First day in New Zealand

After a somewhat uneventful flight we have arrived in New Zealand! Dexter is here too...we haven't seen him yet, but we called the quarantine company and he had a good flight, yay! We get to see him on tuesday (apparently tomorrow is a holiday).

The best part of the flight was the All Blacks themed safety video - I actually paid attention for once!!

Our flight landed at 5:30am, so not much was open. We expected customs and stuff to take way longer, but it was pretty quick and we didn't have any problems (what a nice surprise!). So we had a small snack at the airport. Scott was pleased to discover that salt and vinegar chips exist in New Zealand too! Richard - the $2 you gave us bought one small portion of this snack :) 

Our first "meal" in NZ! 

We picked up our stylin rental car, and experienced the excitement of driving on the left side of the road. Scott did a great job, we didn't even have any accidents!

Our new (rented) wheels.

 Driving on the left, eep!

Using about three sub-standard maps we made our way to a nearby mall, which of course was also not open yet. Luckily the grocery store was, so we picked up a few items and wandered around exclaiming at anything that was different than in Canada. Turns out Coke and Pepsi cost more in NZ (somewhat expected), but Pepsi is substantially cheaper than Coke. Not everything is more expensive than back home though, so that is nice! And tax is included in the prices....bonus! (Also tipping is not expected in resturants or bars, yay no hidden expenses!)

The mall opened at 10am, including the bank and phone stores. We activated our bank account at the National Bank of New Zealand, but unfortunately we have to pick up our debit cards in Auckland later this week. Oh well, our TD Visa is working for us fine pretty much everywhere. We got SIM cards from Telecom NZ and signed out for prepaid plans (was slightly the best option, but we are able to change later if we want). We have a decent number of minutes and texts and data...I decided that 500MB was enough data but Scott of course went for 2GB :) Not too expensive either! Hooray, we are connected to the world again. 

Due to the Rugby World Cup we hadn't been able to reserve a hotel in Auckland for a reasonable cost, so we booked one in Hamilton, which is about an hour south of Auckland. The drive was pretty easy, though we were starting to get tired by this point. 

We checked into Chloe's Motor Inn, which is lovely...this is what you get when you check in:

A room key, a coupon for the nearby pub and and a container of milk.

  

We were totally beat, so a nap was definitely in order. I feel a bit better now....excited to watch the Rugby Final tonight! Go All Blacks!

What a great first day! And it's sunny now!