"Buy the ticket, take the ride"
Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing on Las Vegas*
(* Apologies for the pretentious quotes, it's just it's really, really good fun...)
The New Zealand part of our trip, in particular the loading ourselves into a miniature camper van painted with birds, like true hippies, and proceeding to park up in stunning landscapes with only the birds for company, has always been a point of special excitement for us both when planning and imagining this adventure.
Except somewhere along the line we have come to realise, as the start date for van collection approaches, that it involves driving a larger than usual vehicle, (and M can drive, but we choose not to run a car at home, so it's been a while since he last practised), navigating (and I still have to write 'hello' in the air to figure out which way is right), and (for me, worst of all) - winging it.
I am not a winger. Ask me to wing something and I will react like one of those cartoon characters who runs of a cliff, realises suddenly that they have done so, and immediate plummets. I am a planner. I have planned where we will stay, I have happily removed any uncertainty over where we will be in each country, in the pursuit of our goal of feeling as though we have lived there. I have, on occasion, bravely stated that now I am an old hand at this travelling lark, I could probably give the 'working it out as you go' a whirl, but this brave statement is akin to the one in which I said I would go canyoning to cure my fear of heights. Or the one about going permanently teetotal. I can't actually do it. I mean, seriously, who does that?
In New Zealand, however, we will need to decide on the day, or maybe a few days in advance, where we will stay for the night. We will not be able to book sites because we won't know how far we have managed to drive. Even if, in my hopeless drive to plan things. I do actually set out where we might stay each night (which I, ahem, do actually do, scrawling it in a notebook which acts as my sanity), the fact is, shock horror, we might change our minds. And if there's anything I hate more than not having a plan, it's divergence from a plan. I am a certifiable control freak. (Except in job interviews and at work, where I am of course 'adaptable' and 'innovative'.)
Moreover, in case you were still clinging to a pastoral ideal in which we park our van in any old passing field and proceed to play the lute beside a haystack, New Zealand has had to crack down on 'free camping' for vans which are not certified as 'self contained' (i.e, have a loo and a corresponding poo containing device), due to the amount of tourists happily excreting all over its beauty spots. This seems understandable but of course it leads to a paralysing fear that we will be unable to find anywhere to park up (despite numerous internet devices and downloadable maps and similarly numerous camp sites) and will have to 'drive all night' (M's personal nightmare) or 'park on the roadside and get told off at two am' (mine).
Oh and New Zealand's roads are windy. And some have steep drops.
Suffice to say that by the time we land in New Zealand, the concept has moved from hippie dream to impossible reality, and we are in fact rather terrified of our trip to New Zealand.
"It will be an adventure" we tell ourselves, only its amazing how quickly the word 'adventure' can become synonymous with 'certain death'.
With hindsight, (I am writing this days after our arrival in South America), this line of thinking is ridiculous and the reality turned out to be more hippie dream than dangerous nightmare, but I can't help noticing that there are some strong similarities between how we felt about New Zealand as we started and how we felt about South America, as we landed, days ago, in Chile. (i.e. from 'salsa fuelled land of glorious colour' to 'drug fuelled land of terrifying gangsters'). And incidentally, the salsa imbued version is turning out to be nearer to the reality. Make no mistake, if you happen not to be named Brad and somehow born fearless, and are in fact a namby pamby worrier as per yours truly, travel involves a constant readjustment of current 'top ten lists of terrors' and encouraging pep talks/arguments (especially if your husband is basically so relaxed he's horizontal - at least in comparison). It's just that somehow, and in a way I cannot adequately describe, it's also unbelievably wonderful.
So we wake up on the day we have to pick up our van, with more butterflies than a rainforest, and a sort of brusque over cheerfulness designed to carry ourselves, and each other, along.
Mission one - we tell ourselves - is to visit The Warehouse to buy warm clothing for when the weather turns. A few hours, (and a cheese scone) later, we emerge armed with thermals. We have attempted to buy a thermos because I require tea for my early morning sessions with Neville, but were greeted with incomprehension.
"That," says the shop assistant, "would be with our winter stock."
"Wow. You're all stocked up then," says our cashier rather sardonically as we pile thermals and a hot water bottle onto the check out counter. Outside it is approximately 28 degrees.
Mission two - should we chose to accept it, is to buy a phone card. Accomplished.
Mission three - and we are really doing quite well, we tell ourselves triumphantly - is to pick up the van.
Once inside the rental office we pursue a sheet of terms and conditions in tiny print. We note that if we crash the van, we pay. If someone crashes into us, we pay. Until the third party coughs up. We note that if we incur a speeding fine, we pay that plus a fee. We pau a bind which maxes out M's credit card, note that most accidents are caused by other foreign drivers, speeding on the wrong side of the road.
"You will be alright," says the rental man, "you're used to driving this way. It's the other road users you want to watch out for."
These 'other road users', who we discover later are popularly considered to be largely Chinese or Indian, have killed several kiwis through reckless driving and disregard for road laws. They have underestimated the time it takes to get somewhere given gradients or windiness of the roads, sped to catch up on their schedule, and spun off cliff paths or into oncoming vehicles. They have got behind the wheel of a van in New Zealand having only just passed their driving test in their home country.
"You can't really do anything about them," says our rental man, casually.
I swallow, try to put out of my mind images of our plummeting vehicle following a head on collision with fifteen year old speeding learner drivers in buses, and enquire as to whether we can park on the side of the road if we get desperate.
"I wouldn't," replies the rental man, "the fine is about ten thousand dollars."
If he hasn't done much to reassure us, the sight of our van puts my fears aside. It is a small, compact, blue van painted on one side with clouds and soaring birds and on the other with a Maori canoe bobbing on waves beneath a bright orange sun. It has sections for luggage, a cool box and a little travel gas hob. At night it transforms into a little cosy bed, complete with two duvets. We can move wood slats around to create a rickety little table and there are blue curtains to match our blue sky and our blue sea.
'Escape', it says on the front and back sections.
I am already in love with it.
But don't forget mission four - to drive it. I sit in the front seat while M nervously manoeuvres our way out of the rental car park and onto the busy Auckland roads. I navigate carefully, manage, on this occasion, not to get us lost, and we successfully convey ourselves out of Auckland and to a supermarket just outside of the city.
The distance we have actually travelled is negligible, but we are jubilant and self congratulatory. I can navigate, it would appear, with the help of GPS and M is perfectly comfortable driving as soon as he actually gets behind the wheel.
We buy wine and beer to mark this mini victory, cram our van full of food and drink, discover that no one in New Zealand appears to know what a 'Thermos flask' is, give up on that, buy more alcohol to make up for it, and proceed to tackle mission five - finding a place to stay.
Surprisingly enough, it turns out, at least so far, that everyone who told us it would be easy to find camp sites, didn't actually lie. We roll up at one not far from the supermarket (today is about covering metaphorical, not actual, distance) which I have found through the app we have downloaded for this purpose, enquire nervously as to whether there is space, are shown to an empty slot amid a sea of empty slots in a green and friendly landscape, pop open our drinks and triumphantly toast ourselves.
Then we snuggle up in our van.
So no. We are not Brad. Our van contains more tea than fosters (and more craft beer and wine than tea), our evening contains more snuggling than substances and our victories are more of the order of 'drove a few miles without panicking' than 'abseiled down the nearest canyon'.
But we are happy. And we think, just possibly, New Zealand is going to be actually pretty damn cool.
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