Standing by the side of the road just outside of Taupo with a sign that wasn't exactly one of our prettier ones, Jasper suggested we make another sign that said Wellington. I personally didn't think much of the plan as the chances of catching a ride all the way to Wellington from Taupo are pretty slim, but we'd need the sign sooner or later anyway so we made the sign. Standing there with a sign each we started making bets as to what kind of car would pick us up, I went for a white one but Jasper swore it would a red one, saying: "All the young, cool people have red cars". I wanted to prove him wrong by showing that white cars had young people in it as well, but every white car that came passed seemed to further solidify his theory. After about 15 minutes a car stopped (I forgot what colour but let's just say it was white), already filled halfway with stuff and a young guy and girl in the front. When we went up to them they said: "Hop in! We're going all the way to Wellington!". I couldn't help but laugh, we may be destined for disaster but by god, we are lucky on the way! While on the road Josh (the driver) said he lived in a town just outside of Wellington (or was it a suburb?) and that we could stay there for the night if we wanted, he was going to take his girlfriend to Wellington the next day anyway. So, 5 hours later, we arrived at his house where he finally caught hold of his parents to tell them there'd be visitors staying the night. His father's reaction: "No! You can't have hitch-hikers staying the night! Are you crazy!?" Our reaction to that: "Errr. . .". Turns out his father thought he picked up a bunch of bums from the side of the road (Which we totally aren't, right? Right!?), and when Josh said we were backpackers on our OE (that's Overseas Experience) his father was totally ok with it. Phew! So we chilled out and had a few beers with Josh, his girlfriend and Josh's younger brother and his girlfriend (and her kid, but he was a bit too young to drink). When Josh's brother heard we were from Holland his first reaction was: "So, do you smoke pot?" "No." "Are you sure?". Yes, we were sure unfortunately for him, but it seems the Dutch (or maybe it's just backpackers in general) are notorious potheads because that was far from the first time someone asked us that; I wonder why. . .
The next day Josh took us into Wellington and gave us a quick tour of the city, led us through the local museum Te Papa, which is really neat, and took us up to the lookout point where you could look out over all of Wellington. He also took us to a camera store to find Jasper's camera (the whole reason we came to Wellington), they had a lot of cameras, including a newer version of Jasper's model, but unfortunately not Jasper's. They could however order it for us and if we were lucky it would there on Saturday (the next day) if not, on Monday. After a quick tour through the local museum called 'Te Papa' he dropped us off at a hostel and said goodbye. The hostel wasn't exactly cheap and the kitchen was much too small for the amount of people trying to eat and cook there, but hopefully we'd only have to stay there for 1 night.
The next day we set out just before 10 AM, seeing as that's when they kicked us out of the hostel. We arrived at the camera store about half an hour before it opened so we waited, impatiently, for it to open.
When it finally did I went to ask if it was alright if we stored our bags there while we waited to see if Jasper's camera would arrive that day, but before I even finished my sentence a courier arrived with Jasper's camera and we were all set to go! We asked that camera guy what the best way to get out of Wellington would be and he mentioned that it was actually not possible to hitch-hike out of Wellington because you couldn't stop on the motorway. We hadn't thought about that yet. So he advised us to take a bus out of town and try it from there. Unfortunately it was Sunday and we found that the bus we needed didn't actually go that day. Bummer. So we headed to the i-site and asked if it was possible to take a train out of Wellington and fortunately for us it was. After a 15 minute walk we arrived at the train station and went to purchase our tickets. When the ticket guy asked me if someone was going to pick us from there I replied: "Hopefully!", "Oh" he says "Because the no-stop zone is actually still in effect there, if you want to hitch-hike you have to go a bit further." The man probably saved us a lot of trouble and soon we arrived in the lovely little town of Plimmerton. About 5-10 minutes of sticking our thumbs up later 2 girls approach us and ask if we want a ride to about half-way; of course we do! And so we pick up our bags, but just as soon as we'd gathered everything a van stopped and asked us with how many we were, Turns out they could take us all the way to our destination (Wanganui) so we had to turn the girls down. After stopping for lunch on the way, we arrived in Wanganui early in the afternoon and went to check-in in a hostel that was, according to my lonely planet, one of the best hostels in New Zealand. It was a tad pricey but well-worth it, so they said. As we inquired about a dorm bed the receptionist starting looking really worried. Their dorm was full (it only had a capacity of 3 beds) but they still had a single room open and if we didn't mind they could rent that out to us for the cost of 2 dorm beds and cram another bed in there for us. The place looked so good with their big wide-screen TV, huge stack of DVDs, free internet and hot tub that we decided to stay another night to rest up. After two good days of rest we moved on, hoping to get to Hawera, one of the guys we met at the hostel was kind enough to give us a head start and dropped us off just outside of town. As he was driving us there however, just before he wanted to kick us out, we passed two other hitch-hikers. Saying that it would probably be best for us to stand before rather than behind the competition he turned the car around and dropped us off just around the corner from where those two guys were. 2 minutes later we get picked up and cruise by our competition, Jasper couldn't resist hanging out of the window and waving at them. We read in my lonely planet that there was a farm stay about 5 km out of town so we planned to stay there, but it took us about 20 minutes from the centre of town to get there (by car) so we decided it wasn't such a good place to stay after all. Luckily our driver mentioned he was going to Stratford (sister town of Stratford upon Haven) and that that there were plenty of hostels there. So, off we went to Stratford with not a clue what we could do there. We booked for two nights and spent those two days doing nothing at all. Well, Jasper bought one of those old RPG books (if you want to go east, turn to page. . . etc.) and some dice so we had some fun with that, but there was really nothing else to do.
After all that fun we made our way out of town to find a good hitch-hiking spot and as we were walking to our selected spot, a car stops and asks if we're going to New Plymouth, and we were! Apparently she read the "New" part of our sign as we were walking and figured we must be going to New Plymouth so she stopped and picked us up. We asked her to drop us off at a place called Egmont Eco Lodge which was a hostel but also had camping. As we approached the lady sitting behind the reception she immediately told us that she "wasn't there" because the reception was only opened from 10am till 12pm and from 5pm till 8pm, she then told us to just pitch our tent and come back at 5. We were taken a bit aback by her promptness but set out to pitch our tent anyway. When we came back at 5 we found the receptionist to be a lot more friendly, apparently she had been trying to work out the accounts earlier and was getting annoyed from constantly being interrupted and having to start all over again; fair enough. We booked for a few nights and set out make dinner; pancakes. Since we made more pancakes than ever before we ended up with a huge surplus of pancakes and decided to just give them away to people, including the receptionist. She would tell this story to numerous other customers after that "I basically told them to piss off in the afternoon and that evening they were feeding me pancakes!".
We met some nice people during those days, including an old English couple that had been travelling around New Zealand for a while. That guy was a real character, complaining about everyone and everything but still keeping a jolly attitude. When we offered them so pancakes he insisted that we try some with sugar and lemon as that's the way they eat them in England, of course the New Zealand lemons are but weak imitations of the British ones but he reckoned we should still give it a taste. So we did, and it didn't taste too bad at all.
One of the main reasons we went to the Taranaki region was Mt. Egmont (or Mt. Taranaki as it's also known), there was a day hike going all the way to the summit and I was anxious to try it, Jasper was a lot less anxious and it took me a while to convince him to come along; I guess the fact that 60 people had already died on that mountain didn't really help either. The first few days the weather was fine, though it was a bit windy on the mountain and it was usually covered in clouds. Seeing as we were spending a lot of time in the internet cafe anyway, playing video games, we checked the weather every now and then and picked a good day to go.
As sort of a warm-up we went up a small, but very steep, hill which was about an hours walk out of town. On the way there we passed a group of cyclers, after they passed us later on we overtook them again as they were resting in a park. They overtook us again and they were just about to climb the hill as we arrived there. This went on for the entire walk back as well and finally one of the women says "You boys should get yourselves a pair of bikes, it's nearly faster than walking.".
The next day Josh took us into Wellington and gave us a quick tour of the city, led us through the local museum Te Papa, which is really neat, and took us up to the lookout point where you could look out over all of Wellington. He also took us to a camera store to find Jasper's camera (the whole reason we came to Wellington), they had a lot of cameras, including a newer version of Jasper's model, but unfortunately not Jasper's. They could however order it for us and if we were lucky it would there on Saturday (the next day) if not, on Monday. After a quick tour through the local museum called 'Te Papa' he dropped us off at a hostel and said goodbye. The hostel wasn't exactly cheap and the kitchen was much too small for the amount of people trying to eat and cook there, but hopefully we'd only have to stay there for 1 night.
The next day we set out just before 10 AM, seeing as that's when they kicked us out of the hostel. We arrived at the camera store about half an hour before it opened so we waited, impatiently, for it to open.
When it finally did I went to ask if it was alright if we stored our bags there while we waited to see if Jasper's camera would arrive that day, but before I even finished my sentence a courier arrived with Jasper's camera and we were all set to go! We asked that camera guy what the best way to get out of Wellington would be and he mentioned that it was actually not possible to hitch-hike out of Wellington because you couldn't stop on the motorway. We hadn't thought about that yet. So he advised us to take a bus out of town and try it from there. Unfortunately it was Sunday and we found that the bus we needed didn't actually go that day. Bummer. So we headed to the i-site and asked if it was possible to take a train out of Wellington and fortunately for us it was. After a 15 minute walk we arrived at the train station and went to purchase our tickets. When the ticket guy asked me if someone was going to pick us from there I replied: "Hopefully!", "Oh" he says "Because the no-stop zone is actually still in effect there, if you want to hitch-hike you have to go a bit further." The man probably saved us a lot of trouble and soon we arrived in the lovely little town of Plimmerton. About 5-10 minutes of sticking our thumbs up later 2 girls approach us and ask if we want a ride to about half-way; of course we do! And so we pick up our bags, but just as soon as we'd gathered everything a van stopped and asked us with how many we were, Turns out they could take us all the way to our destination (Wanganui) so we had to turn the girls down. After stopping for lunch on the way, we arrived in Wanganui early in the afternoon and went to check-in in a hostel that was, according to my lonely planet, one of the best hostels in New Zealand. It was a tad pricey but well-worth it, so they said. As we inquired about a dorm bed the receptionist starting looking really worried. Their dorm was full (it only had a capacity of 3 beds) but they still had a single room open and if we didn't mind they could rent that out to us for the cost of 2 dorm beds and cram another bed in there for us. The place looked so good with their big wide-screen TV, huge stack of DVDs, free internet and hot tub that we decided to stay another night to rest up. After two good days of rest we moved on, hoping to get to Hawera, one of the guys we met at the hostel was kind enough to give us a head start and dropped us off just outside of town. As he was driving us there however, just before he wanted to kick us out, we passed two other hitch-hikers. Saying that it would probably be best for us to stand before rather than behind the competition he turned the car around and dropped us off just around the corner from where those two guys were. 2 minutes later we get picked up and cruise by our competition, Jasper couldn't resist hanging out of the window and waving at them. We read in my lonely planet that there was a farm stay about 5 km out of town so we planned to stay there, but it took us about 20 minutes from the centre of town to get there (by car) so we decided it wasn't such a good place to stay after all. Luckily our driver mentioned he was going to Stratford (sister town of Stratford upon Haven) and that that there were plenty of hostels there. So, off we went to Stratford with not a clue what we could do there. We booked for two nights and spent those two days doing nothing at all. Well, Jasper bought one of those old RPG books (if you want to go east, turn to page. . . etc.) and some dice so we had some fun with that, but there was really nothing else to do.
After all that fun we made our way out of town to find a good hitch-hiking spot and as we were walking to our selected spot, a car stops and asks if we're going to New Plymouth, and we were! Apparently she read the "New" part of our sign as we were walking and figured we must be going to New Plymouth so she stopped and picked us up. We asked her to drop us off at a place called Egmont Eco Lodge which was a hostel but also had camping. As we approached the lady sitting behind the reception she immediately told us that she "wasn't there" because the reception was only opened from 10am till 12pm and from 5pm till 8pm, she then told us to just pitch our tent and come back at 5. We were taken a bit aback by her promptness but set out to pitch our tent anyway. When we came back at 5 we found the receptionist to be a lot more friendly, apparently she had been trying to work out the accounts earlier and was getting annoyed from constantly being interrupted and having to start all over again; fair enough. We booked for a few nights and set out make dinner; pancakes. Since we made more pancakes than ever before we ended up with a huge surplus of pancakes and decided to just give them away to people, including the receptionist. She would tell this story to numerous other customers after that "I basically told them to piss off in the afternoon and that evening they were feeding me pancakes!".
We met some nice people during those days, including an old English couple that had been travelling around New Zealand for a while. That guy was a real character, complaining about everyone and everything but still keeping a jolly attitude. When we offered them so pancakes he insisted that we try some with sugar and lemon as that's the way they eat them in England, of course the New Zealand lemons are but weak imitations of the British ones but he reckoned we should still give it a taste. So we did, and it didn't taste too bad at all.
One of the main reasons we went to the Taranaki region was Mt. Egmont (or Mt. Taranaki as it's also known), there was a day hike going all the way to the summit and I was anxious to try it, Jasper was a lot less anxious and it took me a while to convince him to come along; I guess the fact that 60 people had already died on that mountain didn't really help either. The first few days the weather was fine, though it was a bit windy on the mountain and it was usually covered in clouds. Seeing as we were spending a lot of time in the internet cafe anyway, playing video games, we checked the weather every now and then and picked a good day to go.
As sort of a warm-up we went up a small, but very steep, hill which was about an hours walk out of town. On the way there we passed a group of cyclers, after they passed us later on we overtook them again as they were resting in a park. They overtook us again and they were just about to climb the hill as we arrived there. This went on for the entire walk back as well and finally one of the women says "You boys should get yourselves a pair of bikes, it's nearly faster than walking.".
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