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The drive north from New Plymouth to Auckland was beautiful. I found myself wondering how large a town I'd have to find in NZ to be able to find enough work to support myself. The weather was balmy with a brisk breeze and partly cloudy skies. Tank top and shorts weather for me. <heh> The roads are very good, not many windy bits and mostly flat and straight. Lots of sheep and cows in the pastures, but I don't see as many deer as I did on South Island. I get to Auckland, find the airport easily, but haven't a clue where my motel might be. Driving aimlessly around the airport, I find a McDonald's and decide to ask there for directions. It's Saturday and dark now, and nothing else is open. But first, another Kiwiburger. I discovered this in Greymouth and like it a lot better than anything else I've ever had at Mickie D's. It starts life as an ordinary burger, but includes an egg, cucumber slices and a pickled beet slice. Yum! The staff confer over my bad tourist map and decide that they do know where Tidal Rd is. The point me on my way and I find the motel with only one wrong turn. Happily they have a room available for me and I plan to catch up with my email now that I'm in a town with a local access number again. Then I read the fine print on the phone - the motel adds 30 cents per minute for local calls. Ugh - added to the 15 cents earthlink charges (for being out of my home country) and the SLOW connect speed (24K is the best I can get) it's clear that it will be far too expensive to try to do much about the 600 emails that have stacked up in the 3 days since I've deleted them last. Off I trot to the lobby to the internet machine. Only $10 for 45 mins, but a fast connect. I manage to cruise thru my 579 emails and delete all but the 4 personal ones. Perhaps I need to wait till I get to Adelaide to work some more on the website. Sunday I drive over to the car rental place to try to find out how I can return the car at 4am and get to the airport. The rental place, Ace Rentals, is a lot less than helpful. Sorry, they don't open till 7 a.m. and they absolutely cannot pick up the car from the airport - I absolutely must leave it at their office. No, there are no airport shuttles that run anywhere near them. No, there is no taxi company that will come to pick me up at 4am and drive me to the airport. Surely I don't want to walk all that way in the dark at that time of night? Perhaps I should go and ask at the airport if they can arrange a bus or something. Ha! Everyone at that airport, from Qantas to the Special Assistance folks laugh and tell me to leave the car in the car park. Hmmmm... Yeah, that's right. 4:30am and here I am walking in the pitch black night from Ace Rentals to the airport. It's only about a mile and the night is nice and warm. I wish I had worn shorts instead of trousers. I think about suitable punishment for the travel agent who booked me on such an early flight and the incredibly bad service provided by the Ace Car Rental co. So if you wind up in NZ needing a rental car you now know which one to avoid. Any way, here are some pix of the beautiful scenery I saw on my way to Auckland. This was the first time I tried taking many shots and then "stitching" them together. It worked remarkably well and I may try this again with pix in Australia.
On the left is a picture of Auckland city proper - I never got there, but I became quite familiar with the Airport on the right - traipsing around there in the wee small hours of the morning. |
