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amethyst73Wednesday March 10
The first order of business after breakfast was to pop down to our local cafe and get on their wireless network, so that we could use Skype to phone the credit card company. After two attempts, we determined that, while I could hear them just fine, there was something in the nature of the connection that allowed them to hear only every third to seventh word - no good for trying to solve a credit card snafu.(As a result of this lesson, we won't bother trying to call anyone else using that particular method.) We ended up using the phone in our hotel room, and were happy to pay the NZ$8 (about $5.50 US) to solve the problem. We spent the rest of the morning hanging about downtown. After lunch, we boarded the bus to go to Paihia.
The north island between Auckland and Paihia is mostly rolling, relatively steep green hills. There were a fair number of cows, some sheep, and a handful.each deer and alpacas/llamas. A lot of the scenery looked like it could have been in the Central Valley! And the greenness of the hills put me in mind of Hobbiton, even though I know that was in the south island. (We appear to have taken no photos of the trip with the phone's camera, sorry.)
Four hours later, we were in downtown Paihia! The auto rental guy was there to meet us, and after signing papers and calling our contact at the condo, Peter kindly took the wheel and drove the ~1.5 miles to the condo. I thought it was tremendously brave of him to drive on the 'wrong' side of the street!
It's a nice condo - two bedrooms, two bathrooms, good-sized living room, kitchen, eating area. The view outside the living room is much pleasanter than the wall of apartment that we had outside our hotel in Auckland (see
photos). It's on a bay so there's no surf, but it's still really pretty.
And because there's not tons of light pollution, you can see lots and lots and lots of stars, including old friends from home like Orion. The weird thing is, because we're in the southern hemisphere, he's upside down! This is much stranger than having the sun in the northern part of the sky rather than the southern - I've got a poor enough sense of direction that that difference is rather subtle. We took some long exposures of the night sky with our other camera; sadly, unless we switch SD cards around, you'll have to wait to see those.
And now, some Kiwi vocabulary:
Rocket (in the context of food) - a variety of lettuce
Give way - yield
Takeaway or carryout - takeout
Entree - appetizer, mains - main dish
Hokey-pokey - some flavoring that can be used with coffee or ice cream. No idea what it tastes like.
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The first order of business after breakfast was to pop down to our local cafe and get on their wireless network, so that we could use Skype to phone the credit card company. After two attempts, we determined that, while I could hear them just fine, there was something in the nature of the connection that allowed them to hear only every third to seventh word - no good for trying to solve a credit card snafu.(As a result of this lesson, we won't bother trying to call anyone else using that particular method.) We ended up using the phone in our hotel room, and were happy to pay the NZ$8 (about $5.50 US) to solve the problem. We spent the rest of the morning hanging about downtown. After lunch, we boarded the bus to go to Paihia.
The north island between Auckland and Paihia is mostly rolling, relatively steep green hills. There were a fair number of cows, some sheep, and a handful.each deer and alpacas/llamas. A lot of the scenery looked like it could have been in the Central Valley! And the greenness of the hills put me in mind of Hobbiton, even though I know that was in the south island. (We appear to have taken no photos of the trip with the phone's camera, sorry.)
Four hours later, we were in downtown Paihia! The auto rental guy was there to meet us, and after signing papers and calling our contact at the condo, Peter kindly took the wheel and drove the ~1.5 miles to the condo. I thought it was tremendously brave of him to drive on the 'wrong' side of the street!
It's a nice condo - two bedrooms, two bathrooms, good-sized living room, kitchen, eating area. The view outside the living room is much pleasanter than the wall of apartment that we had outside our hotel in Auckland (see
photos). It's on a bay so there's no surf, but it's still really pretty.
And because there's not tons of light pollution, you can see lots and lots and lots of stars, including old friends from home like Orion. The weird thing is, because we're in the southern hemisphere, he's upside down! This is much stranger than having the sun in the northern part of the sky rather than the southern - I've got a poor enough sense of direction that that difference is rather subtle. We took some long exposures of the night sky with our other camera; sadly, unless we switch SD cards around, you'll have to wait to see those.
And now, some Kiwi vocabulary:
Rocket (in the context of food) - a variety of lettuce
Give way - yield
Takeaway or carryout - takeout
Entree - appetizer, mains - main dish
Hokey-pokey - some flavoring that can be used with coffee or ice cream. No idea what it tastes like.
Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com
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Date: 2010-03-15 05:00 am (UTC)Can't wait to see the star pics! So glad you guys are having fun. I'm enjoying the travelogue :D