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Published: June 23rd 2008
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Baggage
In this photo our baggage looks deceptive small. Sarah can fit herself in her duffle bag. New Zealand: The beginning
Sydney to Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass
Leaving Sydney was one of the hardest things I have had to do ever. Of course I wanted to avoid the reality of it by not packing until the night before I left. Unfortunately this meant I stayed up for an all-nighter of packing fun……..not really fun…in fact it was very painful. It was also hard because I have made such good friends with everyone in my house that I spent a lot of time hanging out with them and saying my goodbyes.
Also most of the people in the house were celebrating because they finished their exams that day. So they were extra happy! Brittany and Michelle (my hallmates) and Stuart (one of our RAs) spent a lot of time with me through the night encouraging me to pack. Then even later, Brittany supported me from her bed with her door open. She has been an amazing friend this semester and I’m so glad I met her. She’s incredible, one of the best cooks I have ever tasted, one of the best adventurers, ever. THANKS Brittany for all of your help and support. I’ll
Bessie
Here is our rental car. Yes we named it a cow's name so it would feel at home with all it's brethren here in the NZ countryside. be supporting you from NZ while you pack on the night of the 28th to go home. I’ll wave to you when I fly into LA and I’ll definitely drive down from Iowa to visit you at school in Missouri.
Finally 5 in the morning came and I had not slept a wink. I also realized that I lost my ticket………Oh NO! Well it’s electronic….I hope! Sarah and I shared a cab to the airport. Brittany, Michelle and Stuart carried my bags to the cab and gave me some great hugs.
When we got to the airport we had the most fun dragging all of our bags to the kiosk to check in. By fun I meant they were heavy and by dragging I meant I had way too many of them. The Check-In lady was very helpful and printed me a new ticket and allowed me to carry-on my extra bag even though it was over the weight limit for carry-ons. Then we made it successfully through customs and security only to find out that I 8:30am flight was delayed 45minutes. We set up camp at the gate and I proceeded to fall asleep a little. It
Arthur's Pass YHA
Here is our first hostel of the trip. was nice because out the window behind me I got to see the sunrise on the city skyline. It was a nice goodbye to Sydney.
Once we actually got on the plane we had a whole row in the middle of the plane to ourselves. So we had a junk chair in between us. Then an announcement came on the intercom from the pilot saying that we had a broken windshield wiper that needed to be fixed before we could leave and it would take 1 to 2 hours to fix it. You could audibly hear the shock and disappointment throughout the cabin. Then the stewardess came on and said she would be giving us a comedy to watch while we waited. And the cabin clapped for it. Eventually, in just less than an hour, I think, it was fixed and we began our taxi to leaving Australia. By this time it was about 10:30 which made us arrive in Christchurch at 3:30pm instead of 1:30pm.
I think I have grown a little Australian in my blood because I wasn’t “fussed” about the delay. I “couldn’t be bothered” being upset. It was fine and good.
Once we arrived in Christrchurch and collected our bags (on little trolleys that were free, yippee) we set off through customs to hit the real New Zealand. I was very nervous about customs because I had to check yes on almost all parts of the form. But I had a nice little conversation with the guy and he looked at the bottom of my boots and sent me through. Whew, what a relief. I thought “all downhill from here.”
Just outside of customs there was a vodafone kiosk. I was like sweet we can take care of getting a new sim card to use quite easily. Unfortunately, there is a difference between Aussie and NZ vodafones (even thought I had asked them if I could do this and they said yes in Oz) and I had to get my phone unlocked. To unlock my aussie phone I needed to call Australia and pay $50 dollars. Well its hard to make calls when you don’t have a phone…..we decided to deal with it later.
The car rental company picked us up at the airport and delivered us to the office where we picked up our car. She taught us how to use the Snow chains on the tires and we signed our lives away. Then I drove out of the place and into Christchurch to drop some of our bags off for storage at a hostel to pick up when we return on our way out of NZ. We discovered at the hostel that the lockers were way too small but we problem solved and found another way to store them and it worked out beautifully. Then because we arrived later than we were supposed to and had more trouble storing bags we had to drive to Arthur’s Pass in the dark. I braved it up and Sarah was my awesome navigator. It was about a two hour drive but it took us longer because we drive slow. At many points the darkness loomed all around with mountains on either side that I couldn’t see. There were a lot of one lane bridges. In particular there was one that seemed like it went on forever and it was so scary because all we could see was blackness. And a tiny bridge ahead of us….. I couldn’t tell if I would be more scared driving over it in darkness or if I could actually see what we were crossing.
When we finally rocked up to the hostel it was raining and we quickly ran our stuff to our full four-share room and set off to the kitchen to make the pasta with butter dinner that we had bought while we were in Christchurch. It took forever to boil the water because it took forever for me to realize that the stove was on low and not high. In my defense there were no markings what-so-ever on the knobs. As we ate our heaps of pasta dinner and decided to hike to a waterfall in the morning after an early start and then continue on our way to the West Coast.
I was asleep very soon after hitting the sheets but not before I set my alarm for
7:15am. We want to make the most our of our days here so we decided to get started early.
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