Auckland Jan 19th, Big Day Out Music Festival and roadtrip

Wow what a Fun six days of travelling which took me from Christchurch 1000kms north and to the Auckland music festival which they proudly call The big day out, my mode of transport was a United campervan as part of a relocation deal which cost me absolutly nothing, ahh free camper to sleep, free fuel and free ferry crossing and i had a couple of diversions on the way up which included abseiling in the famous Waitomo caves and a 7 hour hike to the impressive Tonogario National park in the middle of the north island a location used for the filming of Lord of the rings not that ive seen the movie.

The night before driving to Auckland i parked up for the night at a service stop which included a 24 hr gas station and a local pub and thats exactly what it was as local a new zealander bar i have experienced so far, i sat myself down with a well deserved beer after my day of driving and abseiling listening to the locals talking and watching the pool being played, also looking around at all the rugby memorbelia on the walls from all local teams and not forgetting there love for the mighty all blacks with a huge t-shirt hung proudly above the bar area. one guy introduced himself to me saying he was dissappointed thats the strippers had cancelled there show for that night, so was i, i said to him.

The day of the big day out started for me at 7am because i had to drive to the city to drop my bag off at my friends backpackers hes called Peter Hill, We then drove to the airport to drop off the campervan which took double the time first of all we got lost then we asked a lady in a courier van the way to the airport this was at the traffic lights intersection she said follow me and thats exactly what we did until we ended up following her to her house she meant to say follow me until you see the sign for Airport. We was very fortunate to hitch lifts twice to make it to the festival firstly a Spanish couple dropped us near the stadium then with a km still to go we gave it another go and after about 2 minutes a local kiwi guy in a work van stopped and drove us right up to the gate, on the way we was whistling to pretty girls and taking random silly pictures of people including a pakastani window cleaner.

The music festival was really good as we got to see The Killers, Lilly Alan from England, Jet and Chemical Romance, It was a really hot day and a great atmosphere, As we left the stadium we ended up hitchhiking again for the third time that day back to our hostel, after 15 minutes of walking with our thumbs up a Russian guy in a spots car picked us up so a good day for hitching lifts in Auckland.

My mate Peter Hill from Kent in England who by the way never smiles for pictures doesn´t think hes that funny well he is!!! and whilst in Auckland on a night out after the Big day out we bumped into two road construction workers and after some talking with them they eventually gave us their sign which said GO on one side and STOP on the other amazing ahh, well it was a hit taking it around the bars all the girls wanted to hold it and have pictures with us, quite silly really but peter after not much perswasion decided to put the sign to the test and divert some real new zealand traffic luckily no police cars come by, but he did very well and lots of people stood laughing at the idiot in the middle of the road with a stop/go sign, i was there encouraging him whilst videoing the whole event, some cars were getting very confused it was either follow the traffic lights or Peters sign. we told some girls as a joke that we designed the sign ourselfs and we had difficulty with the spelling ie: we thought Go was spelt with a K they actually thought we was stupid. this is proudly been uploaded onto peter hills my space website and his mum is very happy with it.