Back on the North Island

Andy, 12 March 2008

I’m in a delightfully modern two-story suite outside New Plymouth tonight, and the king-sized bed waiting for me upstairs is almost a foreign concept at this point. It has been ages since I’ve slept on anything larger than a twin, and not having my feet hang off the mattress edge will be a welcome luxury.

I most recently dallied in Wellington after saying goodbye to the south island and ferrying back over Cook Straight. My last couple nights have been spent in a room shared with five other travelers, some of whom hailed from countries that shun deodorant. Despite its 300 busy beds, the YHA Wellington hostel was surprisingly efficient and clean, and I certainly can’t blame the establishment for the hygiene of my roommates. Within hours of checking in I found myself drinking a couple English blokes and a pair of Welsh girls under the table, and I won a complimentary Guinness t-shirt for my efforts. The next day’s wind gusts were strong enough to cause me and my fellow pedestrians to lurch about unpredictably as we walked—the “Windy Welly” moniker is well-deserved.

After speeding too quickly through the books I hauled across the Pacific, and being too thrifty to restock with overpriced fluff (outrageously, trade paperbacks are NZ$20-30 and every second-hand bookstore I sought out was picked clean of all but usual Danielle Steele garbage), I decided to purchase a couple meatier novels that could give me more bang for the buck. In other words, I bought discounted classics with an eye towards maximizing reading hours per dollar spent. I ended up with 1400 pages of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (for NZ$25), and holy shit I can’t wait to wallow in some gratuitous laser-titty sex alien holodeck DNA-splicing spaceship moon-jewels crypto-jizz while my poor neurons work to forget that 19th century Russia ever existed.

Briefly, some other highlights that have transpired since I last posted: turned 25 in Invercargill, NZ’s southern-most city; bungy jumped from the Karawau Bridge 143 feet into the brilliant, turquoise river below; visited two glaciers in as many days; woke up and watched thirty-odd dolphins playfully cruise up the coast across the street from the night’s modest lodgings in Kaikoura; and ate for dinner a wild pig which had been shot in the expansive, grassy valley behind our motel in Blenheim.

Now to succumb to sleep while the river below fills my head with soothing white noise. Six days ’til Thailand. Six days ’til 50 cent beers, exquisite $4 meals, depraved ping pong shows, malaria medication, unbelievable waterfalls, even dirtier eurotrash backpackers, and drinking buddies who can sympathize with my unspeakably strong burrito cravings.

Categories: Leisure, Bars, Travel
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