Country No. Six

...Unfortunately the flight to new Zealand stared off a little more stressful than simply having to decide what coffee we wanted in the departure lounge. Arriving at check-in we answered that no, we did not have an onward flight from NZ but instead had proof of our ability to fund ourselves. WRONG! Instead of reading "and" we had seen "or" on the immigration website and after a check with NZ customs the airline said we could not board the flight without a ticket. They did give us one concession though, we had to buy ticket online in the remaining 20 minutes check-in was open! A quick trawl of the net brought up a cheep single to Sidney which we snapped up, planning on canceling once we landed. Thankfully we were let through and just about made it to our seats clutching sticky cakes we had used our final Baht to acquire. the 3 hour stop over in Singapore was much quieter and we managed to uphold our airport fast food tradition by splurging on a Burger King. At around 10am on the last day of the year we landed in Christchurch and having sped through the infamous Kiwi customs were picked up by Kirsten and taken to the plush suburb of Cashmere up on the Port Hills. This was to be our base for the next week with a significant list of jobs that needed doing so that we could stay and work for the next year. First however, and far more importantly, we hit the town for New Years Eve! with the next 4 days being bank holidays there was plenty of recover time and Kirsten was an amazing host, ferrying us around town to see the sights and drink coffee with her friends. Tuesday came and the first thing was to get some wheels, settling on a camper, the iconic way to travel this neck of the woods. It was kitted out amazingly well and for the next month our catchphrase would become "it came with the van". It also evoked serious van envy from Tim and Phil who drove down to see us later in the week. By that time we had opened accounts, notarised documents (for free and done at 8pm on a Friday night - not in the UK), been bled and x-rayed, seen the tax man; in other words ticked all the boxes. We had felt at home from arrival and the week just highlighted further how helpful and friendly people were. A day trip in the van to Akaroa had been successful, though one tyre valve blew which made sure we knew how to free the spare using the Japanese handbook, and with that we hit the road in a 2 van convoy heading south.