On a Whim Wm's world travels

So, now that the Vonage phone is working, everyone wants to use it! Cindy got up early (6am on Sunday morning!) so she could call a bunch of people. I called my mom. Yvette is on it now. Both Jacob and Robin (our housemates/landlords/friends) used it last night to call people in the US and Canada (Jacob is originally from Canada).

The reactions from people we call is very funny. The audio quality is excellent, so nobody knows we are calling from New Zealand. Cindy called her friend Darleen, who when her caller ID showed “von ofenheim” assumed it was Cindy’s sister calling. Since Cindy and her sister have similar voices, Cindy had to say it was her. Then Darleen freaked out, asking where she was calling from, and how much was it costing per minute. Everyone is amazed at the fact that our Oregon phone (including its number) is working here in NZ and it doesn’t cost anything per minute. Vonage charges a $25 monthly fee for unlimited calls to the US and Canada, and cheap rates to other countries. Like 7 cents per minute to NZ. And not only can we call people in the US and Canada, but they can call us by dialing a phone number in Oregon. Robin’s sister in in the US has some calling plan where she can call anywhere in the US for free, so she can call Robin here in NZ on the Vonage phone for free. Everyone loves it.

It is amazing how much better I feel now that we have a fast internet connection. Using dialup for the last 3 weeks was just wrong. And even though there is a fast internet connection at the University, it is so heavily firewalled that you can’t even use a regular email client there — you have to use the web interface to read your mail. Which means that weird stuff, like the internet phone, chat, or even ftp so I can upload photos, is right out.

So, we packed up the last of our stuff this morning and drove out to our new place. We are living in Tawa, which (as I mentioned) is about a 20 minute drive to Wellington. We are up in the hills, and out of the windows on one side we have a view of the valley below us, and on the other side some wild hills covered in what they call “bush” (bushes and small trees). Jacob is just now telling me about some walking trails just a block away. sweet.

So what is the first thing we do? We go shopping! Our new room is unfurnished so we had to get some essentials. We didn’t have sheets or anything yet, so we drove to the next town (only 10 minutes away) and discovered… the mall. Yikes, they even have K-mart here. Bought some sheets, duvet cover, and a beautiful sheepskin mattress pad (extra plush!) that was on sale. (No, not at the K-mart, but at a place called “Farmers” that reminds me of Target). So we are ok for sleeping tonight.

Then I set to work hooking up the Vonage box. Our new home comes with a fast internet connection, so I could finally plug in our internet phone. It took me a while to configure it (still not sure if I have it set up right, but at least I got it working). So now we can call anyone in the US (or Canada) for free! The first call was Cindy calling her sister, and then I called in to work for the first time. Even Jacob (one of our housemates) got to call a friend in Canada.

And with a fast internet connection, I should be able to upload more photos. When I have a spare minute or two.

Prices of things compared to the US seems to be erratic. Phone rates are extremely expensive. I’ve mentioned the 49 cents per minute to use a cell phone. Long distance is similarly expensive. CDs and DVDs are also expensive, but other things are cheaper here. Some you might expect, like our sheepskin mattress pad, but other things are fairly cheap too, like food. Car insurance is very inexpensive here, probably because everyone is on nationalized health insurance. We are paying around $200 for full coverage on our car — for the entire year.

So it took all week, but we finally picked up our car today. Which is good because we have already booked the ferry to the south island early Monday morning. We also arranged for car insurance, as well as contents insurance for our stuff (mainly to cover our computers and cameras, I suppose). And made some copies of our new keys. We also took a load of our stuff to our new place. Tonight is our last night in our temporary lodgings. The house’s owner is coming back tomorrow at 1pm. We’ll take the rest of the stuff over in the morning. Our new digs have a fast internet connection, so it should be easier to upload photos to the web. And the big thing we’ve been waiting for — hooking up the Vonage phone to the internet, so we can call people in the states whenever we want.

We also did some shopping today for some stuff we will need in our new place. The room is unfurnished, so we need to find a bed. Until then we will be sleeping on an air mattress. We bought a wool duvet, which is relatively common here in the land of sheep, and two pillows. Now we need to find a duvet cover and some sheets. And some other furniture. But most of that will have to wait until we get back from our tour of the south island, which is supposed to be very scenic and fun.

The car we bought is a Japanese imported used car. Very common here. The Japanese do not buy used cars, so when someone sells a car there (or buys a new car and trades in their old car) the used cars are normally shipped to other places. Since the Japanese drive on the left side of the road, same as here, New Zealand is a common destination for these used cars. They are typically in very good shape, so they are a good deal. The only funny thing is that the user manual for our car is in Japanese. But other than that, you’d never know.

Well, it looks like we found a car to buy. It is a boring used Nissan station wagon, but it will be a good car to travel around in. We have an appointment tomorrow morning with the AA (New Zealand version of AAA) to give the car a full inspection to make sure there are no problems before we actually buy it.

Poor Yvette. She arrived here on Sunday, and so far has spent most of her time here helping us shop for a car. Yvette knows more about cars than I do, so it was good to have her along. We have spent some time in the botanic garden, for a concert and then going to see the glow worms. And this afternoon we spent a few hours at Te Papa, the huge museum here. But I bet she will be happy when we take off for the south island in our new car in a few days.

Te Papa is very nice, and the best part is that it is free, so you can go in even if you have just a few hours to spare, and do the museum in sections. Which you pretty much need to do because it is HUGE.

So now that we found a place to live that will require a commute, we need to buy a car. Spent yesterday looking at cars. Toyotas are VERY popular here. Will probably end up buying a small Toyota station wagon, which is a good compromise between good milage and a car that will be good for traveling around.

One thing that is interesting here is that used car salesmen are actually nice here. And helpful. It kind of freaks us out! Like, when they tell us something we automatically don’t believe it because of our experience with used car salesmen in the US. But they seem to be telling the truth. Takes some getting used to!

“Wellington today is more than hobbit forming… it’s absolutely positively addictive”

– Gourmet Traveller Magazine, Australia, May 2004

When we arrived at the Wellington Airport two weeks ago, Gollum was there to greet us. We actually came in to the gate right under Gollum. We have a photo of him on our page of photos, but here’s a better one from the airport site.

Well, yesterday when we picked up our friends from the airport, Gollum was gone! Gone I tell you. I can’t find any mention of it on the web, so we don’t know if he was supposed to be taken down (it has been over a year since the last movie came out), or if he was damaged by the big winds we had a week ago, which closed the airport. Well, I’m glad we got to see him.

I’ve been asked how the dinner party went — well, it was with the friends we decided to share a house with, so I guess you can say it went very well. It must have been the yummy pumpkin cookies that Cindy made for dessert. Jacob is originally Canadian, and one of the things he misses is pumpkin ice cream, and although that was a bit too difficult to bring with us, we brought a can of pumpkin to make cookies for him. The funny thing is that pumpkin is common here, but only eaten as a vegetable (like carrots or beans), not as something sweet. So if we are going to make any more pumpkin cookies, we will either have to make them from fresh pumpkin, or find someone to bring us over more cans of pumpkin. They don’t seem to sell canned pumpkin here.

Today we pick up two friends at the airport who are coming to visit. I hope this is a harbinger of the future, and lots of people will come for visits. Like you! We plan on taking off for the south island with them for some traveling while summer is still going strong here.

This weekend is the Extreme Sports Festival in Wellington. We walked down this afternoon for a couple of hours and watched bicycle riders launching themselves off a ramp like a ski jump and landing in the bay, breakdancing, inline skaters, and other bicycle riders doing flips and twists and other tricks in mid-air. But the most amazing thing was the FMX (which I think stands for Freestyle Motor Cross). These motorcycle riders would ride full-tilt at a ramp that would launch them a couple of stories (30 to 40 feet) in the air, where they would do all sorts of tricks before landing (in one piece) on another ramp. I have no idea how they did the things they did. They would do handstands on the motorcycle handlebars, or completely separate themselves from the motorcycle in mid-air, before miraculously getting back on before they landed. And worse. Cindy was freaking out just watching, thinking every last one of them was going to die in some horrible twisted heap of metal and flesh. I have to say I’m not sure how they did the things they did without killing themselves frequently! Next time I get a chance to upload photos, I’ll have some photos of them doing tricks in midair. What you can’t see from the photos, however, is that they were doing this stuff way (way) up in the air.

There is bad news and good news today. The bad news is that we gave up on looking for a place to live. We’ve been looking at all sorts of places, but couldn’t find any place we liked. Or worse, where the people liked us. We were trying to find a place fairly close to the University, so we were competing with lots of students for housing. The good news is that we decided to move in with our friends Jacob and Robin. The only problem is that they live in the ‘burbs — a good 20 minute drive when there is no traffic (and we’ve heard it can be an hour or more when there is traffic). Since I’m not on any particular schedule at the University, it should be fine, but it does mean that we will be buying a car. So now we need to look for a car. At least living in the burbs is cheaper, and we really like Robin and Jacob. They are musicians and dancers, too!

Just after Cindy posted her blog entry we both felt an earthquake. It rattled the windows and shook the house but didn’t do any damage that we know of. There were a bunch of smaller earthquakes last Tuesday, 8 over the course of the day, including one that Cindy felt (but I didn’t). We definitely felt the one this morning, even though it was only 5.5 magnitude. Rock & Roll!

Here’s a link to a listing of New Zealand earthquakes.

Sorry this has taken so long, but I’ve finally uploaded some photos from New Zealand to the web. See http://www.leler.com/NZ-Jan.

Here’s Mo and Jo (or is it Jo and Mo? who can tell?) — the cake toppers from our wedding — watching me type this blog. They are traveling with us in New Zealand and there are lots more photos of them on the photos page.

Still looking for a place to live. Better get on the ball, as we have guests arriving on Sunday!

Went back to visit the glow worms last night yet again. Still love looking at them. The trail down to them is very dark, and with all the little spots of light everywhere it is enchanting.

Someone said that NZ has the most expensive cell phone rates in the world. They are very expensive here, but isn’t there some other place that is more expensive?

Another difference between the US and NZ is that rent is charged by the week here, which if you think about it really makes more sense. Charging rent by the month is a bit silly, since months are different lengths. Weeks are always 7 days long. Also, people usually move in and out of places on the weekend, so when you charge by the month, you’re always needing to calculate partial months. But when you charge by the week, it is much simpler.

Finally broke down today and bought a mobile phone. Kinda scared to use it, since the cheapest rate is 49 cents per minute (interestingly enough, while it costs 49 cents a minute to call another phone here in Wellington, it also costs 49 cents per minute to call the US on the cell phone). Calls to cell phones that are not Vodaphone are $1.39 per minute! Everyone here uses TXT messages, which are 20 cents each no matter where they go to. So I can send a text message to the US for 20 cents, or to a non-Vodaphone cell phone, or anywhere else. I’m beginning to see why text messaging is so popular here.

Now we just have to find a place to live and (maybe) a car. We are thinking we might try to live without a car. But being Americans, that might just be too difficult for us.

Went back down to the botanic garden tonight to see the glow worms again. Simply amazing. It is a warm summer night, and we are receiving emails that Portland had a huge ice storm last weekend, which virtually shut the city down. But here it is warm, sunny, and the days are long. Ahhhhhhhh!

[as a note on my last blog entry, it turns out that today was particularly windy here — they even had to close down the airport for the day!]

We are noticing some interesting things here in New Zealand that are different from what we are used to. Note that between Cindy and me, we’ve lived in 5 different countries and even more different states, so we are no strangers to different things.]

One thing is that no houses here have central heating. Everyone seems to have those large electric heaters that look like radiators and are filled with oil. They are quite heavy. You roll them around to where you need them and plug them in. No gas heat at all, probably because they don’t produce much here, so it would have to be shipped in somehow.

Another thing is that there are no screens on windows or doors. When it gets hot, you open the doors and windows and all the flies come in. I don’t think I’ve seen a screen yet, and we asked some Kiwi friends and they don’t think they’ve seen them either.

Some things are unusually expensive. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that they are an extremely isolated island country, and many things need to get shipped here. But other things are just expensive. Everyone seems to have a mobile phone, but they are expensive — both the phones themselves, and the per minute charges. Phones are NZ$300 and up, some costing over $1000. The cheapest we’ve seen minutes is around 49 cents per minute, and on some plans minutes can cost as much as $1.39! And calls from your home phone to a mobile phone are toll calls, even if the mobile phone is in your area. Cell phone companies (and there are only two of them, so not much competition) seem to be raking in the dough!

Books are also expensive. A cheap paperback book costs around NZ$25. You can buy the same book used for “only” $18. Food, depending on the item, can also be a bit expensive, although not that much higher than the rest of the world for most items.

On the other hand, most museums are free, and health care is free (only for residents, unfortunately for us). The concerts we keep going to are free. Restaurants are reasonable, and there is no tipping. So I guess it all works out.

As I mentioned before, in some (but not all) ways, Wellington reminds me of San Francisco. Maybe it is because of the wind. It is rather windy here. This morning in particular, the wind is howling around the house where we are staying up in the hills. It is even more windy down by the waterfront. In between is a bit calmer, but still windy. On Saturday night we went to the Latin Music festival on the waterfront, and as night fell (which happened quite late of course since it is summer here) the temperature dropped quickly. It had been a rather hot day with bright sunshine, but it cools off quickly. Last night (Sunday night, which must seem weird to people in the US who are reading this blog entry on Sunday, but remember that we are in the land of tomorrow on the other side of the date line) we went to a concert in the botanic garden, and as we lay on the grass listening to the music, there were clouds moving by right above us at high speed. It is quite amazing to watch.

Like SF, Wellington is a compact city. We even have a cable car, but only one and it runs up and down the hill in a straight line on tracks (not on the street). There are Victorian houses, although not as many as SF. And like SF, Wellington is built beside a large bay. Last week we drove around the bay to an area that reminded me of Sausalito.

In other ways, Wellington is less like San Francisco. It is far less crowded here of course, and there is way less traffic. And summer days can be quite hot and sunny, unlike SF where there is the famous fog.

We’ve been busy this weekend — trying to find a place to live, a car, and a mobile phone. Tonight we went back to the botantic gardens near where we are currently staying to see another outdoor concert. Concert was good, with lots of dancing again, on a beautiful night. But on the way back to our house we saw the most amazing sight.

Along both sides of the path back through the botanic gardens there were thousands of spots of slightly greenish light, as if there were fairies out having a great party. They were everywhere — by the stream, along the side of the trail, and especially in banks where they had cut the trail into a slope. They were “glow worms”. We had heard of the famous glow worm cave, but here they were, thousands and thousands of them surrounding us on all sides.

We found a web page about them, for those people who want to know more. Here it is: http://www.angelfire.com/or3/orchidsnz/wbg/wbgglow.htm

Last night we were downtown, and at the waterfront there was yet another free music event — the one day Latin Festival. There seems to be an amazing amount of music going on here, at least during the summer. The events are good, and seem to be popular.

One thing about the trip I didn’t mention was our adventures with the Qantas luggage allowance. Qantas has a more limited luggage allowance than most airlines and since we are planning on being in New Zealand for a while, we maxxed it out! We actually didn’t have much problem with our checked luggage, even though we were over the size restrictions on one bag (because we strapped our sleeping bags to it). Qantas is way more concerned about the weight restrictions. Luckily we were within the weight restrictions on our checked bags (although we were close on one bag, which they labeled with its weight). The problem was our carry-on luggage.

Between our laptops, hard disk drives, cameras, toiletries, reading materials, and food, we had quite a bit of stuff to carry on to the airplane. Qantas, like most airlines, allows you to carry-on one bag (with the standard 45 inch size restriction) plus one “personal item” (purse, laptop, etc.). Where they are more restrictive than most airlines is their weight restriction. They insist that each bag weigh less than 15 pounds (7 kilos). This might not seem like a problem, but 15 pounds is a rediculously light weight for a bag. And they enforce it!

Our flight from Portland to LAX was on Alaska Air, so they merrily let us on with all our carry-on. But when we checked in for our (first Qantas) flight in Los Angeles, they weighed our carry-on bags and they were way over the limit. I’m talking seriously way. Now, our main luggage is already checked through, so we can’t move anything from our carry-on to our checked luggage. What to do? Checking extra bags is an option, but we don’t really want to check things like our computer equipment and cameras, and besides, extra checked bags are $90 each.

To give you an idea of how small a 15 pound allowance is, I have a subcompact laptop, but when you add in the power cord, case, and everything, that’s easily 8 pounds, which is over half the 15 pound limit. Throw in one good sized book and some dried fruit and you’re over the limit.

We finally got around it by taking everything out that had a strap on it. The laptops (we brought two), the cameras (we brought three). Then we took out all the food (dried fruit mainly) and the books, got a duty-free bag and put that stuff in the bag. So now we look totally rediculous. I have my carry-on sized bag, and my daypack (as my “personal item”), plus I have my laptop and cameras dangling around my neck, plus I’m carrying a bag containing food and books. The bag alone weighs over 15 pounds, but they tend to ignore duty-free bags. Cindy is similarly smothered in various carry-on items. But they let us on.

Apparently their main concern is luggage falling out of the overhead bins and seriously injuring people. So they don’t care if you have lots of little things, they just don’t want any single bag to be over 15 pounds.

Then, once in NZ, we had a connector flight from Auckland to Wellington, and sure enough, they weighed everything again. We were still slightly over the weight limit on a few things, but they let us check in. Are we home free yet? No! When we get to the gate, the person checking our tickets won’t let Cindy on with her carry-on bag because it is too heavy. Luckily, they just want to gate check it (at no extra charge). So we get away with 5 checked bags and a motley assortment of carry-on items, but we do make it to Wellington with all our stuff.

Well, almost. NZ Customs did confiscate my turkey jerkey. If it had been beef jerkey they would have allowed it, but because of all the bird flu going around they won’t let in poultry meat, even if dried. They were also very concerned about our hiking boots, but luckily they were easily accessible and checked out as clean.

We have heard that for flights in NZ or Australia, they are even more restrictive. Apparently, the weight limit flying from NZ to Australia is 20 kilos of checked luggage. That is unbelievable. How do people do it?

Maybe we just need to learn how to live without all these material possessions.