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Easter Break: Day 1
Alex's first day in his weeklong camping trip.
April 16, 2007
Today is my first day back at school after the University of Otago’s Easter break. Starting on Friday, April 6, the school shut down and several thousand students left town. I was one of them.
Easter break is the only major break for the semester, and the majority of Kiwis go back home to celebrate Easter, while the majority of international students travel around the country. As you can imagine, as I’m an international student, I got the hell out of town to see the rest of the South Island.
Amanda, Greer, and I have been planning this trip for weeks. We had very specific plans: travel north to Christchurch on Friday the 6th, and after that we’ll see what happens. It was my kind of plan!
So we started up North with the intent to circle the South island and be back in Dunedin before school started- which we succeeded in without any 4WD/Spider incidents. The following passages are a recount of my experiences camping, hiking, and driving around the south island for 7 days with two girls.
Day 1, Friday, 6th April
Today we planned to get out of town around 11 in the morning. Didn’t happen. Of course none of us packed last night, instead we all chose to go to a “goodbye” party to our friends who were heading to Australia for Easter break. (Since I’m writing this a week after it actually happened, but I’m writing it like a journal entry, please forgive any confusion I cause from poor present/past tense usage. I would fix it, but remember I’m not getting graded for these entries. So I’m not going to.)I actually don’t think I woke up until 11… Anyway, I started packing at my house while the girls did the same at theirs. After packing Baby Blue to the brim with food, backpacks, and camping gear (We finally gave in and bought a tent. No more sleeping in cars for this bunch), we finally were off by 2 pm.
Everywhere you go in New Zealand is beautiful. I caught a glimpse of this the last time we went camping, but every time you head down the highway new scenery pops up that blows you away. (I can’t exactly remember the scenery from Dunedin to Christchurch, but I imagine it’s something like this: green rolling hills, sheep. Farmland, coastline, forests, sheep, towns that aren’t on the map, more hills, mountains, blue skies, bridges, rivers, and sheep, or some combination of these sights. I probably won’t mention the scenery while driving a lot unless it was especially interesting, so just imagine that everywhere I drove through had incredible scenery. And sheep.) Christchurch is 350 kilometers away, and takes around 4 and a half hours to drive there if you’re going straight through. We didn’t drive straight through, however, because I made an incredible discovery on the way there.
I’ve turned into my parents.
How did I discover this? It was a surprise to me, I’ll let you know. I started to get an inkling after I stopped the car by a sign in the road. I let the girls know what I was doing- “Ooh! I’m going to stop the car, ok? It looks like a historical marker. Could be interesting! Do you guys want to check it out with me? No? Are you sure? Oh, you’ll just stay in the car? Okay, well I’ll be right back.”
After the third time I did this, Amanda dropped the bomb. “Alex, you’re acting like your parents on a road trip. Chill out.”
I couldn’t stop laughing.
Anyway, the first place we stopped that everyone in the car wanted to check out was the Moeraki Boulders. The Moeraki Boulders are a natural formation of rocks about 60 million years old. On a beach down the coast between Dunedin and Christchurch, these boulders have been shaped into perfect spheres. Moeraki is the only place in New Zealand (And possibly the world, but I haven’t check that out) where these formations exist, and they’re awesome to see in person. However, after a half hour of taking pictures of the rocks, we got restless and hopped in Baby Blue for some more driving.
We arrived in Christchurch just as it started to get dark and found a camp site a couple of kilometres from the center of town. As the girls started making dinner, I went off in search of some beer to celebrate our successful first day of Camping Trip ’07.
I couldn’t find beer anywhere.
It was Good Friday, a day which in the states pretty much means nothing as far as commercialism goes, but here in New Zealand everything shuts down. I had seen a few corner stores open, so I check them out, but to no avail. I was getting frustrated. Why wouldn’t anyone sell beer?
I found out why at the 6th store I went to. A big sign was posted in front of a wine section of a corner store, saying “No alcohol may legally be served today.” Apparently in New Zealand on national holidays like Good Friday and Easter, it is illegal to sell any alcohol. Now, while I can tell you how unfair it is that none of my Kiwi friends gave me any warning about this, I can’t tell you why this law is in place.
So as I left the corner store to walk to my car with despair in my heart, I heard someone shout at me from across the street. It was a car full of kids, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, so I just kept walking. They started driving past me, yelling again, and when I looked up at them, one of the kids was leaning out of the back passenger window pointing a gun at me. POP!
A yellow pellet hit me on my upper lip.
At this point I didn’t know what to think. My first reaction was to call Amanda, and the conversation went a little like this:
Me: “Hey! I was just in a drive by shooting!”
Amanda: “WHAT? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Me: “Yeah, I’m ok. I was shot by a pellet gun. And I’d say my pride hurts more than my lip does.”
I went back to the campsite to eat and go to bed. I was ready for the day to be over.
Thank goodness the rest of the week was way better than that first night- and luckily for the rest of the week I had no more run-ins with the ouchie side of a pellet.
