July 25th to 27th - A Wizard Is Never Late

We set off on the Southern Motorway from Auckland just as I had so many weeks before only this time we drove past the turnoff to the Coromandel Peninsula and into the interior where we made for the town of Paeroa. The sole purpose of our stop there was so that we could get a bottle of their famous soft drink, L & P direct from the source. The ‘L’ stands for lemon and the ‘P’ stands for, you guessed it, Paeroa. It came into existence after the discovery of a clear spring running right underneath the town center and some bloke getting the idea to ruin perfectly clean water by saturating it with sugar, over 60 grams of sugar per bottle to be exact. Regardless of its nutritional properties, L &P is like Sprite’s larger, angrier and tastier brother. Each small town in New Zealand seems to have erected a giant statue of some food item by their welcome sign and I wouldn’t be surprised if the giant L & P bottle on the main street of Paeroa was the catalyst for that ritual. With excessive amounts of sugar flowing through our systems we made for Matamata. What was once an average sized farming town of a few thousand people has turned into somewhat of a tourist hotspot for one simple reason; The Lord of the Rings. A few kilometers up the road is the farm which was transformed into Hobbiton for the first and last films in the trilogy and it seems everyone in town has seized the golden opportunity to cash in on the namesake. While perusing the main street looking for a loaf of bread we found a place called Hobbit Sushi, it was shameful. Equally as shameful is the price we paid to take the official tour of the movie set but I won’t get into figures here. A brave few of us hopped onto their bus which they’d named Gandalf and took off down the road. We’d been forced to sign a confidentiality agreement with respect to any pictures or video we took and I plan to respect their wishes because after meeting the tour guide we found out that he and 20 other people would be out of work if their secrecy was compromised and I can’t have that on my conscience. The tour inexplicably began with a sheep shearing demonstration; it was something to just kill time while the previous tour group was picked up but it was still rather impressive and you’d have to have a heart of stone to not be happy bottle feeding a baby lamb. Once we entered the active set the tour guide asked as all sorts of trivia questions and everyone pretended not to know the answers (though we obviously all did but were too embarrassed to admit the extent of our love for Tolkien). It worked out fine though, the tour guide got to feel good about being knowledgeable and we got to keep our dignity. It was definitely surreal to see some of those places from the films in reality, the amount of detail the production team went into to give the place an aged look is nothing short of astounding. We heard stories about crazy Tolkien fanatics who could recite pieces of the story from memory and would put the set under intense scrutiny. We also heard tales about the lengths Peter Jackson went for authenticity like spending tens of thousands of dollars on a tree mentioned in one line of the book that got maybe a few seconds of screen time. I don’t regret for one second spending all that money on the tour, it was magical. I didn’t think it possible but I’m now even more excited to see the Hobbit films as I’ve seen firsthand the effort that’s going into making them amazing. After the tour we decided to push onto Tauranga where we would make camp at the base of Mount Maunganui such that we could climb it first thing in the morning. It was only 6:30 or so when we arrived but had been pitch black for almost an hour. I was aware of the effect this would have on Jaclyn as she couldn’t see the ocean only 20 meters away and couldn’t see the hulking behemoth that is Mount Maunganui right outside our doors. I’d never stayed in a holiday park before and I’ve certainly been missing out. For the equivalent of about $13 Canadian we got a little plot of land right on the first bits of grass touching the beach where we had access to electricity and all the amenities of a good hostel. We cooked a well-deserved dinner in the kitchen before rearranging our spaceship into sleep mode. This thing is cooler than cool; we were warm and cozy in our roomy back area, hot water bottles under our feet, tea in our hands with a DVD player showing The Fellowship of the Ring and a portable heater plugged into the provided power source. The best of part of all was we got to wake up to the sunrise over the beach. The morning’s hike was something we didn’t do the last time I was here and it’s a shame because the views over the Bay of Plenty are stunning as my photos will attest to. The hike was a difficult one but we celebrated by finishing off the last of our Lemon & Paeroa while I played guitar on some rocks on the beach. We spent the rest of the day driving to the east coast city of Gisborne where we sit now, preparing lists of food items for our big walk tomorrow. We will be tramping over 4 days and 3 nights around Lake Waikeramoana, one of the government sponsored ‘Great Walks of New Zealand’. Once that epic journey is complete we have promised ourselves burgers and a hostel in Napier to celebrate before roughing it in the central North Island. We will be out in the wilderness for a while without access to the World Wide Web but I will surely update everyone as soon as we make it back to civilization.

July 22nd to 24th - Depature From Wellington/Auckland Part II

It was 48 hours until my departure from the city and I was beginning to get desperate to find someone willing to take my place at #1 Sydenham Street. I had arranged for one final viewing and while I waited in the kitchen with my fingers crossed one of the dogs felt it was necessary to sneak into my room and leave a steaming coiler on the carpet right before the gentleman arrived. I sprayed the area with stain remover and strategically placed a vacuum cleaner over the darkened spot but I’m assuming that the eventual refusal could’ve been influenced by that faint odor of canine fecal matter. Shit luck or not, pun intended, I hopped on the overnight bus to Auckland still paying for a room I wasn’t occupying. My stomach felt a bit off on the ride; I’m assuming it was a combination of stress over the room as well as the fact that I decided to try and eat as many of the things left over on my pantry shelf as I could in one odd last minute meal rather than throw them out. This was only exacerbated by the junk food I was limited to at the all night McDonalds at the rest stops along the way. I met up with Jaclyn at Auckland International having only had 1.5 hours of sleep through the night. Throughout the day that followed I was able to find my second, third and fourth winds from someplace within I didn’t know existed. We picked up our rental van, the ‘’spaceship’’ which they’ve labelled Avatar, and drove to the hostel I stayed at on my first night in the country. The mixture of déjà vu and nostalgia was overwhelming but in a good way. I seemed to be retracing the steps I took with Kelsey, so naturally we ended up at the Auckland Harbour Bridge Bungee. Jaclyn took it like a champ and I got some excellent footage of her leap of faith from a comfortably safe vantage point. Despite being high on life we couldn’t fight the exhaustion forever. We had thought of capping off a solid first day of NZ experiences by heading into town to find a pub to watch the first All Blacks fixture against Fiji. We first made a delightful dinner of kumara and chicken and afterwards I sipped tea and played my guitar under the overhang in the rain but by then we couldn’t keep our eyes open and ar 7:30 we were sawing logs in our hostel room. We awoke exactly 12 hours later feeling like a million bucks; we celebrated by doing a 5km run and Jaclyn fried up some French toast. We spent the entire day walking around downtown Auckland, checking out the Maori carvings at the museum and getting pictures with the Sky Tower. In the afternoon we hopped on the ferry to Waiheke Island, one of the highlights of my first adventure, only this time we would have the pleasure of staying the night with a local, a certain Ms. Jessica Alloway, a violin prodigy who I met while she was staying at my house in Wellington for a couple weeks. Before meeting up with Jess, Jaclyn and I ate Thai takeaway with Vanilla Coke on a beach that we had pretty much to ourselves. Thinking like true backpackers we decided to keep the Tupperware containers that the food came in so that we could reuse them when we were living like homeless people out in the bush. While on the bus to Jessica’s house, I spilled some of the sweet and sour sauce on my jeans and dropped all my belongings in shock after I noticed what I had done. After getting off the bus in pissing rain and pitch blackness I realized that I hadn’t recovered all the items I’d dropped, more specifically, my wallet. This was especially bad because I had taken out several hundred dollars from an ATM that morning to last me quite a while. Thankfully we were on a very small island and the bus depot was literally around the corner. The driver and his friend were in the process of coming back to the last bus stop to come return the wallet to me so what could’ve been a major disaster was averted and I was able to make it through that predicament without completely freaking out. Jess had just come back from a performance where she was trying to raise money to travel to Switzerland to study a Master’s degree in music. Her family were all dressed up in their nicest clothes but welcomed us filthy travellers with open arms all the same. Within the hour I had downed three tall glasses of wine and was being offered some homemade rum. What we had imagined would’ve been an early evening given our tiredness at about 8pm became a wonderful drunken mess that lasted until 2am and featured a late night jam session with guitar, piano and violin. I love how pitch black it gets here in the evenings with the lack of street lamps in lots of places. You are always met with a welcome surprise when you see just where you were the night before. The natural surroundings are always astoundingly beautiful. After taking the Alloway family dog Gypsy for a walk on the beach it was time to go. On the ferry back to Auckland I decided to head to the top deck for some pictures and the wind was so strong it blew my sunglasses right off my shirt and into the sea. Upon arrival we hopped on another ferry, this time to Rangitoto Island, and uninhabited volcanic mass that was the site of gun turrets in WWII. It was an epic walk to the summit but the views were worth it and I finally got perspective as to the size and prettiness of the Auckland region. After eating a massive dinner at an Asian cafeteria called ‘Food Alley’ we drove to my old roommate Elspeth’s sisters house where we were offered a free room with a double bed. So far we have been exceptionally lucky with all the hospitality we’ve been offered but despite the pampering, I’m excited to get out and try my ‘’spaceship’’. Matamata, better known as Hobbiton awaits, and our campervan has a DVD player and it just so happens we have a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring for after our tour of the movie set!

July 18th - The Trouble With Potterheads

I asked my housemate Brendan if he wanted to join my friends and I in going to see Harry Potter on my last night out in the city. He emphatically rejected my invitation on the grounds that he ''is an adult'', which apparently disqualifies him from the movie's demographic. Tell that to the sixty somethings who came dressed in wizard caps to bid farewell to their favorite fictional character. We opted for a touch of class and went to the famous Embassy theatre, home of the priemere of Return of the King where one can enjoy a glass of wine before the show for less than one can enjoy a coke back home. I enjoyed the film, much like I have with the entire series, but while it was nice to see the lovely Hermione finally admit her love for that goblin Ron, it didn't bring me to tears like it did for nearly everyone present. Since I have mere days left before my radical shift back to backpacker mode I have been in the thick of things trying to tie up all the loose ends of which there are many. Finding a replacement for myself in the house has been interesting to say the least. One fellow was supposed to come view the room last night but needed to reschedule because he ''needed to see Harry Potter''. Needless to say this doesn't have Brendan ecstatic to meet the Potter-head but, like I tell Brendan, don't judge a book by it's cover. The merit of all things Potter and their priority over flat viewings aside, I need to find someone for my room, and quick. Most people new to the city arrive convinced that they'll be able to find a place that isn't up a giant hill but how wrong they are. A little known fact is that Wellington has more cafes per capita than New York City, and even less known fact is that Wellington has the greatest calf muscle strength per capita in the world (note: I'm just guessing about that last one, all I'm trying to say is that it's very hilly here). So far we've had people interested in the room, the house, as well as the people living it but above all else are too concerned that they won't be able to bike everywhere. I hate to admit it to them but I think anyone who uses a bike as their sole means of transportation in this city is one of three things; an olympic athlete, extraordinarly cheap because they won't get a bus pass, or just downright crazy (or all three). I may have to start sweetening the deal by throwing in my bed for a reduced rate or by lying about certain aspects of the house like saying that Brendan is a chef in a Michelin star restaurant who regularly brings home leftovers or that Elspeth is Peter Jackson's cousin and he comes round from time to time and crashes in our ''hobbit room''. Supposing the situation remedies itself, rather than delay the inevitable I may go to Auckland a day or two sooner than planned and go poke around. In addition, I need to consider a unique way to get back to the Motherland after this final adventure with Jaclyn is complete. It's already $500 cheaper to get home via Los Angeles than it is to go through Vancouver but do I make a pit stop in Australia before then? It would be a shame to come all this way not to see at least one dingo eat a baby since I am no longer heading to Melbourne for the Wild Beasts concert. I'd settle for an extended layover in Sydney where I'd require just enough time to snap a generic peace sign photo with the Opera house, chug a Foster's, play knifey-spooney, say g'day to a mate, box a kangaroo and/or a koala, and examine which way the water turns when a toilet is flushed. That's not too much to ask right? The next time I post to this blog ought to be when I'm back to backpacker mode and can stop being self conscious and embrace my limited wardrobe and my constant bearded-ness. I shall do what I did the first time around and update my current city as well as my profile picture to instantly relate my whereabouts and the craziness I'm getting myself into.

July 12 - Loopholes in Logistics

Meeting Jaclyn first thing in the morning at Auckland International is a bit of a logistical nightmare for me but that’s fine because I am partial to the idea of an airport reunion. I could fly in a day early and stay at a hostel in the city and organize some rendezvous with the help of public transit but that’s just not how I operate (too expensive). Instead I am posting ads on Gumtree and other social networking sites hoping that some random traveler with a vehicle is heading up that way in my window of opportunity and would be willing to accommodate me in return for the splitting of petrol costs; think of it as high tech hitchhiking. If that should fail I will see if any of the car rental companies need vehicles relocated to Auckland and thus afford myself a bit of flexibility as well as the chance to take a speedier yet more interesting route than the bus. Speaking of the bus, it takes 11 hours, which in all fairness would put me on an even keel with Jaclyn who will be fresh off a 14 hour flight but while it is cheap, the fact that my Ipod has recently kicked the bucket doesn’t make that long haul sound too appealing. This may sound like a nightmare scenario to most people but it’s the kind of interesting situation that I love working my way around. One of the first things I wanted to show Jaclyn in Auckland was Waiheke Island. It is the little tropical island 35 minutes by ferry where we spent our second day in the country and first got to drive on the left. Luck would have it that I made a friend a few days ago who grew up there and, despite being away from home frequently these days playing violin and touring with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, she will be there the weekend that we had planned on spending in Auckland and has offered us a place to crash at her house which is by one of the more congenial beaches on the island. I hope to capitalize on the opportunity to jam with someone of her musical experience; maybe I can capture it on video with a vista of sea and sand behind us. I guess I’m getting soft after being away from Canada so long as I’m starting to grumble about the cold weather even though it still floats casually around 10 degrees every day. I’ve caught a cold for the first time in many months which threatens to put a damper on my last few days in the city but I’ll have to just acclimate to the situation. Since I was bedridden last night I reviewed all the short videos I’ve taken since arrival and I’ve got to say, once I compile them into a neat little package they’re going to make about an hour long film that will surely have people laughing. Hopefully this movie will include performances of the few songs I’ve written about my trip. I’d pondered about what I’d do on an 11 hour bus ride to Auckland sans Ipod if it came down to it and I figured that since I can’t write songs on the bus it would be an interesting experiment to write a short story with the duration of the bus ride as the time limit. This may be especially tricky if I take the overnight bus but that just means I’ll have the added advantage of writing the nonsense that can only be generated by the sleep deprived brain. Naturally I would post it in the blog should it occur and should I be satisfied with the results. I need to start thinking of a proper way to cap off my stay here in Wellington because as of right now, the only thing I’ve got planned is a little gathering for wine on Saturday before seeing the Harry Potter finale. There is however a bungee pod in the city center…

July 7th - The Best (and Worst) Things In Life Are Free

Lesson learned; the free gigs on Wednesday are free for a reason. Twice now I’ve gone to a venue on Cuba Street and had to wait hours for the band to take the stage only to be subjected to noise so heinous that my crew and I end up leaving after only a few ‘’songs’’. Tonight was especially excruciating and in hindsight, we should’ve gone and judged the book by its cover. They were a man and a woman, both dressed to the nines in makeup, wigs and skin-tight jeans with a random assortment of items for instruments including an Optimus Prime mask that modulated the user’s voice. They pranced about on stage to a pre-recorded back track, throwing candy at the audience and howling off-key. The man fell off the stage and broke his microphone stand during the first song but didn’t seem too concerned. I found it ironic that they were persistent in wasting precious minutes of stage time on tuning their guitars when it was clear they had no idea how to use them properly. Chelsea was wise enough to capture some video evidence of the affair on her smartphone though I’m not entirely certain I wish to relive that anytime soon. As poor as the music is on Wednesday nights, I’m going to miss the experience of it. Sadly there will not be too many more trips to the city center in the evening to meet up and continue our quest to find the best chai latte. After some serious soul searching I’ve decided to let Wellington go. After weeks of being in a jobless limbo the map of the country that I hung on my bedroom wall is speaking to me more clearly. I’ve decided to get back out on the road to see all the places on that map that I still haven’t seen. Chance would have it that Jaclyn arrives in Auckland on the precise day that my rent covers up to in Wellington so on a whim I asked if she’d agree to us meeting up and her letting me drive her about the country in a campervan that we’d split the cost of. It turns out she was more than game, perhaps influenced by my promise to take her to the Lord of the Rings filming sites that are so carefully displayed in the map book I bought. Now that I have something concrete on the horizon I suddenly find my optimism reignited. I’ve rekindled that indescribable feeling I had throughout my journey with Kelsey and upon my arrival here in Wellington. That spark has been sorely missed over the past couple of weeks as I became too caught up in my job search and forgot what was important. Even though it will be the polar opposite of my first road trip (I will be eating lots of budget beans and generally living like a homeless man) it will be just fine because the best things in life, aside from Wednesday night concerts in Wellington, are free. We’re going to do two more of the Great Walks, bringing my total to three, we will scale Mounts Maunganui, Ruapehu, and Taranaki in some form or another, and we will snap pictures of us doing the peace sign in all the famous film locations we can get to. I’d say it’s fair to say I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl. To conclude this preliminary farewell I must add that even though my time here in Wellington has been short, I will miss Sunday evening meals with my roommates. I will miss the pets, our Three Stooges; Pirate, Ninja and Morris. I will miss movie Tuesday and shitty gig Wednesday with Chelsea. I will miss running to Stellin Memorial park in the mornings but I won’t miss sucking wind on the way up there. I won’t miss getting cramps walking down the hills into the city center. I won’t miss having only 4 channels on the TV and I won’t miss not having central heating. Oh who am I kidding? I’ll be gone from here two days and I’ll be missing all those things. I really wish I could’ve had a bit more of a proper run at Wellington, it definitely has potential. That being said, I still have two weeks left here which includes two Sundays so I must be sure to cook up something extra special for our weekly flat meal. It will be hard to top my Canada Day feast from last Sunday that included poutine and pancakes. It’s always nice to be the one who introduces poutine to someone who’s never had it before.