New Zealand; Hmmmmmmm

My cunning plan of setting my alarm in case it didn’t automatically change to daylight saving sort of worked. Well it worked in the sense that I wasn’t late. It actually meant I got up an hour earlier than necessary – at 4am (so that’s just 4 hours sleep!). The thing was, I didn’t actually know what time it was, so I had to get dressed, gather all my things and head downstairs to check out, in order to ask the person at reception what the real time was! The two Thai girls had gotten up whilst I was gathering my things together, they too hadn’t been sure of the time and they were checking out too. We agreed to share the cab I had booked, to take us to the Skybus terminal.

Seeing as I had a bit of time to kill before the taxi came, I remembered I still had the tin of beans I had won from Safari Johnno on my first night in Melbourne, so dug that out and ate them cold! The Thai girls then found me and insisted on having a photo taken with me, as we’d be sharing a cab! It arrived early, so we ended up getting the 5.45am Skybus, which delivered us to the airport earlier than we’d anticipated getting there. The Thai girls and I said our goodbyes and went into our respective terminals (international and domestic).

I was barely functioning as I was just so tired so it took me a while to find the right check in desk for my flight. The queue seemed surprisingly long for a flight that was leaving at such a ridiculous time on Easter Sunday - I had figured everyone would have travelled on Thursday or Friday to wherever they would be going to spend the Easter bank holiday weekend, but apparently not.

By the time I got to the front of the queue, my eyes were hardly staying open and I just wanted to crash in a chair somewhere, so when the woman told me I had the wrong plane ticket and needed to buy another one, it took me a fair few moments to take in what she was saying. I was passed to another woman who told me that I needed to buy another ticket or I couldn’t fly, so that is what I did as I had no choice, but it left me reeling as it had cost quite a lot! Then to add insult to injury I had to pay excess baggage charge (my bag was only 3kg over!), but I was too tired to complain or argue. All I could think about was getting through security and finding somewhere to sit and rest. Sadly, it wasn’t as easy as that – the security checks took forever and with the large numbers of passengers and small numbers of staff, it seemed to take even longer. By the time I was through, it was only thirty minutes before boarding time, but at least I got to sit down for a bit.

Once on the plane, I got settled and had fallen asleep more or less straight away, only waking up when the engines roared as the plane started its run up for take off! Once we were airborne, I slept again for as long as I could, waking up with an hour to go, then dozing for a bit, before decent.

On landing in Christchurch at 2.05pm, I had to fill in a landing card, then whilst waiting in another ridiculously long queue for passport control, I suddenly got the fear – everyone around me was clutching a piece of paper saying ‘Visa’ and I didn’t have one! My mind went into overdrive and I convinced myself that I was going to get arrested and put in some form of detention centre. The ridiculously long queue suddenly seemed even ridiculously longer, as I waited for my fate. When it didn’t come and the lady wished me a nice trip, I was somewhat baffled to say the least! Next we had to queue again, this time with our luggage, as every single thing we held was x-rayed.

Eventually I got through and went into the arrivals lounge and found Andrew who had come to meet me. We had a sit down in a cafe and a quick drink and snack (I can’t believe I have managed to avoid meat pies in Oz for 6 weeks, then have one as soon as I land on NZ soil!) before hopping onto the bus and heading to the hostel, where I checked in and promptly crashed out.

Not long after I arrived, Jet came over (a friend who emigrated here 3 months ago) and the three of us chatted for a while. We then headed into town, had a quick wander (more or less absolutely everything was closed due to it being Easter Sunday), it was noticeably colder here than it had been in Melbourne, I certainly needed my cardi and coat!

I mentioned fancying a coffee, so Jet took us to a place he had heard about called the Coffee House. It turned out to be a coffee shop and restaurant, so we decided to have some dinner, a proper dinner, seeing as it was Easter Sunday! Jet had lamb and Andrew and I both had rib eye steak. All our meals were absolutely amazing and the meat was so tended and cooked to perfection! I certainly haven’t had a meal like that in a long while!

Feeling rather full, we decided to go for a walk and get a drink somewhere. There was a problem with this plan, however. It seems that NZ is a bit old-fashioned (or crazy; one or the other) and there is a law that says on Easter Sunday, you can only order an alcoholic drink if you also order a ‘substantial meal’. The ‘substantial’ bit meant that each person had to have something which was a reasonable size/price - ie you can’t order one thing between people and you can’t just have a bowl of chips or a dessert each. Absolutely everywhere that was open was enforcing the law and nowhere would bend the rules! As we still felt full to the brim, we couldn’t entertain the idea of eating another thing, so decided to go for a walk, to think, talk and digest! Jet called Andy Williams – another of our friends from home (he has been living here for 5 years) and arranged for him to come and meet us for a drink.

When he arrived, we went into a place called Fat Eddie’s and ordered drinks and a ‘mini burger and chips’ which was the smallest thing that constituted ‘substantial’ according to the law, apparently! The bar itself was quite funky and we sat and chatted whilst some live music was going on elsewhere round in a different area. We had a really nice time and when they eventually brought the food over, the guys’ stomachs had found a bit of room to fit it in, before we made tracks back to the hostel.

So, New Zealand, I'm not impressed yet - you're gonna have to work hard to convince me that you rock - Australia is certainly winning so far and I'm biased too, so it's going to be even harder to persuade me that it's better here... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm