Hawaii to New Zealand

We have finally arrived at our first international destination, New Zealand. It is wonderful here and we are glad to be continuing on our journey after some relaxing time in Hawaii. The last couple days in Hawaii were largely consumed by Halloween festivities in Honolulu. Jodie and I decided to dress as the Dharma Initiative (from Lost) because it was easy and cheap(goodwill jumpsuits). Si made an awesome costume of Max from "Where the Wild Things Are". With a little sewing instruction from Jodie and a pile of fake fur fabric, Si finished his costume and it turned out great. We saw a couple other "Max's" out and Si blew them away. We had a great time out with Si and his friends, so much so that we only managed about 2 hours of sleep before we had to be at the airport to New Zealand. Needless to say we were a bit rung out the next day but we managed to catch some sleep on the plane. Our original plan was to buy our "round the world" tickets here in New Zealand right when we landed because they were quite a bit cheaper than in the States. We also discovered that the company we were buying them from happened to have a 10% off sale that ended the day after we landed. Early the next morning after our much needed sleep we hurried off to the airport planning on an easy ticket buying experience. We talked to the man at the Qantas Airlines ticketing counter who didn't seem to want to help us because of how long it takes to book all the flights so he pawned us off to the phone

representatives. So we didn't really need to be at the airport after all even though thats what I had been told before. No big deal we thought, we will just call and book them over the phone. Well the lady on the phone told us that the 10% off deal was only available on the internet so we had to

book on the internet. We paid the outrages airport internet fees and tried to book them online but ran into more problems using the website, but we found out on the website where it specifically said that we could book over the phone and get the 10%.

We called back and finally talked to someone who was willing to help us so she took down our itinerary and said she would get back to us in about an hour when she looked up all the flights. FIVE HOURS LATER, we finally heard back from her with a itinerary that had only about half of our stops at about twice the cost. She said that some of the cities that we wanted to go to didn't fall under the tickets that we wanted so we had to do something completely different. (Which is not what I had heard before) We thanked her for her time, and decided that we needed to leave the airport after 8 hours, $40 in internet charges, and no tickets. It was a very frustrating way to start out our trip. Everything was fine once I cooled off a little and picked up our rental car.

Driving here (on the left side of the road) wasn't quite the anxiety inducing experience as it was last time I was here, but it still made me a little nervous. Probably the funniest part about driving with the steering wheel on the right is the blinker lever is also on the right and the windshield wiper lever is on the left so every time you try to turn on the blinker the windshield wipers fire on at full speed. It takes a little getting used to. Jodie is doing quite well behind the wheel.

We have been here for two days now and camped both nights since we got the rental car. Camping makes it way cheaper and the money we save on lodging more than pays for our rental car. Yesterday we went for a day hike up Rainbow Mountain near Rotorua and it was a wonderful view from the top of the rolling grasslands filled with sheep and dark forests. Today we will tour around the Taupo Lake region and plan a hike for tomorrow.