Locked Up Abroad

About 8 months in New Zealand, minding our own business, and sure enough Steph and I spent last night in a jail cell. We’ll be there tonight too. Jailhouse Hostel that is, a hostel built from a converted jail in Christchurch. Had you going didn’t I? It is actually a pretty cool hostel - our room was literally a jail cell, and still has the heavy iron door. We’ve made it to Christchurch and are currently working on selling our car before flying out on Monday. Shouldn’t be a problem selling it, though we may have to drastically reduce the price if we don’t find a buyer soon. First a rewind to our last days in Queenstown and getting from there to here…

I know I promised a bungy jump and canyon swing before I left, but I never got around to it. It’s too bad, since they would have been free, but we were pretty busy with work, moving out, and taking care of all the little things we had to do before leaving town. There was a Super 14 rugby game on the Saturday before we left, which is made up of 14 teams from New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. We saw the Highlanders from NZ play a team from Australia. The venue, along with the weather and the setting, was great as we sat on a grass embankment around the field to watch the game. The rugby game unfortunately wasn’t so great, especially since the hometown Highlanders led most of the way but got blown out in the last 10 minutes. Rugby is all right to watch, but I still don’t really get the appeal. At least it’s better than cricket. Or netball. Ugh.. don’t get me started.

It was kind of sad to leave town and say goodbye to all our friends, but most of them we’ll probably see again. Some of them we might meet up with while traveling, and most of the river boarding crew will be back next summer. Whether or not we stay for another season, we’ll be back in Queenstown in December so will get to see everyone again. It was starting to get cold though, especially at night, so at least that made us feel ready to head north to warmer waters. From Queenstown we did have to briefly head south to Gore, as we had a couple days planned on a dairy farm with our friend Sean. To be honest we weren’t looking forward to this, but it turned out to be great. Sean lives in a nice house on the farm with a couple other guys. It’s pretty isolated, but good honest work and he is an amazing painter, so he’ll have plenty of time to do that in his off time. They were able to talk me into getting up at 4 am for the morning milking shift (Steph slept). Let’s just say that getting up was the easiest part, as you are constantly dodging cow urine and feces as you do the milking. Three hours later and I was pretty nasty from the splatter, but no direct hits so I was happy. We did manage to get Steph to milk a couple cows before we left, though she stayed pretty clean.

While we weren’t helping Sean with his farm duties we were continuously entertained by their resident cat and it’s two 6-week-old kittens. They were adorable as they scampered around and attacked anything that moved.

We said goodbye to yet another friend and headed north towards Christchurch. Originally we planned on spending a night or two by Lake Tekapo to see first-hand the “clearest skies in the Southern Hemisphere” and really experience it through the nearby observatory. Regrettably it was quite cloudy as we drove up there, and we were pretty concerned about selling the car in only 5 days, so we kept moving and came straight to Christchurch.

Our mission in Christchurch is simple: sell the car. It is the last thing we have to take care of, and currently feels like a huge load on our backs. Today we spent all day cleaning her up - gave her a nice wash down and a vacuum, and bought some amazing Turtle Wax cleaning stuff that removed all the scuff marks from our little wreck a while back. The last piece of the puzzle is to get a replacement front blinker casing and side mirror to replace the one’s that were shattered in said wreck, which we’ll do tomorrow. Even without that completed, through the magic of photography we were able to make some flyers and advertisements to get the buzz going. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that someone will bite soon.

While out and about fixing up the car today, we did stumble upon a couple little gold mines that we are really excited about. The first was the “dollar store” which was really just an Asian grocer. We went in looking for a FOR SALE sign and maybe some tire cleaner. They had neither, but did sell Dr Pepper. I know this doesn’t sound like much to all of you, but this felt better than finding money in a coat pocket. I’m not even a big Dr Pepper drinker back in the US, but this was the real thing. Sure, we can get Coke, Sprite, as well as other name brand things from back home (Doritos just came to NZ, for example), but all of these things are made in Australia and quite simply don’t taste the same. This was Dr Pepper, made in the good ol’ USA and boy was it delicious. I drank the entire room temperature can right there. Later we went back in and found A&W root beer and cream soda, which we saved for dinner. I’ve been searching for root beer the entire time I’ve been here, just didn’t think to check Asian grocery stores. While I was enjoying my Dr Pepper, we wandered next door to the Funky Pumpkin, a fruit and veggie store. Nothing out of the ordinary here, except for the cool name, but it sure was cheap! We loaded up with all the fruit and vegetables we could possibly want and even got two small watermelons thrown in for free! We took a picture of our bounty so you all could share in our joy. You have no idea how happy this made us. Little victories, I guess.

All this for $22 NZD!! That's about $15 US!

So now we’re just playing the waiting game in Christchurch. There should be plenty to do - we’ve seen a movie theater, go-karts, putt-putt, and we’ve already checked out the arcade. Plus, the beach is close by if we want to wander around a bit. We’ll check back in a few days before we fly up to Auckland to let you know how the car selling went.