Hitchhiking

New Zealand has this cool thing with transfer cars which allow you to move from one point to another for free, including gas. This happens when too many one way rentals end up in certain places and it’s a great way for travelers like me to get around. It’s smart and it makes me wonder what we do in the U.S.? I imagine we probably have more economies of scale and use trucks to transport lots of cars at once from city to city.

Since driving just a few times in Uganda I got to drive on the left again traveling from Dunedin to Queenstown in a transfer car. The scenery is amazing. I picked up a young German hitchhiker who had been traveling around New Zealand in both islands for 10 months and had never paid for transportation once or owned a car. I was amazed to hear this even though I had heard that hitchhiking was pretty normal here. Getting over feeling like you are a beggar is a bit weird but I was inspired by the German from then on to try it out myself.

Hitchhiking can be quite the adventure and I’ve seen both the pros and the cons. It requires a fair amount of faith and a willingness for whatever. It’s not that it’s sketchy at all here but you just don’t know when, and even if, you will get to your final destination. There's also a real strategy to it, picking where to stand on the road, deciding how out of the way you might go in which rides you take, and figuring out the timing. My first trip from the Queenstown airport to Queenstown involved waiting only 20 minutes but it was raining and cold which wasn’t fun. A decked out sleeper van picked me up with three young Kiwi hippies and a puppy. When asked what’s fun to do in Queenstown, they responded: “the pubs.” From this point on I figured these were the type of people that picked up hitchhikers. I was very wrong. Here is the list of people who have picked me up so far: A van full of Venataun farm workers who barely spoke English, an older Kiwi woman listening to Dire Straits, Helen - an older English woman who used to drive taxis, Fabian – a young French dude working seasonally, Phillipe a young backpacking Chilean, and Noel –a middle aged Kiwi returning from a long distance bi-weekly trip to visit his lover. Most of the time I waited between 20-40 minutes and one time it took an hour. And then there was time it rained all day, no one picked me up, and the whole day was wasted. This was both sad and made me think twice about hitchhiking in New Zealand as I missed a day of WWOOFing at a very short homestay. I am now in Harihari and will update more soon about tourism, hostels, backpacking, and hiking in NZ.

Road Trip NZ!

Vanuatu Worker's Van

Entering Queenstown