The past week and a half we’ve travelled around the East Cape, one of New Zealand’s least touristic area’s, staying at Gisborne, where we were awoken at 3.30 am because of a leak in the roof just above our bed, then to Tokomaru Bay where we stayed at a great hostel called Brian’s Place, onwards to Hick’s Bay (where the local shop stocked magazine editions from March to October and where we stayed at Mel’s Place wich didn’t have flush toilets but a rather short “long drop”) to end our journey around the East Cape at Opotiki. We actually met a nice French guy (find the contradictio in terminus) there who tried to persuade us to try the green mussels so common here in NZ, but I decided to leave the molluscs to the French. The hostel’s owner, Steve, was a nice guy as well and he let us watch ‘Lost’ at his home since the hostel didn’t have a TV. So if you just happen to find yourself in Opotiki search out the ‘Opotiki Beach House’.
After bodyboarding to our heart’s content (bodyboarding is what everybody does when they first learn to surf: catch a wave just lying down on a short board in stead of trying to stand up) for three days there, we moved on and made our way up to the Coromandel Peninsula – a drive of about 400km which we managed to do in one day. We originally planned to stay in Hahei but once there every motel, hotel, hostel and farm- or homestay was fully booked. Except one but that was probably because noone could find it. We couldn’t anyway. So we backtracked to Whitianga, not a place I’d thought I’d spend another night. Just look at the november archive (see sidebar) if you want to know what I mean. The YHA there was full as well though, but the lady at the reception referred us to a couple taking in travellers every now and then, so that was allright.
Now, we’re up north again, like we were over four months ago. We went around the Coromandel and then we took highway 2 north. That turns into the motorway about 50km south of Auckland, which is as close as you’ll get to a ‘snelweg’ here in NZ. It starts out as a four-lane motorway, but as you cross over Auckland (it actually runs straight over the city) it gets up to ten lanes. Traffic is horrible though, it’s not like back home where it’s either moving or going really slow. Everybody is just doing something, driving 75km/h on the right lane (that’s the fast lane since you drive on the left here), overtaking on the left side (that’s the wrong side since you drive on the left here) (which actually is legal here), etcetera. The average speed on Motorway 1, the biggest road in NZ and about the only one with asphalt, is about 70km/h. Seventy! on the $%%^@ motorway! Trucks driving on the centre lane at 60km/h, people overtaking, lanes just splitting up at an exit (one goes on, one does not), lanes becoming exit only or a “slow traffic lane” that suddenly comes up on the left side (which is the slow side here since you drive on the left here) and disappears again only a kilometer later. And then you get around the corner to the harbour bridge. There are four lanes going in each direction here, but the original bridge was only wide enough for two, so they added two more lanes on each side of the bridge, but these are seperated from the other two lanes going in the same direction by a curbwalk. And there’s a police car on this curbwalk with one of those matrix signs stating ‘keep right’, and everybody ofcourse tries to zip in to the right (you don’t even know if he’s talking to the outside lanes or the inside lanes, but hey) so the traffic comes to an almost complete stop – from 80 to 20 in five seconds. I could feel my heart pounding five minutes after.
I know I probably didn’t make much sense in the last paragraph but hey, if I wasn’t crazy before, I certainly am now, after the New Zealand Motorway. I’m sorry to tell you that this PC doesn’t have a USB plug so I can’t upload any photo’s. I did add some over the past few days though so you might not have seen those yet.
