SPEED XI New Zealand: the search for Keanu

Written in the car by Margarett last week sometime on the way to Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula:

How to begin? All is well, sort of... We have our van, the wind is flowing through our hair and the Paul Simon is blasting. Then we hit the freeway (which is not as scary as it could have been considering our newfound driving skills). The van starts jerking spasmodically as we hit 5th and stalls out on the on ramp. I intrepidly start it up again while still rolling and sort of urge it forward wondering if we should even be anywhere near a freeway in this breadbox of danger when we realize that suddenly the van has decided that any time we try to shift gears, it will commence with an awful lurching seizure. I spend several minutes cursing alternated with kind of helpless laughing and eventually through a lot of coaxing (and many people passing us looking curiously at our ridiculous heart-painted van sputtering along) we figure out that the van's preference is for an RPM comparable to a jet engine. 90 kmph in 4th gear seems to be ideal. Who knows how long the "new" radiator will hold out. Also, hills and stop and go traffic are not included in the van's repertoire. We hope to make it to Thames by nightfall or at all, really. Every now and then I peel my eyes off the odometer and I think "Shit, I'm in New Zealand, this is some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen hands down" but then the van gives a warning lurch and maybe trries to stall out again and I have to try again through the force of my glare keep the damn thing going. I have no idea the actual speed limit out here but regardless of what it is we can't go any slower or faster than 90 kmph and we are gaining a serious caravan of about 15 cars behind us. As of writing this we have 80 km to go.

Update: turns out we can also go about 2 kmph ok when traffic inexplicably stops in the middle of nowhere. It's a traffic light (??!?!?!) holding up about 8km of cars.

The illustrious Rupert

Graceland

So we've got our van now, and I'm still waiting for my heart rate to come down from the harrowing journey across the city. We decided to take only surface streets from pleasant tropical suburbia to downtown because the freeway just seemed too intimidating, a decision which, in retrospect, may have been poorly conceived. The first five minutes were sheer joy. Our van comes complete with Paul Simon tape, which incidentally is the single most perfect soundtrack one could ask for while careening dangerously through roundabouts and accidentally turning your windshield wipers on when trying to turn left. The weather was perfect, the directions seemed clear, and Molly only missed third gear a couple of times. A combination of extensive construction and an absolutely terrible map I took from a third-tier car rental company, however, led to many u-turns, parking lot surveys, and taking of the round about all the way round. Eventually (and it took that whole goddamn tape and then some) we made it back to where we'd stored our stuff and we could breathe deeply into paper bags.

Superbowl Monday and Van Quest 2009

Our first day in Auckland we went out to get phones but instead we found the Superbowl. It took us a bit to figure out if it had already happened and we were still debating time zones and watching buggy racing when it came on. 4 beers later and I am arguing with an english guy in a suit over Palomalu's hair and general awesomeness over the cheers of a bar full of inexplicable Kiwi Cardinals fans (?). We asked them if they even knew where Arizona was. No answer. In the end we got incredibly beermotionally involved in the game and rooted for the Steelers for about as much reason as the Cardinals fans were rooting for the cardinals. I.e just to make it exciting.

Auckland from Mt. Eden

The next day we went on a van-finding odyssey and our first stop was trying to buy a camper van from this guy: http://www.totaltravel.co.nz/travel/north-island/auckland/auckland/transport/car-hire/downtown-rentals. The first sign that things were a little off was the unmarked junkyard with no cars or vans that appeared functional even to the most radical imagination. I think only about 2 had all their wheels and/or engines or doors. After calling him up and waiting for a couple of minutes a dilapidated white car pulls up and out leaps a man in posession of about 23.8% of his teeth and some amazing denim "shorts" that were so full of holes they were more air than shorts. He kept wondering out loud and muttering about who had left the cars on so they wouldn't start or who had broken the doors etc. when it was pretty clear that no one else ever came there let alone messed around with the cars. Needless to say, we didn't commit to anything right away.

After that singular experience we caught a ride with Laura and Annie to the other van we had looked at online. It had no picture online though but we were pleasantly amazed. This van was cherry red and had a huge heart painted in the back window. It has a leaky radiator and no power steering which makes it approximately 5 million times better than the previous vans. So we decided to buy it from Trevor and his wife (who clearly wears the pants in their relationship). He's replacing the radiator and we're picking it up tomorrow afternoon, christening it, and heading for the beach!!

This morning we took a ferry teeming with old people to Waiheke island off the coast of Auckland (don't ask us how to pronounce anything down here because it's definitely not ever how it looks). By 11 AM Magaret had seared the outline of her shirt onto her decollatage (she's a LADY, dammit!) and covered it in a horrible, chafing paste of sand and sunscreen while I accumulated a sun 'reaction' on my legs akin to the color of a boiled beet ("It's not really a burn, it's just a 'reaction'"). After a lot of supremely satisfied sighing, collecting shells and finding sweet tide pools and getting shrimp pedicures we set out for the nearest booze hole. This 'hole' happened to be a cluster of swank vineyards that were only slightly less packed with old people. The world-renowned Stonyridge vineyard had an ancient black english lab and some incredible Malbec all from grapes grown on the island but too many people so we walked over to the nearby Te Motu vineyard which is smaller, younger and didn't have too many people. There we experienced an awesome Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough and a small Jack Russel mix.


That's all for now, we need to go ice our sun reactions, sort our sea shells and repack our individual luggage explosions in our rooms.
Cheers,
Molly and Margaret.

P.S. we're considering getting mumus tomorrow to avoid more of this sort of daily self-roasting.

48 hours to go!

Hello everybody!  Welcome to our blog.  You may keep tabs on our whereabouts here if you feel so inclined, and we will post fun stories and exciting photographs of our adventures.  I imagine it will be rife with suspense and intrigue, especially since we don't have the foggiest idea what we're doing or where we're going.  At the moment, all I am doing is watching Daily Show reruns from inside a tent in my vacant living room, but the excitement will begin in just a few days, so get ready...