Leaving Paihia for Hamilton meant a 6:30am alarm, discovering the nice showers behind the back kitchen were closed (HEARTBREAK they were so warm and amazing), and instead having a horrible cold shower in the normal shower block. Yay.
We checked out at half 8. Well, we posted our keys into the little “early check out” box at half 8 but same thing. We had no idea where to put our bed linen (we had to strip the beds when we left) so we just left them outside the office door. It hadn’t rained the whole time we were there so hopefully it didn’t rain on it all after we left…
We made it to the bus stop with plenty of time to spare. Okay, plenty may have been an exaggeration but we had way more time than when we caught the bus from Auckland so y'know.
Tom’s bike got on the bus fine and then we spent pretty much all of the journey to Auckland doing as much as we could on the free wifi. I needed to catch up on my diary as well, so I spent a good 2 hours of the journey doing that. (Diary keeping is such a ball ache by the way, if I miss just one day it takes me forever to catch back up).
We had to say goodbye to Finn and Emily (who had come to meet Finn at the bus stop) when we arrived in Auckland. They were staying there for a night before flying down to Queenstown, and we had another bus to catch that left half an hour from our arrival. It was really weird saying bye, especially because we have no idea when we’ll next see them (or if we will see them) before they leave for Australia next month. Sad times!!
We got on the bus to Hamilton not long after that. That was a pretty uneventful journey. The scenery was mainly urban/built up between the two cities, so it wasn’t as interesting to look outside as it had been going to Paihia.
The walk to the hostel from the bus stop took a lot longer than we were expecting. We were in building number 1287 on our street and watching the numbers count up to it as we were walking was not as motivating as I would hope it would be. Reaching 900 something and hoping you were close felt awful.
The hostel wasn’t great but it was clean and had a big common area so we weren’t complaining! Plus we had two roommates in our room (we’d booked another 6-bed dorm) and the one who was there when we arrived was not interested in socialising. It was definitely a far cry from the hostel in Paihia but we had free wifi and the showers were indoors so we didn’t feel too sorry for ourselves.
Being exhausted from our journey ended up being handy as it gave us some time to start emailing WWOOFing paces. WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a scheme we have all joined that allows you to work on organic farms, in exchange for food and accommodation. It’s to promote organic farming, while also letting you learn about organic farming and experience ‘real NZ life.’ As we discovered in Paihia, you need to contact hosts well in advance to be able to find a place, so we used our time that afternoon to try and find somewhere available.
When we felt like we’d done enough (boy we’re going to be unprepared for working hours when we come back), we went out in search of a supermarket. We stocked up on food to last us the next few days (avoiding the terrible pre-cooked sausages). We actually bought some vegetables to eat. You can always tell when you’ve been too long without healthy food because it just tastes SO BLOODY GOOD when you next eat it. We demolished the carrots and broccoli.
The rest of our evening was spent cwtched up on the armchairs watching television. One of David Attenboroughs programmes started as we sat down and, excited because David is King, we settled in to watch.
It was the kind of slow, evening in that we didn’t even know we needed.
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