Hitch Hiking.

Having flown from Melbourne to Auckland we stayed the night in the 38th different bed since leaving the Rectory in November! And in the morning we set off bright and early to start a three day trip down to the south of North Island. Looking to save money we decided to try our hand at hitch hiking. We had arranged people to stay with for the following two nights in a sort of zig-zag across the country we just needed to get to them using our thumbs.
A brief “How To” guide for getting lifts by standing at the side of the road in New Zealand.
How do you entice people to stop their comfortable cars while they’re driving along and invite two total strangers who might well, for all you know, have issues, fleas, weapons, really irritating laughs or possibly all of the above? Well, being two middle aged would-be hitch hikers (just typed that and the iPad rewrote it as kitsch hikers which is kind of sweet) we thought the best way of getting lifts would be to carry awesome signs.
We had all sorts of signs planned but the practicalities of having too much writing were difficult to overcome. “Sorry, all the young good looking ones have already gone – just us left now” or “So far today has gone without a hitch : (   would, I’m sure, have worked but we only had two small bits of card we managed to borrow from the people we were staying with in Auckland – so we made do with “South” on one and “Please” on the other. 
 

And by jingo they worked! Day one: Auckland to Tauranga which is across on the east coast.

Lift 1. We spent the first 6 minutes “debating” whether we were better off standing at the top of the slip road which had no real stopping place, or before the traffic lights on one of the two roads leading to the slip road. This had better stopping places, but only half the traffic. I was just telling Ella how misguided her views on the  matter were and how we should move to the other place when a van stopped and picked us up. The old Maori lady and her daughter
In the cobbled together camper van took us 10 kilometres, to just outside of Auckland and dropped us off. I think that was as far as they were going rather than that we had done something to offend them (I am sure it’s good Maori manners to rub noses….) but 10 km is all we got.

We were just getting into a discussion as to whether we would have been better off where we were in the first place as this slip road didn’t look like it would have much traffic on it when (3 minutes waiting time) a guy in a well named pick up truck stopped. He was going to Tauranga which was where we were hoping to stay that night, which was handy, but he was going via Hamilton where he had half an hour’s work to do in his office, but he could drop us off for a coffee while he went in to work and if we didn’t mind the wait he could then take us all the way.
En route he decided to take us to see Hobiton, the setting of Bilbo Baggins’ village in The Lord of the Rings and now a bit of a tourist attraction seeing as we were passing 5 km from it. As he got to the car park he announced: “Well, we can’t go in as it’s 75 dollars each and we haven’t got time, but anyway, it’s over that hill and looks pretty much like it did on the film so you get the picture”, and we turned round and drove off.
When we got to Hamilton we were left with an awkward choice. He dropped us off at a coffee shop and said he would see us in half an hour. We had been in the car with him for 90 minutes and he seemed like a really nice guy, and he had, to his credit, almost taken us to one of the main tourist attractions in the area. So, is it impolite to say that you will get your bags out of the back and sit with them while he goes off (subtext – cos we don’t trust you you Bilbo Baggins tease you). Being British this was tricky. We had passports, wallet and iPads on our persons, so we figured it was politer to leave the bags in the truck and he drove off. Just after he turned the first corner we wondered whether we should at least have taken a photo of the registration plate….
“Yes, that’s right officer, we did indeed just get out of the truck of a total stranger and deliberately leave our entire luggage in there and wave him off. What did the truck look like? Well, it was white. Any other distinguishing features? Umm, well, it’s got our bags in the back. What? Yes, we know – it was a bit, wasn’t it. Pardon? Oh no, don’t be silly; this wasn’t our first ever lift. No, no, no.
It was our second. Well, you see, he had taken us almost to Hobiton….”

With not much else to do we had our coffee. We waited. An hour passed and we began to get just a teensy bit concerned. Another half hour passed and we thought things were getting worryingly suspicious so we had some cake. Just under the two hour mark (which we had agreed would be the police calling point) he returned.
OK, chalk one up to experience – we wouldn’t make that mistake again. (At least, not until about 20 hours later…..)
Still, we got all the way to where we were headed and had a good evening nattering to our hosts, who the folk at the River Monastery had put us in touch with.
Next morning we were heading down to Turangi, a few hundred kilometres south west. So our “south” and “please” signs were still good. And so were our finely honed thumbs. Before our hosts had even turned the car round having taken us to the main road out of town a car had stopped. It took us a few km more to a main road and this led to an entire two minute wait for the next lift. (This hitch hiking lark is a piece of cake.) The lady (Greeta) took us a good chunk of the way and turned out to be fascinating company. She is the widow of the only New Zealand Formula 1 world champion, Denny Hulme and was full of wonderful stories of life on the motor racing circuit back in the ’60s and ”70s. She threw in a guided tour of her home town of Rotorua and even took us to lunch! (It was here that we got out of the car and left her to find a parking space, leaving our bags in the boot….. But we totally haven’t done that again since.) We then got a lift from two American students, one of whom lives in Boston and the other in New York, two of the cities we’ll be going to when we’re in the U.S, and who invited us to stay with them when we get there. They dropped us off at Lake Taupo where we grabbed a coffee, wrote a new sign for Turangi which was still 30 km away and had literally only just got to the side of the road when the first car passing stopped and asked where we were going. Not being sure how to pronounce it I looked at the sign and said “This place” and the driver asked who we were staying with there. We told her and she said “That’s Uncle Sam: jump in!” and took us to his door. I may never get another coach or train again!
The people we were stopping the night with, Sam and Thelma, live with 4 generations of their family in a former hospital. It’s a warren of corridors and rooms all on one level, stretching hither, thither and over yonder. Sam is well known in New Zealand for his work over many years with the Mongrel Mob, a hard as nails group whose gang members make up over 10% of the entire New Zealand prison population at the moment. Sam works with groups of gang members who want to get back on the straight and narrow often having been through rehab and has an amazing attitude to life and to restoration and to working with people who have been cast out from society and looked on with equal measures of fear and loathing.

(One of the members of the Mongrel mob)

Sam and Thelma have, for decades now, run an open door policy and welcomed in all sorts. Living with them, befriending them – seeing lives turned around and others wandering off in a destructive direction. Knowing jubilation and heartbreak – seeing hospitality and trust at times ripped up and crushed and yet offering more with an open hand and open heart. We spent the evening talking with Sam about his whole philosophy of how he sees his Christian mission. It is very hard to fault what he does and why he does it – and it is immensely challenging.

He and Thelma stand where most people would be far too concerned for their own comfort to stand. They offer a listening voice, practical help, acceptance, time and have gone without much while reaching out to thieves, addicts and murderers. He has a bunch of the Mongrel Mob living next door to him in a house he secured for that very purpose. Christ can be seen in people of many different shapes and sizes: he can definitely be seen in a certain big 20+ stone Maori called Sam.
The final leg of our three day hitch-hike came in the rain the next morning when a half hour (much of which was spent singing and dancing to songs with rain in them) wait led to someone taking pity on us and taking us a few hundred km closer to our goal. from there it was but a two minute wait for the final lift right down to Waikanae, the closest town to the “in the middle of nowhere” community in which we’ll be staying for 4 weeks.
Zig zagging from Auckland to just north of Wellington over three days, 8 lifts and an average wait time of under 9 minutes per lift. Lots of interesting people and stories. Hitching is the way to travel in N Z.