SamPaulling.com

Getting to New Zealand is quite possible the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. The journey there was ridiculous. Lets take a look at what it took to get me here.

First of all, my plane was to leave at 8:50 am on Saturday, and the trains running from Newcastle to Sydney were going not going to be running this particular weekend, starting Saturday morning at 2 am, and I would have had to take a bus early in the morning, which, trust me, is a horrible idea. So I took the last train out Friday night with the intention of sleeping in the airport terminal after checking in. The train left Newcastle station just after 9 o’clock, and I started off the journey reading “The Bourne Ultimatum”, which was a great way to pass the time, until a lady with the five most annoying children on the planet got on the train. One of the children had a whistle that he blew on, loudly, for near an hour, his mother never saying a word to him, and my patience was wearing quite thin. I eventually gave up reading and put in my headphones on loud, barely loud enough to drown out the screeching noises of the kid.

So then I get to the train station in Sydney around midnight and ask a conductor which train is going to the airport next. He says “Why do you want to go there?” I wasn’t really expecting that question, and I didnt really know what to say because I thought it was obvious why one would go to the airport, so I didnt say anything, and then he said “Because its closed now.” And he destroyed my dreams right there. He tells me I should just go back to my place and come back around 5 in the morning. My blank stare for an untold length of awkward time told him everything, and then he says “Your not from Sydney are you?” I tell him no, and hes like “Oh boy.”

Needless to say, I spent that night sleeping on a bench in the trainstation. A trainstation that is not closed off to the elements mind you. There’s a roof, sure, but each of the sides of the building have huge open archways to the park outside, which means arctic winds throughout the night. Im not entire sure how much sleep I got, but I promise it wasnt much. I couldn’t even lay down because of the armrests, so I had to sleep proped up in a sitting position. Then I wake up around 5, get on a train to the airport, move wearily through customs and check-in, wander mindlessly through the terminal, somehow end up on a plane, and once im on the plane, Im suddenly awake. I cant fall asleep to save my life. The flight was quite awesome though, we stayed fairly low for a good bit of the trip, and there was little cloud cover below, so the Tasman Sea was visible the entire time.

Landing. More walking. Huge line. Baggage scan, again. Another huge line. Customs, again. 45 minutes after landing, I meet up with Devin, Luke, and Britt. (I abreviated to save you the pain of reading about boring airport security procedures.) We then get shutted to a rental car place where we had reserved a Ford Focus, which is sweet. We pay, added extra insurance, and the woman made the biggest mistake of here life. She tells us, and I quote “It doesn’t really matter what condition the car comes back in.” We looked confused and asked “Really?” and she said “Well it does, but it doesn’t.” Sweet. We put this to test a day later when we hit a bird (more like a falcon/buzzard) on the highway. It was huge. It was eating something on the road, and didnt decide to move until it was too late. Well actually, it flew out of the way just in time, but then changed its mind and flew back in front of the car. But now im skipping ahead.

Back to the car. Luke drives us downtown for some sweet Mexican food, which was fantastic, but a bit pricey, and we go to our hostel (an old jail) and cook dinner (huge hamburgers) and have the best night of sleep in my life. It was quite restful, but it was merely a facade of sleep since we had to get up a 4:30 in the morning to begin driving to the next place. Queensland. Learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, making wide right turns and short left ones, with unnecessarily bright high beams and dangerously dim low beams, around corners so sharp it makes you dizzy in the mountains, at 5 in the morning is not the easiest of activities, but it will definitely wake you up. And driving here is SO much fun. It might be the huge mountains and valleys, the millions of sheep, or the spectacular sunrise (which made the gettting up early worth it). I drove for 6 ½ hours today, ending at 11:30 am. Upon arrival in Queenstown, an absolutely gorgeous town located in the valley between two mountain ranges and bordered by a crystal clear, ice blue lake, we checked into our hostel, which happens to be right across the street from the lake, and wandered around the small little town. But Ill pick up here in the next post.