The Kiwi Experience

Wednesday 17th March 2010, 11.50pm, Bazil's Backpackers - Westport.

Travelling overland in the back of a coach has formed a large part of my backpacking experience, it's the cheapest way to get around and once you've taken your seat you can let someone else worry about getting you to your destination. In Asia this had it's own difficulties. Will my bag get stolen from the hold, will the driver overcharge me, will the air conditioning work, how many times will we stop to pick up locals who fall asleep in the aisles on the floor, are the tracks we travel on going to be so dangerous and bumpy that I am frequently thrown out of my seat, will I be dumped by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere without explanation etc. etc.

Well, it's quite different here. Before coming away, Ella and I booked what is called the Kiwi Experience package. A travel company aimed at 18 to 30 year olds who transport you from one New Zealand highlight to another with the driver acting as your informant and tour guide. Today marked the beginning of our Kiwi Experience when we were collected from our hostel by a mini van and taken to meet the bus and our fellow travellers at a roadside stop somewhere between Christchurch and Westport, on the North-West coast.

There's no mistaking it; it's a 55 seater big green beast that I imagine Kiwis all over the country dread pulling in to their town, carrying with it tens of cheapskate, rowdy backpackers looking for the nearest pint. Our bus companions who we will be spending the majority of the next few weeks with, are young, very young. There's a few other decrepit twenty-somethings but there are also a large percentage of private schooled, hair flicking, rugby shirt wearing 18 year olds on a gap year with Daddy's gold card. Bless their privileged cashmere socks. They seem pleasant enough though, so I'm resolving to throw off any reservations, proletariat class system biases and the feeling that I've returned to work - although my 18 year olds would eat these ones for breakfast, nick their wallets and then probably set fire to something.

Apart from the disappointing revelation that I am in fact an old lady, I'm feeling so much more excited about being in New Zealand. It strikes me as a place where anything can happen if you let it. Quite unexpectedly I went Jet Boating today, 20 passengers sit in a huge speed boat which race along the Buller River, the driver pulling sharply to one side at very high speeds or narrowly missing the rock face by centimetres in water no more than a foot deep - it was like a ride at Alton Towers, but with better views. Then this evening, in the secluded, backward little town of Westport, the 50 or so of us descended on the only pub in town (instantly doubling the number of drinkers and quadrupling the profits) to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by dancing Celtic jigs to the twangs and strains of the town's Irish band.

The Kiwi Experience is so practised, so meticulously organised, that all I have to do is sign my name on the few clipboards that are passed my way and I will find myself with accommodation booked, dinner cooked, sporting activities planned, directions to night life pointed out, and history, geology and culture tidbits fed to me through the tour guide's microphone. This is travelling at it's easiest - having other people rigidly and competently arrange my fun. Tomorrow I am told I will be going on 3 walks around various locations along the West Coast, I will look at Pancake Rocks and Limestone Blowholes (?) and cliff-lined bays and I will be happy that someone else has made this happen for me.

All the more time for me to worry about nothing and stare vacantly out the coach window at the South Island landscape, which, you'll have to forgive me, we'll come to in a later blog. I haven't the words for it now - too much Guinness. Let me just say this though, yesterday I wanted to get back on a plane to Thailand. Today, because of the scenery and the scenery alone, no beach or sunny day in the world could tear me away from the next month I have here... prepare yourselves for some over egging of the superlatives guys, I ain't seen nothing like it yet.