It took only two hours and forty minutes to fly to Auckland, New Zealand. When we arrived and picked up our baggage, we went to look about rental car possibilities. We were studying the board when we were approached by a well dressed, fast talking man. He explained that he owned rental cars; he had an excess on the other (south) island, and would give us a really good deal if we would fly to Christ Church, pick one up from his brother there, tour with it, and return it to Auckland. Even factoring in the domestic flight cost, we would still have only one ferry crossing fee, and his price was impressive. His brother would pick us up at Christ Church, put us up in his motel, then send us on our way with a hire car. We agreed, and he quickly (too quickly, it turned out,) booked us a flight for Sunday morning, leaving us a day to see Auckland. Auckland was impressive. We toured by bus. The Sky Tower was fun. As we worked our way up, Barb decided not to go to the top. She was not feeling real well, and Standing on the glass floor, and looking down through it hundreds of feet of empty air to the ground was not appealing to her.
When I reached the top, a tourist, again a young Chinese, was being buckled into a harness, lifted up by a crane, swung out over the edge. He was then dropped, hundreds of feet, then finally slowed down as he reached street level. I passed on this, our budget did not allow it. Or my fear factor.
We went to the Maori Museum. The Maoris, of Indonesian descent, were the original New Zealanders. They are a large, very husky people, extremely strong. They were very athletic. We had noticed in Australia that football was left largely to Maoris, whites played Soccer. We talked to two young Maori men while admiring their Grandfather's carving display. Each brother probably weighed four hundred pounds. An extremely large proportion of Indonesian men wind up in the National Football League in America. Many people in that part of the world feel they will someday dominate the NFL. I tend to agree. These people are sometimes called Kiwis, along with the bird and the fruit.
We arrived at the airport early on Sunday morning. When we checked our luggage, we got a shock. We had now accumulated so much stuff that there was an extra fee of $75 on this domestic flight. If our common sense had just kicked in, we would have just stored most of it there. But no, that's just too easy. I preferred to carry all of it around with us all over New Zealand! When we picked up our tickets for the 10:00 AM flight, we got another shock. The flight was PM, not AM! It was a long, expensive bus ride back to Auckland, so we decided to kill the day wandering the airport. We would arrive at Christ Church at midnight. Oh, well, just go with the flow. I heard the announcer lady say “Auckland,” with her cute little accent, so many times that day, that I began to fall in love with her voice before we flew out. I didn't tell Barbara.
When we arrived at Christ Church, it was the last flight of the night and the airport was closing down. Our ride was not there. We had called our hire car man about the time mix-up, and he had assured us that his brother would be there. We moved our stuff out on the sidewalk. The lady guard who locked the door on the way out stopped to talk to us. Barb explained our situation to her. And, as we “had on clean clothes and looked somewhat neat,” she took pity on us and waited with us outside until about 1 AM, when a nice lady driver showed up and took us to our motel. It was nice, and the car was fine the next day, and, since that was the end of the negative aspects of our car deal, it turned out fine.
We toured Christ Church. It was a beautiful city. I say “was,” because, much of it has since been destroyed by a large earthquake, including the totally beautiful Cathedral we loved, and it's amazing gardens.
We headed out across sheep country. New Zealand has vast expanses of open, rolling green hills with snow-capped mountains in the background. Millions of newborn lambs frolicked about. Barb had me stop the car, time after time, trying to get a good face shot of the lambs, but almost every time she got tails and heels. Miles of thick, green hedges, fifteen feet tall, perfectly trimmed, stretched across the rolling hills for windbreaks. In several places, we saw tall fences enclosing elk. I learned later they were imported there for hunters, but they flourished so well, competed with the sheep so much, they were pinned up and domesticated. New Zealanders would just not tolerate competition for their sheep. Their opossum, which is different from ours, is a leaf eater. It was constantly vilified on large road signs, for “Eating up our forests!” Kill those suckers every chance you get! Foxes in Australia were similarly vilified and poisoned, for being a sheep predator. Scavengers, like our buzzard, were non-existent, so with the dry air in the Outback, kangaroo bodies just piled up along the roadsides by the hundreds. Sheep are king in that part of the world.
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