Get Rec'd, Charleston
- TJ Smith
- Jan 20, 2019
- 2 min read
Hello crappers!
More from New Zealand's West Coast! Let's take a jaunt to Charleston!
Charleston was originally founded as a gold mining town during the West Coast's gold rush. During its golden (pun intended) era, the Charleston area boasted a population of around 11,000. Nowadays, Charleston is a hub for the West Coast extreme sports scene (which is apparently a thing who would have thunk it). Caving and white water rafting are two of the favorites of the area.*
As for toilets, well, our tiki tour of the Charleston sites proved fruitful because we came across not one but two loos!
First was the Charleston Recreational Area. You can find this down by the Charleston waterfront.
This was a pretty rough and ready kind of affair. It's a long drop, although apparently the DOC (Department of Conservation) is now calling them "vault toilets" now. So these "vault toilets" were single stall with two stalls available. It's a gender inclusive toilet block with plenty of ventilation. There is a sink outside but, like most of New Zealand's middle-of-the-wop-wops places, there isn't any soap so you're going to have to bring your own.
Overall, Charleston Rec Area's toilet was pretty nice. It wasn't ideal for me since I do have an irrational fear of long dro-I mean "vault toilets" (I'm afraid that a rat will be sneaking up the side of it when I sit down and will encounter my ass and react with tooth and claw).
And now that I've overshared and you have that image in your head, let's move onto the next toilet; the Paparoa National Park Access toilet. As the name suggests, this is on the Paparoa National Park Access Road. You can find it by the train tracks that take white water rafters up the river.
Experience has taught me to be immediately wary of these kind of toilets. They're basically just a hotbox that takes you one step closer to dying of ammonia poisoning so I braced myself for the rancid wave of heat and opened the door.
I'd love to say that this is a redemption arc for these godless oxygen-lacking hell-pits but that is not the case. I entered to a sickening tsunami of foul tepid air and, because I really had to pee, I forged onwards. This place was horribly ventilated, I mean like there was absolutely zero airflow inside it. I was taking small intermittent breaths through my mouth which was helping but I feel like when you can taste the ammonia you should really leave the location you are in.
I will say that the one redeeming feature this place has is that it's got a really beautiful view of rock formations and a river when you step outside. But that's it. The one redeeming thing.
So this was awful and I would recommend going to the bathroom in Charleston township before you come up here.
Thanks, Charleston Rec Area, and up your game, Paparoa National Park Access!
Happy crapping!
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston,_New_Zealand
