Hitching in the south island #3

Day 6
To go to the wedding or not. My decision for Day 6...
I went, I wasn't invited but I went anyway. Caught up with a few people I knew, had a good time, afternoon tea was in an aerodrome hangar. cool. Biplanes from a long times ago, refurbished and lookin slick. And the canvas wings were amazingly thin!
After the hangar sesh went back to the house for the evening while the others went to the reception. Ah the serenity. Serenity. What a great word.

Day 7
First thing we go to Terri's parents for a cooked breakfast with all the whanau. Choice!
Then we get dropped off next to a BP to start the next leg of the journey. It was a good 45 min wait this time...
Eventually a north island (this is important, we got to talk about non-south island stuff) lady in her mid forties picked us up. She drove a prius. Great mileage! She worked at Min of Health so we talked about policy, politics, economics, china etc etc. She took us all the way to Dunners.
We stayed there a couple hours. Had lunch. Checked out Andre's old digs.Off again at about 4pm. Waited ages. We stood next to the two lane highway going out of Dunners. Eventually a young guy sees us. He's in the wrong lane. Starts to swerve across. Sees car in the lane closest to us so he stops. In the middle of the two lanes... Cars stop behind him, SUV squeals to a hault. Woops. He says as much when we open the door, lucky him. We would have rejected him if he didn't realise he just pulled off the dumbest move of the day.
We cruise with him, hoping to go inland to check out the lakes but expecting to not get far as its late already. He's going to Twizel. Inconceivable! We dole out our 2nd lot of petrol money for the whole trip (10 bucks) and he takes us all the way to a sweet camping spot next to some motor homes by the Benmore Canal (see the picture). Get there at 9, dinner 9.30, take photos, setup tent at 10, still light. We sleep.

Day 8
Pack up, breakfast, chat to old codger with a motor home next to us. He tops up our water, tells us about building the canal, and crazy stories about lake ruataniwha and how it wasn't supposed to be built and when the govt found out they fired the foreman, then the whole town boycotted the work... etc. lots of drama and intrigue. Good guy. We leave, get a ride with a dude from stewart island, his puppy is very happy to have andre in the back as a licking post. He takes us 2 mins down the road to Twizel, a better hitching spot. 5 mins later a German father and daughter pick us up and take us to Tekapo. Amazing scenery! The lakes are stunning and so is Mt Cook. How does the water get to be that colour...?

From Hitch hiking

It looks like someone has poured a whole lot of milk into the lake and mixed it up to a bright bluey/white colour. We have lunch by the lakeside at Tekapo. On our way to the road we bump into Andrew a guy Andre knows from Chch and I know from Welly. Small world. Again. He's mountain guiding, based in Tekapo. We wait 20 mins then get picked up by a guy our age heading home to chch in his new holden. We drive for 5 mins, then turn around and go back for my DSLR camera sitting on the side of the road... We drive some more. Turns out we are the first hitch hikers he's picked up, his stereo had stopped working and with the long drive was very bored! haha. We keep him entertained. He takes us to Andre's friends place in Chch.
We relax, chat, go out, have dinner with friends of friends, watch Dark Knight. Good night. Sleep

Day 9
Catch up day. Andre and I split we have different circles to move in today. I catch up with a cousy - Aaron at UC campus. Mini tour of the area. Amazed with the pumpin effort going on, a new construction site is in the chch water table so lots of water pumped out into nearby stream and myriads of dry bores. Then I catch up with friends Paul and Anne, go their home, meet their 2 week old Enda, go for a drive south, catch up with friends of friends (this needs an abbrev. FoF perhaps...?), back to their home, lend a hand on fence project, dinner, TV, dropped off back at home base. Relax, buy some trip snack for day 10. Sleep

Day 10
The final day of my trip. Starts off bad. I ate the wrong thing the night before... hitch hiking and super fast digestion are not so compatible. I wait. Say goodbye to traveling buddy the Dre. Wait some more. And finally... off and away. A good 15 kgs on my back. Walk. Bus. Walk. SH1. Thumbing. 10mins wait. A young bro pulls up. He's heading north to his fathers deer farm to work. Sweet. He offers me a puff on his joint... I decline. He's very relaxed. Good guy apart from the occasional lapse in concentration... We chat, we agree that my skin colour helps with getting rides, he tried once but waited 6 hrs, he asks "its darker in the north eh?", I agree, and its prolly easier to get a ride there.
He takes me as far as Cheviot. I wait 20mins including food stop and toilet. A young girl picks me up. Turns out she's an FoF (that abbreviation will be handy this year) from Timaru, knows Josh in Welly. We chat. We stop to see seals 20 metres from road at Kaikoura. She dops me at Blenheim. Another 20 min stop, do the usually stop stuff while I wait... Get a ride with a young guy from Ashburton. He's from the country. Yeap. He's got a real country accent! We drive by a river bed, it smells real strong, like there's a rastafarian national love in or something! He tells me its actually a yellow flower in the river bed and says he'll take me to have a look... Ok. Why not...? Go for a cruise down a dry river bed in a pickup with a slow drawlish speaking, 18yo from ashvegas. So we cruise down the river bed. Maybe not cruise. We lurch and bump and slide down the river bed. Yeah. Cool. This is a good story. If only we could find the flower... Oh well. Back to the road and drops me off at a major intersection. 10mins down the road from where he picked me up. As I get my bag off the deck I keep one thumb out. An SUV pulls over as the ashvegas kid leaves. Score! Its a semi-retired couple from isle of man. Cool. I'm semi-retired too! :) Very nice.

The last leg of the journey, its about to become a super bendy road and I'm in an air-conned comfy car with a sensible older driver. Nice way to end a great adventure!