Grant and I made it to NZ! After a little initial confusion at the airport when Grant tried to get us on the wrong plane to LA when we were supposed to go to San Francisco, we made all of our flights with all of our bags! Air NZ was pretty good. They had complimentary wine and beer with refills in coach. The food was decent enough, and they had this incredible entertainment center with hundreds of movies, tv shows, games, etc to choose from. Grant tells me that this is standard on overseas flights, but I haven't flown overseas coach in almost ten years. For work I fly overseas business class quite often, and I still don't remember this range of options.
On our connector flight to Christchurch, we sat next to a really nice man who used to work in Antarctica, so obviously he worked with Patrick G! Buckwheat says hello, Patrick. As the saying goes, it's a small world...or is this an example of six degrees of separation? He gave us a lot of good advice, but basically told us to keep doing what we're doing, which is winging it and
exploring.
We did pretty well with the jet lag, and stayed up until 10pm with only a two-hour nap in between. We started our search for a campervan on day one, and so far it has been overwhelming. With a good nights' rest, today shouldn't be as daunting.
The Kiwis are already living up to their reputation of being warm, and friendly people. We stopped at an auto shop to ask for directions to a car lot we were trying to find, and they had no idea where it was, but gave us directions to a place they liked, which was all the way across town. So, a customer paying for his car offered us a lift. We took him up on it, and he drove us straight there while talking up a storm about NZ.
Christchurch is very nice, albeit expensive and trendy. Microbrews have been about $7-$8 NZD which is about $4-5 USD. Every restaurant I have seen has a vegetarian option, and we are not talking portabella sandwich and Gardenburgers. They are creative, interesting meals. I would say that this is the most vegetarian friendly city I have been to, much more so than Seattle, even. Of course, Grants "normal" food has been great as well. He had some spicy mussels last night, and the kumara-pumpkin mash was fantastic. . Shhh, don't tell Grant that kumara is another word for sweet potato, because he hates sweet potatoes!
Our hotel is nice. They are tiny rooms. Basically you get an affordable hotel ($60 US) with the important amenities i.e. free wireless internet, tv, restaurant and bar, but it's all packed into a closet. The bathroom is a glass-enclosed cubbyhole, so it does not afford much privacy. Grant and I are pretty close, but not this close. We are going to try to move into a hostel on Friday. So we're off, like a herd of turtles. We'll check in again when we buy our vehicle and move on. Cheers!
Our hotel is nice. They are tiny rooms. Basically you get an affordable hotel ($60 US) with the important amenities i.e. free wireless internet, tv, restaurant and bar, but it's all packed into a closet. The bathroom is a glass-enclosed cubbyhole, so it does not afford much privacy. Grant and I are pretty close, but not this close. We are going to try to move into a hostel on Friday. So we're off, like a herd of turtles. We'll check in again when we buy our vehicle and move on. Cheers!
P.S. Our hotel "hi-speed" internet sucks, so I can't load pictures right now. We'll try to add them later.
