Road Trips

I love road trips. The bus system here in New Zealand works very well. It’s like a little club. You meet people, sometimes the same ones the next day and you chat and share. At this time of the year there aren’t that many people traveling so there’s lots of room. The bus drivers are friendly and point out interesting spots. Sometimes, if they’re ahead of schedule, they’ll even stop to let you out to take pictures. Yesterday’s 10 hour bus trip from Franz Joseph to Nelson was fun. The bus driver was hilarious. He reminded me of George Kastanza from Seinfeld. The scenery was spectacular, especially driving right along the coast. We stopped at Punakaiki to see the blow holes and pancake rocks. Amazing.

On the first section I chatted with Elisabeth who I’d already met a couple of days earlier on the trip from Te Anau to Queenstown. And there were two elderly ladies from Chicago sitting behind me who are heading towards Perth next to go swimming with sharks! They were cute. They said I reminded them of someone they know, a Karin Schroeder. That was strange. They all got off in Greymouth to take the trans-alpine train across to Christchurch. I had initially wanted to do this trip as well but I’ve run out of time and have to high-tail it back up to Auckland. I’m hoping to still manage to stop off in Waitomo to go black-water rafting!

On the second section of yesterday’s bus ride I met Deirdre from Ireland. She’s a doctor working in Wellington at the moment. She was very nice and we ended up sharing a room at a cool backpacker's place in Nelson. Kevin and Jean, a retired couple from Tasmania, were also great. They invited us to Tazzie, a good connection for the next time. Kevin, Jean and I were on the bus together again today from Nelson to Picton.

Now here I am on the ferry back to Wellington. It’s raining and the open sea is quite rough. The ferry is huge, with trucks, cars and trains on it. There are three burly grown men sitting in front of the window as if in front of a TV screen counting how many big waves crash over the front of the ship. They get all excited at the particularly big ones. They discuss whether the smaller ones actually count. It’s very funny. I’m sitting just back behind them, taking this opportunity to get a little caught up on blogging. There isn’t room at the window for me to sit there too and count waves.