On a Whim Wm's world travels

Ron Arps is organizing another contra dance trip to New Zealand, at the end of January 2006. It sounds great. If you would like more information, contact him at ronarps@jackson.main.nc.us

A long time ago (or maybe it just seems like a long time ago), when I started this weblog, I said I would answer the question “why are we doing this”. Someone reminded me the other day that I hadn’t yet answered this question. I guess the answer is not all that simple, but I’ll try.

Yes, some of it is because of the current political mess in the USA. I am worried that the US is going downhill. It isn’t just the insane deficit spending. We aren’t spending money on those things that will keep the US strong, like good education and research. Remember the days when lots of big companies had research labs — Xerox PARC being the primary example, but there were many other places (like the Tektronix Research Labs where I worked for a while). Those were the places that came up with the insanely great ideas that led to the computer boom, but most companies have closed down their research labs. And the US has stopped building infrastructure. Remember when the US decided to build a national interstate highway system? Or provide universal telephone service? Other countries have invested in broadband networks to provide cheap Internet access, but not us. I’m not sure what our economy is going to be based on in the future — overpriced medical care for our aging population?

Meanwhile, the economy in places like New Zealand is booming. And Cindy and my trip to China a year ago was eye opening. I give it 10 years max before the economy of China completely overpowers that of the US. Most people in the US still are laboring under the delusion that we are the world’s only superpower — are we blind? It is sobering to realize that there are more English speakers in China than in the rest of the world put together. They are investing in infrastructure like crazy. And unlike Japan, they know how to write software, so there goes that edge. China is a dictatorship with global ambitions. I expect that the Beijing Olympics in 2008 will be pivotal, when China publically flexes their muscle for all to see.

The other advantage of the US is cultural, but countries like New Zealand and China have demonstrated that they know how to make movies. I’m not sure if the US can hold onto their cultural dominance for that much longer.

So, do I want to live in a country whose economy is sinking in a sea of deficits and crumbling infrastructure? Where people are dying because of a lack of public health care and overpriced prescription drugs? Where the major political discourse is about discriminating against gays? Where pollution is on the increase? Where the government purposely distracts the population by starting unnecessary wars? Where people give up their basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism and the military tortures innocent people? Not really.

So it seemed like a good time to pop my head up and look around (before the proverbial shit hits the fan). I’ve lived in Canada and England in the past. Living abroad has always been a challenging experience for me, in the good sense of that word. You learn about yourself when you are in a different situation. You can get some of this from travel, but only so much since as a tourist you are isolated from daily life, and your experience is temporary.

So when Cindy and I started talking to people about potential places to live, New Zealand kept popping up. And many of our recent trips have been to Asia, which we have enjoyed, so we thought it would be good to be closer to those places. Originally, we were going to do a visit here first, but most people we talked to who had lived here said to not bother — that we should just move here for a year to try it out. Which is what we did.

The other reason for me is that I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and time is running out! Living in Canada and England always helped me figure out what I wanted to do next, and I’m hoping the same thing will happen here in New Zealand.

So how is it working out?

I have to say that of course there are good and bad things about any country, and New Zealand is no different. Some things are rediculously expensive here, petrol (gasoline) as expected, but also phone service and broadband internet. Computers and other electronics are overpriced. And even though New Zealand has a deserved reputation for being ecologically sensitive, they have their share of ecological disasters. I’ve also noticed that many Kiwis seem to have something of a national inferiority complex, perhaps from being overshadowed by Australia and other places for so long. They don’t seem to think they can compete in the world, so they often don’t try. Maybe this will change with sucesses like “The Lord of the Rings”.

In general, however, we love it here. The people are very friendly. The country is beautiful. The food is great. There are lots of cultural events, festivals, and other things to do.

The big issue for us is the distance. We have family and friends back in the US whom we miss terribly. If you’ve been reading this blog you know that Cindy’s son was going to move here with us and go to school, but he didn’t. The Vonage internet phone has helped (now that we have a reliable internet connection to use it on) since it allows us to call anyone as if we are in the US. But the distance is still there. So we aren’t sure if we want to live here permanently. We’ll see. And if it doesn’t work out, then at least we will have had a great year in a beautiful and friendly place.

Wellington is on the southern tip of the north island (the ferry leaves from Wellington to go to the south island). We live in a valley north of Wellington, about 20 minutes away. Yesterday, we drove north (for the first time). We actually live about 5 minutes away from the coast, which has beaches and cliffs. The area north of us is called the Kapiti (pronounced CAP-it-tee) and it is nicknamed the “sunshine coast”. Lots of people in Wellington have beach houses (a beach house is called a “bach” — short for bachelor pad I suppose) on the Kapiti coast, and some people even live there and commute into Wellington (there is a train and a motorway).

Kapiti also is famous for cheese and ice cream. So we stopped at several cheese shops, a cheese factory, and a chocolate factory where they were making chocolate eggs for Easter. We also stopped at the ice cream place (where they make Kapiti ice cream), which has really good ice cream with unusual flavors. I had a double scoop: Cardamom / Orange, and Lemongrass / Ginger. Yum yum yum.

We stopped at several beaches, and collected a bunch of “cat eyes”, which are shells that have been worn down so they look like flat white pebbles but with a spiral design in them from the spiral shell. Really beautiful.

On the way back, rather than go back along the coast, we headed inland over a mountain with a great view of the coast. Then we stopped at a park which is kept as a working farm. We got there just in time to see a really good sheep dog rounding up the sheep. They sorted the rams from the ewes. Then we got to see some “sheep dagging” where they shave the discolored wool from the rear end of the sheep, to keep it from lowering the quality of the wool when they shear them. They are going to shear the sheep in a few days, so we will probably go back later this week to see that (the farm is only about a 20 minute drive from where we live). It is interesting how the farm is set up. The buildings are the original farm buildings, but they built a raised walkway over the sheep pens and the shearing area (inside the barn) so visitors (like us) can look down and see what they are doing, without getting in the way. So you get a close-up view of everything.

More images from the Kapiti Coast.

We had described Trader Joe’s to several people, and they said we should check out Moore Wilson’s. Well, not quite. Sigh, there really isn’t any place like Trader Joes. It is probably the only store I really miss here in NZ.

Moore Wilson does have quite a few interesting things, but they are more like Costco in that they cater to the wholesale trade. They do have many things that Trader Joe’s has, like wine, cheese, dried fruit, nuts, orange juice, etc. But many things you have to buy in huge quantities (like Costco).

I went back to Moore Wilson’s today, after my first visit yesterday, and I found more interesting stuff, so I’m feeling a little better about them. But they still aren’t Trader Joes.

We discovered the “Trash Palace” today. We were in a second-hand furniture store, trying to buy a table to use as a desk to put my computer stuff on, and the owner didn’t really have something that would work for us. People are so nice here — first he said he might have some tables that would work for us, and would bring some into the store tomorrow, then he told us we should check out the Trash Palace. We had never heard of this place, even though it is not that far from where we live. It is on the road up to the garbage dump. We drove up to it, and it is a big complex that does recycling/reuse. Yes, we did find a good table, and for only NZ$10. They also recycle computers (including the monitors), furniture, electronics, dishes, you name it. Cindy found some cloth napkins with rings. It is a huge complex, and they also give classes and do other environmental projects. Cindy is in love.

Our first weekend after returning to Wellington, and of course there is a festival going on. These people like to party.

There is an area of Wellington centered on Cuba Street. It is sort of like the Haight in SF or SoHo in NYC (but smaller). Several blocks of Cuba Street are closed to traffic and contain a variety of interesting shops and restaurants.

Today was the Cuba street festival, with all sorts of counter-culture booths, three stages of music, lots of food, and good people watching. There was even a kissing booth, which was a hoot. Then, at 8:30pm they had a parade. It was like a smaller version of Carnivale, with samba bands, floats, and lots of dancers. Cindy’s favorite float was the firemen, who went by in an antique fire truck, shooting supersoakers at the crowds and getting everyone wet. I enjoyed the topless dancers on two of the floats — people here seem to be a bit less uptight about public (partial) nudity.

   

Well, we are back in Wellington after our trip to the South Island. We were gone over 3 weeks and there are still places we didn’t get to.

I’ve reorganized the photos from that trip, combined them, and added new photos from the last week. You can now see all of them at:

http://www.leler.com/NZ-SouthIsland/

I also added a few new photos to the Mo & Jo series

http://www.leler.com/NZ-MoJo/

Just uploaded a whole bunch of new photos from our (ongoing) trip to the South Island. Having a great time, as you can probably tell from the photos!

http://www.leler.com/NZ-SouthIsland

I’ll have to reoranize everything once I get home, and post the photos from the final week or our trip.

[added note — I’ve now reorganized these. See next posting.]

Differences between NZ and the US:

No tipping in restaurants here. Hardly any tipping at all, actually.

They even pay wait-persons overtime for working on holidays, so some restaurants charge a 10-15% surcharge for meals on holidays. At first this seemed weird, but now I think it makes sense. Why shouldn’t wait-persons get paid extra for working on holidays?

Restaurants serve you bottles of water, so you can pour yourself extra water if you want it. In many restaurants, these bottles (and water glasses) are just sitting out, so you can serve yourself water if you want it.

It is fairly common to order your meal at the counter, and then you find a table and sit down and they bring your meal to you. To make this easier, many restaurants give you a number on a stand, which you take to your table.

When you order at a counter, you pay for the meal when you order it. Likewise, you tend to pay for hotels when you check in, not when you check out (although you can do either).

There are more kinds of accommodation here. In addition to normal hotels, motels, and B&Bs, they have hostels (like the rest of the world, except there are far more of them), backpackers (similar to hostels, but used for any place that caters to backpackers), and holiday parks (places that usually have camping spaces, but also have cabins and maybe even motel rooms). Cabins are in general very common, and quite cheap. We’ve been paying between NZ$40 and NZ$120 for cabins for the four of us, ranging from small single rooms with bunk beds and a walk to the toilet, all the way to large two bedroom affairs with bathrooms, kitchens, and a living room (with a TV).

There are signs along the road, pointing out accommodations, and telling you how far they are. So as you are driving down the highway out in the middle of nowhere, you will often see a small sign pointing down a side road, telling you that there is a B&B 2 km down that road.

Most towns have a tourist information office that will book accommodation (and other things) for you. For free. Even accommodation in some other town.

Every town, no matter how small, has public bathrooms. And they are clean.

Skate parks are very common. We’ve seen them even in small towns in the middle of nowhere.

There are walking tracks (trails) everywhere. You can’t drive down any road without there being tracks going off in different directions. At the start of each track, there is always a sign telling you how many minutes it will take you to get to various interesting things. Like 5 minutes to a waterfall, or 30 minutes to a lake, all the way up to 3 to 5 days to some remote place. The trails are extremely well constructed, with drainage ditches to keep them from getting muddy, lots of bridges and boardwalks, even warning signs like on roads.

Businesses are very trusting. Like, when you take a boat somewhere there are no tickets or things like that. They just assume that you remember to pay (either before or after you take the boat). Likewise, when you use the internet, you often tell them how many minutes you’ve been using it, and they just believe you.

I’ve already mentioned the one lane bridges and driving on the left. They also have round-a-bouts (traffic circles). Hardly any traffic lights.

I haven’t seen a parking meter yet, but they do have “pay-and-display” (like in Portland) where you buy a ticket from a machine. Even this is not all that common, except in big cities. When there is a cost for parking, it is usually pretty expensive.

When they repave a road, they pour gravel on top of the tar, and then let cars drive over it to push the gravel into the tar. When they do this, they lower the speed limit to 30 kph, and have warning signs showing a car kicking up gravel and breaking the windows of another car.

Sometimes, when a road is being worked on and only one lane is open, they don’t bother with flaggers. People just take turns and somehow it works out. Other times they do have flaggers. The flaggers often smile.

Car horns aren’t used very much here, and when they are, they are more for greeting than warning. You can stop right on the road (say, to take a photo) and nobody minds. They go around you, or wait.

Groceries are more expensive than in the US. But restaurants are about the same price. The quality of food in restaurants here is very good. We’ve had some awesome meals here.

Mexican food, when you can find it here, is considered fancy, and is expensive. On the other hand, sushi is cheap. Kebab shops are everywhere, and are very cheap. Hamburgers tend to be expensive.

Petrol (gas), of course, is very expensive. We have paid NZ$1.15 to NZ$1.35 per litre. All the gas stations in a town will usually charge the same price for petrol.

In addition to national parks (which they have a good number of), there are lots of scenic areas. Any pretty area, even a small one, can be designated as a “scenic area”.

NZ has possums but unlike opossums in the US they are furry (even their tails). They are doing quite a bit of damage to the forests because they climb trees and eat the blooms (along with bark and leaves), which keeps trees from reproducing. They are not native to NZ, so there are huge campaigns to eradicate them. We’ve even seen poster contests for young children, where the winners were a crayon drawing extolling the virtues of poisoning possums (“so the trees will bloom”) and a drawing of possum road-kill. They also make clothing from possum fur — we’ve seen possum yarn, possum hats, socks, gloves… even possum willy, nipple and belly button warmers.

Despite the sand flies here, people in NZ don’t seem to believe in screens. Even in areas where there are lots of sand flies, we’ve only seen screens on windows once or twice. The norm seems to be to just open the windows and let the flies in.

Despite the fact that it gets rather cold here in the winter, people in NZ don’t seem to believe in central heating. Instead, most homes and other buildings are heated by small portable electric heaters and electric blankets. Even cabins we’ve stayed in seem to have electric blankets on the beds.

Like in England, Kiwis seem to like their hot and cold water separate. Most sinks have separate faucets for hot and cold. And they can’t seem to decide whether the hot water faucet goes on the left or the right. They will always have a stopper so you can get warm water by mixing hot and cold in the sink (then splash around). We’ve seen a few sinks with a single faucet, but they are rare, even in new construction. The only time they mix hot and cold is for showers (which is by necessity, I suppose).

Kiwis also like to keep their toilets separate from their sinks and showers. The toilet is usually in a separate room, all by itself. The cabin where we are staying has a US-style bathroom, which contains everything (toilet, sink, and bathtub) but this seems to have upset someone’s sensibilities so much that they built an elaborate curtain system so you can hide the toilet.

Toilets have two buttons on them, one for a half flush and one for a full flush. This saves water.

NZ apparently never had the fierce range wars that were fought in the US. Sheep and cows are commonly grazed together in the same field. For some reason this looks very strange to us. They also graze deer in fields — venison is much more common here than in the US. We haven’t seen any open range grazing. Animals seem to always be fenced in (although they do get out occasionally and run around on the roads, which causes everyone, even the locals, to take pictures).

Constellations are all different. Orion is upside down.

Not only is the northern side of a house the sunny side, but the Pacific ocean is on the east. Disorientation city!

We spent the last 3 nights in Te Anu, the heart of “fiord country” in the southwest of the South Island. We definitely did the tourist thing. Drove out the road to Milford Sound (the most well-known tourist place in NZ) and did a cruise out the sound. Then the next day we did an all day trip out to Doubtful Sound, which included a boat trip across a huge lake, then a drive 2 km underground to a power station, then over the top of a pass to the west (coast) side of the mountains down to Doubtful Sound, finishing up with a cruise on the sound itself. Doubtful sound was so named by Captain Cook, because he was ‘doubtful” that he could get out of the sound if he went in because of the winds. Very understandable — the winds were howling! But I couldn’t help but stay up on top of the boat it was so beautiful. We saw more seals and on the way back we ran onto a group of bottlenose dolphins. Finally, yesterday we did a short cruise out to the Te Anu Glow Worm caves. Inside the caves you hike in a bit, then take two different boats back into the cave. They turn out the lights so you can see all the glow worms, looking like galaxies of stars. Wow. Now we have driven out of fiordland down to the southern end of the island. Staying in a lovely little cottage above the beach in Riverton. I’ll try to post more photos soon — we have lots of them so it will be difficult sorting them all out and selecting the best.

It only took me about a week to become used to driving on the left side of the road here in NZ. Probably because I lived in England for a year and drove on the left there, but that was back in the late 80’s. So far, I’ve only goofed up once, and that was a few days after arriving. I exited the motorway and merrily went down the side road on the right side, until an approaching truck in the same lane as me tipped me off to my error.

More difficult is getting used to the turn signal lever being on the right side of the steering wheel. Our car has the windshield wiper on the left side, so you can tell when I want to turn by the fact that I turn the wipers on. We all still do it from time to time, but it still makes us laugh when we do it.

Even though I’ve driven on the right side most of my life, I actually think it makes more sense to drive on the left side. When I lived in England, someone told me that the reason people there drive on the left is from the old days of horses. If you are on a horse and riding on the left side of the road, when you meet another person riding toward you, you can shake hands much more conveniently. Or have a sword fight I suppose, for that matter.

Interestingly, people in New Zealand also walk on the left. In England, they could not make up their minds, probably because of the close proximity to the rest of Europe, which drives (and walks) on the right. Japan, which also drives on the left, also does not have a clear preference for walking. But here in New Zealand, people definitely walk on the left side.

Today, we were at Franz Joseph Glacier, and the trail to see it was one of the busiest walking paths we have yet seen in NZ. And many of the people walking on it were tourists from various places around the world. It was interesting to see how people negotiated which side of the path to walk on. Some people stubbornly stayed on their side (right or left) and expected you to go around them on the other side. Others tried to accommodate oncoming pedestrian traffic. I was one of the latter.

New Zealand (at least the south island, since we haven’t driven around the north island yet) seems to be littered with one lane bridges. Even on major highways, you’ll be zooming along at 100 kph (just over 62 mph) and suddenly there will be a bridge ahead of you, barely wide enough for one car (I’d be afraid to drive a truck across one). Some of these bridges are quite long. On the longest ones, there will be a “passing bay” — a place in the middle of the bridge about two car lengths long that is wide enough for cars going opposite directions to pass each other. We went over one bridge that was long enough to require three passing bays.

We have perversely noted that many of the one lane bridges are in places where you don’t have a really good view to see if there is traffic coming from the opposite direction. After going over a few one lane bridges like this, we will suddenly come to a bridge that is two lanes wide, and will joke that they put a two lane bridge there only because there was a clear view in both directions.

The most bizarre one lane bridges we have seen were originally train bridges. Or should I say, are still train bridges. They paved the bridge around the tracks (sort of like the light rail tracks on city streets where you can drive in Portland). So the same one lane bridge not only serves for traffic going both ways, but for trains too. It feels weird enough driving over a train bridge, but you need to watch out for oncoming traffic too. Yow. I’ll post a photo of one of these.

Even more frightening than the one lane bridges are places where the road is cut into the side of a rocky cliff, and not only is the road one lane wide, but only tall enough for a bus. These are particularly frightening because (for some perverse reason) the road always curves around so you cannot see oncoming traffic. Luckily the speed limit is 15 kph (less than 10 mph) so assuming that oncoming cars obey the speed limit, you will have plenty of time to stop (and then negotiate who will have to back their car up on a curving one lane road on the edge of a cliff). Unfortunately, we don’t have any photos of these one lane cliff roads, because usually everyone in the car has their eyes shut tight — except for the driver of course, who is watching out for oncoming traffic. After negotiating the first one of these we came to, Yvette, who was driving, screamed “They’re trying to kill us all!”

The most amazing thing is that in all the one lane bridges we have crossed, (and I’d guess around 30) we have only had to wait for oncoming traffic twice. As you approach the bridge, there will be a sign saying which direction has priority. Of course, if there is already someone on the bridge coming toward you, you wait, no matter if you have priority. And they do the same thing for you.

The beauty of living in a place with so little traffic.

Ok, photos are updated. There are even some photos from first week of our trip to the South Island, showing dolphins, whales, and lots of other stuff

http://www.leler.com/NZ-SouthIsland

I also updated the photos taken in Wellington before we left, nearly doubling the number of photos, including photos from the Medieval Folklife Festival, the Extreme Sports festival, our hunt for a car and for a place to live.

http://www.leler.com/NZ-Jan

And finally, I put all of your favorite photos of Mo and Jo into one place, including new photos of Mo and Jo touring the South Island

http://www.leler.com/NZ-MoJo

We aren’t getting very frequent access to the internet while traveling around the south island of New Zealand, so I’ll give updates when I can.

On Monday we took the 6am ferry from Wellington, to a glorious sunrise (see photos). Had a wonderful breakfast in Picton, then drove down the east coast to Kaikoura, which is famous because there is a deepwater trench that comes up within a new kilometers of the shore, so they have lots of marine mammals. Tuesday we had a fantastic time swimming with dolphins and watching them leap out of the water, even turning complete somersaults in mid-air. Wednesday we went out whale watching, since there are sperm whales that live there year-round. The sperm whale is the largest toothed whale.

Then we drove inland to a hot springs, where we lay around quite happily all afternoon. We also visited a wild hot springs alongside a river. Now (Thursday) we are back up north, where we are going to spend a few days at the beach, before going in to Abel Tasman national park.

More later — see the photos!

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!