Cairns and New Zealand

Hi Folks it has been a while since our last update. People told us that things would be a bit cheaper in New Zealand but they were full of malarky. Yesterday we paid $170 for an oil change. and that is the going rate for an oil change in this country. This means that we have had a harder time finding economical internet.

After Townsville we went out to the Undara Lava tubes and then to Cairns. The lava tubes are giant caves created from lava flowing and hardening on the outside. They are very neat. We saw lots of wild kangaroos here and other macropods which was awesome but we also saw lots of dead ones killed from the road trains. Then we traveled north to cairns where we sold our car. It was sad to see "Sally the station wagon" go but we ended up selling her for $1150 more than we bought her for. This gave us enough money to buy our plane tickets to New Zealand and a couple of tanks of gas on our new car.

We took a trip to the great barrier reef while we were in Cairns and took an introductory scuba dive and saw some awesome sea life (including a 1.5 meter white tip shark). Unfortunately most of our time in Cairns was spent dealing with selling the car so we didn't get to do any more exploring north.

We had a red eye flight to Auckland so we spent our first day pretty much in a hostel sleeping. The only grocery store we could find was in china town so we ate rice noodles and dumplings for 2 nights. We had trouble figuring out how to cook these things because all of the directions were written in chinese. some of them, however, had pictures.

New Zealand has been beautiful so far. We bought a terrible gas guzzleing Ford Fairmont for $950 at the car market. 2.5 of the 4 windows are broken and dont roll down. The back passenger door does not open from the outside. it does not have a radio or antenna so we rigged up some computer speakers with our ipods through the cigarette lighter. the trunk makes the sound of thunder for anybody near by when it is closed. but all in all it gets us from point a to point b with no fuss.

Our first trip with our car that we have named Biff was to the almost northern most tip of the country Cape Reinga. It is said that the Maoris believed that this is where spirits would jump off to go back to their home land after the person has died. It also is where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and on a stormy day can create waves 30 feet high crashing into each other.

We have also been to the Coromandel Peninsula where the hot sand beaches are. Here you can rent a shovel for $5 and dig a hole in the sand where the water is just about boiling and create your own natural hot tub. We have also been to the black sand beaches of western auckland and now we are in the bay of plenty.

Our car came with plenty of camping gear so we have been saving some money by camping at Department of Conservation campsites and holiday parks. Some of these are conservation areas for Kiwi birds and we have gone on many nighttime missions to go and spot one of these bizarre little creatures.

Next we are heading to Rotorua and Taupo then back to the west coast for some surf.