Today Kelly and I decided to hit the road with the help of Nils, the Brown Kiwi manager who strolled in at 9am (an hour late). The Southern hemisphere does not seem to have many time stresses. BTW, this hostel was only our second day with shared bathroom facilities. The first was our last day at the Octopus Resort when we had to check out early, but we wanted to snorkel before our boat left at 2pm. So we used the dorm bathrooms afterwards. Fiji and New Zealand have alot of hostels, but almost all of them have private rooms which is nice for honeymooners like ourselves. And most also have private rooms with shared or private facilities, the latter which obviously cost a little more. Anyway the Brown Kiwi only had shared facilities which are just fine. Even with all of the traveling I have done over the years, I have never really done the true hostel backpacking trip with sleeping in common dorms and using shared bathrooms. I guess I have been too Americanized. I can sleep anywhere, but it's nice to have a private bathroom, especially when you are staying with your wife. Tonight we are staying at the Treks Backpackers Hostel in Rotorua in a private room with a private bath. It only cost $US8 more for the private bath, so we splurged. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Nils set us up with a cheap rental car this morning. So first we traveled to the SkyTower in downtown Auckland which is the tallest structure in the Southern hemisphere. It was sunny, so we could see 360 degrees of the city from above. It was beautiful!
Then we picked up our 4-door Mazda economy car and headed south. We decided to go to Rotorua which is pretty much in the center of the North island of NZ. I don't know how many kilometers it was, but it took 3.5 hours to drive the distance. First of all this was the first time I had driven any car in two weeks, so I was a little rusty. Second, they drive on the left side of the road here, which I have never done. It's not bad on the highway, but quite freaky in the city. Luckily it's an automatic. Third, outside of the major cities, it's almost all two-lane 'highways' so I spent alot of time grasping the wheel and waiting for the occasional passing lane. Fourth, NZ basically does not have traffic lights outside of the major cities and they don't use four-way stops here. It is all about the roundabouts or 'roustabouts' as Kelly calls them because you have to be alert. I already like them, but probably because it adds a little more flavor to the drive. Gas was not too expensive, but more so than in the US. I filled up 3/5 of the tank on this small car and it cost the equivalent of about $US28.
We arrived in Rotorua tonight about 6pm. It was already dark. We think that is what is making us the most tired, the switch from summer to winter. Of course we had jet lag at first with the 8-hour time difference, but we think our clocks are more messed up from the change in daylight hours. We checked into our hostel and then walked to a great restaurant, the Fat Dog. We shared sweet chili meatballs and a lamb and pecan salad mix. Plus we had some leftovers to put into the common refrigerator for reheating in the morning. We were going to spend much of tonight finally putting pictures on the blog (I finally found a memory card reader to buy today), but the computers here don't recognize it. They are for basically Internet surfing and emailing only. So maybe tomorrow again.
-- Alan
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