One for the Books

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » New Plymouth
March 22nd 2008

Published: April 18th 2008

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Ashleigh smash

Road Trippin'

The first week I was here, I bought tickets to Jack Johnson. I love, love, love his music and the concert just so happened to fall on Easter Sunday so I knew we would have a couple days off to make the trip down to New Plymouth. Our original plan was to drive to Marokupa and stay at the beautiful campsite on the beach that we saw on a flyer at a travel center, and then we would go to Tongaririo National Park and camp there and then head over to New Plymouth and hopefully find a place to sleep after the concert. You see, New Plymouth is this small town that doesn't have much going on in it but, of course, on this particular weekend EVERYTHING was booked and we had no place to stay. After getting to the Marokupa campsite, which was NOTHING like what they showed on the flyer we knew we would have to change our plans- just a bit. When we got to the campsite we pulled out all the tents and supplies this nice lady, Joe let us borrow. None of us had any clue what we were supposed to do so it took us

Traffic Jam

New Zealand Style

a while to get the tents up. Then we headed to the beach that was clearly not for tanning but full of people fishing. At this particular beach the water is shallow until way out there so fishermen love it (I guess). Old guys were whizzing by us in their four wheelers with poles sticking out of every which way. We headed back to the campsite and "enjoyed" our makeshift dinner- spaghetti and toast. The next morning we decided to skip Tongaririo and just head straight to New Plymouth instead. It was Saturday and the concert was one day away and we still could not find a place to stay. When we got into New Plymouth we headed straight for the I- Site in the hope that they might point us in the direction of some overlooked hotel. The girls went in and asked the woman in the office and she said EVERYTHING was full up. She told them she would have loved to have us at her house but she was already taking in 8 people who had come in earlier looking for a place to stay. She insisted she would call her friend and we crossed our fingers

The Scenery

kept me occupied the whole trip

that she wouldn't say no when all 8 of us showed up at her door step. She did the exact opposite. We offered to camp out in her back yard but she insisted we stay in her house. She gave us all the blankets we needed and gave us her house key so we could come and go as we pleased. She was an angel! We stayed there Saturday night and swam in her pool Saturday and made dinner in her kitchen before we headed to the concert. The concert was great until me and the girls decided it would be a brilliant idea to go jump in the lake that was in between us and the pool. Gross! Totally worth it though. Jack Johnson and Matt Costa were great! The next morning Pamela, our god- send, said goodbye because she had to catch a golf game with friends. We gave her a thank you card and flowers but I still don't think that was enough. I have never met someone so nice! Her daughter even gave us watercolors of New Zealand, they are gorgeous. We lucked out major on that one!

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