My first hostel experiences…surprising to say the least. Chelsea and I arrived in Rotorua late evening and checked into the YHA hostel. I had envisioned in quite detail what a hostel would be like. The reality of them did not match my expectations. I believed hostels were cheap places to stay because they were grungy (with bedrooms similar to those seen in movies about third world countries and bathrooms I would be afraid to step into). But not at all! Hostels were very clean with new washed bedding and once even a towel wrapped in pretty bows with a Hawaiian flower attached. I was also surprised to see how many adults were staying there as well.
Going to Rotorua brought me back to fond memories of high school. And not so found memories of rotten eggs. The whole town smells like sulfur because of the natural hot springs. I was lucky enough to go on an educational tour abroad with my best friends my sophomore and junior year summers. Rotorua was one of the first destinations on the New Zealand/Australian trip my junior year. The town itself is known for very touristy things to do such as zorbing and leuching. Zorbing is when you are put in a huge plastic ball with water on the bottom and pushed down a huge hill. The water on the bottom keeps you from tumbling upside down. Leuching is when you ride down another huge hill on a small gocart with no motor. Leuching will forever make me laugh because it will make me think of the time that my friend Jenny somehow managed to fall off of her “vehicle” and literally roll down the hill for a ways. Huge hills have definitely been a theme in NZ, they are everywhere and incorporated into extreme sports. For instance, jumping off of sand dunes to see who can land the furthest from the top of the mass hill has been made into a sport.
Since the price of everything in Rotorua was pretty steep, we stuck to seeing things that were free. Or so we thought! We couldn’t seem to find the hot springs that we were searching for. Note to self: next time I will have to do a better job of finding an actual address instead of just an area of town. Sections of town have many long roads that lead to the middle of nowhere. We did manage to see a beautiful area called Blue Lake. And I was especially pumped to spot out a pit bull puppy. I almost stole it; I miss mine so much.
On the way to our next destination we stopped in a little town called Levin. Jill told us the area has lots of small little parks that are a lot of fun with ziplines and hamster wheels. When Chels and I heard hamster wheels we had to find it! I have an entire new respect for hamsters that can truck it in those things. A real life hamster wheel is extremely hard to move or balance in and usually running results in dizziness while tumbling over and feeling like you will flip upside down. I developed many bruises from that experience. In NZ people definitely let their kids get into extreme sports fast, that was the most dangerous looking jungle gym I had ever been too! I about fell off of every zip line there and have never seen steeper slides.
The next stop was Wellington. The city has a great nightlife for young adults and houses stack on hills similar to a look of California. What really stood out about Wellington were the VERY interesting people we met there. So in our first hostel we didn’t actually get to meet our hostel mates because they were gone when we left for diner, asleep when we came back, and gone before we woke up (kind of strange not knowing at all who is sleeping across from you in the dark)! I was disappointed to see that when we walked into the hostel in Wellington, once again our hostel mate was gone. Now that I think of it I wish that she hadn’t returned! I can’t remember her name but I’ll refer to her as “crazy lady.”
I have to give crazy lady some credit; she was very nice and friendly. I just wish I had never asked her where she was from because that started the crazy talk. She lived in Christchurch. The reason she was staying in the hostel was to escape the after shocks of the earthquakes and look for a job in another town. A huge earthquake wiped out a lot of Christchurch and many subsequent ones were still happening months after. She was scared to currently be there, many of her favorite fish and chip shops since childhood were destroyed. I can definitely understand her worry and desire to get out of the city. But she didn’t stop there with her talk of destruction. Basically, Chelsea and I heard how the world was going to end. “You girls better travel now if you want to see the south island before it is completely destroyed with volcanoes and tsunamis. I will be leaving NZ in March, I know that is when it is going to happen,” she said. She also explained the phenomenon in Christchurch that scientists are “dumfounded” by. Blue and white light is currently beaming unexplainably out of the cracks in the earth. After about 30 minutes of this intense conversation, Chelsea and I found an excuse to exit the room.
The same night I bumped into the next peculiar lady. While standing in the bathroom waiting for Chelsea to come out of the stall, I was contemplating whether or not to put up my hair. I decided to ask what the lady standing next to me thought about it. She became more than excited that I asked her and yelped out, “I have a vision! I am a hair dresser, I will help you put it up!” Before I could respond my hair was being pulled in every which way as she was carefully thinking and braiding with her tongue out. Chelsea came out of the bathroom laughing at the scene and watched the lady in action. Before Chelsea could say anything, my hair was finished and she moved straight on to fixing Chelsea’s hair with great excitement. Finally she completed her “vision” for the both of us and not only screamed “done!” but finished with a grand finale of doing a split right on the dirty bathroom floor while throwing up her hands in the air. Keep in mind she was around 40 years old.
On our second night there we gained another hostel mate. No lie, she had to be at least 70 years old. This would have been fine if she wasn’t mean as a snake, looked like the grim reaper, and went to bed at 8:30 PM. Since lights were out so early Chelsea and I went downstairs to socialize with other people in the hostel. At last we met an interesting person in a good way! His name was Scott and he was in town for a friends Birthday. Scott was excited that he had met Americans that were not Bible beating Christians and had an intelligence level that exceeded a fifth grader. It was sad to hear about his experiences of the past with Americans, leaving him thinking that America was very narrow minded and all about money. He told us that after our conversations, we broke many of the stereotypes he had once held. He was very smart and brought up many unique topics such as lucid dreaming and the history of the Maori tribes. Scott explained that his passion was in being a builder but he was frustrated in the lack of intelligence other co-workers possessed. I recommended finding a job of similar qualities that required some kind of college degree. I never would have guessed that Scott was 18. I’m glad that we were able to give him a pleasant experience with Americans and we were able to learn a lot about people from NZ.
After bumping into Scott, the rest of our experiences with new people were quite enjoyable as well. I have discovered that my favorite part of traveling is not seeing all of the landscape, but meeting all different types people. Of coarse, the beautiful land of NZ is definitely an added bonus! During the rest of our stay in Wellington, we talked to people from Ireland and Canada. I learned that Enda was a common Irish male name. I also heard all about how awful the beer was here and how Ireland has the best beer in the world, the Irish definitely take pride in their alcohol and abilities to drink it. It was nice to finally have a normal hostel mate for the last night in Wellington. Claire was 24 from Toronto and was currently in school.
Throughout the beginning of the trip I had noticed a theme of people from NZ disliking the city of Auckland. Everyone I talked to in each new town spoke negatively about my new home. It was slightly bumming me out, since that was the place I picked to go to school. So I was very happy to meet Mike, the first person who was from NZ that admitted to loving Auckland and went on and on about all the good qualities. He use to live in Auckland and was missing it all of the time living in Wellington. I gathered from our conversation that a lot of people from NZ just do not like big cities and stick to the countryside.
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