Road Trip Part Three

Posted by John

After spending part of the morning in a coffee shop in Nelson at the north end of the south island, we drove away with two new rear tires on the car and a bag of freshly ground coffee in the trunk. As a bonus, we had four hubcaps on the wheels again. The spare tire may have had a screw in it, but it also had its own hubcap. This replaced the one we had lost within a day or two of buying the car. Unfortunately, this one didn’t last long either. We don’t know when or where, but it, too, fell off. It took a few days to notice it was missing, we were so used to the three-hubcap look.

From Nelson, we drove along Queen Charlotte Sound to Picton. Like so many roads we’ve driven in New Zealand, this one was also narrow, winding, and had many precipitous drops off the edge. Maybe our hubcap flew off a cliff somewhere. Picton is where the ferry is for crossing back to the north island. We had a room reservation for the night, and at check-in we were given forms to fill out for the New Zealand census. Everyone was to be counted on March 6th. “But we aren’t… We don’t…” No worries. Once we answered the questions about country of permanent residence and length of stay in New Zealand, we got to jump to the end and skip the pages of questions in between.

With free Wi-Fi in the room, we checked the weather websites and learned that cyclone Hola, which had been floating around in the tropics as a rumor, was now an actual cyclone on a path toward New Zealand. There was still a lot of uncertainty as to its exact direction, but it was aiming for the north part of the north island.

The ferry ride across Cook Strait takes about three hours which, I believe, is just a bit longer than the check-in and boarding process. Rental cars don’t go on the ferry. They get turned in on one side and replaced with a different car on the other. Many semi trucks just load the trailer on board, not the cab. A different driver takes it on the other side. Even though our car was no bigger than a motorcycle space, the ferry ticket, reserved for a specific sailing and paid well in advance, still cost a shocking amount. On the crossing we were treated to low clouds, strong wind, heavy rain, and three-meter waves. It was most interesting to be able to look down on ten foot waves from a warm lounge, rather than up at them from the terror of our wet cockpit.

Once across to the north island we stopped at Rivendell, from the Lord of the Rings movies. It was raining hard. Other than a nice area of old forest, there wasn’t much there except a fake stone movie prop surrounded by twenty years of new vegetation. One sign in front of some ferns and bushes explained how we were looking at Frodo’s bedroom. Okay. It also said that most of the “structures” in the movie were digitally added after filming.

At this point of the trip our main schedule driver was an appointment for Robyn to take the SAT in Auckland in a couple of days. Her college admission back home was awaiting the results. We had a lot of driving to do. From Rivendell, we drove nonstop to Hastings, arriving after dark. The next morning we took off for Rotorua. It had started raining heavily during the night, and after about an hour on the road we learned that our route was closed by landslides and flooding. We selected an alternate, longer route, but ran into police turning cars around there, too. We drove back to Hastings to come up with a Plan “C.” Robyn had to be taking her test in Auckland in 42 hours. We looked at the weather reports and the weather radar on the internet, and saw that we might be able to escape the heaviest rain and still make it to Rotorua if we drove back the way we came toward Wellington, and then took the same highway we had come south on originally, back to the north.

We drove through very heavy rain. It was so dark, and the visibility so poor, it was hard to believe it was midday in the summer. We finally came out of it and arrived in Rotorua after dark. Rotorua is like a miniature Yellowstone, with geysers, bubbling mud and steaming lakes. Unfortunately, we also ran into entrance fees and scheduled guided tours of various lengths and costs, each “allowing time for photo stops.” We didn’t have all day to ooh and ah and snap pictures with the crowds. But we did manage to find a free area, down a gravel road, where steaming water comes out of the ground, fills a steaming lake, and flows through the forest in a warm stream. Not spectacular to look at, but it seemed to be well enjoyed by locals.

We finally made it back to Auckland, got Robyn to her test on time early Saturday morning, and then drove back to Opua and the boat. We got there just in time to see that cyclone Hola was on a direct path for the eye to pass right over the Bay of Islands early Monday morning, with a rain intensity of PURPLE (that’s way heavier than RED, which is itself very heavy). This would be cyclone number three, in this place we came to in order to avoid them in the first place. “Very unusual year,” everybody says. But by Sunday afternoon it looked like the worst might pass by offshore. In the satellite images it even looked like it was breaking up, or at least losing its tight little spiral. It ended up being no big deal, especially if you can handle a typical winter storm in Seattle.

So, we came, we drove, we saw. It seems that just about everywhere we looked in New Zealand we saw a picture postcard view. The green fields seem to glow, and at almost every turn a new, often surprising, vista opens up. The terrain and the views may never get old, but the long days in the car do. The break was nice, but we’re happy to be back at the boat. Besides, the marina shuffled us to a different slip the day after the storm. When we went to move the car closer to our new location, it wouldn’t start. It probably needs a rest now, too.