Well, we finally made it onto the road. The van is not finished but we have everything we really need in there. We decided it was time to just hit the road and see what we needed and did not need.
I had forgotten how much I love the feeling of traveling. I was looking through my Facebook account and found a quote I wrote when I first set up my FB all of 13 years ago. It must have been when I was in India traveling around “I long for the open road, my front wheel consuming the road and pulling me into time and space as the past evaporates off my back wheel.” I would change this now to “front wheels” and “back wheels” as I have moved from a motorbike to a van but the feeling and sentiment are very much the same.
So the road we hit with no particular plan, the main plan being that this is no plan. This was just a test road trip to see how we got on. As soon as we got out of Auckland the land starts to open up, become wilder. Motorways turn to single lanes, then to twisting bush-clad roads. Our first stop in Opononi where a friend of a friend we have never met offered us their bach to use (Kiwi hospitality is amazing). Opononi is at the opening of a huge natural harbor, we spent two glorious nights here.
The van worked out great, she was very comfortable and the design worked very well. We are officially van dwellers. Also, the van has a name now, she is called Jackie. My very clever wife thought that because of all the paint splashes on the van, she is like a Jackson Pollock painting so…. Jackie she is.