December 22 – New Zealand here we come! We landed in Auckland late at night and we were overwhelmed with the friendly welcome from the kiwis. People here are so friendly and great! We had booked a camper van for a month. The camper van would be our home and means of transportation for our time here. It’s a good idea right?! Well not exactly... We soon discover that living in a van is a lot of responsibility when we’re in the city: paying big bucks for parking around town, making sure there’s always ice in the cooler to keep the food edible, gas here is at $1.66/litre, sneaking around for a parking spot late at night somewhere to sleep... With the van, we’re equipped to drive, cook and sleep. But what if you need to go to the bathroom at night, or how about taking a shower?... On top of that, the van is an old 1994 model with 200,000 km on it and its name is Robbie (no joke). Well Robbie is old and doesn’t like getting up in the morning, so he would sometimes refuses to start in the morning. And when we go up hills, Robbie is old and slow and would cause traffic to back up behind us at 50 km/h for miles. Needless to say all this quickly became a good cause of stress for us.
We left Auckland without really visiting it. We’ll do it on our way back. We went straight to Rotorua, where it smells rotten eggs all the time. There are lots of hot springs in this area, that’s why :) (hot springs = sulphur = rotten egg smell = you can fart any time anywhere you want and not get caught!)
I wish I could say Gen and I had an exotic Christmas Eve, but I can’t. We were celebrating Christmas on a campground, eating BBQ chicken and toasting with a $6 sparkling wine bottle hahaha! Gotta love it. It’s very weird to be celebrating Christmas without the snow and a Starbucks in my hand by the fireplace. We miss having our family and friends with us :( For that one day, I did wish I was back home with you guys.
We spent the next two nights in the 1st ever kiwi National Park. We also went on a short 3 hour hike.
Then we went to Wellington to catch a ferry to the South Island. We didn’t really get a chance to visit the city, we were too busy running around trying to plan our trip to Asia. After our lucky ordeal with Immigration to come to NZ, we want to make sure we do a better job planning our next leg of the trip. Tip for anyone planning to globe trot: sooner or later, you’ll have to spend time planning all your legs of the trip, better off doing that while you’re still home and have unlimited access to the internet and to phones. We thought it was better to plan as we go but it is just too challenging trying to visit, research and apply for visas while being overseas. Do that at home. Later, enjoy every single day while you’re on the road.
Even if we didn’t see a lot of Wellington, I still noticed it is a very nice city. Lots of cafés in town. Actually, they have more coffee shops per capita than New York city. We have to come back to Wellington on our way back to Auckland anyways, we’ll make sure to plan a few days here.
The ferry between the North and South islands is pretty cool. The view is fantastic!!! We were greeted by beautiful green mountains in Picton (south island). It was also warmer in the south island; funny enough, NZ is having a very cool summer. I think it has not been warmer than 20 degrees since we got here. The evenings are very cool at 13 degrees ish. It’s unusual for NZ around this time. Gen and I are having trouble adjusting to this “colder” climate after having endured 35+ degrees in the Red Centre the last week before coming here. Emile, now I know you were not just being a baby when you complained about being cold in Calgary when you moved back from Dubai :)
Today (Dec 30), we rushed from Picton to Christchurch to go drop off Robbie. We have enough of him and his put-put attitude on the hills and stressful morning starts. The rental company gave us a free upgrade and now we’re driving SUSHI, a much stronger and stable vehicle. Sushi offers a lot more torque. Sushi is as old as Robbie but has only 175,000 km in her or him, we haven’t quite determined his/her gender yet :) We look forward to spending quality time visiting the south island with Sushi.
The drive down to Christchurch today was so great. We drove along the East coast and the view of the ocean and the black sand beaches was breathtaking! Tania, why did you ever leave this country?! It’s a gorgeous place. We look forward to visiting Christchurch inside and out and welcoming the new year here.
Sorry for the long blog guys. I miss you and I wish I was home with you for the Holidays. I hope Santa was good to you and that 2010 will be a good one. Don’t forget to wish me Happy New Year 17 to 19 hours ahead of yours (17 hours ahead of Montreal and 19 ahead of Calgary). BTW, I’m an uncle again, for the 6th time. Yay! Take care everyone.
