It was during that chilly mid season between Fall and Winter (April in NZ), where during the day you can still get by in a T shirt and jeans but at night you are freezing. We had rented our tiny white Nissan in Auckland, and it had been with us for almost a week now. It was the cheapest car available, and we had made a commitment to eachtoher that we would spend our hard earned dinero on it, rather than on hostels and those terrible backpacker tour buses. The freedom to go where we wanted, when we wanted, was well worth the 19 dollars a day. So far, that is exactly what we had done. From Russell, to Cape Reinga, to 90 mile beach, we had traversed the North island of New Zealand with ease. We were headed for Wellington where we would load ourselves and our snazzy little car onto the ferry to continue our tour of this great country.

As we pulled away from Rotorua, a quiet tourist town smack in the middle of the north island, we were warm and rested. Paying 10 bucks a head, we had spent the day amongst the Asian tourists submerged in the smelly sulfur pools fed by the areas famous hot springs. We took long showers, which we found were few and far between due to our lack of accomodations, and bundled up for the ride. Lake Taupo was only an hour or so away, and we had decided, based on nothing other than it sounded like a cool place, that it was where we would spend the night. During the drive, the sky darkened, the clouds opened, and it started to pour.

Pulling into the city in the pitch black of the midnight storm, we were at a loss. Our previous plan had always been to arrive in new cities during the day, scout out a quiet park or look out spot, and set up camp in our 2 man tent. Tonight, we had no such luxury. With Tracy Chapman blaring on the stero (one of only a handful of CDs we had on rotation the whole 2 weeks) we looked at eachother and knew it was going to be a long night. So we did what any 3 single, 20 somethings would do, we found a pub and got wasted. We ate JoJos, gossiped, and giggle for nearly 2 hours, trying to put the reality of our situation our of our minds. Once 6 beers deep on Lion Red, we headed out into the night. Sufficiently drunk, we found a park right on the lake. It was pretty wooded and the trees did manage to offer some shelter from the rain. Headlamps in place, and heads hooded, we frantically set up camp in the storm. Once zipped in from the dark, the rain deafening as it pounded on the tent, we prepared ourselves for the frigid night by layering virtually every item of clothing we had on our bodies. Finally hudded up in our routine spooning position, the three of us: Steffo, Croz and I, held on to eachother's sleepbags and eventually fell asleep.

We awoke to a clear sky, a new day, and no doubt another adventure.