backpacker #2 | How I started writing backpacker's stories in New Zealand.

^{Discovering The Bay of Plenty. By @cnandofer}

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Goodbye to Muhammed.

Since I was staying at the hostel of Te Puke, I was in a very nice group of friends. Lara, Antonella, Mk, Don José and I used to visit several places around the "Bay of Plenty", for some reason that I don’t remember, we named our group the “Tequila Team”. With the exception of Don José, everyone else lived together at Muhammed's place. However, after spending a few days without water, with a broken shower and after getting to know Muhammed better, little by little most of the people who lived in his house decided to move to other places. Lara and Antonella went to live in something that was a mix between a hostel and a very, very large house, while MK and I went to live in the Te Puke Holiday Park with Don José.

Originally, I did not want to live at the Holiday Park, my friends from Malaysia, Don José and other people had recommended me to live in a caravan but I always answered: "No, I want to live in a house. I ain’t living in a caravan”. I think that I had some prejudices about living in a place like Holiday Park, I do not know if there are any Holiday Parks in Mexico, but if they do exist they are not very popular between Mexicans.

No matter what I thought, the reality is that Holiday Parks are cheaper than living in a house, At this moment, I didn’t have a job because the kiwi season was postponed by the never-ending rain, I had spent a lot of money during my nights of party in Auckland and I had a little inconvenient with my bank back in Mexico that I couldn’t solve at the moment. After seriously analyzing my bank account, I realized that I didn't have a choice, I needed to move into a caravan if I wanted to have money to eat while I waited for the kiwi season start.

The holiday park of Te Puke.

To my surprise, the Holiday Park was a lot better than what I have imagined, It was really a big place. In the back, there was a two-story house, I do not know how many rooms it has but It was where the group of Malaysians that I met in Auckland lived, Don José and I used to call them "The Malaysian Mafia", as a joke.

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^{The map of the Holiday Park. Source}

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In front of the house of the Asians, there were 3 buildings. A building with bathrooms, another with showers and the third and largest, where were the kitchen and a room to watch movies with the only two computer with Internet in the Holiday Park. The kitchen with 5 stoves, 4 ovens and 5 sinks was large enough for all the people who lived there, well sometimes It wasn’t big enough but there is nothing better than a crowded kitchen to meet new people.

In the back of the kitchen, were the luxury caravans (those with running water). Although the difference in price between caravans was only based on the number of beds that each caravan had, there were some caravans better than others, from my point of view, those behind the kitchen were the best.

In front of that caravans and right in the centre of Holiday Park, was "The Dollhouse". It was a small house, well... house is a very big word to describe it, it was a room with three beds and a small fridge where Don José, MK and I lived. The advantage and disadvantage of living in the centre of Caravan Park were that all the parties ended up in front of The Dollhouse. We could have a party every day if we wanted, but it was difficult to sleep sometimes.

This party every night situation, made me be a little bit hated from people that didn’t know me and was not able to sleep because I’m known to be very loud when I’m drunk (ups).

The Caravan Nation.

In general, I think that I could classify the people living at the Holiday Park in two different types of people.

1. The travellers. The people that were just passing by, people that only stayed a few days and were the main cause of unexpected parties and noise (when was not me), while others wanted to sleep. On the other hand, when something was going missing, it was usually after a group of travellers leaving the Holiday Park. This type of people generally left behind trash and dirty dishes. In one occasion, a group of travellers left behind a particular member of the group, Javier.

2. The kiwi people and the foreign workers. The local people; the people that were normally more annoyed by my beautiful voice at 3 am, and all the backpackers who were involved in some way with the kiwi season. People who worked with contractors doing picking or that worked at one of the packinghouses of the area. A community of about 50 people that worked, ate, partied, laughed and cried together for months.

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^{The Caravan Nation!!! By @cnandofer}

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Living with so many people, from so many different places and backgrounds was a very interesting experience, in which groups of friends were formed and parted to travel together the rest of their time in New Zealand. It was a place with a lot of stories that eventually lead me to write the incredible stories of some of this backpackers that I crossed during my time in New Zealand.

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