Well that's us in New Zealand now and as usual things didn't go quite as planned! First of all we turned up at the airport and when we went to check in we found out that we weren't on the list of passengers. We were due to fly with Qantas budget airline Jetstar and Jetstar said that there was nothing they could do as it was Qantas' error. So we went to the Qantas desk and the only proof of the flight we had was a cheap toilet paper printout that Qantas had given us when we had booked the flight, it was worse than an old dot-matrix printer! However the guy was fine and said that there was no seats on the flight we were supposed to be on and therefore we were upgraded to the Qantas flight leaving 20 minutes later which was a better flight and service so it worked out good in the end.
After arriving in Christchurch we made our way to the hostel to be told that their computer was broken so our booking hadn't been received and the room was unavailable that night! The owner was very apologetic however and said that her Mum has a spare room that she rents out that was available and gave us it at a discounted rate. She ran us to this house and it turned out she was a 79 year old crazy Macedonian! Both her and her Kiwi husband, also 79 were a great laugh however and told us stories about how they had been to Scotland and travelled about Europe in a campervan!
Our first impression of New Zealand and the Kiwi's was that of amazing friendliness and generous hospitality. It made such a difference from the extreme dislike that we felt a high percentage of Ozzies had for backpackers.
New Zealand consists of 2 main islands - the creatively named North and South as well as a much smaller Stewart Island off the South coast. There are also smaller groups of islands, one of which, the Chatham Islands, is the 1st inhabited place in the world to see the sun each day. No point of the country is anymore than 112km (70 miles) away from the coast. More than 70% of the 4 million population live in the North Island and there are more cattle (5million) along with 40 million sheep meaning that people are outnumbered 10 to 1!
Like Australia, New Zealand was home to indigenous people, the Maori's, before the British colonised the land. However they have fared far better than the Aboriginals as they have developed with the times and there are many restaurants serving local Maori dishes, the Maori New Year is celebrated in June and Waitangi Day is celebrated on the 6th of February to commemorate the Treaty of Waitangi between the Europeans and the Maori in 1840. The Maori even have their own political party and Maori language TV station.
Our Plans:
We had toyed with the idea of renting a campervan for our time in New Zealand however we were unsure if we really wanted to go back to sleeping in a cold van at night with no cleaning facilities! Luckily our mind was made up with the extortionate high prices that the companies were charging. We managed to find a cheap car rental company and we have hired out a car for 5 weeks to travel around the 2 islands.
Our journey starts in Christchurch and will finish on the 13th of March in Auckland. We are pretty certain that this will be more than enough time to travel around both islands and take in everything that there is to see. There is a new link for you to check out our pictures which you can find on our homepage or by clicking here.
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