RIP Moldy Milo

I remember blogging before about how safe and courteous kiwi drivers were, pulling to the side of the road to allow you to pass if you were in a hurry, not scolding you should you forget your signal at a roundabout. So polite that one wonders why they even have horns on their cars, except maybe to compel sheep to leave the roadway.

We left Raglan that morning with great news. While I had heard about my job in Margaret River, Tracy was still waiting to hear a final confirmation. The more time passed, the more concerning things were becoming, as it was a bit late in the game to be restarting a job search for harvest. But the news finally came. She had gotten the job! But as we drove out of Raglan making plans for champagne on our arrival in Hawks Bay, we came around the corner of an S-curve and spotted trouble. A black BMW had taken the turn too fast and had already started fishtailing coming towards us. We had time to slow down and make for the ditch just as the BMW fishtailed back the other way and struck our car full on, leaving us in the ditch and her in the middle of the road.

A car crash isn't very fun to read about, and is even less fun to write about, so I'll skip the details. We both made it out of the car ok, I had a pretty good knock on the head and banged up knees, and Tracy had a sore neck from the whiplash and some pretty serious seatbelt bruises, but otherwise we were ok. Milo did not fare quite so well. Nor, should it be noted, did the Idiot Irene's BMW (names may have been altered to more accurately reflect intelligence). To be safe, we both were taken to the hospital to get checked out, about a 40 minute ambulance ride away. Quite a few of the medical staff there, including our ER nurse (French) and doctor (Chinese) were foreigners, something I thought was kind of interesting. What was far more interesting was that after we were treated, we just walked out the door.

New Zealand has a very interesting program set up that whenever there is an accident, a government organization called the ACC covers all of the medical costs associated with the accident, including emergency care and secondary treatment. The idea is to keep people from suing each other for exorbitant amounts of money, and making sure that everyone involved, even those that are at fault, can get health care. The costs of the program are covered by vehicle registration fees, which are a few hundred dollars every 6 months. So medical care that would have cost us around $6000 in the US without insurance was completely covered in NZ. And yes, somehow they are saving money doing it.

We spent the next few days back in Raglan recovering from our injuries and trying to figure out exactly what to do next. The other driver's insurance would cover the damage to our care since she was at fault (and charged with reckless driving to boot), but in the meantime we had no transportation and were trapped in a rather beautiful but isolated place.

That's when kiwi generosity kicked in.

After a day or so we went to the local garage to collect all of our belongings from Milo, who was towed into town after the accident. The mechanic at the garage, after seeing we were planning on walking back into town with all of our gear, asked if we wanted to borrow their loaner car. I said yes and promised to have it back within 20 minutes, but he tossed me the keys and told me to keep it for a few days until we could sort ourselves out.

A few nights later as we sat outside our hotel room (we opted not to return to the backpackers, who were nice enough to find us a place at a quiet hotel in town that wasn't too expensive), the owners of the hotel, Andy and Brent, came by and struck up a conversation. After finding out what happened, Andy offered to take us back to his house the next morning for a soak in his hot tub and a personal tour of all the local sites in the area. We had managed to track down a car in a town about 40 minutes south of Raglan (thank god for the internet), and Andy even agreed to drop us there when we were finished on the tour. We couldn't say no.

While the kiwis may not have lived up to their reputation as being safe and courteous drivers, they more than lived up to their reputation for kindness and generosity.

We were in a car accident. Our car was totaled. And within 5 days we were mostly healed up and back on the road.

The road ahead

Its a wonderful feeling. The converging in a single point in time, that moment tasted on the last day of school before summer or a first kiss, that rare moment when time, money and opportunity are all on your side, when you have nothing but open road in front of you. Our day had come.

Over breakfast that morning we broke out our lonely planet to decide where to head to first. We were both keen to do some backpacking, but elected to spend a few more days relaxing from the journey before getting our boots in the mud. We settled on Raglan, a sleepy little surfer town about 3 hours south of Auckland on the west coast, just outside of Hamilton. Car packed and occupants caffinated, we hit the road.

Getting outside of Auckland proper didn't take long (even in a car whose top speed was only 90k, about 50mph), and before we know it we were winding through a postcard of the sunny New Zealand countryside. The hillsides were not dotted with sheep however, but cows. As we later found out, the dairy industry had soared recently, thanks to the high price that milk products were demanding in the market, so many former sheep farmers had traded their crooks for metal buckets and ridden the lactose wave. The rest of the county, however, looked exactly as I had remembered it.

We pulled into Raglan around the middle of the afternoon and found our backpackers. After dropping our gear and picking up some dinner supplies, we headed out to the black sand beaches for a stroll and a beer before dinner. The town was not actually on the ocean, but a few kilometers to the east of it along an innlet. Raglan is known for being one of the best surfing locations in New Zealand, but for us this meant one thing: it was really damn windy. Like two weeks later you are still pulling sand out of your ear windy. I had been thinking a swim would be quite nice, but as the clouds descended and the wind increased, I had second thoughts, so we headed for home. Fortunately for us, our backpackers was equipped with a hot tub!

The next day we borrowed some kayaks and went for a paddle in the innlet before once again attempting to head to the beach for a swim. The wind remained almost as strong as the day before, but I was determined enough to dash out in between clouds. Feeling quite satisfied with myself, we spent the rest of the afternoon soaking and reading before another quiet evening of cooking dinner and watching movies. We decided the next morning to make a break for Hawk's Bay and wine country on the east coast and seemed to be hitting our travelling groove.

If only we had known what was just around the next corner.