Wednesday, March 2nd was a big travel day for us as we made our only trip down to the south island of New Zealand. We've all been pretty excited about this trip because we keep hearing about how great the south island is from all of the New Zealanders we've come across. Overall, our trip was pretty uneventful but we did learn some new things about traveling by air in this country. The biggest difference between traveling domestically in NZ and in the US is the security. Or in the case of NZ, the lack of security. There is literally zero security checkpoints if you're flying between New Zealand cities. They only save the hassle of security for international flights. I guess nobody is interested in hijacking planes here... even the terrorists are layed back. I wish it was like this at home, it's so much easier. In the famous words of Alan from The Hangover, "Thanks a lot Bin Laden." Of course we got a bunch of pictures so I'll explain the rest of the trip with my usual visual aids.......
We arrived to a beautiful sunny day in Nelson. It had rained earlier but we didn't have to deal with any of that nonsense. Cindy and Kristin look happy to be there.
This was the trusty plane that got us here. It was like flying on one of the Delta turbo prop planes but the inside was way nicer. It looked more like one of the newer jets inside. This airport was just like the one in Dothan, AL except there were no covered walkways into the terminal. If it's raining here, it's your own problem... run faster.
A sign on the airport so the pilots new they made it to the right place
This is the inside of the airport, again a lot like Dothan. This is the line of people getting ready to leave on their flight. Oh, and this would be for security in the US. Here it was to give someone your ticket and walk out onto the tarmac. I'm a fan of the convenience.
And this is Kristin posing with our "luggage carousel". They put the bags on the luggage carts and then just wheeled the carts to the side of the airport. I guess that's one way to save money.
This is looking the other direction from the bags back through the maintenance area and you can see our plane. You may notice a lack of security guards, barricades, and all the other goodies at US airports. If you wanted to, you could literally walk through there and hop on the plane.
After landing and getting our bags, the trip got a little interesting. We booked a car through Thrifty, who we figured was a well-known and reliable company. Well, they still are, but they donated a good chunk of their fleet of cars to Christchurch for the recovery. That's great and totally understandable under the circumstances but it left us in a tough spot because we didn't have a car because it was in Christchurch. The lady that worked there was very helpful and did the best she could so she loaned us the beautiful car seen below for the afternoon and then had us come pick up another one when it came back at 6 pm. It was a little bump in the road but considering what the cause was, we couldn't get upset.
This was our temporary rental car for the afternoon. That lime green color just asks to be stared at.
Since we had a few hours to blow before we could get a final rental car, we hung around downtown Nelson. The place was a lot like Lawrence, KS with a few city blocks of shopping.
After we got our REAL rental car around 6, we headed across the Marlborough region to Blenheim. And of course we got some pictures of the landscape along the way. It looked a lot like Colorado for most of the drive.
I liked this picture with the water bumping right up against the mountains.
This was the beginning of the wine region. It looks a lot like California. The first of the vineyards is on the left.
We got to our hostel around 8. We didn't really know what to expect with this one because it wasn't in our guide books but we totally lucked out. This hostel is in the middle of the wine region, it's clean, doesn't have any weird characters hanging around, and even has a river right in the backyard. The only problem I've found are two little kittens that live next door and like to hang around the hostel and I'm very allergic to cats. They're really young and haven't been around long (to rub against everything) so my allergies haven't bugged me too much. Oh, and Claritin never hurts. To be honest, I usually hate cats but these little guys are actually pretty cute.
The hostel has pins from everywhere people are from that stay there. There was one from Overland Park.
And here's the world. Lots of Americans and Europeans traveling through.
This is the river behind our place. They have kayaks that you can use for free and go up and down the river. Kind of a fun little bonus for staying here.
That was our day. We have a shuttle coming to pick us up at 9:45 tomorrow for a day of wine tours. I'm glad they're giving us a ride home too! We'll see how this goes...
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