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Milford Sound and Queenston

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

Since the last post we have done alot! We drove down to Christchurch to meet Andrea, my friend from work in Halifax, and her boyfriend Paul who flew in a few days earlier from Northwest Territories. Along the way we stopped in Kaikoura where we saw hundreds of seals lounging on the rocks at the side of the coastal highway which was really neat. We then spent one night in Christchurch before heading out the next morning with Andrea and Paul, us in our van and them in their campervan, to tour the South Island. We drove down to Oamaru to try to see some blue penguins and yellow-eyed penguins to no avail. They apparently don’t come to shore until the evening so we didn’t stick around, plus it cost about $30 to see them. So we then went on to Dunedin. Eero and I went to the grocery store and Eero got recruited for a scavenger hunt in the store. He had to find a number of female toiletry items and then he won some new socks, which he needed, a ballcap and a Speight’s Beer jumpsuit. We have photos which we will be posting of him in his suit. He then ripped it later that evening at the campground when he caught a duck. [read on]

Our First Home as a Married Couple. . .

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

… is a van down by the river! We picked up a 1988 Toyota Hiace van, with only 601,000km on it in Cambridge, NZ which is right next to Hamilton. It was a deal, and looks like its only seen 300k of those km. The engine has been rebuilt in the last five years, and she runs quite well. We know it was rebuilt because we actually met the guy who owned it 5 years ago while filling up with gas and hesaid that it was originally a taxi, and was looking over what was done with it. It’s got a nice cosy bed in the back with some shelves underneath it to stash all our stuff. We are still trying to figure out a name for it, the best we have come up with is “Vanna White” or “The ‘moon-mobile.” But since we’re indecisive we’ll put it up for a vote or if anyone has any other good names for it, email me at eero.teene@gmail.com

 

Our New Van

 

After we picked up the van, we drove to a shopping mall and got outfitted with all the other junk that we need to live in it. We picked up extra dishes and cooking supplies, a propane tank, BBQ stove/grill, solar powered LED lighting for the inside, screens and velcro for the windows to keep out the mossies, etc. We still have to figure out how to get tunes in the van, since the tape deck isn’t wired up, and figuring out the wiring on it is a mess.

[read on]

New Cell Phone Number

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
Well we finally got ourselves a NZ phone number. It is +64 (0) 212978734. We get FREE incoming calls from anywhere in the world so please feel free to call us whenever you feel like it (unless of course it's ... [Continue reading this entry]

How do you spend 20+ hours in a plane?

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
Well that's how long it takes to go from Frankfurt to Singapore and then on to Auckland, NZ. Yes, we finally left the oncomming cold of fall in Europe to get to the warm spring of summer. We left Frankfurt on ... [Continue reading this entry]

Venice and Croatia

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

We spent our last day in Greece in Athens wandering around until we had to go catch our flight to Venice in the evening. We managed to catch the changing of the guards at the Parliament buildings which was something ... [Continue reading this entry]

Finally, some of our photos are up!

Monday, November 12th, 2007
We have managed to upload some photos. We're still slowly working on getting more up but it takes alot of time on the internet. So enjoy our photos of Scotland. You can get to them by going to[Continue reading this entry]

Rest of Europe Plans

Friday, November 9th, 2007
Alright, a quick update of our plans while we're in Athens still. Tonight we fly from Athens to Venice, and will be there for two days, before we take a train and bus through Trieste to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We then ... [Continue reading this entry]

Greek Train Wrecks, Ruins, and Islands

Monday, November 5th, 2007
After Italy, we took a ferry from Bari, Italy to Patras, Greece. The ferry ride was fun, as we met up with a couple of Vancouverites the day before. We hung out with Devon and Tom playing card games on ... [Continue reading this entry]

Robbed in Florence…

Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Ok so we weren't actually robbed in Florence but we felt like we were after paying 10 euro to see Michaelangelo's David. I called it the 10 minute museum since that's the amount of time it took to go through ... [Continue reading this entry]

Onwards Travels through the Mediterranean.

Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Alright, I'll make this quick since we're doing a whirlwind tour, and have no clue where we're about to land. After flying from london, and another night in paris, we went down to Avignon. We planned to spend a day there, ... [Continue reading this entry]