Sydney to New Zealand

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Up at 5am today to pack and be ready for our taxi at 6.15a. Had a fun drive to the airport, the taxi driver told us all about his Sunday in Manley, getting dri\unk ( actually smashed ) talking about his sex life with his wife ( or non-sex life!! ) and speaking a language only drunk people undersatnd - yes we think he still was quite drunk! But we got their safe and sound and on time!
Once checked in - now being told we were only allowed 20kg per bag and one each! Every other flight we have been on and will be going on is 32kg - nightmare! But i took the smaller bag off the front and carried it on as hand luggage then they were fine. Once we were through we got to go on the free internet there - it's great having it, a good way to pass time and catch up with e-mails!
The flight over from Sydney to Christchurch was about 3 hours and we were told there was a 2 hour time change - now we are 13 hours ahead of the UK ! We had to fill in a decleration form to hand over when we landed. We had to declare some dry food, our tent and walking shoes.
Once we had picked up our main bags we had to get them checked out at customs. Our shoes passed... our food passed...our tent...failed !!! It had a couple of ants and some leaves in it from we packed it up this morning - we had been so carefull cleaning it and everything! We had a couple of choices : send it back to Australia with the chance it may be refused their end, destroy it or pay NZ$175 to get it fumagated and cleaned and it would be ready to pick up in 4-5 days! Oh c***! What do we do...
We didn't know what to do, it was our accomadation too! We sat down to compare costs of a new tent and getting it cleaned whist we stay in a hostel. We decided it would be best and cheaper to destroy it...bye bye tent.... We managed to get our poles and pegs back but later realised we had some good ties in there and also our repair pack.
We asked the girl at customs what they would do with it, she said they would still hav it cleaned but then they would burry it somewhere in NZ ! What a waste!
So afetr all that i called our hire car company, Travel NZ Rentals, to say we were ready to pick up the car. Erica, the lady, said she would meet us out front in a few minutes. She arrived in a dark green mini wagon, we jumped in and she drove us to a car park. There we sorted out the paperwork - the old fashioned way! First great news of the day,.. no extra cost to have us both driving and no charge for me being under 25! I could have kissed her!!!! This was going to make our lives so much easier! The car hire was cheap, around 450 pounds for the 6 weeks and this on top as a bonus - will be recommending them!
So Chris nominated me to drive first! It was nice to drive again after 3 months! We asked Erica where we could buy a new tent and get some food. She showed us on a map where the nearest mega store-shopping centre was and it was only 5 mins down the road. We found a tent after going to 3 places for only NZ$170 so about 62 pounds and it's a 4 man with 2 doors and 2 windows - not bad! We then went to get some food for dinner and breakfast - it's so so so cheap here - about 1/2 price from UK and then we saw the alcohol... 2 pounds for a half decent bottle of wine - wow - i think we deserved it after the day we had!
Once we were done we drove to the first campsite, called North and South Tourist Park ( $14 pp/pn ) really good price. We aslo managed to pick up a couple of freebies from the "free food box "!
The campsite was nice, the kitchen enclosed with ovens! The laundry room was only $2 per wash and drier - can't get over how cheap everything is here compared even to Australia!
We got our new tent up, very easy! I'm also liking the car, it feels like an old car and is easy to drive and see out of all the windows! But it is fairly new - bizarre! And we have CD's for this part of the trip just in case we couldn't get any radio sygnal, we bought a couple of 60's music CD's and Angus, Sarah's little brother, copied a couple for us too before we left Canberra - bless him.
We eventually cooked dinner after organising the car, had chicken wraps and of the course the bottle of wine!
Sat and chatted over the bottle of wine until it was time for bed...

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