When you look up awesome in the dictionary, you’ll find New Zealand.

So our love affair with New Zealand continues, although our shock over the New Zealand prices has not yet subsided. I fear the price shock is causing us to spend more than planned. Because now when I see a $3 cookie, I can rationalize it by saying it is $3 kiwi dollars, which isn’t really $3 actual dollars, and if you don’t do the math, you never have to figure out that it is a really overpriced cookie.   But let’s not dwell on that, because guess what kind of overpriced cookies New Zealand has?  Cookie Time cookies, for serious cookie munchers.  And what am I but not a serious cookie muncher, especially after months of being deprived?  In Queenstown, the Cookie Time serves chocolate chip cookies warm, with milk from a draft pump.  How awesome is that?  Clearly worth any amount of kiwi or U.S. dollars.

So far we’ve learned that if something is marked as a scenic route in New Zealand, they really mean super scenic route, and if it is not marked as a scenic route, chances are it is going to be a scenic route anyway.  We pretty much spend all of our time cruising around in our campervan, stopping every five minutes for yet another photo.  Our vocabulary consists of ooh and aah and wow and amazing and awesome and other such words.  Because New Zealand?  Is totally deserving of all of those words and many more.  Not only is the scenery consistently beautiful, the country is totally neat and organized. There’s absolutely no litter, every lawn is immaculately landscaped (doesn’t anyone have a trashy overflowing front porch in this country?), and all of the roads are nicely paved with scenic lookouts just where you want them. Every town has an information center brimming with free information; I hope someone reuses or recycles the zillions of brochures that are threatening to take over our campervan. The Department of Conservation has conserved land all over the country, and each area is well signposted with historical, ecological, and logistical information. I hate to keep making unfair comparisons to Asia, but the differences between New Zealand and Asia are so wide, so profound, I can’t help myself.

I’ve been trying to figure out why New Zealand is so scenic, and I think I’ve come up with two explanations. First, there’s just not that many people here to screw things up or even to get in the way of your fabulous photos. The people are crowded into little towns and cities with tons of trendy cafes and wool shops galore, which much of the land is undeveloped and untouched, or touched only by sheep farms. Which brings me to point number two. There’s a ton of sheep here. We were certain there had to be more sheep than Ireland, and it turns out we were right. There are 8 million sheep in Ireland, but there are 40 million sheep in New Zealand. And you all know how I love sheep. Unlike Ireland, most of the sheep here are unpainted. And super fluffy. I’m thinking it is because it is almost winter, but who knows? All I know is the high fluffy sheep density is reason number 433 why I’m loving New Zealand.

We’ve covered a lot of ground already; we didn’t listen to our wise buddies over at the Road Forks and are trying to cram both islands into a month. Luckily New Zealand keeps you moving; no matter how much you’re enjoying where you are and no matter how much you feel like you could stay forever, you feel the pull towards the next amazing place around the corner. We’ve visited the little French town of Akaroa on the gorgeous Banks Peninsula; cruised down the east coast to the historic town of Omarau; stopped by the Moeraki boulders at low tide; ate a tasty but pricey blue cod lunch at Fleur’s Place by the ocean; explored the Otago peninsula but passed on pricey penguin and other wildlife tours; hung out in the college town of Dunedin and got some tasty produce and treats at its Saturday farmer’s market for cooking up in our campervan; meandered through the sunny Catlins coast and Southern Scenic Route; sped towards Curio Bay on zero gas in time to catch the yellow eyed penguins come ashore there for free; stayed in a campground wedged between two gorgeous ocean bays with a sea lion visitor; saw an amazing sunrise over our campground in Te Anau; cruised through the Milford Sound and explored the Fiordlands in the pouring rain and fog; gawked at impossibly gorgeous sunny Queenstown in fall, in April; gawked at others jumping off bridges and the like but opted only for the tamer jetboating through the Shotover Canyon; tasted a fantastic blackberry and chocolate muffin along with a long black at Ritual Espresso Cafe in Wanaka; drove through the Haast mountain pass, again in the pouring rain and fog (what is with this, New Zealand?); detoured to Jackson Bay to eat perfectly battered fresh fish and chips in a trailer by the sea; and now we’re in Fox Glacier township, about to explore a real creeping glacier tomorrow. Whew!

p.s. New Zealand is toying with our weather emotions. One day it’s freezing cold and winter-like; the next it’s a sunny fall day in April; the next it’s back to rain and fog. The weather really better pull itself together; from here on out, we’re northward bound. And in this upside down world, north is like south.  So I expect sunshine; you hear that, New Zealand?

p.p.s. After all this talk of gorgeousness, I bet you’re wanting some pictures, huh? Fear not; there’s so many, I’ll have to break them up in future posts. But if you can’t wait, you can see all of them through yesterday here because I am a photo processing rock star and current on my photos for the first time during the whole trip!

Shock and Awe in New Zealand

Warning: this post may be written slightly under the influence, so read at your own risk. When passing by the wine rack in the grocery store (I know – wine in a grocery store! Don’t have a heart attack Pennsylvanians!) I spied sauvignon blanc – New Zealand’s specialty and my favorite wine – and it somehow ended up in our cart. Then it somehow ended up empty. I know, I was shocked too. (Don’t worry, I had a helper). What else are you supposed to do when you’re sitting in your campervan at a city holiday park when its pouring outside?

Which brings us to shock number two. It’s cold here. And rainy. Think Ireland, but colder. Yeah, I know. There’s Cadbury eggs everywhere, but the leaves are changing on the trees. I’m very confused.

When we arrived, this was the first thing we saw when we got off the plane was sleeping bag after sleeping bag filled with cheapskates frugal people. But since we’re old and cranky and require a good night’s sleep, we sprung for a hotel. First we were in awe of the king sized soft bed, the number of pillows (two! Per person!!!), the bathtub, and the television speaker in the bathroom (for real). Then we were in shock over the price. Since we didn’t get in until after midnight and planned to pick our campervan up at 8:30 the next morning, we opted to stay near the airport at a hotel with a 24-hour shuttle. Which practically cost the equivalent the price of three days in Asia. Since we took a budget airline (Air Asia), we barely ate the whole day. And we couldn’t afford to eat at the hotel, that’s for sure. My request for a budget exception to eat a $3.00 cookie from the mini-bar was denied, and my hopes for breakfast before we picked up the campervan were quickly dashed when we realized a continental breakfast for two would cost $30 USD. Can you say price shock?

When we finally ate for the first time, it was lunchtime. We found a pub with a semi-affordable lunch special of $9 USD and wandered in. We paused by the door, wondering if we should wait to be seated, then plopped ourselves down at an empty table when we didn’t see a hostess. When the waitress approached us, she looked very confused. Can I, help you? Oh, we weren’t sure if we should seat ourselves or wait… When she responded, oh that’s okay, in a high pitched voice we had our answer. Culture shock strikes again: we never would have just sat down at home, but there’s no such thing as hostesses in Asia. While things certainly operate on Asia time, eating isn’t one of them. You saunter in, sit at any table you want. If there’s a menu, it’s ten pages thick and generic and full of things the restaurant doesn’t even have. There’s no chance to read it; the waiter is hovering over you as soon as you sit down. This “express lunch” meal, by comparison, was downright leisurely, leaving me super antsy when the waitress cleaned every table instead of ringing our card at the “till,” until I realized that we’re supposed to take it to the till ourselves. Oops.

We spent our first night in our campervan last night, and even though it’s freezing outside, our heater and blanket keep us toasty. We rather like our new little home, and we’re looking forward to hitting the open road after we stock up on some warmer gear in Christchurch. Our attempts at mastering the New Zealand accent are in full swing already, but it’s a hard one. I have to keep calibrating by saying Bret and Jermaine, which seems to help. Sean seems to be devoting his time working in as many New Zealand-esque phrase he learned from the guidebook (an utter waste of money because the tourism industry gives away buckets of information for free) as he can in every sentence. He gets a particularly big kick of using the phrase brassed off, which, in turn, really brasses me off!

Farewell Asia, you mixed bag you.

Right now, we’re en route to New Zealand, riding high on our decision to extend the trip past its original year expiration date. We arrived in Asia on September 6; almost seven months ago. We’ve been in Southeast Asia alone for four months. To say we’re ready to move on is an understatement; rice, especially the ubiquitous fried variety, won’t be on our plates anytime soon. We’ll miss neither the wood-like mattresses nor the constant on and off again of shoes, and we really won’t miss the pay squat toilets that someone should have paid us to use or the soaking wet bathrooms with showers on top of the toilet and strange sewer gases seeping through the exposed pipes. It’s someone else’s turn to get eaten alive by the mosquitoes, to try (unsuccessfully) to drown out the screechingly loud music on buses stuffed to the gills, to shake their head at drunk, obnoxious backpackers who think they own the world. Please don’t kill my excitement by mentioning that New Zealand has sandflies, shared camp bathrooms, thin campervan mattresses, or anything else that’s less than perfect, because nahnahnahnah, I can’t hear you.

Despite my current good riddance attitude, Asia’s been good to us and I know it. It provided us with sweet, sweet Cambodian bananas, Malaysian mangoes, Thai pineapples, and Vietnamese dragonfruit and watermelons; tasty, tasty street food; cultures totally foreign; scores of friendly, kind people; almost constant sunshine in what otherwise would be a cold, snowy winter; turquoise waters and white sand beaches; exploration of the underwater world; a peek into an anything-goes lifestyle; and months of cheap, cheap affordable travel.  And the habit of pronouncing words twice. Most of all, it has provided us daily fascination and entertainment. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Asia tops itself, and that alone is reason to travel here.

So ends another chapter of the trip. I’ll catch you guys up on our Vietnamese travels (the Southeast Asian country the least likely to be voted same same, but different) and our five weeks in Thailand and Malaysia (which really could be summed up right now – we mostly sat our arses on the beach. The End.) I’m thinking about interspersing posts about the last two months with near real-time posts in New Zealand, but I hear internet access leaves a lot to be desired in New Zealand, so no promises other than it will all get done eventually. (See how this Type A has learned to relax?)

Good-bye, Asia, it’s been fun, but we’re dreaming of unpacking our bags for one whole glorious month, hitting the open road with our campervan, making homemade meals with goods from the farmer’s markets, eating wild boar pie (well, at least Sean is), filling a chilly box with sauvigon blanc and microbrews, and soaking in fabulous view after fabulous view. New Zealand, here we come.