The 2 Sail R’s have been in New Zealand for one week. So far we are loving it! It’s been a busy week filled with novelty and the excitement of getting ourselves travel ready.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
We left Fiji late on a rainy afternoon where there was an expectation of a possible cyclone. Worrall Wind was safe, but we were concerned the weather would settle in before our plane took off. Our plane was delayed due to runway light failure in NZ the night before causing all planes to be late. We left an hour later than scheduled through thick dark clouds, but arrived just a few minutes passed the originally scheduled time. A strong tail wind from the weather around Fiji had us flying along at 990 kilometers per hour. We landed in NZ as the sun was setting over the north island, only a few clouds. It was a beautiful welcome.
Prior to leaving Fiji, we did rent a New Zealand car for five days and booked a hotel room for one night. When we got off the plane, we at least had wheels and a bed. First though we had to find the wheels. As we entered the parking lot, Russ pre-paid the parking ticket that we had picked up along with the car keys and rental agreement at the tourist desk. Car companies apparently don’t stay open after 7:00 p.m.
The tourist desk told us the slot number we were in, but not where slot Q16 was located. The parking lot was not well marked, and of course it took us quite a long time to find the car. By the time we got to the un-manned exit gate, our parking ticket had extended past the time allotted for getting out of the lot and was rejected. We were instructed to insert our credit card….which we did, and we got another message saying something cryptic, like….entry data not valid. We were stuck. This was reminiscent of our toll road fiasco in Italy last fall. By this time there were cars behind us, and we couldn’t go forward or backward. There was apparently no one around to help us.
After several minutes of cars in our line backing up and going to other gates, we also backed up and tried two more gates with no success. Finally, we backed up a block to a little building that had a man sitting in a gate shed. He had been watching our problem for at least 10 minutes, but hadn’t ventured out to advise or assist us. He asked for our credit card. The extra 20 minutes had cost us another $7.00 NZ! He lifted the gate without so much as even a hello, and we were on our way….where? we were not quite sure. We had ordered a GPS navigation system, but it wasn’t in the car when we arrived. We had a few tourist maps and had to do with those.
It’s been a while since our maps involved so many streets. The tourist office maps were not the greatest. Longitude and latitude charts are much more simple. We eventually found the hotel, found our room one flight up with no elevator and crashed. It had been a long day.
Monday, November 29, 2010
We spent our first day going in unintended directions and trying to get our bearings. Russ kept saying we weren’t lost. We just didn’t know where we were!
Russ had gotten pretty used to driving on the left hand side of the road in a right hand drive car in Fiji, but the little car we had here had a tricky little gear shift (left handed shifting). Every time Russ thought he was putting on the blinker, he turned on the windshield wiper and visa versa as these are switched around in right hand side cars.
We did manage to buy a SIM card for our unlocked phone, Vodafone data modem for getting on the Internet, basic membership in AA (comparable to our AAA), picked up travel books and maps at AA, stopped at the rental car company and got a TomTom navigation system, and found a motel room for two nights closer to the car dealerships. We also got on the Internet at Trademe.co.nz and contacted the owner of a used campervan. We made arrangements to meet with him the following morning and look at his van(s). Phew!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
We left our motel room and drove to a location given to us by the man who was selling the car, approximately 20 minutes west of our motel. Ricky, a very nice and enterprising Chinese New Zealander met us at 7:30 a.m. Ricky who is a driving instructor also buys used vans and converts them to camper units. He showed us three he was working on. We got pretty excited about one of them and thought we had found what we were looking for. Ricky couldn’t get the van started though (hmm) and asked if we could come back the following evening for a test run. We agreed, but in the meantime, told him we would be looking at other vans.
We stopped at a couple of other campervan dealers before lunch but hadn’t found anything we liked or was in our price range of cheap. During lunch we pulled out the computer and new modem stick, got on line, punched up Trademe, and a new listing popped up that hadn’t been there earlier in the morning. The van looked interesting. We were the first potential buyers to call and made arrangements with the owner, to see the van later that afternoon at 6:00. She lived in a suburb of Glenfield 30 miles from our hotel.
With time to kill we drove to Glenfield early and checked out the nearby town and shopping center. We arrived for our appointment a little early, but the owner Jane pulled up just as we got there in her campervan. She had taken it to be WOFfed. Every six months, cars in NZ must receive a WOF inspection (pronounced woof, warranty of fitness). The van passed its WOF, good news, and had a current registration (due to expire the end of December). The van is a 1985, oldy but goody. It has a customized interior unlike any we had seen. Within 15 minutes and a test drive, we verbally agreed to buy the van.
Jane was amenable to waiting a few days for our US $ to be wired to our yet to be opened NZ bank account and was kind enough to let us start cleaning and prepping the van in her back yard starting the next day. We found a camground nearby Glenfield that had camping cabins. Since our two days at the motel were now up, we moved closer to the van. Russ called Ricky to let him know that we had found a van and would not be coming by for the test drive. Ricky asked us to give him a call when we were done with the van in April, as he might want to buy it from us.
Wednesday, December 1 and Thursday, December 2, 2010
For two days, we cleared out the van of all the dishes, bedding, etc., that we didn’t want, vacuumed, scrubbed, polished, shopped and stocked the van with things we did. We opened a bank account with ANZ bank and worked with our bank at home to transfer dollars. Jane let us know that her phone had been ringing off the hook with inquiries about the van. We were glad we had moved swiftly on this purchase.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Our dollars finally made it to ANZ. That’s another comedy of errors of our dollars being incorrectly exchanged to the Australian rate, wired after being stopped, a second withdrawal to our account, double now of what we asked for, $ wired back, fees charged, credited, waived…..kind of a mess, but it all worked out.
We picked up the $, picked up the van and brought it to the campground where we loaded it with all of the stuff we had in the camping cabin and rental car. Then Russ drove the van, and I drove the rental car back to Penrose where Jane worked and located near the rental car return. We met at the AA office, paid Jane, re-registered the vehicle, got extended road assistance through AA and bought our own TomTom. AA recommended we get car insurance, which is not a requirement in NZ through Backpackers Car Insurance company. It would be for a shorter period and less expensive that what AA could offer.
As we were coming out of the AA office, a lady was looking in the windows of the van. She was wondering if we were selling it? Not now, but we took her email address and told her we would contact her in April. (two potential buyers). Another lady, tapped on our window, just as we were getting ready to pull out. She was jumping up and down. Was this another potential buyer??? No, just a 90 year old lady ecstatic that she got her driver’s license renewed and couldn’t wait to share her joy with the first people she saw. Cute!
Here are some photos of our new home and first night at the campground. Yeah! Fresh fruits and vegeta
Saturday, December 4, 2010
With the business part of our week taken care of, we spent Saturday sightseeing in downtown Auckland. It was overcast most of the day. The weather here right now (early spring) is very much like Oakland and the East Bay in the summer, foggy and cool in the morning, burning off to pleasant in the late afternoon.
Auckland is a lovely city. It’s clean, fresh, multi-cultured, and a blend of traditional and contemporary architecture.
Our first stop was the Backpackers Car Market. This was going to be one of our stops before we bought the van. We decided to see what it was like anyway incase we want to use the market to sell the van. We were of course a little worried that we would see something we liked better than what we bought, but left feeling quite satisfied that we had gotten a good deal and didn’t see anything that came close to what we had gotten for our $3,000 USD.
In Auckland City, the sky tower dominates the skyline.
The view from the top is beautiful and the 360 degree view allows the visitor to see both the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea.
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| Looking through my feet to ground below |
And no….we didn’t bungee jump from the top, but there were several people who did while we were there. The Kiwis are really into bungee jumping.
An amusement ride close buy the Sky tower is a bungee rocket. Here is a picture of it blasting skyward.
We also visited the Maritime Museum. It’s a great place, interesting and well done. One of the rooms is a recreated 1900 immigrant bunk room.
The floor moves and creaks just as one of the old ships must have (on a very gentle day while tied up at the dock!). For old salts like us, the floor hardly moved. We’re used to be thrown from one side of the boat to the other!
Another interesting display was a simulated sailboat race with wheel, winches, and race course where folks could test out their team skills. Here are some boys having a great time. We could have spent a full day there.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
It’s our one week NZ anniversary. We’ve been here a week, have a cell phone, data modem, bank account, shopping discount cards, ATM cards, and a campervan. Jesse and Simon, Garyn and Jessica’s friends from Wellington, are also letting us use their address for receiving physical mail. Not bad for the first week.
We decided to spend the day sight seeing on the west side of the island in the Waitekere Regional Park on the Tasman sea. We had lovely day visiting the tourist center, walking along the beaches of Piha and KereKere, climbing sand dunes, watching a surfing competition, hiking through rain forests and learning about the ancient trees, and listening to the whistle and trills of unfamiliar birds.
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