BootsnAll Travel Network



Archive for February, 2004

« Home

Vortex

Tuesday, February 24th, 2004

TM.jpg

Today has been nice. The surf is good (though I haven’t been out yet) and the livin’ is easy. We are really enjoying the van. You can park and camp almost anywhere here. It is super comfortable to sleep in compared to our old Subaru. Even comfortable compared to the beds at McMurdo. We find ourselves sleeping in past 9 every morning. We finally got a stove yesterday for 15NZ$ from a swapit sellit paper so now we are more or less independent. Hopefully we will be able to cut back on expenses now that we can make our own food. We bought a small Thyme plant that we hung from the rear view mirror. We named it Jimi after James Cook for a couple of reasons; 1) because he will be exploring NZ with us and 2) because we plan to Cook bits of him along the way. We named the van Abel after the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. We hope he will be Abel to take us all the way to Auckland without any major difficulties.
It has been difficult to get out of vortex of CHC. We keep planning on it but something always comes up. The last flight to come out of McMurdo was delayed for a few days. We have been waiting for a friend who said he was going to take us sailing off the Banks Peninsula. Yesterday we had another round with AAA. I discovered that my membership had expired in December. I went to get a NZAA membership but they wanted $75US for a 6-month visitor membership. Instead I renewed on-line for $44 and then got my reciprocal card from the NZAA afterwards. It took most of the day though.
Today we bought tickets for a three-day outdoor music festival that happens this weekend so we will for certain be out of town by then. I couldn’t find a toll-free dial-up so today we mailed our laptop home. We haven’t been using it enough to warrant keeping it plus it will give us peace of mind knowing that we don’t have any real valuables in the van while we travel. Hopefully I will still be able to post photos from cafés. We also secured our return to the states. We arrive in Boston on Saturday the 24th of April. We arrive the same day we leave strangely enough. Since we are returning after the 15th we are filing an extension for our taxes today too.

Christchurch

Friday, February 20th, 2004

CHC.JPG

The flight went very smoothly and I even slept a little on the plane. We were really packedin and we were seated next to the last group out of Terra Nova Bay (the Italian base) but it was so noisy that conversation was out of the question.
The temperature here in NZ is mild. It has been both raining and sunny since we arrived. Not as warm as I had expected but really the perfect temperature. Our first day here we managed to get a lot done. We renewed our visas, opened a bank account, did some important shopping and best of all we found our van. It is an 86 Toyota Lite Ace. It is going to be the perfect vehicle to take us around NZ for the next two months. Now that we have gotten our transport situation taken care of we have begun to plan our trip. We still have a few things to pick up before we head out on the road. A friend of ours is having a party for Ice People on Sunday and we are planning our departure from CHC for the day after. AAA has reciprocity with NZAA but we have been delayed getting verification of our account status and now it is the weekend so we might now make it out on Monday. We have a mobile phone now. We mailed ourselves one from Italy that works here with a SIM card. The number is 0211814798. The country code is 64. I am not sure how to dial it from the US so you would have to experiment. We are currently looking for an Internet Service Provider that we can dial-up from the cell phone and connect on the computer with. The number needs to be a 0800 or 0508 number to avoid paying for minutes on the phone. It has proven to be a challenge.
Luci says Hi.

Purgatory

Monday, February 16th, 2004

Our bags have been packed and dragged and were spending the next 24+ hours living in Puragatoy out of our carry-on Luggage. We dragged our bags upo the hill in the Galley Truck which was convienent. I decided ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bag Drag

Monday, February 16th, 2004

Bag Drag.JPG
Well, nothing spectacular to report in our last dispatch from the Antarctica. This is a picture of ?Bag Drag?. We all check in for our flight the day before ... [Continue reading this entry]

Vessel Arrival

Saturday, February 7th, 2004

American Tern.jpg

We have started counting days. 10 days till we leave. We are really looking forward to our vacation. I have a bunch of leads on vans in Christchurch. We ... [Continue reading this entry]

Tanker and Vessel

Monday, February 2nd, 2004

Ships.JPG

We have reached our peak population of 1200 here at McMurdo for the season. There are swarms of NavCHAPs (navy cargo handlers) around. They have nothing to do until the big cargo vessel ... [Continue reading this entry]