New Zealand is Awesome!
Monday, February 6th, 2006Wow!! What a difference it makes to travel in a country where everyone speaks the lingo. don’t get me wrong…we had an amazing time in SE Asia but…it was time to go. 3 months was a good length for us. Granted, we really wanted to go to Laos, could’ve spent more time in Thailand etc… Oh well, you can’ t do it all.
So after a brutal flight(s) from Bangkok to Christchurch, we were wiped out for a couple of days. Terra ended up getting sick because she was so worn down. We guessed that only 3 hours of sleep was had between the two of us of about 36 hours. Not fun. We did watch about 67,000 movies on the planes though.
We decided that we would buy one of the around-the-country bus passes instead of renting a camper van or car. We had originally planned on doing the camper thing but. Being driven around for a few weeks sounded good. We started in Christchurch. Really cool little town. As we were flying in, I commented to Terra how much I thought it looked like flying into Boise!
There are about 300K people in the town but, from what I could tell, most of them live outside the “city” on farms. The downtown area was also much like Les Bois. Very easy to walk around clean lots of neat little shops etc. Our 5 days there were very enjoyable. Spend most of our time relaxing, enjoying the great weather etc. Even had a chance to go for a run on the very Boise-like greenbelt.
Have to make a comment on the coffee in Christchurch. Keeping in mind that Portland is probably second behind only Seattle in number of coffee houses per square inch; I’d say Christchurch is 3rd. It was amazing. You literally couldn’t hit a wedge (even as short as I hit mine) without flying over 6-7 shops. Needless to say I was wired the whole time I was there. It was great.
We were also really excited to try the authentic NZ cuisine. I guess I didn’t really realize there isn’t such a thing (except for the mystery Meat Pies that Sow already warned me about). The food has been quite good actually.
Oh…another one to but in the category of “We shouldn’t take it for granted at Home”… TAP WATER!!! I took my first drink from a tap as soon as we landed. What a liberating feeling!! No longer does every drink need to come from a bottle. You can actually take a bottle, drink it all and fill it back up again. FOR FREE!! It is delightful.
We have been making our way around the south island for the last 10 days. Mor details to come but so far so good. New Zealand is great!!
Weiser Wander