The Wanderings of busman7

On the whole the New Zealanders that I have met both here & in OZ have been more open & friendlier than their Aussie counterparts. Only doing a brief sojourn through a bit of the country so not much to base my limited experiences on but shall pass on my feelings (which may not be typical) anyway.

Was not impressed with Auckland (a feeling confirmed by others I have met) & the first leg of the train journey was fraught with problems, while not really a hardship were unavoidable if proper procedures had been followed by maintenance. Have to give the train crew top marks for the way they handled the situation & an interesting side note is there was an inspector + a couple personnel from head office on board. Their reports should be interesting reading.

Ferry crossing to the south island was nice as was the, incident free, second leg of the very scenic train trip  which I had the pleasure of sharing with a retired Kiwi train driver who started on steam trains, a very interesting & informative afternoon.

Considering the cost of the NZ dollar, prices here seem a touch lower than OZ which is good news.

A cold, damp, drizzly & windy day here in Christchurch so staying in catching up on my blog, checking expenses & have laundry to do so won’t be able to experience more on NZ. However after adding up my OZ expends can’t afford to stay in this part of the world any way.

Staying at a really cool innovative hotel here in Christchurch, they asked travelers what they wanted, listened & came up with a nice comfortable hotel at an extremely good price, hope the idea catches on. Check it out at;  www.hotelso.co.nz

Have a full couple of days ahead as I leave Christchurch tomorrow (Monday 14th) morning, fly to Auckland, by Jetstar, the last Qantas related flight, then onto Santiago with LAN, where I arrive the afternoon of Sunday the 13th (International Dateline) then to Buenos Aires, again with LAN, where I catch an AA flight to Miami (an example of Qantas innovative routing (flucking morons)), followed by another AA flight to Guatemala City where I catch a $10.00 shuttle home to Antigua.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 12th, 2010 at 22:41 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.