On the Road again

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Day 66: The Long and Winding Road

So it hasn't been the most exciting of days. Having been woken up at five by people going to Tongariro (and been grateful that I wasn't one of them - who does stuff like that on New Year's Day?!), and again at half-six by others who had got up to pack, I eventually gave up sleeping at seven and crawled out of bed and down to the laundry to amend my rather desperate clothing situation. I caught the bus a couple of hours later and managed to sleep most of the two hour leg of the journey from Taupo to Hamilton, where I had an hour and a half's break ,before heading back off again on another bus to New Plymouth.

Although not one of New Zealand's highlights, as a small city with a river running through it, Hamilton seemed pleasant enough. What's more, Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror fame apparently lived there during his teens and twenties, with a small Riff-Raff statue in the centre of town. Since everything else in town was closed (and also because I quite liked the Rocky Horror Show), I ditched my backpack in a locker at the bus station, and went to pay homage. With not much else to do in town, I then went on a short riverside walk before heading back to the bus station for the next leg of the journey.

It was certainly a good move booking a couple of long journeys for New Years Day, and I really must have been really quite sleep deprived, because soon after boarding the bus in Hamilton, I was asleep again, waking up two-and-a-half hours later and only about eighty kilometres from New Plymouth. The remainder of the bus journey that I was awake for was along a hair-raising winding hillside road with great views of the New Zealand forest and countryside down the steep drop at the side of the tarmac.

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