What Is Chiropractic Anyway?

With two weeks on the road around North Island, we saw much, and did much. A little too much to document in detail, so for the sake of sanity, I'm simply going to cover the highlights of the trip. Or basically just the stuff I can actually remember, and then let the photographs speak for themselves.

Over the past few months the Zuki had been getting slower and slower. I had no idea what was going on. I could barely peak 80kph on light gradients and had little power to overtake anymore. Figuring it was merely signs of an ageing car, I sighed and looked ahead to the days of a regular income and monthly repayments on something fast and sporty instead of owning the Zuki. On day two of the trip, after spending a warm night in surfer's paradise, Raglan, the reason for the Zuki's lethargy became clear.

Since this was a road trip, we decided to drive roads less travelled. In hindsight, not an idea one should particularly pursue in an unreliable vehicle. But then students are not meant to have reliable cars now are they? Ninety minutes from a major town, on Giftmas Eve when all workshops were closing, Mark and I were winding merrily through the rolling hills of endless farmland with not a house in sight. My right foot falls flat to floor with no resistance whatsoever. The Zuki roars into acceleration down the hill and nothing is slowing it down. Blaspheming relentlessly I turn the engine off and manage to retain enough impetus to free wheel into some kind of village of four or five houses. The only houses in this entire region.

Day two of a fourteen day trip. I climb out and poke my head down to the pedals. Drawing on the accelerator cable, it slides toward me with ease. I pull a little more, and still some more. It slides all the way out and I'm left holding the tethered end of what used to be the Zuki's accelerator cable. We make our way to a nearby house.

A few days later we realised how serendipitous the location of this breakdown was. The husband of the couple we approached tinkered with cars, and knew some numbers to call in nearby towns, but being Giftmas Eve, everything was closed and we were without a vehicle for two weeks. Secondly, the wife's mother was headed back to Auckland that very hour. A hitch to find another car we were most thankful for, even if it meant two metal heads had to painfully endure Shania Twain for two hours. And thirdly, I was able to leave the Zuki under a makeshift canopy at their place for two whole weeks. Unbelievable, really. In countryside where there are no houses, we breakdown near these folk. We gave them a bottle of chutney in gratitude.

Mark and I met in engineering school. He went on to finish after I left for NZ in 2002. Yet here we find ourselves before a pot of geothermal activity next to a walkway in Rotorua, demarcated by nothing more than a bit of orange ticker tape - the lackadaisical approach to volcanic safety that's always amazed me about Rotorua. Why would anyone want to live where steam comes out of the Earth beneath you? I say to the chemical engineer facetiously, "It's steaming, Mark. What temperature is steam normally?" He says he has to prove it. In a whimper of pain and bewilderment, he withdraws his big toe in a flash from the water in the ground. "See? 100 degrees."

Subconsciously I recall seeing the sign that read: HICKS BAY. We were rounding a massive U-turn, marking this corner of NZ very clearly. We had already gone too far because after performing a three-point turn and heading back, the two signs reading HICKS BAY were about 200m apart. That was it.

The East Cape is incredibly beautiful, and State Highway 35 is one of the best scenic drives I have ever done, but it was tainted by feelings of unease when we entered this particular backpacker - or what was supposed to be a backpacker. Joe, the Maori sir attending us seemed to have a dark cloud following him, demanding respect from a long lineage of ancestors, and us. "What are you doing here?" he says to me. Um, I wasn't entirely sure anymore. Since when did one have to supply a reason for coming to a backpacker on holiday anyway?

My first error was saying that I was there for the "chalet". Chalet? Look, in panic, it was the first word that came to my mind. Don't blame me for possessing a lexicon that extends beyond the words "room" or "dorm". Ushering us to an immobile, dilapidated caravan with windows that don't open nor shut, and an air about it of people that had sinisterly lost their lives in it, Joe says with a hint of sarcasm, "Well, we don't have a chalet, but I can offer you this." The booking website showed images of the guy's own house! Not where one would actually be sleeping; sleeping and probably never waking. My second error was asking if we could rather camp nearby. "What's wrong with my caravan?" Joe retorts. "Um, nothing. It's lovely. We'll take it."

There were also no shops in this area so dinner consisted of a can of budget baked beans each and a glass of Glen Morangie single malt whiskey. If you can't eat well, you should at least drink well. Only the finest to compliment our chalet in a setting that kisses the sunrise first on planet Earth.

The next leg of the trip I care not to document. Gisborne was a hill billy town if I'd ever seen one. We cut our stay short to one very, very scary night.

We were booked into Sycamore Lodge by a company that had mistakenly double booked us in a place we wanted to stay in. Sycamore Sanitarium I called it. A renovated old age home with white clad walls it most likely used to be. But not just an old age home; like a dog nearing the end of its days which starts to circle the garden, searching for a spot where its spiritless body can lie, this was a place where people went to die.

I hardly ever dream, least of all imagine paranormal material, and this place hit me with both in one night. I was somewhere between sleep and the third dimension, and felt an old haggard wraith of a woman standing over me, hitting my chest with the flat of her hand. It must have been her room before; she must have died in the bed I was sleeping in, considering the relevant emergency numbers on the wall alongside my head! I turned and she hovered out through the closed door. I said to Mark, "We are getting the hell out of this place, man!"

No photographs were taken.

We quickly decided to move on to Napier regardless of the itinerary. It was so lovely we stayed for three days. Lazy days comprised of visiting wineries, tanning in the warm sun, long walks along the boulevard, barbecuing like kings on hot summer evenings and soaking up the atmosphere that is certainly sophisticated Napier. By far a personal highlight and a town I would very much like to return to. Eric Clapton is even playing at Mission Estate Winery on the 27th of January.

Hollywood doesn't hold a candle to the real life action of rural New Zealand. The morning of our drive to Wellington, cars were queued for miles; people from every direction converging on this one point of chaos where a 43-ton milk tanker lost control after the driver allegedly choked on a lollipop, pile driving through the middle of three homes. The first two were empty, but a man - already with a broken ankle - was just chilling in front of his television when the tanker smashed through the lounge wall and hurled him into the next room, fracturing his good leg in two places. The whole scene appeared totally inconceivable.

The Tongariro Crossing in the centre of North Island never lets anybody down visually and is one of the Great Walks of NZ: Contrasting worlds apart between forests, craters, ice and sulphurous lakes. This was the second time I had done it and I think by simply knowing what was coming next, it appeared easier, though the entire hike is totally manageable to most. We completed 17km in five hours.

Something has to be said about South African mentality, because we were the only two fools up that mountain in shorts without a stitch of wet or warm weather gear. I don't know what that something is, but it's probably inappropriate for virgin readers. Even being summer, it's freezing atop the craters. The wind cuts through anything that's not supposed to be there. For more information, go here.

As the trip wound to a close, I paid a visit to a friend from chiropractic school and spent a night with her family in Taupo before heading on to glow worm caving in Waitomo. Unfortunately we don't have imagery from this because it was underground, in dank, dark, watery caves. The experience was phenomenal though: Staring at thousands of fly larvae attached by mucous to cave walls with glowing buttocks is truly a captivating phenomenon. Really.

There's an image here of a camper van we spent the night next to in Waitomo, which had "Buck Fush" painted on its side. I concur after watching a documentary last night entitled "The World According to Bush". It revealed that the man who instigates war on foreign soil, legislating foreign policy, didn't even own a passport when coming into office. A few days later the same camper van crossed me on the Harbour Bridge in Auckland on my way to work.

After circling the northern half of New Zealand for two weeks, I apprehensively returned to the original site of calamity, hoping against hope that my car was still there, intact. South African fears of a burnt, metallic skeleton resting on nothing more than its axles was in mind but the sight of my Zuki again reminded me I was living in New Zealand. And the couple who looked after my car was even there to give it a jump start.

Failing to get a new accelerator cable locally, Mark and I reluctantly decided to tow back to Auckland. What is normally a two hour trip took four with a lot of intense concentration, constantly keeping the rope taught and regarding road safety at all times.

We were a little tired: A winter spent and a summer earned. Packing and driving everyday is not always easy going; trying to make decent meals out of often grotty kitchens; and coping with Rustle after Russell in each dormitory, waking you up at the crack of sparrow fart because they have to make their flight to Europe. It all makes for a little exhaustion, but with a best friend at one's side to make a joke out of everything, laugh at the dumbest things and make the most of every situation just means I'd do it again and again. Cheers, brother. This entry is for you.

Mark and Neil's NZ Road Trip
© Neil Bossenger 2007