About six weeks ago, a lawyer from Abu Dhabi told me that she wanted to come hitchhiking with me... so on Good Friday we stuck our thumbs out about 200 yards away from my flat on Hobson Street. After a couple of hours, Elizbeth and I were on our way south with a Lebanese-Japanese couple. We made it to the beautiful Rheid's Farm campsite just outside TaupÅ by dark and set up camp. The following day we went to the lake to witness the VW convention and then chilled in some hot pools by the river. Easter Sunday got us as far as Napier (after another long wait), where we managed to convince Elise, a petite French lady to take us north to Lake Tutira to camp.
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| Campsite and VWs |
In the morning I got attacked by a lamentation* of swans before we started on our merry way, facilitated by a kindly policeman. We decided to try to get to Lake Waikaremoana, which proved surprisingly easy considering there are pretty much no settlements anywhere near it. A hunter got us to Rosie's bay campsite and I got some bouldering in, before we hit the hay. The issue with camping when it gets dark at like 6 is that there it becomes very difficult to find things to do apart from sleep.
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| Swan friend and Lake Tutira |
Now comes the epic day of hitchhiking. Elizbeth's birthday was coming and we
had to get back to Auckland that day. We woke up early and tried to beg a ride west from some of the other campers with no luck. Fortunately a DoC (Department of Conservation) ranger got us about 10 km up the road to Aniwaniwa where we found groovy waterfalls... and ended up walking two hours to get our next ride. We didn't get to a village until about 2 in the afternoon, and it wasn't until 3:30 that we made it to Rotorua, where we desperately needed chips. After some poor route choices, we were about 100 km away... on the wrong side of town, at 9 pm. Ely's chances of seeing her 27th birthday in a tent were getting higher. Some kindhearted people got us onto a more suitable road, but as the hour reached 10 and the traffic started to come in drips and drabs a hidden patch of grass by the shopping center began to look more and more inviting. Just as we were about to give up, our saviour came! He took us right to my front door. Home-sweet-home!
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| Waterfall; Mushroom; We made it!!! |
*Apparently, "lamentation" is an acceptable collective noun for swans. This makes me extremely happy.
