Road Trip! (Again...)

11/03/09

It is chilly and damp this morning. The Tongariro Crossing looks to be even worse today; there is even a promise of potential snow! A chirpy and adventurous backpacker with whom we share one of the chunky pine dining tables at breakfast is debating today’s activities. His eye is caught by my Zorbing t-shirt and he quizzes me about what zorbing is like. Over cereal he outlines to us his plan, now in tatters, of doing the Crossing today and maybe some of the other activities available around Turangi. He isn’t tied to a timetable though, so he thinks he can be flexible about when he does the Crossing – hopefully it will have cleared up a little for him in a day or so! In the meantime, he thinks, he might head off and do some skydiving. He is sure he’ll bottle it if he books so he is deciding to chill out for a bit at the hostel and see what the weather does, then head off on impulse if he feels like it!
We scramble our luggage together and head out of the hostel. However, we are mere seconds too late and watch our coach zoom off without us (well, it probably wasn’t zooming, but with three bags each to carry it might as well have been going at warp-speed…). I am cross but try not to get too upset about it as it is the first thing I have missed since leaving the UK. Nevertheless, I sulk at myself for a bit as we haul ourselves and our luggage up to the iSite, where we explain our plight to the nice lady behind the counter. She manages to book us onto the next coach which is lucky – especially as it is neither as full nor as late in the day as we expected.
In the hour or so before the next coach (we’re NOT missing this next one!!) we decide to potter around Turangi and investigate the CBD and river which we hadn’t originally planned. We walk along a quiet main road and around a nice little housing estate to the river’s edge. It is peaceful here and the riverbank is quiet and still. We peer out at the water through the grass and brambles from the safety of the little gravelly beach. The beaches on either side of the river are broad, grey and pebbly. There was a great deal of disgruntlement surrounding this river a few years ago. It was the centre of a legal wrangle over a power station upstream from Turangi. Sadly, the power station won the argument and now there are notices up all along the river bank relating to certain dates in the year when you have to be careful out here. The dam is opened up to six times a year, mainly now for recreational purposes, but it more than triples the amount of water flowing through here, so the friendly, shallow, burbling river could well become a torrential monster. I shouldn’t like to find out…
Currently, as we walk along a little path by the beach’s edge, it is calm and peaceful and blue, almost aquamarine in places, and very clean and clear. There are little swallow-style birds skimming the surface for flies. We follow the path a little further and come to a swing bridge. It is wooden and sturdy, but cabled up and gently swaying nonetheless. We step on and cross to the other side, carefully. It’ll be a while before I am bored by these delightful bridges, there is a sense of adventure as you stomp carefully across on mesh or panels, trying not to wobble too much, with the opposite side shrouded in leafy, beckoning darkness.
However, the leafy beckoning darkness on the other side of this particular bridge was leafy, dark and full of jumbo mosquitoes… I scamper back to the relative safety of the other side and we walk back to the iSite and our coach along the grey, pebbly beach. There is nothing particularly exciting in Turangi, but I imagine it would be rather a nice place to live, especially in some of the wonderful river-side houses we pass…
Drool…

We head back towards the CBD (the tiny shopping centre here nonetheless bears the grand title of Central Business District, like so many tiny towns here…), where we buy postcards and stamps before sitting down outside the iSite (not missing the bus again!) with some lunch purchased from a little bakery. I have a lovely chicken and avocado roll, shared with a little family of cheeky, endearing sparrows. It is drizzling slightly and Dad comes along perkily and bounces at my feet. He sees me dropping crumbs and pecks those up quickly, looking at me with his little bright, button eyes. I drop a bigger, deliberate crumb and that is collected and swallowed in moments. Mum turns up and is a little more timid though just as greedy; she is shyly accompanied by a couple of other nondescript bundles of brown feathers of various genders. They each happily bounce about after our leftovers, until a silent shadow overhead causes a muffled and terrified cheeping to break out and we are left with nothing but a handful of crumbs and a daintily quivering bush marking their passage…

We get ourselves onto the coach in the light drizzle (yay!) and set off for Wellington. In terms of terrain and temperature, it is cold and wet and it feels a little like heading into Northumberland from Cornwall. Much of the trip is spent snoozing and staring at the rain, but there are some interesting points as we travel.
We pass a large vintage aeroplane decorated with the ‘Cookie Time’ motifs and monster which fills me with glee. The backdrop is awash with chocolate-chip cookie images and the monster perched up top is an amiable, grinning, snaggle-toothed, goggle-eyed, furry, red thing. He’s very sweet. I wonder if they make cuddly ones…?

I snooze some more.

We arrive at Flat Hills in the pouring rain, some time later for drinks and a pee-stop. Flat Hills isn’t quite a conventional service station, though it has adequate facilities, a shop and a fairly nice little café. The shop is rather empty, containing, besides the usual sporadic tourist tat and some second hand books, a sticky toddler on a wooden tricycle and a smaller tot just learning how to waddle across to mum at the till… There is a rather desolate feeling here as if they have been deserted, and I suppose they are fairly remote.
This feeling is not helped by the very large rusty weathervane swinging and twisting in the drizzly wind as is squeaks and squeaks.
(Igor would be so proud… It mutht’ve taken aaageth to get the thqueak jutht right!)
We head back for the coach. The clouds over the hills are black and forbidding.

It is strange what inner peace you may find in the upheaval travel. The wandering rootlessness brings a sense of calm and self reliance when all you have is yourself and a few bags. It is refreshing and adventurous and I enjoy the freedom of being legitimately of no fixed abode, like a tortoise or wandering snail. I suspect that the next time I get the rootless free feeling will probably be after I have retired! So I am enjoying it now… :)
We are heading down another dull, wide, grey highway (which nevertheless has great views, but there are only so many mountains you can watch float by before even their beauty begins to lull you to sleep!) when there is a sudden slowing down. We are slightly startled and I suddenly see something huge, grey and flappy directly in front of the bus… The driver announces, guiltily, ‘I hate doing that…’, we lurch a little more as he tries to slow enough to avoid it without flinging his passengers through the windscreen but, despite his efforts, a moment later there is a dull, soft thud… I don’t think it was anything exotic; I suspect it was a large gull after carrion on the road that didn’t have the wit or energy to fly sideways.
Rather a sobering moment…

Bulls is the next town through which we pass. We don’t get out this time, merely pausing in the bus station to check for extra passengers. A gaggle of schoolkids lurks in the entrance to the station and one of them grins at her mate, who takes a thumbs-up photo of her against the front of our coach. We wonder if we are still sporting the sorry remains of a large gull, but Andrew pops out to look and seemingly not. Soon we are off out of Bulls. Bulls isn’t terribly exciting; it is small and uninspiring, though has been colonised by the Greater Spotted Subway and the Yellow-Legged MacDonalds.

The road wends on…
I am going to STRANGLE that coughing, sniffing teenager in a minute!
Did his mother not teach him how to use a tissue??
Sniff.
Cough.
Sniff.
Sneeze!
Sniff.
Sniffff!
Burst into random song.
Snif.
Repeat random song.
Sniff…
Cough.
Cough!
Sniff.

Arghhh!!!

Sigh.

A curtain of rain falls between us and the distant hills. At 4:30 pm we are passing Awahuri in the rain.
[Sniff]
The coach gets stuck behind a vintage Wolseley… Not 1930s, probably more likely to be early 1950s.
[sniff]
Palmerston North.
It is very industrial here, there are multitudes of car dealerships.
[sniff, sing]
We have an unmemorable five minutes stop here. It is very wet.
In Otaki there is a clean building labelled, ‘Birthing Services’ right next door to the Baptist Church. Presumably they are popped out in one building, given a quick wash and brush up, then sent next door to have their immortal souls washed and saved too…
Plimmerton boasts a Piano shop and a Harp and Cabinet-maker…
We head ever onward…
The sun comes out and shines silver off the clear and rippling ocean, with rugged mountains looking cold but sun-flecked across the bay.
We pass signs to Whitby and Elsdon and I find myself wondering what sort of people settled here, and how long ago, that these names should have been imported to the other side of the world.
The penultimate stop is in Porirua. The driver announces it to his sleepy cargo, “Right, all my Poriruans, this is your stop!”
A small handful of people get off and the rest of us are heaved out at Wellington, not a few minutes away.
Andrew and I are plonked unceremoniously out by the back end of the bus and wait for Katka to come and find us. We are most pleased to see her friendly grin behind the wheel. We squeeze our luggage into her car and are whisked back to her and Glen’s house.
Her incipient bump is duly admired and quizzed and their toddler met before tea.
A tasty pasta dinner is most welcome, as is bed. I wonder what tomorrow will bring…

:)