Diana Balham: A clean break

'I'm ashamed to say I have strolled into campgrounds waving my towel with studied casualness to use the shower when free camping.' Illustration / NZ Herald

Nasty latrines are tolerable but a good wash is a must, even on the most basic camping trip, says Diana Balham.

I can put up with a lot when I'm travelling. I've done years of camping-and-pasta trips where I eschew the pleasures of a pensione and sleep in a tent in a paddock full of bullocks to travel longer on a leaner budget.

I've spent so long nipping to the bogs or trekking to the showers I almost forgot that houses came with bathrooms attached.

En suites? They're for people without jandals.

Some people's Waterloo is toilets, or the lack of them. I've seen some shockers in my time on the road.

I once spent three days on the deck of a ferry on Lake Tanganyika travelling from Zambia to Tanzania. The toilet had its good points: it was in a room with an actual door and was a proper Western-style affair.

Trouble was, it had never been cleaned and years of other people's deposits had left it looking like an unspeakable chocolate fountain. It was a vile monument to poo.

I've perched on stinky long drops, strained on squat toilets and piddled behind bushes all over the world but, oddly enough, this has never particularly worried me. (Thanks for the strong-stomach genes, Ma and Pa).

For me, the deal breaker has always been staying clean. I hate going to bed dirty. I've somehow managed to breed a kid who would never shower again in his life if I didn't force him into the bathroom, whipping his legs with a towel.

I'm the one who lurked behind a truck for three months feverishly washing myself with my two-litre daily ration of water.

I'm the one who insists on trying out the shower in bathrooms where fungal spores wave gaily in the breeze that funnels through broken windows. I'm the one who puts on three layers of clothing over my jammies to make an expedition to the shower block in midwinter.

I'm the one rinsing my smalls in the washing-up bowl and hanging them on trees.
And I'm ashamed to say I have strolled into campgrounds waving my towel with studied casualness to use the shower when free camping.

I remember doing this many years ago when my brother and I pitched a tent on the shores of Lake Wanaka then dismantled the "no camping" sign and turned it into a makeshift bench.

The car - an ugly Fiat that looked like a phone box on wheels - had blown its gearbox and my bro set about reconditioning it so we could move on. Once finished, we carefully put everything back exactly as it was and didn't leave a blade of grass out of place, officer. Scout's honour.

Soon after, the car, bench and tent featured in the local rag in a huffy story about these two criminals who camped right on the lakefront and vandalised the sign.

I swore that when I went on my OE I would come back the day I had to wear the same pair of knickers two days in a row. It did mean taking a hell of a lot of them with me, but I kept that (admittedly pointless) promise to myself and came back on my own terms.

So, if you see me hitchhiking, feel free to give me a lift. I'm not that earthy hippie with the agricultural odour. I'll never stink your car out. You can bet your ... er ... bottom dollar on it.