I got up at 4: 45 this morning and we got a cab to the airport at 5:15. After checking in we had a couple hours to kill. I got a meatball sub at Subway, which was odd at 6:00 am, but enjoyable. The flight left about 15 minutes late and got us into Christchurch, New Zealand around 2:15. The lady at customs asked a lot of questions and wanted to know why we were spending a night in Hokitika. She did not seem satisfied with our answer, which was that it was on our way to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. Oh well.
After exiting the airport, we headed to the rental car place to pick up our car. It took an hour for them to get us ready to go. The lady we were dealing with was not very friendly and was quite rude. Overall, it was a very frustrating process and, to top it off, the car is quite a piece. No power locks or windows. The stereo will only play on the speaker on the driver’s side in front. However, it does get good gas mileage- its only redeeming quality.
Leslie, Jordan, and I finally started our journey a little after 4 and drove into Christchurch to find some food before hitting the road. We stopped at a cute little café called ‘blax’ to get sandwiches. The Kiwis there were very friendly and immediately pegged us as Americans. They were our first good impression of the people of New Zealand and it was great. I had a bagel with lox there. Very tasty. After the café we found a grocery store to load up on snacks for the drive. Let me first say that the exchange rate in NZ is quite favorable, about .67 US cents to one NZ dollar. The grocery store had incredibly low prices! With the exchange rate factored in they were even better. Definitely cheaper than Brisbane.
Once on the highway heading toward Hokitika, NZ lived up to its name and gave us many, many sheep to look at. They are all over the place here! It’s a sight for sure. The drive was pretty long, but the scenery was beautiful and reminded me a little bit of Colorado at parts.
We got into Hoki around 9:30 pm and stopped off to check out the Glow-Worm Dell. It’s just a rock wall at the end of a path, but there are all these larvae that light up. It was a bit reminiscent of my childhood, many summers spent catching lightning bugs. It’s quite chilly here though. Certainly not like summer in Austin. We made it to the hotel after taking a couple wrong turns and got settled into our room. We asked the guy who checked us in to point us in the direction of dinner. Hoki is a pretty small town and there wasn’t really anything open. We stumbled upon a bar called the Red Lion Tavern. They were open late because the bar was switching owners the next day and they were having a little closing party. We were welcomed in with open arms. A very friendly man in his 70s or 80s bought us all a drink and the owner made us a big bowl of chips (fries) and brought us some bread with butter. There wasn’t really much else in the kitchen because of the owner-switching stuff. Their hospitality was great and we had a fun evening chatting with the locals. Before departing, we were coerced into singing our national anthem. It was great fun. After the bar we headed back to the hotel to get some much-needed sleep.
*Pictures from Day 1 are posted and the rest are on the way*
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A powerful earthquake with a 7.3 magnitude struck off New Zealand early Tuesday, the US Geological Survey says, but there were no early reports of casualties or significant damage.The quake struck at a depth of 35 kilometres under the seabed off the remote Kermadec islands at 03.09am (0109 AEST), the USGS said.No tsunami warning was immediately issued.Nearly an hour later a 5.3-magnitude aftershock was also registered by USGS .Earthquakes are frequent in New Zealand , where the boundaries of continental plates meet as part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire", causing earthquakes and volcanic.
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