Off to a Literary Festival

Work finished on Thursday before Christmas and I had a flight out of Auckland late on Boxing Day: I could have done the boring thing and flown up, but I thought I would try my luck with relocating rental vehicles. Several weeks before departure, Transfercar obliged with a Jucy campervan for four days ex Christchurch. I was just about to bite the bullet and get on the bus to Christchurch when they released a bunch of cars needed to be taken from Dunedin to Christchurch. All I knew was that they were Budget cars, but I had the vague hope that I might get something decent to drive: I really lucked out and got an XR6, a car I have been thinking of buying as it can be both a tow car for the caravan and a normal car. It was a nice car to drive, although I found I had to clamber a bit to get between the steering wheel and seat.

Leaving after work meant it was about Timaru that I started to feel the need to eat - although Macs do a great fish and chips, I was sold when I saw the sign for Saikou Teppanyaki & Whisky Bar: obviously, I couldn't sample their whisky but a quiet beer with some gyoza and chicken karaage hit the spot. This place (opposite the old Hydro hotel) looks like a real asset for Timaru - it had quite a decent crowd and a nice feel. I'll be back.

Bed for the night was a pod in the new Jucy Snooze just outside Christchurch airport: I found the pod a wee bit claustrophobic and the mattress thinner than expected but it is great to have this here: it has a wonderful big social space and they deliver guests to the airport and to the Jucy depot, which suited me just fine.

With a ferry to catch and concerns about the state of traffic (given the closure of SH1 and the proximity of Christmas, I didn't dilly dally: a quick coffee at the first place I saw, then a bigger break in Hanmer to wander around (it has more than doubled in size since I was here last) and another coffee break in Murchison.

River near Hanmer

I was really surprised at the lack of traffic: I drove for long periods with no-one in front of me or behind me, and maintained a good speed, so that I hit Blenheim at around 5:00 p.m. I don't know this town at all in terms of finding good places to eat, but Tripadvisor came up with Gramado's - it is a Brazillian restaurant just as you come into town from the south. I had two dishes I have never heard of - Feijoada (a black bean stew with chorizo, ham hock etc) and Escondidinho (a kind of shepherd's pie).

Escondidinho @ Gramado's

Feijoada @ Gramado's

I was well in time for the ferry, which is a bit of a pity because it was a tough crossing: so rough that the staff forced sickbags and ice on the passengers and closed the bar! It was also very noisy: the whole ferry boomed as it crashed through the waves. I don't think many people actually got sick - I didn't even feel queasy. We were a bit late so it was around 2:30 a.m. when we hit Wellington: I needed a loo break at Mana and discovered that the Domain there is actually available to self-contained campervans. It was a great place to wake up.

Ngatitoa Domain

Once on the North Island, I had a bit more time up my sleeve: even so, I think my brother was a bit shocked when he phoned me quite late in the day, and I had only made it from Paremata to Fielding - a total of 135 kilometres! I basically popped into anywhere I thought might be interesting - so had coffee in a very busy cafe in Paekakariki, went down to the beach at Otaki (it is not a great beach and wandered the streets of Otaki town centre. I was most impressed with an idea I discovered in the Otaki library: to facilitate bookclubs, they have bags of ten or a dozen copies of the same book, along with suggested questions and some background. Across the Kapiti Coast library system, they have quite a decent selection.

Bookclub in a bag @ Otaki Library

It is a long time since I've been in Foxton, so I stopped off there for lunch and a wander - there's a sort of trolley bus museum (really, just half a dozen buses, but they'v set up some wires so they can actually take them somewhere.

The leather seats in the penultimate photo smelled fantastic - I could have just sat in there all day and soaked them up. I liked the signs in the last photo, as I am pretty sure there was no actual conference centre. More impressive was MAVTECH (formerly called the "National Museum of Audio Visual Arts & Sciences Of NZ" - lots of old movie cameras, TVs, radios, cameras, record players... There were a few items in there that I or my family have owned.

In addition, there were a few things I remember really really wanting and never having:

This radio is quite quaint as, like most of its time, it listed all the radio stations around the country on its dial

I'll put the rest of the photos of MAVTECH at the end. Of course, the major feature in Foxton is the windmill, which is still put to regular use to grind wheat into flour.

Nearby there is a collection of murals which were painted for some competition or other - some are better than others. and they've faded a bit.

I carried on up SH1 because I'd heard there's a great new cafe called the Woolshed just south of Sanson, but it was closed so I diverted to Fielding, hoping to see a film in its cool little cinema, but they weren't showing any. This led me to Palmerston North, where I watched United Kingdom - a movie based on a true story in which the future leader of what is now Botswana met and fell in love with an English woman. The romance side of the movie was dealt with pretty quickly: the main story was about the political ramifications for both of them when they married. It was contrary to English political goals to have a white woman have power in Botswana and the people of Botswana felt cheated by not having one of their own marry their leader. I finally hit the road north at about 9:30 and found a quiet spot above Tokaanu to sleep.

Things actually worked out for my two brothers and their families and I to all get together in Tauranga for Christmas dinner: after sleeping that off, I headed off to Auckland to drop the van off and embark on the next leg of the journey - to Kuala Lumpur on Air Asia.