Keen to get on the road again

Ididn’t have a car or American driver’s licence when I lived in the United States, so my first road trip in the country was onboard a 40-seater sleep-on vehicle known as the ‘‘hippie bus’’, ‘‘highway hostel’’ and ‘‘Woodstock on wheels’’. Our motley crew of American college students, European and Australian young professionals, and the cash-strapped Kiwi journalist got to know each other over games of cards in diner-style booths as we set out from San Francisco and the golden beaches alongside California’s Highway One gave way to the wild western landscapes of Nevada and Utah.

In the evenings, we would pull up at a remote camping spot, pitch in to prepare dinner, and tell tales around the campfire until it was time to transform the bus into a communal bedroom.

Being a light sleeper, I went with the bring-your-own tent option, doing my best to strike the delicate balance between being close enough to the bus to hear the morning wakeup call and far enough away to avoid being tripped over by my travel/drinking buddies.

In my mid-30s, I would have preferred a few more luxuries (regular showers, a decent night’s sleep, and some element of privacy wouldn’t have gone amiss), but it turned out to be quite the trip.

Highlights included wandering through rooms that once hosted parties attended by old Hollywood heavyweights such as Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable at Hearst Castle; listening to a band of elephant seals trumpet to one another on a beach outside Monterey; hauling myself to the top of a red-rock canyon in

Zion National Park; scaring myself silly on a glass platform above the Grand Canyon; and trying (but sadly failing) to change my cash-strapped status in Las Vegas.

In New Zealand, and blessed with my own car, I have taken to heading off on mini roadies whenever I can.

Despite being born and raised in this country, so much of it is still foreign territory to me that I feel as much of a sense of adventure as I did on that crazy road trip in the US.

I’ve found myself inching across ice toward a hidden lake mirroring snow-capped mountains along a gravel road past Paradise; swimming at a string of blooming pohutukawa-backed beaches where kids drove tractors up and down the sand on the East Cape; and discovering a porthole back to the classic Kiwi camping experience of decades past near the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula.

After three months in lockdown in Auckland, I’m itching to get out there (don’t worry, I’m double vaccinated).

And I’m even more keen since reading Brook Sabin’s story on pages 46-47 on what he reckons are New Zealand’s best road trips. The wildlife highway between Invercargill and Dunedin sounds just as trippy as my journey on the hippie bus. In a good way.