Where (Happy) are all (New) the people (Year)!?!
Advertisement
Published: January 21st 2008
We had many a debate as to where to park the Tron for our new year's celebration! We had to get to Wellington on the 1st for an early morning ferry to the South Island on the 2nd, so we were left with many options all around the North Island. We finally decided to Go For IT and head to the first place IN THE WORLD where the New Year's Sun rises, Gisborne! We rolled into town in the rain, but had high hopes for a new years party since the first campsite we tried was sold out! We ended up on the outskirts of town, and settled in next to some more permanent resident neighbors! We had fajitas for dinner, and decorated our Tron for new years with confetti, silly string, and of course the disco bottle! Jet lag finally hit Mason, and we decided to take a short nap before heading out to celebrate....except we woke up at about 1130! Oh well, we´ve seen many new years countdowns, we´ll see many more! We got ready quick and headed into town....I think it was at least a 45 minute walk before we even saw another person! Lucky for us it
was about 10 people in some guys front yard and he offered us a beer as we walked into town! Once we got there, it was a lot of mayhem, but most of the people were under the age of 20, stumbling, and it seemed....quite angry at the world!
It took a while to find the party, and when we did, it was a bad irish bar blasting bad 90´s music (interspersed with a few of my new favorite dance tunes) and we felt we had a lot of catching up to do, so we ordered a beer and a shot each time we went to the bar.
The first sunrise of the New Year? local came up to me laughing and explained....that guy doesn{t know who the packers are! He thinks the G stands for Gangster! Oh my.....
Later in the evening we got droppéd off at the beach near the town{s festival so that we could watch the first sun of the year rise! We got there and we were the ONLY people in sight! Apparently everyone at the festival was fast asleep in their tents! We saw about 5 people TOTAL, and met a local Kurt, who assured us the best place to watch the sun was atop a nearby hill, so we started to follow him into town. Kurt´s lived here all his life, but WE were directing HIM back into town and after a while we started to notice that he was pointing to a hill on the right, but kept turning left. He had no idea where he was! Sigh. We turned around and left him to his maze (i don´t think he even noticed we weren´t with him anymore!) and went back to the beach ourselves! It was rainy, windy, cold, and cloudy, but we were determined! It started to get light....sort of....but there was definitely not
going to be a sun. We declared "the sun has risen" and caught a cab back to the Tron around 7am!
We slept for a couple hours, but then had to get motivated, take our 5 minute/ $1 showers, and hit the road! We had about 600 km to Wellington, and needed to be there that night! It was a looooong day of driving, but we had two fantastic stops....one at a winery run by a couple BY THEMSELVES (impressive amount of work for two people!) and another at a roadside cafe in the middle of nowhere that had absolutely fabulous sandwiches! I tried to be domesitcated and make snacks while mason was driving, but through the turns and twists I ended up with Coke all over my face and up my nose, cheese flying across the bed, and almost stabbed myself! We had to wait for rest stops for snacks from now on! This was the day that Mason also started entertaining himself driving by hooking the horn to the music ' which got us to notice that it freaked out all the sheep on the side of the road and made them start running away like mad!
This became one of our favorite pastimes....
We got into Wellington LATE but were starving and thirsty, so we walked into town to see what was up....what was up was that its a national holiday and there was NO ONE ANYWHERE....STILL! We found another Irish bar that served us for about 45 minutes, but we were promptly kicked out and forced to go to ask WHERE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.194s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 20; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0729s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
mommy
non-member comment
we are saddened for your loss
after talking to you over the wknd as we were so excited for the packer win, i'm sure you are feeling the horrible letdown of the game. we still love our favre over here and congratulate them on a GREAT season!! at least you have new packer t-shirts for the rest of the trip :) p.s. more tron pictures please!