The Jayride Challenge, sponsored by Ace Rental Cars

The Jayride Rideshare Challenge has arrived at it’s destination. Our challenge, to share rides every step of the way from Auckland to Queenstown was an outstanding success.

Finding passengers was so easy we had to turn them down – our compact Ace simply too full to fit one more person and their bags. To Maggie, John, Senay, Nadine, Marty, Grant, the hitchhikers at National Park, Taupo, Franz Josef, and everyone else we had to turn down; our apologies and maybe we’ll see you next time!

The passengers we did take were all types and from everywhere. We gave lifts to friends and strangers, men and women, couples and singles, locals and international travelers. We found them online, on the road, at our hostel, and by a note on the fridge at a backpacker.

With these people, our new best friends, we saw the best this country has to offer. We stopped in unique places and did amazing things. We discovered progressive rock and Chilean reggae. We had conversations instead of just a radio.

On a personal note, although I’m a kiwi, by traveling with foreigners for several legs of our journey I had the pleasure of seeing my own country fresh through their eyes. What started as a simple publicity trip became a whole lot more. I now have places to stay in Dunedin and Chile should I need them.

The best result was the enthusiasm shown for Jayride by the travelers and professionals we met. From the owner of our hostel in Rotorua and his longing for the good old days when people used to hitch… right down to those same hitchers looking for a better, easier, safer way to travel. Everyone loved the idea and offered help where they could.

The success of the Jayride Rideshare Challenge shows that not only is ridesharing possible, it’s easy. Anyone can do it and benefit from it, with very little work at all. Make Jayride.co.nz your tool for better transport.

In coming articles we’ll be breaking down the benefits for you. How does ridesharing green your travel? How does ridesharing help you save money? How do you find rideshare passengers? We’ll show you the theory and our example of just how cheap, clean and easy better travel can be.

Thanks to our passengers Chris, Tom, Svende, Ting, Tomás and Trista for helping us to prove how easy it can be. Special thanks to our secret passenger Connie Chan, the photographer extraordinaire who brought this trip to life.

Finally, extra special thanks to Ace Rental cars, whose commitment to sustainable transport provided us with “Ace” the green-modified rental car that became the wheels beneath the Jayride Rideshare Challenge.

Tags: rideshare, The Jayride Challenge

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:41 am and is filed under Jayride News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.