This is an account of one of my earliest adventures in New Zealand. Because it is a rather lengthy experience, I have broken it down into three parts. Here is Part One.

“Hitchhiking?” I said uncertainly. “I don’t know…”

Actually I did know. I knew there was no way in the name of Arthur Dent that anyone would pick me up. Here I was, a bulkily-dressed and shifty-looking guy standing on the side of the road. Yeah, I thought irritably. I’m everyone’s dream passenger. I tried to pull my toboggan over my head in a manner that would make me look less dodgy-bloke and more innocent-yet-strangely-attractive-guy, but to no avail.

We were in the town of Oamaru (pronounced AH-ma-roo), a town about eighty kilometres north (as the bird flies; it was a bit further driving distance) of Dunedin. Christa; myself; two girls from the Arcadia program, Mandi and Alice; and two of Mandi’s flatmates all had hopped off a bus a few hours previously, slightly cramped and eager for adventure. The bus ride had been a particularly wonderful, scenic drive and the highlight was an absolutely spectacular sunrise over the ocean around 8:15. After walking out the bodily kinks that the bus had given us, we stopped at the local iSite (one of a chain of visitor’s centers located in every major town and at every major tourist destination; superlatively organized, they’re a must-stop if you’re new to the area), picked up some info, and headed out.

It turned out that our ultimate destination, Moeraki, was some thirty kilometres south, so we wandered aimlessly about the town, buildings beautifully sculpted out of a handsome, bone-white rock called Oamaru Stone. We wandered close to the beach, where one of Mandi’s flatmates spontaneously took off on her own, calling out that she’d see us later. Mandi and her remaining flatmate shrugged, and told us not to worry about it, and so we plodded on. I gazed at the sea, stretching on relentlessly. So much blue…I thought, and hardened my resolve to learn how to swim should New Zealand, a plane, or any body of dry land ever decide to promptly sink into the ocean. Our group-minus-one even managed to find a couple penguin nests, complete with penguins, located in storm drains under the road, though it was so dark that no one’s pictures turned out. In the end, we missed the bus, and that’s when our newly returned member decided that hitchhiking would be the way to go. “It’s so easy in this country,” she cried enthusiastically, and doubt once more gathered at the corners of my mind.




Oamaru. Beautiful enough on its own, but this is one of the beaches where dozens of penguins land every evening around sunset. This particular stretch is home to the rare yellow-eyed penguin, whose eyes aren’t really yellow; it’s more of the fur around the eye that’s yellow.


In the end, we agreed, and split up into three groups of two. All we had to do was get to Moeraki, Mandi kept telling us. The bus would pick us up there at 7:30. I was paired with Christa, and while Mandi’s two flatmates waited at one street corner, the four of us moved onward, not wishing to compete with our fellow travellers. Mandi and Alice said their goodbyes a short while later, and Christa and I decided to walk a little ways outside the town, because people outside Oamaru would be more willing to pick us up, since they were probably not just running errands about town.

An hour later, Christa and I, our thumbs tired, decided to walk briefly down a lonely side street to see what breathtaking vistas it would undoubtedly yield. It yielded none whatsoever, and we returned to the highway, an ominous feeling between us. At that point, it began to drizzle, and Christa, also inexperienced in the ways of hitchhiking, suggested that we turn around and look the drivers in the eye as they passed. This course of action rendered us semi-invisible, as many drivers refused to look in our direction. A few tossed us those unfathomable hand gestures, which we took to mean, “I’d stop if I wasn’t taking my mortally wounded grandmother to the hospital for emergency lung, brain, and heart transplants.”




Lack of success begins to wear on me…



An hour after that, we stopped at the first sign of civilization that we had seen since leaving Oamaru—a gas (or more properly, a “petrol”) station. We stopped inside, desperate for any kind of warmth, drinkable liquid, and most importantly, information. Our only hope—that there was any kind of bus stop nearby—was summarily dashed as he handed us our change, and as we left, the weather, deciding to go for the extra point, allowed the heavens to open upon us for a few minutes as we trudged away. “There’s a city just over the next hill,” Christa and I kept reassuring each other, “We’re nearly there.”

Three hours after leaving the city of Oamaru, our conversation long since dead, just over yet another of those frustratingly disappointing hills, a car pulled over in front of Christa and me, and stopped.

It was one of those moments so long hoped-for that when it actually arrives, you think someone’s playing a trick on you. My mouth hung open; this was unbelievable, and I said so. Then I looked down at my right hand, which was sort of half-frozen into a balled fist with the thumb sticking out. I had completely forgotten that I had it out. My brain worked furiously, and finally produced a thought: Wow.

Meanwhile, Christa, obviously in a better mode of thinking than me, sprinted to the car, and began thanking the man who got out and began clearing his backseat. He was youngish, and looked precisely the sort of stranger one should never get into a car with, hair awry and faintly pink, a wild goatee, and a small, nervous sort of build, the kind of guy you would expect to relive days of junior-high torment over and over for years in his mind until he finally snapped. I fervently hoped that Christa and I had some time left yet before his big kaboom.


Stay tuned for part two of this hitchhiking epic.