New Zealand - No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem!
Trip Start
May 01, 2007
1
43
45
Trip End
Apr 29, 2008
Christchurch,
New Zealand
Friday, November 9, 2007
We ended up settling down in Hamilton, about 2 hours south of Auckland. Hamilton (unlike the Hamilton at home) was a pretty nice town, and we enjoyed living there. We scored a pretty decent place near downtown at the YWCA, and set out to find jobs. We were very quickly hired at a company that described itself as a business that sold products to established clients
01 Fur Seal
. We were under the impression that we'd be selling office supplies to area businesses. WRONG. In fact, the job entailed walking around trying to sell crap out of a duffel bag. Seriously. Our mantra was "Every Door, Every Store, Every Floor, Every Person." We'd go out in teams of 2-4 for a day, and assault the poor citizens of a certain neighbourhood, trying to convince them why they should purchase an unbreakable flashlight, or a dancing, singing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer snowglobe. We walked randomly into offices and businesses that were trying to serve customers. You name it. I couldn't believe we were never arrested or shot. It was, to be blunt, bloody horrible. Terri ended up being quite awesome at it, but I pretty much stank, so was re-assigned to selling car wax at gas stations. GOOOOOOOD fun.When we could take it no longer, we left to travel around and see the country. We rented a car and bought a tent. We froze every night. There were a couple really stand out things that we did: Black Water Rafting in Waitomo was a trip through subterranean caverns - rappelling, tubing, climbing up waterfalls. And the entire cave system was full of glow worms, that stuck to the ceilings of the caves, and...well they glowed. We met a Canadian couple there from Vancouver, Mel and Ryan, who we inexplicably ran into many times throughout our month of travelling. The other really cool thing we did was a sea kayaking trip in Abel Tasman National Park
02 Bucolic NZ Scenery
. We did a bunch of hiking (they call it "tramping" in NZ), saw some bubbling mud pools in geothermally active spots in the North Island, and visited some museums around as well. There were a couple funny things about New Zealand that offered us never ending entertainment. First: Pedestrians don't have the right of way. At all. My boss delightedly told Terri on my first day back from selling kids colouring books that "Matt almost got hit by two cars!" You apparently shouldn't cross streets, well...ever. We were cursed out for crossing a street while there was no traffic, only to have someone come up from around the corner and have to step on his brake lightly. This happened more than once.
Second: New Zealanders don't wear shoes. It seemed to us that, every time we went out, 25% of the people we saw were barefoot. They'd walk through spilled gas to fill up their cars, they'd step in very suspect puddles under urinals in bathrooms. This was all the more surprising considering New Zealand has the most broken glass scattered on streets and sidewalks that we have ever seen, anywhere. I suspect that the Prime Minister likely goes barefoot in Parliament.
It sure is funny, the things you notice...
Happily, we got some really nice photos that will fill in the blanks from this entry. NZ is a beautiful place.
Next stop for us: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Stay tuned...
