Around The World In 80 Waves

After a night spent in a car park right on the waterfront in Wellington I woke up with something of a sore head and found a note saying I owed the council $40 attached to my windscreen.

Apparently paying for parking does not allow sleeping in your vehicle, which is considered camping. The charge for parking was $10 and the charge for camping is $50. Had I parked the car and slept on the floor adjacent to the van it would only be $10, all of which is a bit ludicrous but par for the course with my racking up big bills of late.

The guy at the car park is only doing his job and is good enough to give me a discounted rate when I try to sort it out, but I need to head north towards Hastings so don’t stick around long.

My drive takes me up over the mountains and more stunning scenery, but as you can see it is a bit of a grey and cold day and it is for this reason that I stop and offer a lift to a hitch hiker. (Having walked 20 km in Mexico with nobody stopping I couldn’t do the same to somebody else.)

The stereotypical image of mauris would be something along the lines of this picture, but Matiu who I gave a ride too was far more interesting than that. He was conveniently also on his way to Hastings having just sold his car near Wellington, but was soon telling me all about his work trying to motivate young mauri kids through music.

We played some of the recordings he had put together with the youngsters and I have to say I was a big fan of what he called contemporary mauri music. I had hoped to be able to share some of it with you but sadly he hasn’t got back to me, so you will have to imagine yourselves elements of rap, R&B, soul all based around mauri culture and in the native language.

Matiu is a really colourful character who I discovered  has not always had the best of luck, so I hope his recent good fortune bodes well for him.

Having spent so much time on my own he made fascinating company as we drove past the wonderfully named Cape Kidnappers. (Another thing attributed to Captain Cook after mauris tried to ‘free’ his Tahitian cabin boy who they thought was being held hostage.) I was getting all the traditional perspectives on landforms, heritage, etc. rather than the more PC guidebook version.

It wasn’t long before we had arrived in Hawkes Bay, which is famous for its wines and I was surprised to see so many sheep wandering around in between the lines of vines. We bid each other bon voyage upon arrival in Hastings and I go looking for an old friend.