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Published: September 28th 2005
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- FOOD: Nice early beers, sandwiches in PACKETS (something I've not seen in a long while), nice bread, lack of cheap fry ups.
- AREA: Freak out that we lost a day. Is this the UK, with weather to match? - such familiarity. Uni hall style hostels. Expense. Clean, perfect city. Tongarua - our Maori patterned campervan.
- PEOPLE: They understand everything I say! Every single person VERY, very friendly
- WEATHER: Well it is winter so I wasn't expecting tropical temperatures.
Sunday 24th July: VANISHED
Monday 25th: We arrived early in New Zealand. 3.30am although the time we were on was mid afternoon so we didn't think it too wrong to go and have a beer or two to help us come to terms with the confusion of a whole day just disappearing by travelling across the globe.
It was this time that we realised we were back to normality as we know it - sandwiches in packets - with NICE bread. HOORAY. Also people that understand everything you say - no more bitching in front of people!
We were surprised at how warm it was being winter and all. The Kiwi friendliness began straight away at customs (they smiled AND called me love), continued at the bar (allowed us to drink alcohol so early on) and carried on with the taxi drivers who were very chatty and jokey. Will this stereotype continue or is it all just put on at the airport for arriving tourists?
Our initial impressions of NZ were - oh my god, we're back home. The grey sky, scenery, houses, signs and the expense! We were amazed and just fascinated with looking out of the taxi window - but also quite freaked out at how familiar it all seemed. I think I had a huge culture shock which is strange as I never get it going into a poorer country but always get it coming out of poor countries/areas and into rich ones.
Everything was so neat and perfect looking - a bit like a model town or something. Weird. Laura was already getting big pangs of missing Brazil and we'd only been in the country 10 minutes!
Even the money is perfect - nice colours and non messy! We found the cheapest hostel 'The Fat Camel' (Laura feels the same as me about the name) which was the cheapest at twice the price I'd been used to paying. The reception woman was butch and scary and the dorm like first year uni halls - fire doors and signs up everywhere with instructions. The most amusing being "Your Mother is not here now so do your own washing up"!!!
It had the luxury of carpet and duvets though so I didn't mind the amount of young people and camel cartoons on the doors.
Our day was spent in and out of sleep except for the 'free' dinner - a tiny portion but for only $4 you can get an upgrade (which was then too big a portion). We hit the sack much to the amusement I reckon of our roommates who must think we just spend all our time sleeping.
Tues 26th: An admin day - Boo. That was after spending hours trying to find a greasy cafe or even any old cafe that did a CHEAP fry up. A fiver was the cheapest - an opportunity for good business here. It was a posh one but lacking in dripping grease.
The achievement of the day was booking a campervan to go around in for the month - Escape Rentals. Have to give them a plug as Andrew was SO nice and helpful and the vans are all painted different designs - we chose Tongarua which means 'God of the Ocean' and is a blue and white Maori design.
The scary reception woman turned into a nice, helpful person and we moved to a private room (one night in a dorm is plenty already!).
We discovered the K road shops - cool but shut at UK times and then the UK rain soaked us so we got a non-UK like taxi with a taxi driver who immediately started telling us rude jokes - not minding his language (which was BAD) in the slightest!
Our free dinner was 2 mouthfuls of cauliflower cheese and due to sorting our money priorities out (a night out was in order), we didn't upgrade.
Our big night out turned into a small one as all the bars were closed except for the awful Base Bar which belongs to another hostel and is like the worst student union bar you can imagine. They were having a 'Simon Says' night - 4 blokes who had to do stuff to win like stand on one leg, put your hand on your head, hand on another contestants bum, kiss another contestant, blah, blah - all highly amusing of course considering it was all blokes. Not amusing for anyone in fact except the DJ.
Wed 22nd: Our taste for a fry up didn't disappear so we had the hostel's version which was much better - a nice lot of grease. After being horrified that we had to PAY to leave our luggage at the hostel, we faffed at the K road shops again and then picked up our baby. Andrew let us raid the box with free food (don't think we were supposed to take ALL of it) and gave us a talk about checking oil, not driving on the beaches etc. We of course informed him we were not girlie drivers and nothing of the sort would go wrong....
After changing our minds 10 times about who would drive first (Laura only just passed her test 3 months before coming away - which was 5 months ago and I've only driven about 5 times in the last 10 years) we were off. I drove first and was constantly amazed by the joys of power steering. It was a nice, easy vehicle to drive and the other drivers on the state highway were not crazy drivers (like we'd been warned) in the least. Maybe crazy by Kiwi standards but not ours after being in South America for 4 months!
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