Acid Blue

Chapter Twelve
"Acid blue, sick green and inbetween"

We wake up inbween sick greens and yellows on the trees. We're not that far from Queenstown, and not that far from Christchurch. We're gonna head towards the last big city on our trip, before driving up to Picton, Wellington and Hamilton. But first, a breakfast. The local way.

Omelette with salmon, food never tasted as good "early" in the morning. Now we're ready for the very special part of the day. The lakes. And if the kiwi-dolphin-pee did have psychedelic effects, I must still have some of it in my blood. 'cause the blues up here are acids. And amazing.


It's just like the Big Painter, the one that fixed the look of the world after getting rid of the dinosaurs, had spared all the burning, silly, amazing colors for the New Zealand South Island. And here they are, blue and golden, dancing with each other, tickling the wind.





The road flows on the side of canals, rivers and lakes. We drive on isolated, strange roads, and breath in the silence of a world that seems soo far away from everything else really.


A church in the middle of nowhere becomes a turist trap and still, it's beautiful. Even the little crowd over there becomes fascinating.


On our way into Christchurch we give a ride to a french girl that has been working in Fox Glacier for a year. That's pretty amazing. I liked Fox Glacier, but the place also gave me a kind of claustrophobic feeling, I don't think I'd have beared having to be there for so long. We salute la mademoiselle, and drive into the big town, looking for a hostel. I'm actually looking forwards to a good shower and some good food.


And there we go. Newly dressed very stilish people ready to go out and eat in an indian restaurant, ordering tikka masala and sauvignon blanc from Malborough. It's a good evening, even if we have to deal with return ferry tickets and planning for the last big drive northwards.



We end up in a pub where a kiwi family and a japanese one jump around and take pictures of themselves slowly involving all the other customers in a picture taking circle where the people that take picture after a while get dragged in front of the camera, in a constantly growing bunch og madmans.
A singsonger plays Jason Mraz and Bob Marley on his guitar, and we drink Monteiths and enjoy the show. Than, we drag our arses back to the hostel, in the glowing lights of a weird Christchurch.

Chapter Thirteen
"Danish breakfast and invisible penguins"

We stop at a danish bakery seen the day before to eat breakfast, and I must say this really is the best breakfast of the trip. We walk a bit around town, than we pack the car and leave the hostel, to drive up to the volcanic peninsula just outside Christchurch. The Chariot stops halfway out there, but hey. Give the lady two minutes two recover and she's as good as new.




The wind is blowing crazy out past Governors Bay. And the turist road to Akaroa seems to never end. When we at last get there we get told it's quite difficult to see penguins, dolphins and anything really. We'd have to get on (an expensive) cruise. So we give up, driving for as long as we can and showing our fingers to the invisible penguins and the hidden whales. Well, it's still amazingly beautiful here.
On our way back Jesper tries out different interesting prositions of the passenger front seat, and we laugh. we juts laugh all the way into Christchurch.


It's the end of the day and we're all pretty tired. No shops are that interesing, but at least (I fool myself into believing that) I get to take some cool pictures. It starts getting dark, and we know that we have to leave. Picton is our stop for today, and it's gonna take quite some time to get there.

On our way to the ferry we make up a bunch of fantastic rules about how to react to the different signs and things on the road. Screaming to every Britz van we meet is the most important one, I guess. We park on the side of the road just outside Picton. Our ferry is gonna leave around 6, so we better get up in time tomorrow.

Chapter fourteen
"Of silly minds and pictures that never existed but stand still"

The ferry trip it's amazing. Jesper gets to see some dolphins, Hansi and I don't. We have a cozy breakfast in Wellington, and a last shop tour where more money gets "safely invested" in clothes.
But the time-hound's biting our heels, and we've gotta run. We wave goodbye to Wellington, surely missing most of its interesting bits. But hey, it's about missing and coming back sometimes. This time that's definitly the way to go.


It's probably my fault, but I'll do as I please and I'll blame it on the Olympus. The last filmroll never came through. So all the pictures I thought I'd taken in Chritschurch at sunset, and all the amazing sunrise shots on the ferry never existed. Neither did the last pictures of Wellington.

When we get to the southern part of the Taupo lake and I open the camera, I get it as quite a shock. The last roll never started. Well. The pictures are in my mind, and that's fine. Along with all the sick fun we had in the car during the last thirty-six hours, screaming like madsquirrels.

So we're not far from Mount Doom, just a step or fifty away from the Tongariro crossing, and it's getting really dark. Jesper now knows how to count to hundred in Italian and is learning the verbs. We change seats, and I take the steering wheel, pointing towards Hamilton. Hansi reads the map, Jesper sits in the backseat talking to a plastic bag. A couple of hours away from Hamilton we change for the last time and Hansi gets on the driver seat.

We disappear in the night, three knights of an order of fools, six pairs of tired eyes and three brains smashed into tiny pieces by a road-trip tornado. We got to damned Invercargill and up again, and we laughed our arses off. Somedays we looked like hobos and smelled like mountain goats, some other days we looked pretty and smelled nice. We had breakfasts like never before, fooled and got fooled. Creating rules for a world trapped between the doors of a Mitsubishi Chariot, we ruled the road indeed.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe... The things you'll never forget.