2 posts tagged “travel”
How was your weekend?
Mine included landslides, blizzards, cults, stoners, several luxury car brands, members of Her Majesty's Government, seven thousand dollars in cash, rural graveyards... and Huntly. There's going to be some awesome video which I will post here as well.
To Grandmother's House We Go
It began -like so many things these last few weeks- over drinks at The Bog. (Incidentally, one of my first blog posts was about 'how I would never get to go to the bog again'. Now I go there almost every fucking day. Shows what I know, huh?)
Anyway, it was the last couple of days of Royce's unemployment and I -for one- wanted to get the fuck out of Auckland because I was going stir crazy.
Karl suggested his grandma's house in Taumarunui.
Taumarunui was a place I had never been and really my only requirement was that it be "somewhere out of Auckland". Plus Royce had never seen snow
Royce was selling his car on the weekend so we opted for Friday/Saturday and back to Auckland on the Sunday.
Friday
Some of this was covered in the previous post. James and I were picked up in two cars (like rappers) by Karl and Royce. One was a gold BMW (gaaaaaaaay) and the other was Royce's car. Royce's car which he was this afternoon selling to some stoners in West Auckland who worked for -wait for it- the Switched On Gardener.
Hilarious.
Anway... Here's the video for that. There will be more video from the trip once I have cut it all together and put some inappropriate music on it.
So anyway, the guy paid Royce in CASH for his Jaguar (remember what I said about them being stoners? They're obviously very "successful" ones) and -in order to beat the Friday traffic out of Auckland- we decided to find a bank further down the line.
Further down the line turned out to be Huntly. After hours. The woman behind the counter reacted as if she had never seen so much money in her life. (Maybe she hadn't?) While Royce was impressing the natives the three of us "took in the sights." "The sights" are, in fact, a single platform over the Waikato river.
Plus these fake coal carriages:
One last fun fact about Huntly: The whole town stinks of shit. You don't notice it while you drive/speed-through-with-your-eyes-closed down SH1 but we stopped at the supermarket. And yeah... Horse shit.
And so we carried on down the line in the rented BMW. Karl's "shortcut" was the first shortcut suggested by a New Zealand that was actually shorter than taking the main roads. Usually they involve some combination of backroads and a flux capacitor that add further proof to my theory that kiwis can't judge time/distance. (I'm far from alone in this belief.)
Thus it was that we arrived in good time at Grandmother's House in Taumarunui.
But not good enough time to catch the kitchen at the RSA. So we decided to dine in 1985 instead:
Taumarunui is where all those fish n chip shops have gone to retire. There were about five. This one was the best out of the several we sampled.
Then it was back to grandmothers house to drink until 3am.
Saturday
Drinking until 3am in front of a roaring fire was a poor decision. (It was Karl's.) We got up to late and the dry horrors were fifty times worse.
And so instead of cooking, we went to the flax cafe:
Then it was off to the mountain.
You know, ever since I moved to New Zealand my life has followed a vaguely LOTR 'shape'... sequences of events, people I have met. Others have remarked on it as well, so it's not just me being crazy. (This time.)
Visiting Ruapehu (Mt Doom) is like that. Despite having driven by it many times and been near it several more, I never went up it until last weekend... Until my last few days before leaving NZ. Weird.
Anyway it was symbolic and extremely fun... despite the hideous weather. It was one of those disgusting skiing days where it's sleeting in a white out... But still. I love snow. Always have.
This was the view on the way back. The weather was insane... It made everything just that little bit more difficult and thusly more of an adventure.
Then it was a quick trip through a very pretty graveyard to pay our sodden respects to Karl's dead relatives. (James has since worked out why The Warehouse sells so make fake flowers: graves.)
Then more take away Not as good this time. If you're ever in Taumarunui and wish to partake of their fine culinary tradition be sure to choose Hong Kong Take Away over The Golden Kiwi.
Then more drinking by the fire.
It was at this point we heard the civil defense alarms. Actually it was just Karl that heard them. That little poof has the ears of a bat! The three of us wouldn't have a clue what a civil defense alarm sounds like -or what we are supposed to do when we hear it. Is it some kind of sale? Are they calling last drinks?
Sunday
It turns out the road into town has been washed away.
Next morning, when we were heading home... low and behold: gone! If that had happened the night before we would have fallen into a swollen death river. Remember those school kids who got washed away earlier this year? Same river.
Oh... and the whole country was visibly flooded for my last ever trip back up to Auckland. I'm choosing to end on this point because regular readers (Donna) will recall a post from the other week where I said it has been raining since early June and nobody had said a thing.
Well.. Now I have video proof! Also there are a numer of news reports how it was the wettest July on record and blah blah blah... but still... this isn't a fucking metservice blog so I'm claiming it.
Peace!
PS - I think this is actually the first legitimate piece of travel blogging on my travel blog and it's Taumaunui. Ha! I'm so awesome.
Probably because it is.
When I moved to New Zealand almost five years ago I went through the whole process of throwing things out, giving them away, selling them (Ha! If you ever want to work out how well your life is going try and see what price you can get for the crap in it)... By the time I was through was was left of the first 22 years of my life could basically fit in a shoebox.
And now I am doing it all over again... This time for two people.
Familiarity shouldn't necessarily feel odd but this bout does. It feels like something more... something karmic. Let me explain why.
James leaves tomorrow to spend a week and a half in New York (for work). He's the one that does all our personal admin because, if you have met me, you know I am positively allergic to it. So rather than letting out a masculine shriek at the prospect of dealing with Her Majesty's bureaucracy I am choosing to look at it as a life lesson.
Karmic point one.
Karmic point two is being forced to make a value assessment on your entire existence. When I left Australia I was throwing out old report cards, photos of friends from when I was younger... Hell, I sure wasn't taking any of that with me. Out it goes!
Thing about it was... I didn't especially like the life I was leaving in Australia. I was definitely ready for a new one. But this life, my kiwi life... Well, I like it. Heck, I am even a bit proud of it.
But proud of it how much?
Enough to save those Lord of The Rings posters I got in Wellington the weekend that PJ won all those oscars and the town went crazy? They have extreme sentimental value to me... It was the first time I had gone on a 'kiwi' holiday on my own, having only been in the country for a couple of weeks.
Enough to save the memory blocks I made for James for Valentines Day and his birthday?
Or the seashell my mother brought back from Santiago at the end of the Camino Trail?
To your eyes the answers to this may be 'yes, if they mean something to you' but these are just the things my eyes landed on from where I am sitting right now. All these little things add up.
Clothes and homeware can be given to good will, furniture and computers can be sold... But it is probably one of the cruellest ironies that the things you least want to part with are the ones that are the most likely headed for landfill.
This 'odd' familiarity I feel I am taking as a lesson. The first time I moved countries, dare I say it, I may have been a little too rash with the disposing of mementos. That's why it feels like this time I get another chance to put a bit more thought into it.
The books, however, are coming with me. No matter what I am never starting my library from scratch again. Once bitten....
