Tag: South Pacific

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New Zealand Interstate

Enroute Dunedin, NZ

The Great Kiwi Roadtrip continues!!


We make it a habit of reporting things to the highway patrol.  This mostly started when Tiffany and Greg’s Mom teamed up on him and forced him to quit stopping for motorists on the side of the highway.  If someone looks like they are broken down but not in immediate danger, they reasoned, it is much safer simply to use a cell phone to report it to the highway patrol than to stop in the middle of nowhere and put yourself at the potential mercy of a carjacker.

The reason we bring this up is when we called in a broken down car to the NZ police, they asked us where it was.  To which Tiffany replied that it was on the interstate southbound a few kilometers from whatever exit we had just passed.

Tiffany was very proud of herself, incidentally.  Using kilometers in conversation.

The police operator chucked and immediately asked if Tiffany was from the States.  A bit confused, (she’d used kilometers!) she replied, “Why, yes.  Did you guess that from my accent?”

New Zealand give way sign

“No, this is New Zealand.  We don’t have interstates here.”

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Silly Kiwis

On the Road, NZ

We sometimes think that travel does, in fact, broaden one’s horizons.  Gives perspective, understanding if you will, of persons individually and peoples as a whole.

For example, we now understand that, as a people, Kiwis are pretty dang witty.

the cure for veganism is baconBillboard ad in Auckland – dude, true that.

As we wander down the length of this great country we should take a moment, if only a moment, to admire the brilliance of the Kiwi advertising agencies…

Continue reading “Silly Kiwis”

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Burritos are not square…

Wellington, NZ

interislander ferry new zealand 1The Great Kiwi Roadtrip continues!!

The Interislander Ferry is located in Wellington, the national capital of New Zealand which is situated on the southernmost tip of the North Island.  No, we hadn’t ever heard of it either.  Mostly because, aside from being conveniently located in the geographic center of the country to make it as accessible as possible to all citizens (see, again, Kiwis are just nice people, even to each other) and being the seat of the national government, Auckland trumps Wellington as the international city of New Zealand.  Simply put, there’s no rude nickname for Wellington-ers, like there is for the JAFAs up north.

It’s in the interest of education and making you look important that we use the slur, bro.  Don’t get mad.

Remember when we discussed how sailors spend their 90 days in French Polynesia?  If you wanted to spend a month each on 3 of the islands or spread out to more remote places to spend a week here and a week there?  Though we joked about it at the time, we never flat out asked the question, “What if a week in French Polynesia is all you got?”

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Yeah, That Mount DOOM!

Mt. DOOM, New Zealand

20101212-NZ-road-trip-w-Ronni-27 - mount doom

(oh yes, there.  Right freaking there!  Life Achievement unlocked: Entered Mordor!!!)

The Great Kiwi Roadtrip continues!!

When you tell your friends back home that you’re in New Zealand, there is one reaction you’re almost sure to receive (especially if said friends are big fans of Science Fiction movies and some are actually known to posses the one ring) and question is, “Are you going to Hobbiton?”

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In Search of Castle Kiwi

Auckland, NZ

Mount Eden and the Sky Tower, Auckland, New Zealand

Us: “No, mom, really what do you want to do while we’re in New Zealand?”

Mom: “Oh I’ll just do whatever you’re doing”

We’ve been down this road before with Greg’s mom.  She doesn’t want to intrude.  But we didn’t really think that getting eaten by a Sharktopus (Sharktopi?), canoe drag racing, or crawling up volcanoes were much her thing.  As we’ve said before, this “normal tourist” routine is a bit difficult for us to grasp without the aid of a 20 sided die. So this time we insisted.

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The Power of “Go”

Auckland, NZ

We decided to buy vs. rent because the cost of second-hand cars was really cheap and we figured out that by renting we stood to probably spend more than outright buying and the cost of insurance was very low (finally, an upside to being over 30!!).  Most importantly, owning the car we gave us the power of go, which was critical if we were playing host in a foreign country.

20101206 (5) - NZ license plate - dimwit

Really?  Really!? 

Dude, there’s a reason this vanity plate was available.

The power of go was discovered by Greg several years ago.  As Greg never owned a car before his senior year in college, he spent his high school and university years dependent on someone else (friends, buses, and the ever-loyal Cal train) for transportation.  Upon getting a car Greg realized that he no longer needed to have a plan when he wanted to do something, which is what the “power of go” is:

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Boatless Transportation

Auckland, NZ

With Greg’s mom on the way we realized we had a problem we had managed to completely avoid on our journeys until now: how do we get around?

It sounds odd but for the past several years and about 1/3 of the way around the world our method of day to day travel simply was not a concern.  When working on sailing yachts our office also happens to encompass our primary means of locomotion and accommodation.  As we sailed wherever our captain wanted and stayed as long as they wanted to, we didn’t put a lot of thought into where we would be going or how we would get there.  We just took the ship safely wherever we were told when we were told to do it.  Being land bound now we had to face such difficult questions like, “Where will we go?”  and “Where will we sleep when we get there?”  and the most urgent of these, “How will we get there?”

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Map of our trip

Ok, BIG announcement here everyone.

After a cubic butt load of work on Tiffany’s part and a few weeks of strangling the wordpress though island internet servers until it gave us what we wanted,

We can now present to you,

In all it’s oceanographic glory,

Along with geo-locational hyperlinks for all our entries,

(Ooooooo how completely awesome does that sound!?!)

THE MAP

(no, not the chart.  It’s not to be used for navigational purposes.  Who in their right mind uses google maps to navigate?)

View CoastGuardCouple.com – Tiff and Greg Around the World! in a larger map

You can click on the green pins to find posts related to that area.

Our current location is denoted by a green arrow and star.

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Kiwis on Water Skis

Auckland, NZ

Having completed our assorted obligations to hearth & home, we returned to a much warmer New Zealand a few months later.  As our winter is their summer, that worked out in our favor.  Tiffany would like to point out that it was “warmer” vice simply “warm.”   She is sensitive to such things.

Since we had a week before Greg’s mom arrived to join us on our adventures in Kiwi-land, we decided to take up some of our new friends on their offer to teach us water skiing.  We met Chris & Jo while we were in Tonga, which incidentally would have made a much warmer aquatic instructional environment but see they’re Brits by birth, so we just had to do it the hard way or at least the non-tropical water way…which supposedly helps the stiffness of our upper lips or something…

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Is it worth it to go home?

Enroute San Jose, CA, USA

It provides us with endless amusement that after all the places we’ve sailed to, all the countries we’ve travelled around by boat, that we’ve flown into and out of Auckland, New Zealand…the “City of Sails.”

Sometimes we just enjoy being contrarian because we can be.

There comes a moment of truth in every long-term traveler’s trip when they are forced to confront a simple question with a heck of a lot of implications:

“Is this worth going home for?”

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