I just got back from new Zealand, and here’s a holiday report: broken into three sections.

Prelaunch

My mum got a phone call asking if she’d like to talk at a conference in Tauranga, and she decided the whole family could go on a holiday: myself, my sister, and my parents.

Getting passports proved to be fairly painful. My mum needed to provide a birth certificate, which she didn’t have, and by the time she finally acquired one (unearthing a family scandal in the process), we were getting very close to the hilt and had to pay $400 to get the passports expedited. It was the only way they could have arrived in time. We had to go to interviews, and the photos we paid for were rejected twice for being the wrong size.

This would have been in late August. By the 3rd of September, we were finally ready to go!

Stage 1

We drove to Sydney airport, but were slowed down by traffic and missed our flight. The next one would be in two days. So we drove to Mercure hotel and crashed there. It was sick being able to explore the inner city. I found a music store, and annoyed the living hell out of the salespeople by playing all the instruments and refusing to buy anything. Finally, it was Friday and we got on our flight, landing in Auckland airport at roughly 4:00pm NZ time.

We booked into the Sebel hotel, which is a really fancy place. The rooms were amazing. During the days, when my mum was at the conference, we were at liberty to explore Tauranga and soak in the New Zealand experience.

New Zealand is to Australia what Australia is to America. It’s very laid back, relaxed and friendly, although fairly uneventful. At some time the following week, we checked out of the Sebel, and the freaking holiday began. AAHH YEAAAAHH!

At Rotorua we went bungee jumping and white water rafting. We also stopped by at Lake Taupo and rode the Luge, which was about sixty different kinds of fun. After spending tons of money there, we drove to Wellington, which was definitely the most Sydneylike city in the country, and boarded a ferry to the South Island.

Stage 2

We landed in the South Island, and stayed in Picton overnight before moving on to Christchurch. It was now that we saw the true face of New Zealand: lots of fields, agriculture, and livestock. I have so many photos of sheep on my camera it isn’t funny. The country has its own set of quirks: for instance, it was rare to see an actual wall, people just plant rows of pine trees and let them grow into a natural barrier.

We saw a seal colony on the eastern coast, and nearly got charged by a bull seal as big as me. We learned all about the Maori culture and visited every museum we could find.

Somewhere along the road to Nelson my dad became very sick, and when he’s sick he, frankly, becomes an asshole. This was probably the least pleasant part of the holiday.

For the day before leaving Christchurch we went on an Alpine train ride across several hundred kilometers. This trip really drove home the fact that you can’t rely on people who have a monetary interest in what they’re selling. My dad made it very clear to the guy on the phone that he’s in a wheelchair, and was assured that the trains were wheelchair accessible. They were not. The factory-made wheelchair we put my father into simply would not fit down the chair aisles. We broke one of the chairs trying. Eventually we physically lifted my father out of the wheelchair and carried him several feed into his designated trip. The guy in charge of the trip was super pissed. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that he would find the guy who told us that the trains were wheelchair accessible and have him fired.

The next day we flew home, pretty uneventfully. Oh, and when we lost our house keys when we arrived back home. So much other weird and wacky stuff had happened that we took it in stride, though.

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