Day 2 - Christchurch to Motueka

Look out New Zealand there is another idiot on the road!

Arrived in Christchurch in the morning to pick up our camper van.  It is HUGE and drives like a bus.

    Christchurch had a major earthquake on September 4th and they had an aftershock on Boxing Day that was 4.9 on the richtor scale. The aftershock damaged many buildings downtown and rubble still covered some of the streets, so they moved the camper van's pickup depot to slightly outside of the central business district.  And that's a good thing.  It was scary enough driving on the left side of the road as it is - I did not want to start driving downtown.  

    My intention was to drive to Abel Tasman national park but driving in New Zealand is slow & scary.  I decided to stop in Motueka to find a place to camp for the night, but all campgrounds were completely booked up.  I talked to a guy who directed me to the next town.

    It was seemingly a good plan to get out of town, except there was a roundabout on the way out of town.  Of course I took the wrong turn in the roundabout and ended up in a hippie camp.  It was a collection of about 10-15 camper vans, much like mine, all parked on the beach 'freedom camping'.

    Camping for free.  Score!  So I found a place to stay afterall.

Day 1 - Auckland

    The flight to New Zealand was never ending.  Thank goodness we are flying home from Cook Isands and the flying time will be 5 hours less.
   

    The city itself is nice even though it was pouring rain almost the entire time.  It seems like a very small city.  Everyone is friendly but wifi is very overpriced.

    I tried to order a regular coffee & they had no idea what I was talking about.  Cappuccino, latte, cafe au alit, moccachino? I couldn't make them understand that I just wanted coffee.

Boxing Day in San Francisco

     After waking up at the crack of 4AM today, taking a very overpriced taxi to the airport and sitting in cattle class seating for 5.5 hours, I finally made it to San Francisco.

     The only thing I wanted to do was tour Alcatraz Island but after taking a train & a street car to get to Alcatraz landing I found out that the tour is sold out until Thursday (today is Sunday!).  Bummer.  So I decided to walk around the waterfront and see Fisherman's Wharf at Pier 39.  The place is a tourist trap but I had a great time watching the sea lions bask in the sun on the floating docks at the pier.

    Apparently there are relatively few California Sean Lions at the pier this year (just a few hundred compared to 1,200 last year) and everyone is very concerned about them.  The current theory is that they disappeared because the fish stocks have diminished this year and the sea lions go where the fish are.  Another theory is that they disappeared before the big earth quake :)

     Otherwise, it was a nice day spent in San Fran.  Can't believe I only have 2 more hours left until my 13.5 hour flight to New Zealand.