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Published: December 6th 2007
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There will probably be some duplicate photos due to my many attempts to upload, reupload, upload again...and forgetting what has actually worked and what hasn't...hopefully this is mostly new to you.
We are about as far south as it gets on the north island of New Zealand...tomorrow at 7:50 a.m. we head on a ferry ride (that I heard is pretty rough the first hour) for a three hour ride to the south island where we then hop on a train to Christchurch. I'm reading Eat Pray Love right now and it's funny in the book, I couldn't have said it better myself, she writes:
"Truthfully, I'm not the best traveler in the world.
I know this because I've traveled a lot and I've met people who are great at it. Real Naturals."
"I'm bad (or, rather, lazy) at researching a place before I travel, tending to just show up and see what happens. When you travel this way what typically "happens" is that you end up spending a lot of time standing in the middle of the train station feeling confused..."
"My shaky sense of direction and geography means I have explored six continents in my life with only the vaguest idea of where I am at any given time."
I'll admit, my lack of geography knowledge is because I was a very poor student in high school, hoping the information would absorb into my brain through osmosis while I slept the night before off in class rather I had been working to late or just up to late. I'm still like that, my brain doesn't function until the evening (only now I'm a grandma and go to bed pretty early), I walk through work in a daze waiting for my brain to catch up with my body. My point being that I'm not much for geography...what I like about travel is learning from my surroundings and map reading skills where I am, where I'm going. A hands on lesson making up for a small portion of what I missed when it was a free hand out. I couldn't have pointed out the capitol of New Zealand before this trip...I didn't even know what it was...and here I am...sitting in our hotel room - in the capitol of New Zealand. Now I can not only tell you and show you where the capitol is,
I can also add.................I don't care for Wellington, New Zealand. Another Chicago like city. It's too busy.
Busy sidewalks, busy people, confusing streets, no where to park. I think the travel agent had us drive the five or so hours so that we could prepare ourselves for the city life. What we're actually doing - is avoiding it. We went out last night to find dinner, and as for today? Movies and Oprah. Dave Chappelle was on O's show...I can't say I've ever seen a whole episode until today and I'm happy to report that Dave is back from his quick escape to Africa, alive and doing well.
Back to our drive. It was long and I'd like to say endless beauty, but where there's trees - there's loggers. We passed several logging trucks and quite a few large patches of land that were bare. I just hope they have some kind of tree replanting game plan and replenish what they're taking down.
A sudden cookie attack happened when we were driving along and saw a plane...a real plane...permanently placed next to a gas station that read, "Cookie Time". This was marketing that couldn't be passed. We
stopped to have a look, you could sit in the cockpit - the plane completely gutted out and turned into a seating area for people eating. It looks like on some occasions they serve food in the plane. The cookies as it turned out were just packaged cookies you could buy anywhere in New Zealand called Cookie Time. They were good.
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Denae
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It's like a wild wild ZOO!
I really just wanted to say that the pic of Alex titled 'canyoning' where he's going through the crevice- Scarry! He's like a little kid in the pics of him in the plane. LOL the entire time looking at those!! LOVE YOU!!!!