Paihia and Wanganui

Next time I travel, and I will travel again, I really need to bring my laptop or something. I wish I could have kept up with this blog better instead of writing about events weeks after they've happened, but so it goes when you're traveling on a budget.

Anyway, to continue from my last post, after Queenstown I flew to Auckland and took a bus to Paihia, a small beach town in the Bay of Islands. It was here that I first become aggressively spending-conscious, which I think caused some social problems for myself. The hostel I worked at, the Peppertree Lodge, was about 100 meters away from the beach on a road that consisted of about 4 hostels and 4 bars, a dairy (the name for a New Zealand minimart), and a liqour store. Had I gone here at the beginning of my NZ trip I would have gladly accompanied the other workers/regulars at my hostel to the bars, but I made the disciplined decision to hold off, telling myself I'd had enough fun throwing money around on nightlife during the first 2.5 months I was here.

I was put in a room with a 29 year old girl from Ireland, sort of the TA of the houskeepers since she'd been there about 9 months already. After a few weeks in Paihia I had to seriously wonder how someone could spend 9 months there. It's a nice little vacation spot with not-so-great beaches, good enough for a few weeks or a month tops. Also in the room were a 20 something London girl and a 24 year old German girl. It was me and three girls. I quickly stashed my meager belongings in the only corner not infested with clothes and accessories. The job wasn't quite as gratifying as the free-meal-with-almost-no-work gig I had in Queenstown. It was 7 days a week whereas virtually every other hostel in NZ has its workers going no more than 6 days a week. My tasks typically including cleaning the bathrooms, which meant pretty thoroughly wiping the showers and toilets and mopping floors and such. It really wasn't that difficult though I definitely needed to designate some 'cleaning clothes' due to all the chemicals I was using. If I finished too early I'd usually have to sweep the courtyard or wash windows or any other miscellaneous tasks the Irish girl or Jan could come up with. Jan was the hostel co-owner. Something in her expression always made her seem upset or incredulous at how badly I was doing my job, but I learned that that's just how she looks, because she turned out to be a fairly considerate, conscientious host simply looking out for the best business interests of her hostel. Plus nearly every day after we finished cleaning she'd have cake or biscuits or something prepared for us, even chicken wings one day. Since the other cleaners were all self-conscious girls I ate a crapload of chocolate cake during the few weeks I was there.

Job searching went horribly in Paihia. There isn't a whole lot there to begin with, but having arrived just before New Years most cafes and bars were already fully staffed. The only place that was willing to offer me a job needed me to work during my housekeeping hours, and that just wouldn't have been worth the negligble profits I would have made. About a week into Paihia I started looking on a recently rediscovered job search site for something new. I began by emailing virtually every hostel in Auckland to see if I could do some work-for-accom there. I figured it would be easier to find a job in the big city, plus I wouldn't have to worry about traveling back there before my flight home, plus Caroline Wool will be there starting late Feb for a semester abroad, so it would be great to see and spend time with a familiar face. Unfortunately of the few places that responded to my emails none needed workers.

I decided to try to make the most of my time in Paihia for as little money as possible. With a few secondhand bookstores I managed to buy 4 books in the 2.5 weeks I was there for a total of about $10 NZ (about $6 USD). Not bad. I picked up my running a bit, though I didn't respond as well to the hill training as I'd hoped and that's really all there is around that town. Most days consisted of houskeeping for about 2.5 hours, then laying on the beach for most of the day and maybe watching a movie or two at the hostel since there was a pretty respectable DVD/video library. Towards the end I started making good use of the free tennis court (apparently you have to pay to use most public tennis courts in NZ, but our hostel had a free pass) along with Anselm, the new German (male) housekeeper who started a few days before I left. I don't know what the housekeeper turnover rate was like before I showed up, but I only stuck around for 2.5 weeks, then a brief chat with Anselm a week later told me that he left shortly after and Vicky, the Argentinian girl who started about the same time as Anslem also left a few days later. I felt pretty bad, and I know I would have been really pissed off and probably distraught if I was in Jan's position, but that's the problem with backpackers, they come and go as the winds take them.

One of the more memorable things I did while in Paihia came at the suggestion of Josh, an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada native who was living at the hostel for a few months while working in town. One of the tourist highlights in NZ is Cape Reinga. It is the most northern tip of the country, at which lies a poetic-looking lighthouse and where you can also see the Atlantic Ocean and Tasman Sea crash into each other. Cape Reinga is about 3 hours drive from Paihia, and bus tours usually run about $100 NZ. Josh and I hitchhiked there and back. Never in my life thought I would hitchhike, though apparently it's not terribly uncommon or dangerous in NZ, as long as you're sensible about it. I met some German guy in Paihia who said he used hitchhiking as his only means of getting around the whole country and never had problems. Anyway we got pretty lucky, never having to wait more than about 20 minutes in any one spot for a ride (we took 3 separate rides there and back, all from Kiwis).

Regret about Paihia: I wish I could have participated in the nightlife more, though to be honest I wasn't big fans of a few of the regulars at the hostel and didn't totally mind not getting to hang out with them. I also never used the free kayaks or bikes available at the hostel. The bikes probably would have hurt like hell with all the hills and there was nowhere I particularly wanted to ride to, but I love kayaking, and there are a few tiny, rocky islands scattered not far from the main shore of the nearby beach. I did do a coastal walk from Paihia to nearby Opua, which lasted about 2 hours each way, but unfortunately my camera battery died so documenting some of the nice views there didn't go so well.

And New Years! Not terribly exciting unfortunately. We went to a bar across the road around 10pm, which turned out to suck, then headed into the main part of town to check out another bar, which also mostly sucked. Some of the bars had a big prepay deal, but none of us were game for that. Fortunately it was a nice night and there were a lot of people just roaming the streets and lounging around on the Village Green. And the fireworks on the beach were actually pretty good, but all in all not a particularly memorable night, which is probably why I forgot to mention it until this late in the post.

Around the 2nd week of January I found a job listing at a backpacker lodge in Wanganui. Going to Queenstown I had absolutely nothing lined up, for either a job or for work-for-accomodation (so I was pretty lucky to get the latter one at all). Going to Paihia I had a work-for-accom spot ready but no job. Third time's the charm I guess, because the Wanganui job included both accomodation and pay. I responded to the notice within a few hours after it was posted, and a few emails and phone calls later the job was mine. Another nice thing about the job is that Wanganui happens to lie on the west coast of the North Island. Aside from being in a region I hadn't visited yet, it gave me the exciting idea to hop back on the Stray tour bus in Auckland and use that as my transportation to my new hometown. It would be a bit more expensive than a direct bus, but I love the casalness and the chance to easily meet more likeminded travelers that comes with Stray travel. I'm glad I had already done the tour once though, because several of the main attractions of the first week of the tour ended up being canceled this time around, causing most of the people to hop off and wait for the next bus, leaving a bus with me, our driver Ali Barbar, and about 5 swedes (only one of them female, already dating one of the male swedes, sadly).

On Tuesday, January 20th, I finally arrived in Wanganui, where I was treated to a most unexpected welcoming committee several hours later.

But that's a story for next time.