A bummer of a 200th post

Sigh. Hello from Taihape. What a day it has been. This also marks my 200th post, and what a bummer of an entry it will be... oh well. Long story short, here's the deal.

I was in Lower Hutt this weekend (Friday/Saturday). This morning, I got up at 6:30am and packed my bags, ready to head out to Taupo and then on to travel the east cape of the north island, which is supposed to be just an awesome, scenic, cultural experience. Fish and Sam both got up early with me and drove me to my bus pick-up point in Wellington for 7:45am. We said our goodbyes and I got on the bus. We drove 2 hours down the road to a small town called Bulls, at which point my driver got a phone call from the office in Auckland to tell him that my East As trip had been cancelled. AWESOME. So now I'm 2 hours down the road, going in the wrong direction, I have nowhere to go, I have 9 days left in the country, and I've just left my friends in Wellington/the Hutt.

Gutted. So we try to figure some alternative plan out (I even temporarily contemplated flying to Fiji or Australia for a week, but realized that financially that would be quite difficult). Instead I decide I'm going to hop a bus back to Wellington tomorrow. Fine, I'll stay on the bus for 4 hours to Taupo, then catch a public bus to Welly.

We get back on the road and not 10km out of Bulls we hear this huge BANG! .....The emergency exit panel on the roof has just ripped off in the wind, and it's freezing out there and about to rain. The driver pulls over, we get delayed by about an hour altogether with all the stops he had to make to call the Kiwi Experience office, pick up screwdrivers from gas stations to try to temporarily fix this gaping hole in the roof of the bus, etc. In the end, we drove all the way with the emergency exit dangling from the roof, freezing cold winter air coming in, yadda yadda. Just the icing on the cake after I've just found out that I got up early after only a few hours of sleep for nothing, found out my trip was cancelled, etc. On the bright side, my driver and I come up with the idea to just drop me off in Taihape so that the next Kiwi Experience bus coming south can pick me up and take me RIGHT BACK TO WELLINGTON, where I started at 7:45 this morning (only I won't get there until 6pm, so essentially it has been a totally wasted day).

Stupid, stupid, stupid day. I am freezing, I'm gutted that I'm not going to do the east cape trip, and I've wasted a day on a cold and windy bus with no roof in the middle of New Zealand winter.

The southbound bus from River Valley should be pulling into Taihape to pick me up soon so with that I'll sign off. Better moods ahead once I get back to Wellington and get to see more friends.

Ka pai.