The Batmobile

“Would you be Ok with the Batmobile?” he asked. Looking up, I couldn’t conceal the big goofy grin that had sprawled across my face and responded “Absolutely”.

My good friend Tim Oborn just wrote an incredible post on his blog as he and his family of four travel the world. On this last blog he wrote about many of the things that he has learned during his travels. World travel certainly brings with it lessons that cannot be taught any other way. One of the things he learned was that it is always best to book things last minute.

We wanted to have a camper van to tour NZ, but realized that by booking only 6 months in advance, we could not get a van that could be picked up in Aukland (North Island) and dropped off in Christchurch (South Island). We had to drive out and back, which reduced the amount of NZ that could be traveled significantly. After reading Tim’s blog, we decided to see what we could do about changing things last minute. We were able to drop it off in Christchurch, could get an extra two days, and they waived the one way fee of $300. OK, I am now a fan of last minute booking!

New Zealand drivers are crazy. The highways are quite curved and narrow. Speed limits of 100km make you laugh because you think speeds like that could only be possible in high performance cars by professional drivers who know how to drift around corners. New Zealanders seem to have no issue meeting the speed limits on these highways while we chug along at an average speed of 60 km/h hoping not to turn the camper van onto one side or the other. Our campervan is very special because it has a graphic on the drivers side (the right side) of the Batman driving the Batmobile, with Robin hanging on for dear life onto the rear spoiler. As car after car passes us (likely cursing) they must have a good laugh at the irony. (Incidentally, the left side is a picture of the Batman kapowing some sort of bad guy. Heather has nicknamed the Batmobile the Un-hippy van. Nevertheless, she now refers to Fenton as Robin and can often be heard crying out to him, “to the Batmobile, Robin.”)

Day 1 of 15 in the Batmobile was spent driving a little North of Auckland to Coroglen’s Hot Beach. Only it wasn’t hot. It was windy. Very windy. So windy that the sand felt like glass cutting your skin. So we ventured on to Mount Montganui where it was also windy. Very windy. Apparently we were experiencing the tail winds of a cyclone. Nevertheless we managed to find a campsite to park the Batmobile in, a playground to let little Robin run around in, and enough shelter to make supper.

The next morning we decided to head straight to the home of volcanic activity - Rotorua. The highways were much less curved and it was a relief to be free of the gale force winds that threatened to tip our van over or push us into oncoming traffic. Rotorua is beautiful. It has been 12 years since I have been here and so much has changed. The hostel that I stayed in no longer exists. Pam’s Muesli is no longer sold. However, the Kuirau park with all of the boiling mud pools are still here. As well, there is still the Polynesian Spa with their choice of many natural hot springs to sit in and watch your jewelry oxidize before your eyes. Only Reykovic’s hot springs compare to this one in my experience.

Tomorrow we plan to head to one of the greatest volcanic parks in the world, Wai-O-Tapu. After that we will continue south as far as we can towards Wellington.