Kia Ora from New Zealand

Text by Sabrina (Smart ass comments by Chad)
I know you all want pictures, so check out the gallery:
http://picasaweb.google.com/crbates/HoneymoonNewZealand
We will keep adding pics next week as well.


Our Hotel.
Friday morning we woke up early and got ourselves ready to head to our next destination. Chad went to check us out of the hotel and nearly had a stroke when they tried to charge him $129 in internet fees. The guy working the hotel desk the night before had told Chad that there was a flat $25 fee - he was new to his job and some discussion with hotel management Chad was able to persuade them to only charge us $25. It's amazing here how large hotels don't offer internet service to the guests. Oh well! The manager kept trying to get out of living up to what the guy working the desk the night before had told me. She logged on to the website that the guests use and looked for the Terms and Conditions. She asked if I would take a discount and I said "Yes, to $25". She kept trying to talk me into paying the whole amount. I guess she thought I was just some tourist that doesn't stay at a lot of hotels. Boy was she wrong!

Our next stop was the city of Napier located on the east coast of New Zealand at Hawke Bay. Many years back the town was demolished (by fire I think). The residents of Napier decided to rebuild their city in the then popular Art Deco style. The city is definitely a beach town and the views of Hawke Bay are gorgeous. We had planned to stay 2 nights, but being winter made it a kind of dull place to be, and unfortunately the place we had booked a room at was almost as bad as the Crowne Plaza a few nights earlier. We decided to stay only one night and head someplace new the next day.
My wife doesn't like my hotel choices. I feel like I am apologizing most of the day for a pick I made over the internet. I think I should just let her pick the accommodations from now on. As long as it has a TV and isn't to expensive, I am ok with it. I think I am have just learned not to look to close to hotel rooms. Any one who has been a business traveler learns to look for the big things but ignore the little things.
Sabrina's trigger is stray hair, mine is blood stains. There have been a couple rooms I have stayed in that I wish the only problem would have been stray hairs.
On the other point here, Napier was BORING. We did almost everything there was to do in about 20 minutes. This included Opossum World. This is the weirdest store I have ever seen in my life!! It is a possum fur store, which is odd, but they take it one step further. They have a possum safari. This is a tour of "the ecological nightmare that opossums are in NZ." This shows you how they kill possums and the damage that possums do. Think a 100 stuffed possums in various states of death. Sabrina walked us in there and she was horrified the whole time we were in there. It was really horrific, but more than that just WEIRD!

SATURDAY

Us at Napier
We woke up in Napier and wanted to check out the National Aquarium before heading to our new stop in Whakatane (pronounced - Faw-kaw-taw-nee). The word "National" would make you think this has got to be a really large and fantastic aquarium. In Vancouver we visited the Vancouver Aquarium and really enjoyed it and were impressed by it. Not quite so with the National Aquarium of New Zealand. We drove by it the night before and thought it looked a little on the small size. I mean the building wasn't much larger than a small supermarket and yet they were boasting about having dolphins and such. At first Chad was convinced that it must be all hidden underground and that the building on top was perhaps just the entrance. This was not the case - it is really itty bitty. New Zealand needs to work on their aquarium! We decided to jump the Napier ship and get out of town. The local tourist information office helped us book a B&B in Whakatane, so we were on our way.

The drive to Whakatane was one of the most beautiful I have ever been on, but, IT TOOK FOREVER. We ended up driving almost the entire day. Poor Chad was behind the wheel the whole time and I was a nervous co-pilot because I am still getting use to being the passenger on the other side of the car. Our B&B in Whakatane was really nice, but after eating dinner I was so tired I was asleep by 7:30! Needless to say it wasn't the most exciting night of our honeymoon.
My wife is a great navigator, but a bad co-pilot. We haven't gotten lost in almost 900 miles of driving in a different country, but she is nervous. Every time I move a little right in the lane, she has a heart attack and starts making this awful noises. I look over expecting to see her turning blue, but she is just looking out the window. She sees the guard rail and she thinks she is about to exit the car the hard way. The problem is, New Zealand doesn't build roads like the US does. The US has BIG cars and trucks to worry about, NZ justs puts roads where ever they will fit. We drove down a road yesterday that was paved into the side of a hill. If the hill went out into the roadway, the road got very narrow for a couple feet. It was especially scary when a loaded semi came at me in the other lane. Not the best time for passing traffic. So when the lanes narrow or someone in the other lane comes across the center line, I move to the left, Sabrina hyperventilates and I have to reassure her that I am not trying to kill her.
The place we stayed in Fuckatawnee was really nice. It was my first time at a B&B, and I actually liked it. The room was nice, the bed was comfy and best of all Sabrina liked it so I didn't have to look for another place to stay. We went to town to find some dinner, but when we got to town at 5pm, nothing was open. We thought that the place was like Napier and closed for the season. We drove around looking for any signs of life. Finally we found a couple places down the street from the town. One place didn't open till 5:30, so we thought would go back and see if this was the case of some other places in town. It was and most actually didn't open till 6. We tried to find something a little bit local maybe some seafood, but after looking around we picked the Irish Pub. It was really good. I got some cider and we had a nice dinner. I wanted to get back to the room so we could watch the NZ v. France Rugby Test. NZ destroyed France, but the funniest thing about watching the match was that the owners of the B&B had to be watching the channel that the Rugby was on for me to see it in our room. It was on, but after about 10 minutes of the game, they turned the sound off, so I had to watch the remainder of the match with no sound. This worked out since my wife was asleep in bed next to me.

SATURDAY

I am not as short as I look.
This morning we were up and on the road by 9:00 am. We were hoping to make it back to Auckland in time to do a little site seeing. The drive today was much better and quicker than yesterdays and we were even able to stop in Rotorua one more time. Since I really didn't want to go back to the Crowne Plaza we booked a night at a cute little B&B in a cool area just outside of downtown Auckland called Ponsonby. You can check out the site at: http://www.greatpons.co.nz
We dropped our stuff off, had a cup of tea, chatted with the owner a bit, and then headed out the door to walk around downtown and get some dinner. We walked around the Marina area, stopped for drinks at a russian bar called Lenin, walked up to the Sky Tower, and then had dinner at a place called Degree. The dinner was really neat because you get to cook your own meat on a hot (and I mean REALLY hot) stone that they bring to your table. All in all in was a nice evening and I enjoyed holding hands and strolling around the city a bit. I love the fresh smell of being near the ocean. We headed back and now we are holed up in our cozy room, watching TV, and listening to the rain coming down outside.
I can't believe I paid money to cook my own food on a hot rock. Will someone check my head when I get home? In spite of that, it was some of the best chicken I have had in a long time. Maybe I should start cooking all my food on a hot rock.

So that it from New Zealand. More when we get to Oz.

Next stop, Sydney, Australia!!