Bats Flying Overhead

     We got up at 4 am to fly from Christchurch NZ to go to Sydney Australia, got to the airport only to find out there was no longer a flight leaving at 6:30 am. The next flight would be 9 hours later. Christchurch airport is not very exciting for 9 hours. When we finally got into Sydney we arrived right at the afternoon rush hour and sat in downtown traffic on the shuttle to our hotel. When we finally arrived at the ‘Arts Hotel’ there were bats flying overhead. A bad sign on a long day.

Another Great Experience

      Our next and last Couchsurfing experience was our last two days in Christchurch. Verna & Ian Stewart were just a delightful couple that we truly enjoyed. We took them to dinner and spent the evening chatting about a number of things including their love of Tango and enjoyed reliving our trip to Buenos Aires as they had also experienced it. Ian was a wealth of knowledge regarding NZ, history and all. 

THE TRAIN THAT WENT NOWHERE

Anyone you talk to knows about the train ride from Christchurch to Arthur’s pass. it’s a must see they all say.

We arrived early, as that is our way, boarded the train with a lot of other folks and waited. The time to depart slipped away and then we got the message that a train, not too far from CC had an accident and there were two fatalities. We waited about one hour and were told the train could not get through. We all disembarked, told we could get a refund or catch a bus and come back later on the train. We chose to get the refund which would be deposited in 15 working days. It always amazes me as to how quickly they can remove the funds from your account and how long it takes to put them back.

New Zealand Fjords

The number one place for people to visit in New Zealand is the Fjords. Pictures don't do it justice but here is a link to some photos I took.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WybY6F4HB2g

Dog Trails

We were leaving Te Anau in NZ heading for Gore when someone told us he used to live in Gore and said you should take the scenic route, and the scenic route is what this trip is all about. The scenery as a Kiwi would say was ‘lovely’ and we were getting hungry for lunch and there was no town on the map near us, rarely a house and hardly saw a car when we came up on this sign....

I stopped as fast as I could & backed up to find out what was going on. We drove into the parking lot (actually the parking lot was a field) to find out what was happening.  Here I am asking Dave ...........

Dave says there are dog trials going on here and that we are welcome to stay and watch. Here’s Dave and his sheep dog......

So we decided to stay and watch for a while. We walked up to where all the people were and they were very friendly and they offered us some lunch. Here’s Mary talking with some of the locals

Here’s how one of the contests works. Three sheep are released at the top of the hill, (there are three sheep at the top of the hill).

The dog owner sends his dog up the hill (there is a dog running up the hill) and the owners sends commands for the dog by voice, whistle or raising a cane. The object is to bring the sheep down to the bottom of the hill, not as fast as possible, but in a straight line to a circle hold them there. Here is Dave with the sheep almost in the circle.

We had a lovely time and enjoyed talking with the local people and hearing about their lives. We greatly appreciated the great hospitality of the folks there including the free lunch.

On the Farm Again

We Couchsurfed another farm and had a wonderful time. We got the deluxe tour, it was so good I thought we were going to be put to work!

On the Farm Again

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Miss Daisy is driving us.

We bought a GPS for NZ and Australia. We program a place to go and we get a female voice that says “Drive the highlighted route”. We call her Miss Daisy. If we make a wrong turn Miss Daisy says ‘recalculating’ and tries to get us back on track by calculating a new route or finding a way for us to turn around. It’s bad enough when we get lost but Miss Daisy sometimes gets lost too. We were in Wellington trying to find our hotel and Miss Daisy says “arriving at destination” and it was in an industrial district right on the train tracks. Thankfully ‘Miss Mary’ was able to recalculate our destination and get us to our hotel.

There was the time we were driving on highway 1 and she showed us driving on highway 12. And the time she showed we were 100 kilometers from our B&B and she announced “arriving at destination” and we were at the B&B. 

The problem is when do you trust or not trust Miss Daisy. There were several times  we were lost and confused and Miss Daisy says turn left at next corner and we’re thinking that can’t be right! So what do you do, your in the middle of traffic, I’m driving on the wrong side of the street (it might be right for New Zealanders to drive on the left side but it’s not right for me), so we make our own decision, we’re still lost, Miss Daisy is ‘recalculating’, we still think she is wrong, but some how we manage to not have a wreck, maybe a honk or two at us, and eventually find our way despite Miss Daisy.

Although Miss Daisy is very helpful, Miss Daisy is driving us crazy.