Thursday 3 September 2015

Living the dream

When I first moved to New Zealand I decided I could now live my life the way I wanted to, as opposed to feeling the need to conform to something unrealistic.

Well, within reason anyway.

I still had a part of me that wanted to settle down, but after what happened before I left I knew that was going to take a while.

I wanted to travel a lot, but bills had to be paid so I needed to get a job.

So I did something I'd always wanted to do - I bought a truck. Not a lorry, but what they call a truck here would be a 4X4 in the UK. Albeit a older, rougher type.

I bought a 1988 Mitsubishi Pajero (a Shogun in the UK) with less than 200,000km on the clock, spent a not inconsiderable amount of money sorting out some fundamental issues and then went on a few trips. In the New Year I'm going on a week's trip to the South Island to do several hundred kilometers of off-road tracks and river crossings.

I could never have owned one of these in the UK, it would've been utterly pointless and very expensive. But over here it's a great thing to have as there's so much countryside to explore and distant places to visit.

I'll be hoping over time I can let a bit more of my old life go and learn to be a bit more carefree, but old habits die hard.