New Year, New Country

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Hey Everyone

Well as most of you have probably figured out, me and Angela have made it here alive and still after 3 days have all our body parts and backpacks still in tact. Anyways Im fairly new at this whole "blogging" thing so, bare with me. I figured I will break it into days and give you all the highlights.

Day 1/2: December 30th/31st
We left from Toronto around 10am, flight was good, we had the little TVS in the back of our seats so we were able to watch lots of movies, which helped make the trip go fairly quick. We arrived to LA, around 1ish and quickly found a cart to load our backpacks on (we have come to the conclusion we may not be the typical backpackers, seeing as it looked like we were moving to the country haha). The original plan for the airport had been to go to the beach and maybe get a day room in the airport, but due to cheapness we decided to just go to a restaurant and get a few drinks there. After lunch and a trip to the duty free we were ready to take off. The flight was actually not to bad, and for most people who know how I travel this is actually means that it was AWESOME! hahah I slept for most of the flight and except for the screaching baby it was fairly peaceful. Me and Angela both had two seats to ourselves so we were able to stretch out and sleep and resulted in us sleeping through "New Years". But we had champagne in the morning (for free) and celebrated a bit then.

Day 3: January 1st
We landed in Auckland at 6:45 in the morning, and because we were still on Eastern Standard Time we were raring to go (probably the only time in my life I will have substantial amounts of energy before 8am). So being the adept backpackers that we are we quickly got our bags and a cart to do the carrying for us haha. After that we each bought a cellphone, I bought phone cards and we were on our way. We jumped in a cab and headed to our hostel (we later came to find out that the bus only cost 13 dollars, and me and angela payed 30 each for the cab... again reinforcing the backpackers statement). We got to the hostel around 8 in the morning but had to wait to check in until 1, which turned out to be pretty long since it was New Years day and NOTHING was open. But we met an american girl while we were waiting to check in and ended up going to see a movie with her later that day which was fun. After that the jet lag kicked in and we crashed pretty hard

Day 4: January 2nd
Still very little was open in Auckland so we didnt do too much this day. We walked around Auckland and tried to get a feel for the city. Both Angela and I arent huge fans of Auckland. Its your typical big city with not very much to do during the day, especially during the holidays. We have heard from other backpackers as well, that Auckland is kind of the low point of NZ, as there is alot more to do in other cities. The highlight of the day was probably meeting the other backpackers at the hostel. We met a Canadian girl who was in our room and a British girl and ended up going to the hostel bar with them that night, because it was free drinks for a little while at this place. It was great to meet new people around our age and we had alot of fun.

Day 5: January 3rd
We bought tickets for a ferry to take us to an island called Waiheke and do a wine tour. We left at 11 and by 1130, I had seen probably some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my entire life, and this was only the tip of the iceberg. It sounds cliche but it was actually breath-taking. We visited 3 wineries as well as one olive estate, where we did some olive oil tasting, which was cool. All the wineries were tucked into beautiful green mountains. While on the bus tour, we drove all through the island seeing beautiful beaches and scenery the entire way. Our bus driver was an interesting character and somewhat reminded us of a senior version of Randy Quaid from Christmas Vacation. Anyways Angela and I enjoyed the island so much we are most likely going back tomorrow, just to sit on the beach and take more pictures since it did start to rain right at the end of our tour (actually pretty cool because you could see the rain coming across the water).

Anyways, hopefully that gives everyone an idea of our vacation thus far. On Monday we will be going to the immigration office to get our working visas, then most likely we will go up to the Bay of Islands while we wait for the visas to be processed (everyone here says the Bay of Islands is really cool). After that we will hopefully then make our way down to Wellington and meet up with Kelly and try to find jobs and an apartment from there. Like I said, we arent your typical backpackers and have been told that by more than a few people, so renting may be a good option for the two of us.

Anyways I'll write again soon. Hope everyone is doing well and had a great New Years!

Cheers

Becky

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