Posting nice pictures and great stories about beautiful places so far, it is now time to introduce you to the days that took place in the middle of the trip.

Because our next days turned out to be different to what we had expected at first. With the little information that was given in our travel guide, we started our way to the Onenui Station, which seemed to be an observatory. It was a long way on a narrow gravel road and the further we went, the less it looked like there was any civilisation out there. We passed by hundreds of sheep and cows and from time to time there was a nice outlook to the seaside.
When finally arriving at a farm behind a hill, our navigation system on the phone told us to turn left.
Following the instruction we pulled left to start our way on a downhill gravel road. It all did not seem to be a special place. But all over a sudden someone started yelling at us. When we stopped the car, a man from the building site asked us where we wanted to go. We said that we planned to go to the Onenui Station. A little bit confused he nodded and after a second he asked: “Do you have the code for the gate?”
Now the confusion was on our side. Gate – what gate?
The man started to explain, that the “observatory” we planned to visit, turned out to be a NASA Station with several security measures.
In that way the friendly man who worked on the building site nearby helped us to avoid any trouble by being stopped at a NASA security gate.
We didn’t see the station in the end but we drove back with a funny memory and we will always call it the day we nearly tried to randomly visit a NASA Station.

But that was not it for the day. In the night we watched Gilmore Girls as we mostly did to calm down after a day, as you can watch it without any concentration. Nothing seemed to be unusual. Suddenly I heard something outside the car. Not knowing if that was just created by my brain, I did not say anything to Anna first. But when I heard it for a second time I turned the volume of my device down and tried to focus on the noise outside. It took us some seconds before it came back. In these seconds I could clearly see that Anna was not afraid of what might be out there, but she was scared that the person she sat in the car with, might be completely insane.
Luckily it occurred again. It sounded like a mixture of a dog and a cat not being very amused about us parking the car in its territory. It was a strange sound containing characteristics of both, growling and hissing. Being interested in animals ever since I can remember, I was shocked that I could not analyse what animal was out there waiting for us. The only thing that we knew was that it was not amused. We both still needed to go to the bathroom to get ready for sleeping. And this was the moment, when our life turned into a scene that could be part of a horror-comedy movie script.
I have seen quite a view movies in my life with people in strange situations and so I decided to turn this into reality. Laying on the backseats where we normally slept, I climbed on the driver’s seat to turn the headlights on. We were too scared to get out of the car for taking the seat like normal people do. Still not seeing the animal, I started the motor and drove backwards, hoping to see our friend out there. But there was nothing. Probably it ran away by the moment I started the engine. Now we could have behaved like normal adults by parking the car and going to the bathrooms, to finally get some sleep. But not with us…still scared I decided to drive to the bathrooms so that we had as less time outside in the dark as possible.
I still hope that no one saw what we were doing and how we behaved. Looking back the overreaction is hitting me right in the face but back then it seemed to be the right and only way to avoid the animal that was out there.

One of these days we were done with our daily programme quite early and wanted to search the free camping spot Anna had found. Arriving in Wairoa my first impression was the definition of a ghost town. Following the “main road”, if you can call it like that, we arrived in the industrial part of the town. When Anna said that I had to turn right to arrive to our destination, I was a bit shocked. All that was there was a random parking lot next to a factory. She could read the No in my face. This parking lot was shouting the word kidnapping. A quiet place next to a factory in a town that is already scary when driving through it.
We went back to the street that was supposed to be the town center. It was a sunny and hot afternoon but nearly everything was closed. The only places that were open were rather dubious than trustworthy convenience stores. The longer we walked around the more creepy this empty town seemed and in the end the only thing we wanted, was to leave Wairoa to get on the road again and drive far away from the strange town with its very few and weird seeming people that were the only living beings we could spot. Whenever I want to produce an apocalyptic movie with zombies, I know where to go.

The conclusion of these strange and somehow funny stories was, that a backpacker’s life is not like an Instagram account. There are not only the prettiest views with perfect and nice people. Travelling and especially travelling like we did, has its up and downs, its weird stories and funny unusual moments. At least when Anna and me are on the road.