Thanks to everyone for making posts to our empty blog. Yip, we've arrived in Auckland on January 1, 2008 via Qantas and our bags/bikes arrived 4 days later. No worries. Paul has relatives here in Auckland who took good care of us (they were on holiday upon our arrival) while our bags were flying around from LA to Fiji.
We decided to stay in Auckland for several days so Paul could work on an article for Thorne. While he toiled in front of the computer I went tramping throughout Auckland! Here's what I discovered:
- AUCKLANDERS LOVE THEIR COFFEE - Much of the city is dotted with cafe's and coffee shops just like our own city of Seattle. They claim their coffee is best in the world...I'd hate to rain on their parade...
- EVERYTHING IS TWICE AS EXPENSIVE VS.THE STATES - I should've known better. I thought I was going to a third world country (just joking). So much for staying within our budget!
- TOMATO SAUCE IS ACTUALLY KETCHUP - Well, I guess we didn't learn this tramping throughout the city. We learned this the first night cooking at the de Jong's residence. We were attempting to make some penne pasta with a vegtable spaghetti sauce...come to find out the tomato sauce here is acutally ketchup. So, for dinner we ate penne pasta with vegtables in a ketchup sauce.
- SMALL DIESEL CARS ARE HIP - There's a plethora of diesel cars in NZ. Cool, efficient cars too. Why can't we have more options like these in the states?
- DOMAINS VS. RESERVES - Throughout NZ their park systems are either called domains or reserves. Domains are typically larger parks and reserves are smaller residential parks. They're all beautifully maintained and utilized by city dwellers wanting to playing cricket, rugby, or just interested in hanging out.
- THERE'S A HOLE IN THE OZONE LAYER - We found this out the hard way. 3 hours of walking around Orakei with no sun screen. Ouch! The sun is super intense down here. Skin cancer centers are all over the city.
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