HITCH-HIKING TOUR

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14573, 17 January 1948, Page 2

HITCH-HIKING TOUR

WELLINGTON BOYS VISIT THE MOUNT

DISTURBED BY HERD OF ASSES

Two Wellington schoolboys, Gordon Dollimore and Ross Murdoch, have just completed an eight-day North Island hitch-hike, which included a visit to Mount Maunganui. They found that it lacked the ease and attractions of a South Island trip they made last year, and that it was more expensive. .

Trucks they found the best travel medium for several reasons. Their weight and equipment meant little to truck drivers, whereas fitting them into a car was sometimes awkward. Trucks, moreover, took longer runs—too long sometimes. They could have taken rides of 400 miles, but this would have meant missing the sights en route, and both were ardent photographers. Once a commercial traveller took them 250 miles over uninteresting country. They took waterproof sleeping bags, but no cooking utensils nor provisions, as their South Island experience had proved them unnecessary there. This did not work out auite so well in the North Island. They went from Wellington via the Wairarapa, turning off along the Taupo Road, and from Taupo to Rotorua, where they saw all the sights and took one of the sightseeing flights. Thence they went to Hamilton, on to New Plymouth, and back to Wellington. They slept out three nights alongside the road, once in a railway shed. At Mount Maunganui they were asleep in a big field when they were "bowled over" by a herd of asses, which ran over them. If it had not been for the outbreak of infantile paralysis they would have gene on to Auckland. Except for one heavy shower, they had good weather.

_"One of the chief pleasures in hitch-hiking is that you never know where you are going next day," said one of them. "When you go to sleep one night you don't know where you will sleep the next, or even where you will go. This uncertainty is much better fun than a fixed route or time-table. The only trouble with hitch-hiking is that it has become too popular, and it is no longer a novelty to passing motorists, who do not always pull up now. "We found people more ready to help in the South Island last year, and that is where we will go again next year. It is terribly expensive round the tourist resorts, where one can spend £1 a day on almost nothing. The North Island trip cost us £6 each, while the South Island one cost us each only £5."