On the Road Again

January 24, 2010

Change of plans. The job hunt was not going well and the constant rejection and sitting around doing nothing all day was getting to me. So I have decided to start traveling. I bought a Ron pass from the Stray travel company, which covers the whole South Island. If I make some money I would like to upgrade to the Bret pass, which would allow me to see the rest of the North Island before I leave.

I booked the trip on Tuesday and was to depart from Amberley the next morning. They sent me a confirmation email that stated they would pick me up on Wednesday January 20th in front of the Amberley public toilets at 9:45 am. John took some time off work to bring my bags and me to the pick-up point and waited with me for the bus. We were there about half an hour early and finally called Stray at 10:15 to check if the bus was coming. They put me on hold for a long time and eventually came back on and told me they would call me back. John went back to work and I waited for another hour and half before I called them back to ask if I should be waiting for a bus or not. Apparently they knew that I needed to be picked up they just didn’t know where and had passed through Amberley before we got to the pickup point. They offered to put me on a public bus that night but I opted to wait for the next Stray bus on Friday.

Wednesday afternoon I went shopping at the local grocery store (not cheap) to get ingredients for a couple of meals. The food is slightly different here and I had to make a lot of substitutions. The only hashbrowns they have are like the ones you would get at McDonalds but I did find some shoestring french-fries. I could find reasonably close substitutes for the rest of the ingredients and headed back to the house. After watching some NCAA basketball (on every afternoon for 4 hours) I started making porcupine meatballs and cheesy hashbrowns. The porcupine meatballs were looking good but after 45 minutes in the oven I noticed that they were burning on top. They were supposed to cook for another hour and a half. Suddenly it occurred to me that the ovens in New Zealand use Celcuis, not Fahrenheit. I quickly turned the heat down to low and hoped I hadn’t done too much damage. Luckily the hashbrowns turned out well and the meal was okay.

That night I prepared some sausage brunch and put it in the oven the next morning. I was not able to make caramel biscuit rolls due to lack of biscuits but the brunch turned out well. Thursday night Nicky and her kids came over for dinner. Sammi is 7 years old while Gibson was 5. They had boundless energy and enjoyed dragging us outside to show us the tricks they could do.

Friday morning I packed up again. Stu was going to drive me over to meet the bus at around 9:20 but at 9:05 my phone rang and the bus driver informed me that he was already there.

We stopped once for food on our way to Kaikoura. After that stopped our driver, Mambo, split us into four groups and we had a trivia game about New Zealand. The winning team got a bottle of wine. My team did not win although we did get a bonus point for out team name, Naked Sheep for Gollum. When we got to Kaikoura we drove out to see a seal colony before checking into our hostel. My new friends, Naomi and Elko, and I went for a walk and sat for a while on the rocky beach. That afternoon I went for a short run before taking a nap. For dinner I had some free vegetable soup followed by a delicious Hawaiian burger. That night I watched the end of the sixth sense and then read until I fell asleep.

The next morning we rode to Picton. Half of the group got on the ferry and headed to the North Island while the other half of us checked into our hostel and went to explore. I asked around a little bit about work but it didn’t seem like there was much available in the area. That night we went down to the waterfront for the Maritime Festival. There was a live band and fireworks. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel and talked for a couple hours before going to bed.

The bus picks us up in about an hour. I am going to ask to be dropped off in Motueka and will stay there for the night. In the morning I am going to go to the fruit picking office and see what the have available. If I am not able to start work right away I will either go to Nelson and look there or to Marahau for the next leg of my Stray pass. I am hoping I will find a job in the next couple of days. I will then work for 5 weeks before continuing on my travels. I’ll keep you all updated.