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Hmmm! After mentioning the peace and quiet on more than one occasion, we’ve discovered when Christchurch comes alive. Two o’clock in the morning is an especially noisy time with lots of police car sirens, screaming and shouting. The hotel porter says its the same every Saturday night - and the town was still buzzing at 4.15 when we got in the taxi to the airport. Obviously everyone stays really, really quiet all week and then they go mad on Saturday nights.
So now its New Zealand that we’re bidding a fond farewell to. Time has absolutely flown while we’ve been here. Its strange - as we landed in Sydney, I was thinking that it was only 12 or so weeks before that we landed in Australia excited about our travels, and here we were seasoned travellers, who’d now been through Sydney several times. Our nonchalance knows no bounds! Unfortunately, we’ll spend most of our day in airport queues, lounges and crammed into economy seats for hours on end ... and somehow we’ll lose several hours in the process! Let’s just hope they keep the wine flowing...
So, what can we say about New Zealand that we haven’t already said? We’ve loved every minute - the scenery, the people, the wildlife, the wine - everything has been stunning. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that the weather could be bad in New Zealand - its been fantastic, although a little chilly at night!
We’ve driven a total of 5,871 kilometres in 5 weeks, we’ve been up hill and down dale. New Zealand has a population of 4.2M, and 40M sheep. In 2007 they had 2.2M foreign tourists, and that number has been increasing ever since. There are already shouts that this is disturbing the ecological balance, but they are obviously still keen to increase their tourist industry. They are already planning on importing yet more camper vans for the Rugby World Cup next year. I think that they really have to sort out the freedom camping problems before that, but I doubt that they will!
I think we’ve mentioned that we’ve found it quite expensive, and we’ve been blaming the exchange rate, but people have told us that the cost of living has risen by 25% over the past 3 years, and there’s another planned rise in GST (Government Sales Tax). We’ve been surprised at how expensive dairy products are, bearing in mind how much New Zealand produces - but we hadn’t realised until recently that this is because China is buying up as much produce as possible - pushing the local prices up.
Property prices are also climbing in both Oz and NZ - I caught in the Aussie Sunday Telegraph earlier today that someone had just sold their house outside Sydney with a profit of AU$250K on a house they only bought 11 months ago!
People we’ve spoken to say that they are concerned that crime is getting worse, and they are worried about a binge drinking generation, with the radio concerned about a teenager who died recently of alcohol poisoning. There also seems to be a strong gang culture - we did discover that one gang is called The Crips, which probably explains the tattoo on the girl we saw earlier on the holiday - John had thought it was an unfortunate error! But I think this is just the way of the world nowdays - people at home have the same concerns, only more so. Listening to the radio news, they really don’t have anywhere near the amount of trouble as other places.
I don’t think we’ve mentioned this so far but May is New Zealand music month. That means the vast majority of tunes on the radio are from local bands. Unfortunately, judging by what we’ve heard, they’re unlikely to take the world by storm! Goodness only knows what it would be like if one did. In Australia, all you ever heard about was AC/DC, who have become a national institution, and Men at Work, fabulous but “one hit wonders.” But what they lack on the musical front, they certainly make up for in art and design - we’ve certainly been impressed with what we’ve seen.
Like the Aussies, the Kiwis have a really strong identity and pride in their country and who they are. NZ branding is everywhere - from baked beans to clothing, sport, etc. They take especial pride in their laid-back approach and lack of bureaucracy - when we first arrived and stayed in the first hotel I asked if they wanted our passports, and the response was ‘No love, we don’t need those - you’re in New Zealand’.
So, in a nutshell, what did we think of New Zealand? ... its RIPPER!
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