Road Trip - Day Two
Opotiki to Gisbourne.
I awoke, disgruntled, to the smell of no coffee while the Matriarch enjoyed her cup of liquid wakefulness out on the balcony as she enjoyed her eighth smoke of the day. Although we were in what she refers to as Rastafarian country she was smoking ordinary cigarettes. Disappointed at missing what should have been a good chance to participate in keeping New Zealand green I rolled out of bed, landed heavily on the floor and began crawling towards the lounge area to make my first (of hopefully many) coffee for the day. That activity was made more difficult by the arm deadened by the weight of my body as I slept upon it awkwardly but by that stage nothing was keeping me from my caffeine.
She was disgustingly chipper and not in the least bit discouraged by my monosyllabic grunting. I choose not to consider the possibility that might be because it’s how I usually communicate. Our accommodation offered us little reason to tarry so we (I) stuffed breakfast down our (my) throats and made haste out of there. I did make time for another coffee and to retrieve the 2 bottles of V I had chilled in the fridge overnight.
That turned out to be a major mistake.
The trip was going smoothly until a little way out of Te Araroa those coffees and the half-bottle I’d already consumed caught up with me. The Matriarch was presented with her options. Find me a toilet or pull over. She found the idea of twin moons peeking out from below her passenger door and distracting passing drivers unappealing and so chose option A. I wish she’d just called my bluff.
The toilets by the Te Araroa beach were the worst I’d ever been in until that point. The design results in a permanent case of toilet-seat-up. There was no actual seat. It took a certain amount of careful balancing not to fall arse-first into the murky water. The smell did nothing to add to its appeal. I longed, in those drawn-out moments, for my Pine-o-Clean and Toilet Duck.
Fortunately after that (and another hour or so of driving) we reached some nice scenery. All too quickly that was replaced by Gisbourne. Fortunately the accommodation there was much less unappealing. For my birthday I enjoyed a delicious tarakihi dinner, an unintentionally hilarious movie I don’t know the name of but affectionately dubbed “Ants on a Plane” and an extremely comfortable night’s sleep.
Maybe I’d just stay there.
Tagged: adventures, Travel.