Couch Surfing

Palmerston Hills
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So I definitely haven’t felt like I’m travelling, more like floating from place to place as a bed opens up and beckons. Sometimes it’s not even a bed, just a promise of somewhere to sleep. Lately it’s more like a mattress, which is taking its toll on my back. I could go get a guaranteed bed at a hostel, but that would be at least $20 a night and as such, not really desirable. I’d rather take a little bit of back pain I guess. 

I’ve shifted to the bottom part of the North Island, but am still wandering without a real purpose. I rode down to Palmerston North with Victoria (the friend I was staying with in Auckland when I first arrived) and her boyfriend Alex where I was officially handed off to my London friend, Erika, and her family. The drive was nice. It was like driving State roads in the Midwest though, one lane roads broken by small towns. The only real difference was the names, most of which were Maori. Names like Taupo and Tahape mixed among the occasional Cambridges. The land also had an interesting mixture of orchards, farmland, a deep blue lake as big as 1/3 of the size of New Hampshire, a desert of thistles with a lone mountain in the middle and then back to farmland.

Palmerston Forest
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Palmerston North is known for its windmills while Wellington is just known for its wind. The low mountain range abutting it on one side is topped like figurines on a wedding cake with wind generators to take advantage of the renewable energy. Palmerston, a town of almost 50,000 or less, has a ag college, a rugby museum, and an All Blacks (the National Rugby team) training camp, but not much else touristy. No matter what the town is like, spending a holiday away from your norm (even if you haven’t had a consistent norm since High School) makes it feel like just another day. I went to church with Erika’s family on Sunday for the Easter service, and then they took me to look at the wind farms, which took their own practically unheard of vacation for Easter followed by a light lunch at an herb farm café on the way back down. New Zealand has a really strong café culture, even out of the larger metropolitans. Erika informs me that the Kiwi’s are very choosy about their coffee as a result and the British chain coffee brands I was ‘brought up on’ are apparently far below their stand. I’ll have to do some more taste testing and let you know if it’s deserved sense of superiority, but to be honest I don’t think my taste buds will be able to tell the difference. The next day was spent buying discount chocolates and tramping (hiking/walking) through a garden made into a reserve on the outskirts of town. It had a really interesting mix for a local forest area including: the classic ‘silver fern’ (which only grows in NZ and is the national symbol), native trees, stemmed flower and forests of bamboo. 

Green Leaves
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From there I went to the nation’s capital, Wellington. Technically I was staying in Petone, the first suburb up the Hutt Valley where many of Welly’s workers live including Tessa, Erika’s sister. I spent two days there, getting a feel for the city deciding where to make my home base. It feels more interesting than Auckland. For one, it’s more creative, shown through its sculptures, parks and little decorative touches not found in Auckland. Wellington has also built up their tourist centre, library and other civic buildings not far from the water front with architecturally designed series of open spaces and bridges leading to the wharf and Te Papa, the national museum. There’s also better access to the water, which for me is important because it was so frustrating being in Auckland knowing you’re surrounded by it but not being able to see any without driving an hour out of town. Also, instead of being flat, the city itself is built up into the hillsides that surrounding the bay it’s built on. The effect being that you can be in different parts of the city and still looking out over the harbour. The way the suburbs sit on their own hills reminds me of Cinque Terre in Italy where there are five villages on five hills with national park forest in between. Wellington’s drawbacks are the fewer people so less housing options. It also seems just as expensive but averages $1 to $2 less per hour for similar jobs. Apparently Aucklanders get a bonus for braving the commute each day.

Golden
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Next on my Nomadic wandering was back north to Wanganui where Erika lives. It’s about an hour from Palmerston and ¼ it’s size. A college kid on the bus described it as a ‘one street town’. Although the majority of their main shops and cafes are on the main avenue that stretches the width of the town, I’ve seen a lot of towns that would better deserve the title. A quaint, for laziness to find a better term, town, it is mostly residential but not without a few tourist hotspots like the paddle wheel boat that goes up the river. After hiding out in this quiet village, I got over my indecisiveness and decided to make Wellington my home base and headed back there on an Intercity bus a few days later to finally plant some roots.