by bus, by thumb

spent most of the last two days just getting from one place to another...

sunday i finally convinced myself to leave russell and the bay of islands and explore a bit more of the north island. i had a few errands to do in the morning, though, so it was about noon by the time i actually caught the ferry back across the bay.

i had planned to hitch down to auckland, but was feeling a particularly high level of self-pity - not exactly an ideal state for hitching - so i bought myself a bus ticket instead. besides, i was able to get all the way to rotorua that way, almost twice as far as auckland. bus travel in nz is quirky. the schedules are spare, the routes marginal... but the prices surprisingly high. the buses are comfortable. but the stops are remarkably few. and meal/toilet stops even fewer. once every 4 hours or so if you're lucky. and absolutely no food or drink allowed on the bus. met two argentinian guys on the same route who had missed lunch in the rush to catch the bus... and were nearly ready to pass out by 9p when we got to rotorua and they still hadn't had a chance to eat anything.

monday dawned in much improved spirits and i set out to hitch to lake waikaremoana, in te urewera national park. i couldn't find a decent map or any tramping information in rotorua, but i had the impression it was a little off the beaten track. i had no idea how far off the beaten track.

again, i wasted the morning and finally started hitching from the edge of town a little before 2p. the very first car i thumbed stopped, and it was a friendly college student who drove me about 20km to the junction where i needed to leave the main highway and take a smaller one. as i was getting out of the car, a pickup stopped and asked if i needed a ride. i wasn't even out of the first car, hadn't put out my thumb, and i had another ride. unbelievable. this time it was two locals, about my age, returning from a fishing weekend to the dairy farm up the valley where they worked/lived. they invited me to camp in the forest at the back of the farm, but it was still early and i was keen to get down to the lake so instead they dropped me at the DOC center to pick up some maps/tramping info. after i had acquired such, i returned to the shoulder of the little highway and waited for cars to pass. for the first time all day, a car passed me without stopping. but the second one stopped, and the four inside made room for a fifth. jehovah's witnesses, returning to a group campout in the forest up the road. another 20k or so later, we reached the junction where our ways parted and they let me out.

and there i was, at the end of the paved road, in front of a large sign indicating that i was 82km from rotorua, and a further 80km from lake waikaremoana. 80km of unpaved mountain road, and i was going to hitch this? it was about 315p when i arrived, and about 335p when the first car passed me. it was hot and i was in the middle of a forest, who knows how far from any settlement... and feeling stubbornly optimistic. about an hour and a half passed in my little spot. a total of 5 cars passed heading the direction i wanted to go. a couple stopped to say there were only going a bit up the road. a few cars going the opposite direction stopped to offer advice: "be safe", "don't stay there too late"... i was just deciding what my cut-off time would be, when i would settle for the backup plan of walking up the side road in search of the camp where the jehovah's witnesses were staying and returning in the morning to try hitching again. when a car stopped! it was an older woman, travelling by herself, going all the way through past the lake, and she would love the company! hooray!

it turned out to be a crazy little gravel road through the mountains, often one-lane, always winding... lots of cattle and horses and sheep grazing along the edges (unfenced)... only once running into the road in front of us (2 horses - yikes!). the conversation was a little heavy on the "doesn't your mother worry?" kind of questions, but lovely. and i was dropped at the office to the motor camp at lake waikaremoana about 630p.

no bus would have taken me here.