Welcome New Zealand! 7.9.08

Auckland, Northsore, Monday, 7th of September 2008

WE ARE IN NEW ZEALAND.
Already 4 days. Still getting organized, but this time it is easier than in OZ.
We can’t say WOW yet. Not that it is not pretty here around, but mind you we came from Australia and we’ve seen beautiful places. We’ve been told that NZ is much prettier than OZ but of course we didn’t really move around yet, so we’ll wait and see.
We arrived Friday noon. We were a bit concerned about the food we brought because we heard that the New Zealanders are even more “anals” than the Aussie are (we even have friends who got fined for the mud they carried in their shoes all the way from Israel). We had to carry with us some food from OZ, such as herbs, Tahina (from Israel) and alike. Anyways, we were good kids and declared on the stuff we brought in front of the Biosecurity guards (this is not a joke – this is how they are named). Everything went smooth and we were welcomed to New Zealand. We took a taxi straight to Apollo, the rental company. There we met Rebecca, our new motorhome.
I guess that the rest of this post should be dedicated to her, followed with photos. Even though we were prepared for it, we could not believe it. We really deserved it after living one month with Carl. This motorhome is sooooooooooooo pampering. Amit and I have a double bed for ourselves. Kids sleep on another double bed on top of the driver seats, When they go to sleep and cover their area with the velvet curtains we can even pretend that they are not there. We have a TV/DVD, sink, toilet and shower (not in use), 2 tables with benches and ample of space. Oh, and also plenty of shelves for storage. No more living "on bags". Each one of us has his/her own “closet” and there we put all our personal stuff – clothing, books, games (kids', cause Amit & I don’t have games :-))). I’m sure that if we came to NZ straight from S’pore we would not be that excited about having your own space in the car, but after the one month we had in OZ we’re still excited after 4 days. The only one who sees the drawback of this amazing car is Amit, because he needs to drive it. Unfortunately it does feel like driving a house… or at least a truck. He’s still working on it. So far I can’t even imagine myself behind the wheel, but who knows…

The weather is colder than OZ but after the shock we had in Cairns we are mentally and physically prepared now and can take it all. We had beautiful 2 days (sunny and windy) and 1 not beautiful day (rainy and windy). Officially spring has started, but we were already told that you get four seasons in one day here.

The first 2 nights we stayed about 40 minutes north to Auckland, in Waiwera. We had a very warm welcome by the host, and actually we plan to go back there tomorrow, but that is because we forgot there all our towels and swimsuits :-(.
We then returned to Auckland area, and spend the days in the city. Yesterday we drove there but it is really a hell to wonder around in a city with our motorhome. Just finding a place to park took us about an hour. We visited the Auckland Museum (kids want to write about it) and the Sky Tower.
To avoid the hassle again, today we took a bus. We went to Kelly Tralton’s Antarctic Encounter & Underwater World (kids want to write about it), and then went to the post office. The reason we went to the post office is that back in S’pore I was concerned that we might not have enough books to read. I knew we were having luggage constraints so I sent 11 kilos of books to the post office in Auckland. Indeed it waited for us... Of course it turned out to be silly because we don’t find time to read, and have so many books anyway and now we even have more, but you never know…
That is all for now.