Wanderin' New Zealand (2018)

2017 was a down year for me. I had spent nearly all my money on getting us out of debt and had less than $100 dollars to my name before I ended up hitchhiking and riding trains back to the dropzone in WNY for work. I had worked the past 3 summers there and this was no different, except it was a down year for jumping, of course…and I needed money. There was a lot of rain and when August came around, I quit to find work elsewhere, to head west by freight and work at Crater Lake National Park. I worked for a while, and with minimal expenses between dorm living and scavenging food. I had squirreled away enough to buy plane tickets to New Zealand. What I hadn’t planned was my working holiday visa not getting approved in a timely manner. I had needed to get a chest x-ray done to prove I hadn’t contracted Tuberculosis when I had traveled around Asia in 2014 and 2015, which I hadn’t, but nonetheless, Kelly ended up in New Zealand a month prior to my arrival. I had only done the first leg and ended up wanderin’ around the Hawaiian Islands, where I worked on a farm, worked for Michael and his mother clearing and tending land and planting a banana garden, and eventually made my way to New Zealand even though my airline went out of business.

We lived in Napier for about a month at the historical prison that did day tours before moving to Te Mata Peak, where we fixed up the building, sanding countertops, painting walls, and cleaning floors to start KAI AT THE PEAK, a coffee shop that promoted Māori Tourism. We worked here until April and then we started hitchhiking to the South Island to explore and work a construction gig at Lake Pukaki before heading back to Christchurch where we took a flight home.

This zine, which I will release in the "Zines" section, covers some of the random adventures of my time hitchhiking the North Island and riding freight trains when they randomly stumbled into my life out of Palmerston North to Wellington, Hamilton to Auckland, and Hamilton to Tauranga. I wish I had gotten more riding in, but maybe it will happen down the road if we ever go back there…

All pictures herein were taken by Kelly or myself on our shitty phones or my GoPro at the time. Many are low quality screenshots from videos I took when I was traveling, when I still enjoyed the pleasures of YouTube and all that unnecessary bullshit. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the stories, and if you ever get a chance to visit New Zealand, definitely hitchhike around the island and experience the Māori Culture. It was one of the greatest experiences I have had on my travels, learning about the wood carvings, seeing the intricate facial tattoos, trimming weed in the countryside where the sun practically swallows the sky every morning when it’s summoned from the ocean, and just learning about their use of the stars, bringing seeds over from elsewhere to start living on this continent that is mostly submerged. That is Zealandia.