We've done a lot since the last post:
1. alissa's bday (baked her a chocolate thingy)
2. freedom camping/urban camping for free
3. freaked out that we didn't sell our car on trade me
4. we negotiated with a shady car to buy our car...he didn't want it for the amount we've asked
5. brought our car to the car marketplace (it's like a physical ebay for cars)
6. guy bought it in 4min., cash, no questions asked
7. we're staying in a cute little hostel that is more like a big house
8. bought a snow board bag that is EPIC
9. packing tonight and playing video games
yup, that about sums it up....oh wait, we stayed at another camper ground that was like an animal park.
we got to see donkeys, emus, alpacas, a baby cow (that wanted to play with us), golden possums, ducks/ducklings, and alissa's first encounter with a friendly sheep (it wanted to be scratched ..CUTE!)
I made friends with the donkey....shut up Herrera and Aaron, I know what you're thinking!
k, expensive internet+limited time= short post.
see yall in a week or so!
-jalissa
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
DunEEdin.
Hello all.
I would like you to know that you should appreciate how easy it is for you to access the World Wide Web. New Zealand, though it might seem advanced in its wildlife saving methods, has an extreme lack of internet facilities. Oh, you could, for example, make your way to the PUBLIC LIBRARY, where they might have ONE DESKTOP on which you might use internet for $2 for FIFTEEN MINUTES!
Yeah... this town had all of 2 locations at which to access the internet, both of which cost about that much... I don't know how people live over here.
Anyways, after staying two glorious nights at Queenstown and wishing that we had worked at ski resorts adjacent to this town, (of which there are many,) we moved towards the south. That's the kind of place where one might have no access to internet for days. There is ocean and gorgeous greenery all around you, but there isn't much else. Jon and I stayed at a campground that had sheep just roaming on it and was next to the beach. It couldn't get much better than that. Then, we met people on the campground who were building a fire, and some others that had brought instruments. We had an epic night of singing by the fire. That was just awesome. And to top it all off, in the morning, we accidentally ended up herding sheep in front of the car as we were trying to drive out. No, not just 10 sheep. Probably about a hundred. Hehe. Epic. (Certain friends of mine might refer to the whole experience as majestic. And that it was. My camera simply cannot capture the immensity of the natural beauty here.)
Anyways, we are now driving north along the coast, and have reached a CITY called Dunedin, which is pronounced DunEEEdin. We got a little flustered trying to drive in the city center. After driving long winding roads for days on end, cities are scary!
So now we are staying at another holiday park, on the peninsula outside of the city, where the houses are scarce and the wildlife is abundant.
Oh by the way. WE SAW PENGUINS TODAY. Little tiny ones called blue penguins. They came in little groups to the beach and scampered up the terrain at dusk. CUTE. One of them was not even bothering to hide himself away. He just walked up the road to his favorite den. (New Zealand had already built little huts to suit the penguins in order to keep the birds coming here, and to keep the tourists paying for their meals.) We followed the little guy up the hill as we were walking back to our car. Awesome.
Ok it is late now, and I am paying to write this, so you can imagine that I might want to stop writing right about now.
Talk to you all soon!
Jalissa
I would like you to know that you should appreciate how easy it is for you to access the World Wide Web. New Zealand, though it might seem advanced in its wildlife saving methods, has an extreme lack of internet facilities. Oh, you could, for example, make your way to the PUBLIC LIBRARY, where they might have ONE DESKTOP on which you might use internet for $2 for FIFTEEN MINUTES!
Yeah... this town had all of 2 locations at which to access the internet, both of which cost about that much... I don't know how people live over here.
Anyways, after staying two glorious nights at Queenstown and wishing that we had worked at ski resorts adjacent to this town, (of which there are many,) we moved towards the south. That's the kind of place where one might have no access to internet for days. There is ocean and gorgeous greenery all around you, but there isn't much else. Jon and I stayed at a campground that had sheep just roaming on it and was next to the beach. It couldn't get much better than that. Then, we met people on the campground who were building a fire, and some others that had brought instruments. We had an epic night of singing by the fire. That was just awesome. And to top it all off, in the morning, we accidentally ended up herding sheep in front of the car as we were trying to drive out. No, not just 10 sheep. Probably about a hundred. Hehe. Epic. (Certain friends of mine might refer to the whole experience as majestic. And that it was. My camera simply cannot capture the immensity of the natural beauty here.)
Anyways, we are now driving north along the coast, and have reached a CITY called Dunedin, which is pronounced DunEEEdin. We got a little flustered trying to drive in the city center. After driving long winding roads for days on end, cities are scary!
So now we are staying at another holiday park, on the peninsula outside of the city, where the houses are scarce and the wildlife is abundant.
Oh by the way. WE SAW PENGUINS TODAY. Little tiny ones called blue penguins. They came in little groups to the beach and scampered up the terrain at dusk. CUTE. One of them was not even bothering to hide himself away. He just walked up the road to his favorite den. (New Zealand had already built little huts to suit the penguins in order to keep the birds coming here, and to keep the tourists paying for their meals.) We followed the little guy up the hill as we were walking back to our car. Awesome.
Ok it is late now, and I am paying to write this, so you can imagine that I might want to stop writing right about now.
Talk to you all soon!
Jalissa
Saturday, October 17, 2009
5,4,3,2,1 bungy jump
So we did it!
A 43m bungy jump (at the world's first bungy location!)
It was a lot of fun! Alissa did it on her own too right after me (she even tipped the water at the end a little bit!). I am really glad she did it and super proud of her because not many girls ever bungy jump! (can you tell that Jon is trying to make me feel better for nearly shitting my pants trying to make myself jump off the platform)
This bungy jump was a bit sketch though...ok a bit is an understatement. It was fucking janky. By this I mean that the thing that tied the bungy cord to you foot was only a bungy cable and a a wrapped up TOWEL! That's it, nothing else. Super scary. And now Alissa and I have a super cool t-shirt for free.
Last night, we drove up to a dark, farmland campsite and watched How I Met Your Mother in the car because it was raining. Not that exciting, but fun.
I think we might go party with Alissa's friends tonight, we will see. But right now, diner making time!
until next time,
Jalissa
A 43m bungy jump (at the world's first bungy location!)
It was a lot of fun! Alissa did it on her own too right after me (she even tipped the water at the end a little bit!). I am really glad she did it and super proud of her because not many girls ever bungy jump! (can you tell that Jon is trying to make me feel better for nearly shitting my pants trying to make myself jump off the platform)
This bungy jump was a bit sketch though...ok a bit is an understatement. It was fucking janky. By this I mean that the thing that tied the bungy cord to you foot was only a bungy cable and a a wrapped up TOWEL! That's it, nothing else. Super scary. And now Alissa and I have a super cool t-shirt for free.
Last night, we drove up to a dark, farmland campsite and watched How I Met Your Mother in the car because it was raining. Not that exciting, but fun.
I think we might go party with Alissa's friends tonight, we will see. But right now, diner making time!
until next time,
Jalissa
Friday, October 16, 2009
Queenstown
WOW.
So we're going bungy jumping tomorrow. I might pee my pants. Jon insisted that we challenge ourselves. Aahhhh! I'm pretty sure that I would never have done this on my own, so really, I'm grateful... but seriously??? You have to book it a day in advance, so they make you sleep on the idea for a whole night before you actually have to jump. That's incredibly insensitive. Honestly, isn't there a way to just do it while you're feeling brave? Forcing you to actually think about how you are willingly jumping off of a bridge is a bit mean, don't you think?
Anyways, that was today's fiasco. And that spurred a fiasco about money, since Jon said he was going to pay me back. (I have the only credit card, and you wouldn't believe how many things cannot be paid for by EFTPOS, or ATM card, as we like to call it. When Jon and I opened a bank account, we got an EFTPOS card, which, as we learned later, does not work for most transactions here. Money is such a strange thing... ) Anyways, in the process we managed to get the bungy company to let us use their internet for free. So here I am, blogging away!
Ok, where did I leave off in the New Zealand diaries...
Oh right, Franz Josef, the glacier town. So that place was cool, except that it was raining that day. But we just stayed inside and watched a movie that day. (Speaking of which, has anyone seen the movie "blow"? It's about this one guy who started dealing drugs, and how he got huge and eventually went to jail. It has Johnny Depp in it, but they weren't really focusing on showing off his body, so the movie could have been much better. )
So that night Jon made delicious dinner, and we chilled. The next day we took the short hike to the very bottom of the Franz Josef glacier. That is one majestic river of ice, I tell you. You feel very small when the bottom of a glacier dwarfs you. Jon went and saw the other glacier, the Fox Glacier. Then, on a whim, we decided to spend the night at this campground at a place called Gillespies Beach. We thought this was going to be awesome. It was not what we expected. We thought the drive there would be short, and it turned out to be a narrow winding road of gravel that took forever to get through. We thought we would be alone, but a lot of people ended up sleeping there that night. We thought we'd do a quick 3.5 hour hike, and ended up trudging through the mud and swamps for 5 hours. We thought the hike was to see a colony of seals... there were no seals. We thought we'd have a nice calm night sleeping, but we got eaten alive by verocious sandflies. The like huan flesh a lot. Jon and I have bites on every little bit of exposed flesh. Hands, necks, ankles and even that line of skin between my t-shirt and my pants got attacked. But we did make a cool fire on the beach, and then we met a German guy, whose name is Robin, who offered us some weed and then proceeded to talk the whole night about how epic the whole bonfire by the ocean thing was. Hehe. He also busted out his miniature Hookah, which we enjoyed by the fire.
That morning we got the heck out of sandfly country. They clearly wanted us there way too much. We proceeded to drive a really long distance that day. We ended up in a town called Wanaka. We liked Wanaka a lot, because it was the first real town we had seen since Nelson. We slept in a Holiday Park, and took lots of showers and revelled in the availability of the kitchen and electricity, as well as the lack of flies. Wanaka was having a spring festival they call "Wanakafest." Creative. Anyways, they had little contests for the kids, like : Best trained dog, best dressed dog and owner, best fetcher. And there was a huge bike race. All the local teenage boys were showing off their skills. They had also gotten some snow for the little kids to play in (from somewhere...),a nd there was supposedly a circus, but we never saw it. In any case, this was the place to be, so we were hving a good time watching the festivities. Then, after having to stop the urge to buy all the delicious food and all the half-off ski clothes, we finally had to get out of this haven for people who have money. That's how we ended up in Queenstown, extreme sports capital of the world. We are probably going to walk around town tonight, sleep at a campground tonight, and then do all the expensive stuff, like jumping off of bridges, tomorrow...
We will let you know how that goes!!
Jalissa
So we're going bungy jumping tomorrow. I might pee my pants. Jon insisted that we challenge ourselves. Aahhhh! I'm pretty sure that I would never have done this on my own, so really, I'm grateful... but seriously??? You have to book it a day in advance, so they make you sleep on the idea for a whole night before you actually have to jump. That's incredibly insensitive. Honestly, isn't there a way to just do it while you're feeling brave? Forcing you to actually think about how you are willingly jumping off of a bridge is a bit mean, don't you think?
Anyways, that was today's fiasco. And that spurred a fiasco about money, since Jon said he was going to pay me back. (I have the only credit card, and you wouldn't believe how many things cannot be paid for by EFTPOS, or ATM card, as we like to call it. When Jon and I opened a bank account, we got an EFTPOS card, which, as we learned later, does not work for most transactions here. Money is such a strange thing... ) Anyways, in the process we managed to get the bungy company to let us use their internet for free. So here I am, blogging away!
Ok, where did I leave off in the New Zealand diaries...
Oh right, Franz Josef, the glacier town. So that place was cool, except that it was raining that day. But we just stayed inside and watched a movie that day. (Speaking of which, has anyone seen the movie "blow"? It's about this one guy who started dealing drugs, and how he got huge and eventually went to jail. It has Johnny Depp in it, but they weren't really focusing on showing off his body, so the movie could have been much better. )
So that night Jon made delicious dinner, and we chilled. The next day we took the short hike to the very bottom of the Franz Josef glacier. That is one majestic river of ice, I tell you. You feel very small when the bottom of a glacier dwarfs you. Jon went and saw the other glacier, the Fox Glacier. Then, on a whim, we decided to spend the night at this campground at a place called Gillespies Beach. We thought this was going to be awesome. It was not what we expected. We thought the drive there would be short, and it turned out to be a narrow winding road of gravel that took forever to get through. We thought we would be alone, but a lot of people ended up sleeping there that night. We thought we'd do a quick 3.5 hour hike, and ended up trudging through the mud and swamps for 5 hours. We thought the hike was to see a colony of seals... there were no seals. We thought we'd have a nice calm night sleeping, but we got eaten alive by verocious sandflies. The like huan flesh a lot. Jon and I have bites on every little bit of exposed flesh. Hands, necks, ankles and even that line of skin between my t-shirt and my pants got attacked. But we did make a cool fire on the beach, and then we met a German guy, whose name is Robin, who offered us some weed and then proceeded to talk the whole night about how epic the whole bonfire by the ocean thing was. Hehe. He also busted out his miniature Hookah, which we enjoyed by the fire.
That morning we got the heck out of sandfly country. They clearly wanted us there way too much. We proceeded to drive a really long distance that day. We ended up in a town called Wanaka. We liked Wanaka a lot, because it was the first real town we had seen since Nelson. We slept in a Holiday Park, and took lots of showers and revelled in the availability of the kitchen and electricity, as well as the lack of flies. Wanaka was having a spring festival they call "Wanakafest." Creative. Anyways, they had little contests for the kids, like : Best trained dog, best dressed dog and owner, best fetcher. And there was a huge bike race. All the local teenage boys were showing off their skills. They had also gotten some snow for the little kids to play in (from somewhere...),a nd there was supposedly a circus, but we never saw it. In any case, this was the place to be, so we were hving a good time watching the festivities. Then, after having to stop the urge to buy all the delicious food and all the half-off ski clothes, we finally had to get out of this haven for people who have money. That's how we ended up in Queenstown, extreme sports capital of the world. We are probably going to walk around town tonight, sleep at a campground tonight, and then do all the expensive stuff, like jumping off of bridges, tomorrow...
We will let you know how that goes!!
Jalissa
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Adventures - an appropriate word for current experiences
Hello friends. If we can call you friends since you are clearly uninterested in sharing your comments with us lonely travellers...
Anyways. A recap of happenings since Wellington:
- We said goodbye to Joel and took the most expensive ferry trip of my life (and the most expensive thing we did in NZ) down to south island. $215. In the process we met a car full of ex-rentals staff: David, Tim, and Digby. They had Alex with them (who is Amy's ex-roommate). Dave and Tim were on their way to buying a van, and about to do the same thing Jon and I were already doing. They were going to meet up with us in Nelson, but our phone lost Dave's number. So we just parted ways...
-Jon and I were sick of paying lots of money for housing, so when we got to Nelson, we just parked in a secret-looking place, and stayed the night in our car. Despite a security officer clearly driving past our car, we had no trouble with the law. I guess they don't really follow up on those threatening-looking signs that read: "No camping or overnight parking." We had bought a thin layer of foam from "The Warehouse" to sleep on as a mattress (already being decked out with a Duvet and several pillows, thanks to our lack of loyalty to The Park), but the comfort level in the car was not overwhelming. I managed to bruise my hip bones. I think I'm too heavy for my own skin...
- After Nelson, we went North to Motueka. The main attraction here, as we found out, is a 4-5 day backpacking hike called the Abel Tasman. Though it looks like a really popular attraction, we got all excited about having found the place on a whim. We hiked for a couple of hours in one direction and then turned around and walked back. What a beautiful hike, by the way. This place is a National Park right on the ocean and the ocean views were spectacular.
- Having gone about as north as it gets on the South Island, we headed south. We stayed the night at a little "holiday park"(which is what they call a place where you can pay to park your vehicle and sleep in it, but also to have access to toilets and a kitchen) in Tapawera. This place was awesome. You could tell that the economy of the entire town (of 400 people) was being fueled by the fact that this holiday park was attracting people. We slept next door to a very cool horse, a pony and a wild razorback pig being kept as a pet. And we got to touch all of them because Jon is awesome and makes friends with people. Yes, we fed and petted a wild boar. Oh, and if you scratched his tummy, he fell over. Also, his name was spider pig. The horse was cool cuz she would get impatient with us trying to feed her grass, so she would tear fronds off of the palm tree and chew them. Heh.
- South again we drove, to Westport, where the main attraction was seals, which are apparently aggressive, and we only got to see from the cliffs far above. We passed a place that has rocks shaped like stacks of pancakes, and watched the waves spray out of a blowhole in the cliffs. That night we slept in a campground at Lake Mahinapua. We heard of this place from the guy that let us pet his pig. Six dollars for a place to stay is quite a deal here. That's how we got privvy to the free and very cheap campgrounds owned by the Department of Conservation. SWEET.
- Now we are in Franz Josef, where the Glaciers are just a 30 minute drive away. These people are ripping us off. We are staying in a Hostel for $21 a night each. LAME. Oh and also, today is the first day it has rained on us in the South island. We had been very lucky, but we are in for a week or so of some bad weather. Boo.
So far the $60 a day thing has been working well. We have been spending about that much a day, saving very little, but still able to buy food and gas. Yay! It is possible!
Jalissa
Anyways. A recap of happenings since Wellington:
- We said goodbye to Joel and took the most expensive ferry trip of my life (and the most expensive thing we did in NZ) down to south island. $215. In the process we met a car full of ex-rentals staff: David, Tim, and Digby. They had Alex with them (who is Amy's ex-roommate). Dave and Tim were on their way to buying a van, and about to do the same thing Jon and I were already doing. They were going to meet up with us in Nelson, but our phone lost Dave's number. So we just parted ways...
-Jon and I were sick of paying lots of money for housing, so when we got to Nelson, we just parked in a secret-looking place, and stayed the night in our car. Despite a security officer clearly driving past our car, we had no trouble with the law. I guess they don't really follow up on those threatening-looking signs that read: "No camping or overnight parking." We had bought a thin layer of foam from "The Warehouse" to sleep on as a mattress (already being decked out with a Duvet and several pillows, thanks to our lack of loyalty to The Park), but the comfort level in the car was not overwhelming. I managed to bruise my hip bones. I think I'm too heavy for my own skin...
- After Nelson, we went North to Motueka. The main attraction here, as we found out, is a 4-5 day backpacking hike called the Abel Tasman. Though it looks like a really popular attraction, we got all excited about having found the place on a whim. We hiked for a couple of hours in one direction and then turned around and walked back. What a beautiful hike, by the way. This place is a National Park right on the ocean and the ocean views were spectacular.
- Having gone about as north as it gets on the South Island, we headed south. We stayed the night at a little "holiday park"(which is what they call a place where you can pay to park your vehicle and sleep in it, but also to have access to toilets and a kitchen) in Tapawera. This place was awesome. You could tell that the economy of the entire town (of 400 people) was being fueled by the fact that this holiday park was attracting people. We slept next door to a very cool horse, a pony and a wild razorback pig being kept as a pet. And we got to touch all of them because Jon is awesome and makes friends with people. Yes, we fed and petted a wild boar. Oh, and if you scratched his tummy, he fell over. Also, his name was spider pig. The horse was cool cuz she would get impatient with us trying to feed her grass, so she would tear fronds off of the palm tree and chew them. Heh.
- South again we drove, to Westport, where the main attraction was seals, which are apparently aggressive, and we only got to see from the cliffs far above. We passed a place that has rocks shaped like stacks of pancakes, and watched the waves spray out of a blowhole in the cliffs. That night we slept in a campground at Lake Mahinapua. We heard of this place from the guy that let us pet his pig. Six dollars for a place to stay is quite a deal here. That's how we got privvy to the free and very cheap campgrounds owned by the Department of Conservation. SWEET.
- Now we are in Franz Josef, where the Glaciers are just a 30 minute drive away. These people are ripping us off. We are staying in a Hostel for $21 a night each. LAME. Oh and also, today is the first day it has rained on us in the South island. We had been very lucky, but we are in for a week or so of some bad weather. Boo.
So far the $60 a day thing has been working well. We have been spending about that much a day, saving very little, but still able to buy food and gas. Yay! It is possible!
Jalissa
Friday, October 9, 2009
Wellington
Today is our last day in Wellington. We spent the day at Te Papa, a free museum that was alright, but not as entertaining as it could have been. Also we did a lot of walking around the city. We were hoping to meet our friends here, so we could have lunch (and a drink or two), but they were lame and had to do something. We might meet up with them tonight. Joel and Jon are making dinner right now, so I figure I will join them. Oh, and we overshot our $60 limit by a good 20 bucks today. Not only did we pay for a hostel at $27 a night (each), but we also ate lunch at a restaurant, and bought food for dinner at a grocery store.
I am thinking we will have to sleep in the car a lot from now on to catch up to our budget. Hopefully that won't be too much of a problem. We hear the south island is even more isolated from the north, and judging by the place we had been living in, that's gotta be absolutely dead.
I hope you have at least as great of a night as we're going to have!
Jalissa
I am thinking we will have to sleep in the car a lot from now on to catch up to our budget. Hopefully that won't be too much of a problem. We hear the south island is even more isolated from the north, and judging by the place we had been living in, that's gotta be absolutely dead.
I hope you have at least as great of a night as we're going to have!
Jalissa
Thursday, October 8, 2009
First day on the road!
So yesterday we packed up and left our temporary home of The Park. We drove south, so a town called Palmerston North, where Joel (whom we are traveling with for a while) got us connected with Sarah and Kyra. They were travelling the same direction as us, and had a place to stay, and we ended up joining in on the fun. We went clubbing, sort of...
As all of us that were drinking that night were on a budget, (Jon and I are attempting a $60 a day fiasco) we did most of our drinking at home. We drank so much that Joel refused to go out with us because he felt he was going to throw up. Jon and I then managed to lose the rest of the group at the first bar, so we had to go home, lest we end up lost at the end of the night. But it was an awesome night nonetheless. It just goes to show that you should know someone in every town. It makes life so much more exciting and cheap. Of course, sleeping on the floor wasn't too comfortable, but we made do. (We managed to keep to our budget on day one, by the way!)
Day two started with a drive to Wellington, a massive confusion trying to find the city center, and somewhere to park, and also a $40 parking ticket for being in the wrong place for literally 10 minutes. It was sad. What with Hostel prices here, and that ticket, we did not manage to keep to the budget, despite no other expenses. We even ate only the food that we brought. This might be harder than we thought....
As all of us that were drinking that night were on a budget, (Jon and I are attempting a $60 a day fiasco) we did most of our drinking at home. We drank so much that Joel refused to go out with us because he felt he was going to throw up. Jon and I then managed to lose the rest of the group at the first bar, so we had to go home, lest we end up lost at the end of the night. But it was an awesome night nonetheless. It just goes to show that you should know someone in every town. It makes life so much more exciting and cheap. Of course, sleeping on the floor wasn't too comfortable, but we made do. (We managed to keep to our budget on day one, by the way!)
Day two started with a drive to Wellington, a massive confusion trying to find the city center, and somewhere to park, and also a $40 parking ticket for being in the wrong place for literally 10 minutes. It was sad. What with Hostel prices here, and that ticket, we did not manage to keep to the budget, despite no other expenses. We even ate only the food that we brought. This might be harder than we thought....
Thursday, October 1, 2009
This is an update for Herrera
Hi again. We haven't updated in a while. The highlights of the last two weeks can be summarized like this:
Jon and I took tuesday of last week off, thus giving us a three day weekend to travel around north island. We traveled to Rotorua, Tauranga, Hamilton, and Waitomo. To put this into perspective, Rotorua is about 3 hours away from where we are staying, and each of these towns is equally spread around the country. Needless to say, we did a lot of driving. But all in all it was an excellent adventure. I put p
ictures up on facebook, for those of you who want a visual tour. Rotorua is the cultural epicenter and biggest tourist attraction of New Zealand, from what I can tell so far. We walked around a Maori town (of which there are many), saw Kiwis at an animal park, stayed at a hostel, smelled the sulphury gas escaping from the ground all around us, etc. It was a great time! I really like rotorua. It has a very cute town center, and lots of beautiful nature surrounding it. (That goes for all of New Zealand, except for the drive to my workplace). The map shows the amount of driving that we did. We started at the southernmost green dot and made a big circle. Tauranga turned out to be a very modern ocean city. It reminded us of San Diego, with its art galleries and expensive shops on the waterfront. That was something I was not expecting in New Zealand, and it was also not that interesting, so we just had some fish and chips there and moved on to Hamilton. Hamilton reminds me of home as well. Somewhat suburban, has a mall and a city center with nightlife (I assume. We didn't see anyone making use of the bars.) Hamilton confused us because there were so many cars and roundabouts. We even got lost, and had a scare when the police sounded its sirens behind us. (Turns out they just wanted to pass us...) We slept in our car that night, which is cheaper than staying in a hostel, and perfectly doable in Gertrude, since you can lower the back seat to make a flat surface. On day three, we drove to Otorohanga, the town closest to the Waitomo caves that we would go caving in. This is also where we saw the Angora bunnies that get shaved. Take a look at my pictures for a description of that experience!
We had a great time throughout the trip, and it gave us confidence that we will be able to travel to south island in our car when we are done working here. We will have to work on our spending habits, especially on food. We spent more in three days than I make in one week. But we will figure it out in a week, when we get on the road!
On another note, Jon drove the car into a parked truck the other day. He had an adventure trying to replace the passenger side window that broke in the process. Apparently you have to fix glass related things at a place that specializes in glass. They, in turn told him that he needed to fix his door frame before they could replace the glass. They recommended a junkyard, which Jon deemed "really sketchy." It was literally a junkyard, complete with blind dog, scary guys with dreadlocks and tattoos all over, and little kids running around. As it turned out, they had an entire door, complete with window, that they sold to us for $200. So Gertrude, who is light blue, now has a dark blue side-panel on one side. She is just developing even more of a personality. BUT they did give Jon a stick shift lever too! So we can officially shift without problems now!
Also, we booked a flight from Christchurch to Auckland a few days before we are scheduled to fly home. That way we just have to drive south, and we don't have to worry about driving all the way back up for hours on end. I have a friend who offered to take us around Auckland in those days, so hopefully we will have a good time exploring that place as well.
And while we are talking about getting back to reality: I finally got in touch with that recruiter from "Athletes To Business" who wanted to find me a job after I graduated. He says he will be trying to get me interviews, so that by the time I get back, I will be able to start going to them. What a champ. I wish people were always there to help me find a job. What will I ever do when I have to do things on my own. (Yeah, Tanaka, be jealous.)
Ok guys, that's it for now! See you all soon!
Jalissa
Jon and I took tuesday of last week off, thus giving us a three day weekend to travel around north island. We traveled to Rotorua, Tauranga, Hamilton, and Waitomo. To put this into perspective, Rotorua is about 3 hours away from where we are staying, and each of these towns is equally spread around the country. Needless to say, we did a lot of driving. But all in all it was an excellent adventure. I put p
ictures up on facebook, for those of you who want a visual tour. Rotorua is the cultural epicenter and biggest tourist attraction of New Zealand, from what I can tell so far. We walked around a Maori town (of which there are many), saw Kiwis at an animal park, stayed at a hostel, smelled the sulphury gas escaping from the ground all around us, etc. It was a great time! I really like rotorua. It has a very cute town center, and lots of beautiful nature surrounding it. (That goes for all of New Zealand, except for the drive to my workplace). The map shows the amount of driving that we did. We started at the southernmost green dot and made a big circle. Tauranga turned out to be a very modern ocean city. It reminded us of San Diego, with its art galleries and expensive shops on the waterfront. That was something I was not expecting in New Zealand, and it was also not that interesting, so we just had some fish and chips there and moved on to Hamilton. Hamilton reminds me of home as well. Somewhat suburban, has a mall and a city center with nightlife (I assume. We didn't see anyone making use of the bars.) Hamilton confused us because there were so many cars and roundabouts. We even got lost, and had a scare when the police sounded its sirens behind us. (Turns out they just wanted to pass us...) We slept in our car that night, which is cheaper than staying in a hostel, and perfectly doable in Gertrude, since you can lower the back seat to make a flat surface. On day three, we drove to Otorohanga, the town closest to the Waitomo caves that we would go caving in. This is also where we saw the Angora bunnies that get shaved. Take a look at my pictures for a description of that experience!We had a great time throughout the trip, and it gave us confidence that we will be able to travel to south island in our car when we are done working here. We will have to work on our spending habits, especially on food. We spent more in three days than I make in one week. But we will figure it out in a week, when we get on the road!
On another note, Jon drove the car into a parked truck the other day. He had an adventure trying to replace the passenger side window that broke in the process. Apparently you have to fix glass related things at a place that specializes in glass. They, in turn told him that he needed to fix his door frame before they could replace the glass. They recommended a junkyard, which Jon deemed "really sketchy." It was literally a junkyard, complete with blind dog, scary guys with dreadlocks and tattoos all over, and little kids running around. As it turned out, they had an entire door, complete with window, that they sold to us for $200. So Gertrude, who is light blue, now has a dark blue side-panel on one side. She is just developing even more of a personality. BUT they did give Jon a stick shift lever too! So we can officially shift without problems now!
Also, we booked a flight from Christchurch to Auckland a few days before we are scheduled to fly home. That way we just have to drive south, and we don't have to worry about driving all the way back up for hours on end. I have a friend who offered to take us around Auckland in those days, so hopefully we will have a good time exploring that place as well.
And while we are talking about getting back to reality: I finally got in touch with that recruiter from "Athletes To Business" who wanted to find me a job after I graduated. He says he will be trying to get me interviews, so that by the time I get back, I will be able to start going to them. What a champ. I wish people were always there to help me find a job. What will I ever do when I have to do things on my own. (Yeah, Tanaka, be jealous.)
Ok guys, that's it for now! See you all soon!
Jalissa
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