West Coast
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2010
1
62
129
Trip End
Feb 04, 2012
Greymouth, South Island, New Zealand
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
part of the whole trip. Hitchhiking in NZ is usually pretty easy, since
there are just a few main highways that traverse the country, and these
highways go straight through towns as the town's main road. If
someone's headed south, they pretty much have to pass where you're
trying to get. Or can at least take you partway there, then you just
wait for the next person who's going further south. Then the towns
aren't that big, so wherever you get dropped off, you're close to where
you wanted to be. Christchurch is a big city with lots of little
suburbs and sidestreets and different directions for people to be
going. We ended up walking about 40 minutes to get out of the suburb
Papanui to the main road, where we waited probably half an hour for a
lift. This guy took us to the intersection of the next highway, where
we waited less than five minutes before getting a lift to Darfield,
about half an hour away. From there, we caught a ride clear over to
the West Coast with an American guy who had moved to NZ a few years
ago. He had a side job of selling metal detectors, which he had in
huge boxes in the backseat of his tiny car, and which he was driving to
the West Coast to deliver. Again, real nice guy. The drive took a few
hours, and we talked most of the way. He pointed out different things
to us, talked about sheep farming (which he'd done for a bit), and
stopped to show us these huge parrots that try to peel the rubber off
car doors to get to food inside. Oh, I should mention how cool the
drive across the country was. Canterbury region, where Christchurch
is, is completely flat and mostly farm country. On a clearer day, we
would have been able to see the mountains in the background. The land
slowly got more and more hilly until we were in the low mountains, dry
and reminding me of Nevada or somewhere. We climbed higher into St.
Arthur's Pass, now terrain more like Lake Tahoe, pine trees and
whatnot. There was also a river coursing through the mountains, which
we drove along at times. We passed funny rock towers sticking up out
of the hillsides, apparently the soft rock had eroded away leaving the
hard rock formations. We came down out of the mountains through a
different kind of forest, and our driver dropped us at the north-south
junction at the West Coast. There, we waited just a few minutes before
getting a lift 20 minutes into Greymouth.
Now, most people
will tell you Greymouth isn't worth visiting, but we got there late
afternoon and the sun was shining, and it was really pretty. A little
mountain town. My coworker's mom came and picked us up, taking us out
of town about 15 minutes to her house. There was a beautiful sunset
over the hills as we drove there. Pauline and Keith were such nice
people. They cooked us a delicious dinner and we had some nice
conversation. In the morning, Pauline drove us across the bridge an up
the road a little to where we could hitchhike, telling us to take care
of each other. It was drizzling, and we waited about half an hour
before a campervan picked us up. We played cards with a couple in the
back as we drove along the stunning coastline. We all stopped at
Punakaiki to see the "Pancake Rocks." They must mean European pancakes
(crepes) rather than American pancakes (fluffy), but either way, they
were really cool rock formations. There are also blowholes there, but
we were there at low tide. We did get to see one go off once. I think
we waited quite a while for our next lift, and he took us up the coast
to Westport (about 45 minutes). The scenery along the way was so
pretty, between the rocky coast and the green forest. He dropped as at
another junction, and now we're really in the middle of nowhere. Every
once in a while hitchhiking, you end up in a place nowhere near phones
or stores or bus stops, and then you're really dependent on humanity to
bring you home. Humanity always comes through. And luckily for us,
this next guy was going all the way to Nelson. He even turned around to
come back and pick us up. He enjoys the company on the four-hour
drive. Jenny had the front seat, so kept up the conversation, while I
tried to stay awake to watch the beautiful landscape from the back.
Driver man stopped a couple times for us to get out and take pictures.
He lived in Tahunanui, just outside of Nelson city center, so he
dropped us there. It was getting dark and we were tired of
hitchhiking, so Sandy (our flatmate who owns the house) kindly came and
picked us up. We were very pleased with the success of our spontaneous
adventure. :) I've now had 21 different drivers while hithchiking, and
not one that was anything less than kind and helpful. Many have even
gone out of their way to help us. But it is always a risk, I know
that.
Today I will go to the last game I get to see my rugby
team play and say bye to all the great girls I've met there. Tomorrow,
Jenny and I are getting up early to hitchhike down to Christchurch (6.5
hours) to pick up a campervan that we are relocating to Auckland over
the next five days with our friend Mark. From Auckland, I fly to
Wanaka on the 19th to start my new job/life!
