Yes that's right I'm on the road again - or maybe I should say "we're" on the road? Having worked in Christchurch for the past few months the cold finally caught up with me. Overnight frost? I can get that at home.
So we packed up our life in our little car "Betsy" (not my choice by the way) and headed off for pastures new. Pastures new turned out to be straight North for warmer climes and our first evening on the road was spent winding our way through twisting mountain passes in the driving rain feeling sorry for the guy on the motorbike in front of us, but equally wishing he would hurry up a bit. The problems with an old car being that you're never quite sure whether it will make it to the top of the hill unless it gets a run-up.... Finally we made it to Picton, only to find that we had missed the promised free chocolate pudding (obviously the mention of this did not sway our choice of hostels at all...), and awoke, after a night of drumming rain, to find that we had not in fact floated away overnight, but that the promised free breakfast had.
We headed off to the ferry where I discovered that, despite living on an island for his formative years, Matt had never been on a car ferry. Matt on the other hand discovered that rough seas lead to seasickness, and seasickness makes me grumpy. On arrival into Wellington we discovered that the weather was not better in the North Island of New Zealand. We proceeded to get rained on, and then later hailed on, for 2 nights before finally deciding to pack it in and flee further North, whereby the sun promptly emerged. This distraction may have been responsible for Matt's unusual mode of driving whereby if he doesn't hear otherwise from his navigator (yours truly), he turns left instead of continuing straight ahead... Possibly.
We headed North through the Hutts (Lower and Upper), heading through twisting mountains that showed traces of last nights snow by the sides of the road, before plunging down to surprisingly cold valleys. Finally we fled to Palmerston North, which seemed a reasonably pleasant city (despite what John Cleese may think: "If you ever want to kill yourself but lack the courage then a trip to Palmerston North should do the trick" - or something along those li
nes...), but certainly had very strange hostels, where Matt was reasonably convinced that the trapdoor in the living-room was where they kept the bodies - he watches too many horror films.
Fleeing crazy hostels in the light of day, in fact very bright and sunny light of day, we decided to head towards Mount Taranaki, a real life, not quite dormant, snow capped volcano. Pretty exciting, if it wasn't cloudy and raining here in New Plymouth. I'm sure the volcano would be really impressive if it were visible... Ah well, the land of the long white cloud is truly living up to its name.
So we packed up our life in our little car "Betsy" (not my choice by the way) and headed off for pastures new. Pastures new turned out to be straight North for warmer climes and our first evening on the road was spent winding our way through twisting mountain passes in the driving rain feeling sorry for the guy on the motorbike in front of us, but equally wishing he would hurry up a bit. The problems with an old car being that you're never quite sure whether it will make it to the top of the hill unless it gets a run-up.... Finally we made it to Picton, only to find that we had missed the promised free chocolate pudding (obviously the mention of this did not sway our choice of hostels at all...), and awoke, after a night of drumming rain, to find that we had not in fact floated away overnight, but that the promised free breakfast had.
We headed off to the ferry where I discovered that, despite living on an island for his formative years, Matt had never been on a car ferry. Matt on the other hand discovered that rough seas lead to seasickness, and seasickness makes me grumpy. On arrival into Wellington we discovered that the weather was not better in the North Island of New Zealand. We proceeded to get rained on, and then later hailed on, for 2 nights before finally deciding to pack it in and flee further North, whereby the sun promptly emerged. This distraction may have been responsible for Matt's unusual mode of driving whereby if he doesn't hear otherwise from his navigator (yours truly), he turns left instead of continuing straight ahead... Possibly.
We headed North through the Hutts (Lower and Upper), heading through twisting mountains that showed traces of last nights snow by the sides of the road, before plunging down to surprisingly cold valleys. Finally we fled to Palmerston North, which seemed a reasonably pleasant city (despite what John Cleese may think: "If you ever want to kill yourself but lack the courage then a trip to Palmerston North should do the trick" - or something along those li
nes...), but certainly had very strange hostels, where Matt was reasonably convinced that the trapdoor in the living-room was where they kept the bodies - he watches too many horror films.Fleeing crazy hostels in the light of day, in fact very bright and sunny light of day, we decided to head towards Mount Taranaki, a real life, not quite dormant, snow capped volcano. Pretty exciting, if it wasn't cloudy and raining here in New Plymouth. I'm sure the volcano would be really impressive if it were visible... Ah well, the land of the long white cloud is truly living up to its name.
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