South Island Bus Adventure Day 1 of 10: Auckland - Wellington

A view of Lake Taupo, our first lunch-stop

The trip began with a brisk walk to the Intercity bus terminal at the base of SkyTower. I had on my back a backpack lightly filled with stuff--mostly toiletry items, chargers for my electronics, a bottle of water, and my only reading material for the trip: the library's copy of Haruki Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase." My only other luggage was a small duffel bag packed with clothes, my shaver, shower sandals, and the like. The bag, I would later find out, weighed about six kilos, and probably another one or two for the backpack. This was the eight kilos of stuff I would be depending on for the next ten days--and it already seemed to be weighing me down on this cold morning. I shifted the bag from one hand to the other, and jammed the free hand in my pocket to give it some warmth. As it turned out, this was to be the perfect amount of luggage: I used everything I brought with me at some point in the trip, and didn't regret leaving anything in my dorm room.

Having rushed out of the dorm with no brekkie, I grabbed a rock-hard chocolate chip cookie from the bus station cafe (they had no muffins, which were a mainstay breakfast/snack item for me throughout the trip) and waited for the bus. The coach was a double-decker bus driven by James. James loaded the luggage into the bus, and I grabbed a seat on the top deck. Like every other bus ride I'd take during the trip, the seat next to me was empty, and the coach was about 1/3 full. We left at 8:00 AM on the dot for the 11 hour southerly journey to Wellington, by way of State Highway 1 and the towns of Hamilton, Taupo, Bulls, and Palmerston North.

I should mention that highway driving in New Zealand is very different from the US. Probably only thirty minutes of my entire trip was spent on a US-style divided highway. All of the rest of the numbered roads in New Zealand are one lane in each direction, with a speed limit of 100 km/h. Perhaps similar to U.S.'s Route 1, the highways wind through towns (during which the speed limit drops), around mountains and lakes, and through grasslands. It's certainly not the Jersey Turnpike.

We drove past the gigantic Huntly power plant, through Hamilton, and stopped in Taupo for lunch about four hours later. The buses would take toilet breaks about every two hours, and lunch breaks of 30-40 minutes for journeys over six hours. It's enough time to grab a sandwich or something small and either eat it at whatever roadside cafe you've stopped in or bring it with you on the bus.

Taupo is a town that abuts Lake Taupo, which on this clear day was shimmering blue. I snapped some pictures through the window, and quickly learned of the challenges of taking pictures of scenery through bus windows. The glass reflects in your image, and the camera likes to choose slow shutter speeds that make the images blurry. I got better as time went along, but I apologize if any photos from the bus are blurry. Just think of it as artistic license.

I also made it a point to take at least 20 seconds of video from out the bus window on each of the days I was traveling. I hope to edit this together into one video and put it on Youtube or something so you can see the sort of scenery I was traveling through and give you a perspective of what it was like to sit on the bus. Look for that in the coming days.

Once we left Taupo, the entire bus seemed to fall into a post-lunch haze. I got a little sleepy myself, and dozed off for no more than 10 minutes. When I woke up, the sapphire water of Lake Taupo was gone, replaced by an arid grassland. High density power lines ran adjacent to the road. A sign cautioned that this was a NZ Army training area, and to stay out of certain parts of the landscape. To my left was a small mountain, to my right was cinnamon brown land. Tufts of grass, burgandy and goldenrod in colo(u)r, sprouted across the landscape. It seemed a very desolate environment. And as so often happens here, it started to rain lightly.

We drove through various small towns before reaching Wellington. Of note were the small township of Bulls, whose town buildings were labeled with signs containing a stylized bull (the town icon?) and a witty phrase based on the building: "Bank-a-Bull" outside a bank branch, "Const-a-Bull" outside of the police station, "Relieve-a-Bull" outside of the public toilets.

A public toilet (present in every town) in Taupo

We also passed through Palmerston North, a city that John Cleese once described as "thoroughly, bloody miserable." "If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to," he said, "I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick." Regardless, the city didn't seem to bad. I've never been to Boise, Idaho, but I imagine it'd be a lot like Palmerston North. I don't know why I got that feeling, but that was the first city that struck my mind when we drove through town.

Eleven hours after we had departed, the sun started to set near Wellington. We let some passengers off at various suburbs of the city, and pulled into the Wellington Railway Station exactly on time. I thanked James, grabbed my luggage, and set off to find my hostel in the rain. I had read on the hostel website that I could catch a bus from the railway station to Courtenay Place and walk from there. I had no idea where Courtenay Place was, but I jumped on a "1" bus, said "Courtenay Place, please," popped down my money, and off I went. Another guy on the bus asked for the same destination with the same amont of uncertainty, so I assumed he was heading to the hostel as well and got off when he did...400 metres away from Courtenay Place. Nevertheless, this is what maps are for, and I easily found the hostel, checked in, and had a late dinner.

This hostel was a YHA hostel, part of the Youth Hostelling Association chain. There are 180 or so YHA hostels across NZ and Australia, and they all offer relatively clean, dependable, if somewhat soulless accomodation. This YHA was huge: 300 beds, almost like a hotel or apartment building. My roommates for the two nights I stayed in Wellington were Denis, a former IT worker from Munich who had been in NZ for several months, Roy, a British student from Manchester studying abroad at the University of Otago in Dunedin, and Craig, a teacher/writer/retail employee/Renaissance Man from New York. I was continously surprised throughout my trip about how many people were simply here in New Zealand to hang out and work, as supposed to just traveling for a short time. Do people really do that? Just pick up and leave their lives behind, go to a foreign country, and just chill out and try to find odd jobs for months at a time? That sort of lifestyle really has no appeal to me.

Coming up next: A day in Wellington--Te Papa, cable cars, and kiwis.