Sleeping in an airport can be pretty frustrating. Try sleeping with the lights on, on a bench at the Kids Corner, with people constantly talking, and an announcement every 5 minutes. But despite the difficulty I got some sleep and in the morning (Monday) we washed up and got our rental vans.
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| Our beds in the airport. . .Kids Corner benches :) |
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| NEW ZEALAND MONEY!!! |
Jucy Rentals picked us up and took us to pick up two vans. The vans are free and we just have to pay for gas, ferry tickets, insurance, and the GPS (that really don't work well). For the first half of the trip in my van, Danielle drove and after a few hours it was time for me to drive for the first time on the opposite side of the road! I was a little nervous but after getting behind the wheel it came naturally. It doesn't feel much different at all.
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| Our rental van place...they gave us a plastic doll to take with us and take pictures with to help promote them...we had a lot of fun with it |
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| Our van group! |
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| Eli and Jucy |
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| My first time driving on the left hand side of the road :) It wasn't as hard to get use to as I though |
The first day on the road was a little bumpy. We wanted to stop off at a few places but the GPS decided to take us off roading a few times. Eventually our van led the way and I managed directions using a map. The old fashion way! The first stop we made was in Hamilton at the Hamilton Gardens. The gardens were beautiful and a nice place to stretch our legs.
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| Part of the group at the gardens |
Next we stopped off in Rotorua and saw a few mud pools and hot springs but by the time we made it there everything was closing for the night.
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| Hot Springs |
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| Mud Pools |
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| Did I mention how bad they smelt? Kinda like rotten eggs...yuck! |
Since everything was closing down we headed out to Taupo for a dinner break. We ate at an interesting pizza place and then made the game plan for the evening. The plan was to drive through the night and get to Wellington that night. We drove all night taking shifts (I had the late shift) and made it to Wellington a little after midnight. Here we found the ferry and decided to spend the night in the vans behind a gas station. Little did we know that in the morning (Tuesday) we would get a ticket. But no worries the ticket was $40 and splitting that between all of us makes it $6 each. Not bad for a place to stay for a night (its cheaper than a hostel).
The trip so far had been quit exciting and now that we have everything underway its going smoothly. We spent Tuesday morning hanging out and found some free wifi to do some trip planning and book a few things along the way. Then we caught the ferry from Wellington (North Island) to Picton (South Island). It was a 3 1/2 hour ferry ride and the weather was far from favorable...I started to get a little motion sick so I took a nice nap!
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| In the car waiting for the Ferry (and yes I'm on the drivers side haha) |
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| Seat on the Ferry |
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| Ferry deck plan |
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| Deck 7 |
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| Peanut Butter and Banana sandwich for lunch! |
Once we arrived in Picton we drove for another 2 hours to Kaikoura where we stayed the night in a hostel. It was nice to actually shower for the first time since we left Lennox. Talk about some smelly kids! The hostel was pretty nice. The other van got a room for three and we got a room for two and crammed in to save some money. Two single beds for four people...two in one bed, one on the floor, and one in the other bed.
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| Our Hostel for the night |
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| Room number 18. . .best room in the hostel |
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Four deep. . .two on the bottom bunk, one on the top, and one on the floor
we sure know how to save money! |
It worked pretty well and in the morning we are splitting up for the next leg of our journey. I'm the only driver in my car and we are heading off to the glaciers in the morning (a 6 hour drive) and in the morning we have our climb! The other group is heading to a different glacier to do a walk/hike around it.
I am loving this New Zealand road trip!!!
