a possum. We ended up pitching our tent in a rest spot somewhere between Taupo and Rotorua. I was not sure how legal it was to pitch your tent there, but god damn, I was tired and I'm sure Mr. Police Man would prefer I pitched the tent and slept, rather than kept driving, possibly to impending doom. It was dark and the air was full of moths, sand flies and other random flying bugs. We parked the car, turned the headlights on and attempted to pitch a tent that we had never pitched before in the middle of the night. Let me tell you, this makes one irritable and bitchy. Ben and I bickered a little at each other, because he is a boy and I can pitch a tent better than him. I could have done it myself - oh, hold on, no I couldn't have. Finally, sleep. Well, eventually.
We woke the next morning to the sound of a four-wheel-drive backing a boat into the river that we did not know was next to our "campsite" - at 6am, of course. We exited the tent, and realised we had found, quite possibly, the most beautiful rest-spot in the whole of New Zealand.
Finally, we started our drive to Rotorua. We knew we were close to Rotorua when all we could smell was bad, rotten egg farts. Rotorua (and the surrounding areas) is one of the most active volcanic cities in New Zealand - and caters specifically for lame tourists such as ourselves. We found a hotel where we could shower, spa and lay our weary heads. In the evening went on a horse-trek. How romantic! Also, smelly, and bad for my bony butt. But hey, I look cute in a helmet.
The next day was spent walking around a thermal area called Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland. It was quite impressive. What we saw is nothing short of beautiful. You should visit Rotorua - although it smells like a big, fat man who has been eating egg sandwiches for a week straight, there are many amazing things to see and fun things to do.
Once you get to Rotorua, you can only keep driving. It's really nice at the top of the North Island and the weather during the first few months of the year is very pleasant, although the closer you get to the north of the North Island, the warmer and more humid it becomes. This added to the joy of driving in an un-air-conditioned car for one million hours can lead to what I affectionately call "sweaty back, bum and fanny crack". The upside, however, is that there are many rest-stops along the highways and country roads of New Zealand. Normally, these provide shade and a nice place to rest, but two that we stopped at, featured a forest fit for a scene in Jurassic Park and offered a meal of clucking chicken. Well, we didn't kill and eat them, but I did chase them around, feed them Pringles chips and take photos.
Finally, the Bombay Hills were in view. The Auckland motorway is a long and tedious adventure, let me tell you.
I find Auckland a bit of a boring place. I'm from Wellington, a city full of Auckland-haters, so perhaps I'm bias, but Auckland just doesn't have that much to offer me. I had one okay cup of coffee the whole time I was there, I didn't manage to go ice-skating, I didn't manage to go to Rainbow's End, I didn't manage to go to Browns Bay, in fact, I didn't manage to do much of anything. Instead, Ben and I lay around on our floor-bed most of the day and then went out for dinner at night. The weather was hot and muggy, and the air full of biting bugs the whole time we were there. However, we were staying with Claire, and although I hadn't met her before, she made me feel as welcome as Ben and she is a very lovely person. Big ups, Claire Hurman.
When you visit Auckland, you have to go to the Sky Tower. The Sky Tower is a big concrete needle in the centre of Auckland, also the tallest in the Southern Hemisphere. The thing is, you pay one million dollars to go up to see a whole lot of nothing. Auckland isn't very interesting to look at - some houses, some roads, some buildings, some boats, some houses, some lampposts, some houses... The most interesting part of the journey is standing on the big windows on the floor.
Towards the end of our journey, Claire had a barbeque which involved drinking, sausages and drunken 20-somethings. Jo decided to get very drunk and spill drinks - one being my drink with the last of the cranberry & raspberry juice, another being all over Ben's lap, Ben retaliating by pouring his entire drink on her trousers. I'm sure, however, fun was had by all. At least watching Jo with a lapful of orange juice was amusing.
This trip concluded with a long, long drive home. I do not recommend driving 9 hours in an un-air-conditioned, automatic gearshift car with an AM-only radio.
In conclusion: Camping is fun. Rotorua is smelly. Whangamata is boring. Auckland is hot and annoying. Bulls is a funny city with funny signs around the town. I always look forward to getting home to Wellington.
P.S. There are more photos here. |
