Messing with the Man

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - 21st January 2010

Travelling alone leaves you a lot of time alone with your thoughts, but it was nevertheless surprising to find myself contemplating, of all things, the nature of money as I sat here in the "interlander" ferry terminal. In particlar, what makes one financially prudent when it comes the cheapest hostels, transport, even meals, and feel bad about splashing out an extra $5 on dinner, but happily write off swathes of cash on crazy activities and put it down as necessary expenditure without giving it a second thought.

The main reason for this slightly tangential line of thought came at some stage yesterday afternoon on my drive down from New Plymouth. After a disappointing detour to the Mount Taranaki visitor centre only to have the whole area swamped in cloud, it was straight down to Wanganui for lunch and then down Highway 1 all the way to Wellington.

Unfortunately, "highway" doesn't mean much short of being a trunk road - it's still a single lane in each direction and heads right through the middle of every village en route. The latter presented the main issue - the speed limit falls from the standard 100km/h to 70, and then right down to 50 as you pass through town centres. Sadly for me, I ignored the latter as I passed through Levin, and a few hundred metres up the road my rear view mirror was full of blue and red flashing lights. 79km/h in a 50 zone? $170 thank you very much - and 28 days to pay up . Not cool.

With money being spent for fun in this country, I'd have expected myself to be seriously pissed off by this development. For some reason though, my financial value system slotted this in the "necessary to have a laugh" file and off I went - more amused than anything else.

Wellington greeted me with blazing sunshine - a welcome change from the meteorological crap I've had to put up with seemingly everywhere else I've been - and I passed a relaxing evening checking out the sights, including New Zealand's "Beehive" Parliament building (right) and the ubiquitous red cable car up to the top of the Botanic Garden Hill. The sunshine had locals out in numbers (the weather having been notably craptacular down here for the last week or so), all centred around a stage area at the foot of the gardens where local Brit-pop inspired band "The Supermodels" were the evening's entertainment in the city's month-long summer festival. Covering bands ranging from The Killers to the Rolling Stones and The Cardigans, as well as the Franz Ferdinand blast below, they were pretty damn good - aided by a fantastic location and a buzzing crowd.

Now, it's cheerio North Island till the 30th, and off to the scenic South.

P.S. Events have inspired me to introduce a periodic addition to the blog - with backdated additions from October, keep an eye out for:

The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
# 11 - When speeding through small villages, remember to search for cop cars hidden behind other, more innocent, parked cars. Or trucks. Or just slow down.