Getting on the Bus (Backpacker Culture)

Ok, so. Let’s begin near the beginning. I spent the night of March 29th in Picton, a very small town (as most of the towns for the next few days were going to be) that basically serves as a connection between the North and South Islands. This is where the big Interislander ferry from Wellington docks, but nothing much else happens there.

(The Interislander ferry, by the way, was amazing. Having never been on a cruise ship or other luxurious boat before, I was kind of in awe. I felt like I was in moving mansion.)

So I didn’t do much in Picton. But the next morning I boarded my bus. Now I think a word of explanation is needed. I did my 11-day tour on a Stray bus, which is just one of a number of hop-on hop-off bus services that are very popular in New Zealand and Australia. Both countries have a lot of backpackers that want to see a lot of the country (or, in the case of Australian backpackers, a lot of beaches and bars). These buses are really good because they bring you to landmarks/sites that are hard to get to otherwise—you really need either a bus or a car to get around Down Under. In Australia the Greyhound buses are also popular—a lot of Australian backpackers just do the East Coast route down from Cairns to Sydney, and on that route the Greyhound buses cover pretty much the same ground as backpacker buses, at half the cost. (For this reason, a lot of people on round the world tickets going home through America tell me they’re going to take the Greyhound across the country. I find it prudent to warn them that they might be a little surprised by the differences between American and Aussie Greyhounds.) So anyway, yes, these backpacker buses are really useful. They also, of course, have their downsides, like the many, many photo/walk/activity stops that can make getting anywhere extremely laborious/expensive (especially if you’re at all tempted by extreme sports and going around New Zealand). But what I consider the main downside to these buses is that as much as the tour guides try, you’re not getting Kiwi culture on them. You’re getting a good, hearty dose of backpacker culture. Which is a kind of strange beast.

So. I got on the bus in Picton. About two-thirds of the bus (including the driver/tour guide, whose Stray nickname was Mambo) had gone round the North Island together and were a pretty firm group, but there were a few newbies like me. To help us all get to know each other, Mambo got us to do what he called “speed dating,” which meant we all had to go sit with someone new, introduce ourselves and start talking to them, and then a few minutes later go find another new person. As I talked to what seemed like a hundred people (all from England or Ireland, or so it seemed), a pattern quickly emerged. First would be the exchange of names—unusual in backpacker culture, in which the first question is almost always “Where are you from?” prompting a conversation that often takes ten minutes to get around to the exchange of names. But right after the names was that golden first question, which tells a backpacker so much. Where are you from? Now, I’ve gotten this answer down to a tee, which I think is a lot more than most can say. I say “New York.” I find this specific enough that it won’t need immediate clarification (as “America” would), but suitably vague so if someone is interested they can ask “New York, New York, or just New York?” It drives me absolutely crazy that every single English person, with the exception of a few Londoners, says “England.” YOU ARE ALL FROM ENGLAND, please specify a LITTLE! Anyway, so the first question is important. And I realized quite quickly after getting to Australia that my answer was pretty unusual. But the reactions on this bus were astounding. Most people just gasped, in a tone of extreme shock, “New York!” A few said something in an awed voice such as “New York citaaaaay.” Some started reminiscing about five days they spent there five years ago, while others mentioned their long-unrealized desire to go to New York. One girl, after talking about herself for a minute, said “but New York, what’s THAT like!?” To which I oh-so-eloquently responded, “it’s like… home.”

At first I thought I got this reaction just because it was New York, seen so often in books, movies, and TV shows that people hardly think it’s real. But I soon realized that the shock wasn’t just about New York—it was in meeting an American. 300 million of us, and yet I seemed to be many people’s “second American”—in the 2-4 months they had been travelling, I was the second American they had met. Mambo told me that he can do 3-4 loops of both the North and South Island before he gets an American on his bus. I think that’s all a bit of an exaggeration, but then whenever I hear an American accent I pounce and ask where the speaker is from—to someone not constantly listening out for the accent, we are rare enough that meeting one of us is cause for surprise. (I’m sorry to say, by the way, that about half of the “American” accents I hear turn out to be Canadians. There are way more Canadians around these parts than Americans, and as a result I’ve gotten way better at identifying the Canadian accent.)

So that’s the first question out of the way. We’ve established that I am from America, that exotic land across the sea, and I have been able to dig out of the person next to me that he or she is from Bristol, or Liverpool, or Kent and yes, I do know where that is. So we arrive at the next question! “How long are you in New Zealand?” or perhaps, “how long have you been travelling?” And here, backpacker culture strikes again. There were two people on my bus on a three-week holiday. One was going around just New Zealand with his girlfriend, who was on a 3-month round-the-world trip with a group of friends. The other was just someone who (shock-of-shocks) actually has a full-time job and could only take 3 weeks off. Everyone else had epic tales to tell. They had spent a month in Australia and now had 3 weeks in New Zealand before a week in Thailand, four days in Singapore and a couple nights in Hong Kong. But no! Instead of Hong Kong, this person was going to Malaysia. And over there, they were going to have a vacation from their vacation in Fiji. Instead of going home through Asia, some were going back through the US—and had a carefully planned itinerary including four nights in Vegas (NOT over a weekend), and then a road trip through Texas to New Orleans, Florida and then up to New York. When I got round to telling my travel story, I often got confused looks. I had been in New Zealand for three months? I tried to explain the whole living-in-Wellington, not-finding-work
thing, but it took a few tries to get it right.

This is when I started to discover that pitfall of backpacker culture—a lot of backpackers just aren’t interested in staying in one place for a long time, getting to know the people, the cafes and the culture. They may have three, six, or eight months, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually going to get to know the countries they’re zooming through. They’re just getting to know a lot of people from England, Ireland, and oh yeah, Germany. Ask someone who’s taken a backpacker bus around both Australia and New Zealand for a total of two months a difference between Australians and New Zealanders and they’ll look at you blankly. Sure, they know what the two countries look like, they know that New Zealand is cheaper unless skydiving tempts you, and they know that the weather is better in Australia. But the people? Not so much. Take it as you will—backpacker culture.