Hitchhiking in New Zealand: Picton to Christchurch to Queenstown

Hitchhiking in New Zealand: Picton to Christchurch to Queenstown

7th of July, 2025.

It takes sometime until somebody stops. Shirley Ann is driving a friend of her daughter to Blenheim, so I come with them there. She has 8 daughters! Eight! She used to hitchhike when she was young, she tells me. Shirley Ann is a very nice woman and she drops me off in front of the first winery of New Zealand. Of course I didn’t know that by then, so I didn’t take any pictures, even though I thought the building was really nice.

After what seems like a long time, and when my whole body is freezing, Eve finally stops for me. She’s going to Kaikoura, a town just before Christchurch. Eve is 41 and she works with some Charity projects. We talk about a lot of interesting stuff, AI, technology, politics and even dating / friendship apps, and I really enjoy talking to her. We even talk about our old tamagotchis, the little electronic pets we used to have back in the 1990’s. How nostalgic! She’s surprised about my travels too.

Outside Kaikoura I don’t have to wait long. Brett is going to Christchurch but he has to take a different route, making a detour through the countryside, where he needs to do some work in a village called Waiau, at a baby salmon farm. He had seen me on the road before, back there where Eve picked me up. He actually came back for me, but by that time I was already gone. I actually remember his car passing by me.

The drive here is beautiful. During our drive, Brett tells me a lot of interesting facts about New Zealand, like how a strong earthquake about 7 years ago, lift up the ground about 1.5 metres. That’s was in Christchurch. We can see that difference mostly at the coast, by the beaches, where rock formations which were under water before, have now surfaced. He also tells me about jet boat, which is made only for shallow waters, and it was invented here in New Zealand, back in the 1950’s.

We arrive to Christchurch when it’s almost dark already. Damn it! At least, luckily, Brett drives me all the way to a small town in the outskirts of Christchurch, called Rolleston, so tomorrow it will be better for me to start hitchhiking from here.

I know it will be tricky getting a place to stay. I try a church but it’s closed. I start walking around, hoping that I will find someone outside their homes, so I can talk to them. But is impossible with this cold. When I finally knock in on door, and ask to camp in their backyard, the man says that his wife is not comfortable with that. I miss Asia.

The next door in which I knock is where an Indian family leaves. I try my chances. They say I can camp outside. The man speaking for the family even ask me at some point if I’m really OK with camping, to what I answer yes, and then he doesn’t ask anything regarding that again. There is a senior lady, most likely the mum, a younger woman and another man. They show me to the backyard and I pitch my tent in the grass. They ask me if I want to eat something, and when I tell them that I’ve only had some breakfast (it’s around 19.00 hours now), they offer me some dinner. I speak a little bit of Hindi with them. The dinner it dhal, roti and rice, and they also give me some pickle. Everything is great and they give me a huge portion as well. Plus, chai! Oh! I missed chai so much… As I eat, we talk a little bit. They seem nice but I think they still are a bit suspicious about me. I give them my Instagram, and tell them about meeting Aamir in India, hoping that things will be better, but it seems that, in somehow, it actually gets worse…? I mean, at least for the girl.

I don’t freeze at night, which is good.

8th of July, 2025.

I get my things ready early morning, and as the family is already awake, I ask them if I can use the toilet. They offered me a great peanut butter sandwich with chai. Then they offered me another one, and I stupidly refuse. I leave soon after that.

I walk for a few minutes only before reaching a suitable place for hitchhiking.

Again, after a long time and when my hands are almost freezing, a car finally stops. Steve is a Māori man, and he’s going all the way to Dunedin. He works with trains. It’s his birthday next week, on the 19th, and his daughters are throwing a party for him. He leaves in the West Coast, in a town called Reefton. He says I should come all the way to Dunedin, because from there it’s a “shorter” distance to Glenorchy. The only problem is that from here that’s a longer distance to Glenorchy. And as I know that, I hold on to my word and I’m glad I did it. Even though Steve is a local, and travel a lot for work, that doesn’t always means that he would be right. We stop for coffee, and silly me when Steve offer me some food and I deny. What’s wrong with me? I would regret that later…

After a few hours, Steve drops me off on an intersection near Geraldine. I choose to stay here because people going to Glenorchy have two options from this point on.

First, a lady in a red van comes back to me, just to check, if I would be interested in coming with her to… Dunedin. Laugh. No thanks! Still, that’s nice of her.

This time, it doesn’t take long until somebody stops. Dylan is going all the way to Queenstown, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for.

Dylan has Indian roots, and even though he was born here, his family moved to Australia some time ago. The reason? He and his sister had breathing issues, and the doctors recommended a dryer place to leave. He’s a mechanical engineer, and works in the mines at the desert. His passion are actually race cars, and he has four of them. He tells me that the fastest he has driven was 320 km/h. Holly cow! His sister is studying Medicine in Auckland, and he came here to visit her but he’s also spending some time in Queesntown. He broke his collarbone a few days ago, snowboarding in Queenstonw. Even though the break look rough (he shows me the x-ray), it’s a clean break, so he didn’t need surgery. He drops me off in town, in front of what I thought it was a church. It wasn’t.

I walk to another church from there. Empty. Then I walk to a church which we pass on our way here. It’s in the top of a hill. From outside, it actually looks nice and even fancy, but from inside is just a small and simple church. As there’s nobody inside the church, I knock in the house behind it. A man is about to enter and as I explain to him what I’m looking for, he tells me I can stay inside the church. He even turns the heater on for me. It’s a big one, on the floor, and I have to sit right in front of it in order to get warm. But it works. I ask for water but he doesn’t really gives me much space to ask for food. Besides, I was hoping he would come back later and ask if I wanted any food. He doesn’t.

There’s a toilet inside and lots of soap. I was my socks, underwear and also my shirt. They all dry that same night. Powerful heater! After finishing my macadamias, I do the only reasonable thing I could in order to eat something. There are two boxes of food donations in the back of the church. They are mostly products for cooking, apart from some cereal and some baby food. Because I don’t want to open the package of cereal, I take one of the baby foods. It a sweet one: rice pudding and vanilla. The other ones were a mix of beef, pumpkin and spinach. Who gives that to a baby? The one I eat is not bad. I could eat many more but what to do, there was only one. This reminds me of that episode of Friends when Joey and Phoebe eat some of Emma, Rachel’s daughter baby food.