Today is our last day in New Zealand. We feel like we have been here for ever! We have had a blast although it has to be said that the weather has done it’s best to spoil things.
Six weeks is definitely too long. The North Island has some great places to hike and see, but is not as interesting or appealing than the South Island. We think we could have completed everything in about a month, maybe even three weeks if your happy to drive long distances. The Tongariro Crossing and Nelson Lakes managed to evade us due to the bad weather. We would love to have done both but will have to leave that for another day. See: www.tongarirocrossing.org.nz .
We liked the South Island a lot. Wanaka and Queenstown are great and the hiking here is plentiful. It’s a long way to come but well worth it. Just make sure you come here between mid December and mid March, to get the best of the weather on offer. As for Kiwi’s? They are wonderful, friendly people, pleased to help you out and chat away. They seem to have a better work, life balance than us.
We phoned Pat & Ad and Dick and Jeanette this morning. Sounds like the weather in the UK is typically wintery. After uploading info to the blog, we went for a good walk in Christchurch Park. This park covers 33 hectares and is a great open space.
We dropped of Brian, our trusty rental car, received our $460 refund for bringing it back early and took the free shuttle bus to the airport where we checked in for our flight to Sydney.
Whilst at the desk the lady asked us for our Aussie Visa! What Visa!! So, John had to go and purchase two visas for Australia. Luckily it all went smoothly. We then had to go back and give the visa details to the check in staff who were then able to issue our tickets.
We purchased a few more Christmas T-Shirts and headed to the Qantas lounge. Very nice. Not as big as the BA but fine. We are now flying back all the way to London with Qantas, due to BA being bloody awful. They have gone way down in our estimation. BA no longer seem able to spell or understand the words “Customer Service”. They are great at talking the talk but seem unable to crawl anywhere. In contrast Qantas go overboard to help you out. How embarrassing!
Our plane left on time and the service was great. You get personal DVD players with all the latest films and a nice big seat.
We reached Sydney a wee bit late due to strong head winds, collected our luggage and went through security to the taxi rank. We arrived at the International arrivals hall and headed straight for the cash machine so we could pay for a taxi. We got our cash, headed to the taxi rank and were just loading our bags into a taxi when John realised that the camera bag was missing. It had been on the trolley when they reached the cash machine, now, two minutes later, it was gone. John went back into the airport, checked around the cash machine and then managed to get staff to take him back through the route we had taken from the plane, but the bag was nowhere to be seen. Some bugger had swiped it from our trolley whilst we were getting cash. The lost and found was shut and nobody else could help.
We got to the Hotel Stellar and checked into our room. Unfortunately they had allocated us a smoking room and had nothing else left! We went into town, purchased a phone card and called O2, to put a bar on Johns phone. We then had a quick curry and returned to the hotel to phone the police help line and enter a report about the camera bag. It has all our camera/video equipment, iPod’s, iPhone, headphones and all our chargers in it. We had not been able to back up the video on the laptop due to lack of space, so most of our NZ video is only the lost camera. Luckily, we had backed up all the pictures.
After half an hour, we had filed the report. We went to bed feeling very angry and mighty fed up.
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