Last Dispatch from Aotearoa

Sunday, 28th January
Palmerston North, North Island
Morning

Today is my last day in New Zealand. Yesterday was spent shopping in Christchurch (we are proud supporters of the New Zealand economy) and then hopping a quick flight up to Wellington. Christchurch was great, I wish we had had more time there. We were there during the World Buskers Festival, so there were street performers of all kinds in Cathedral Square, and we watched a big clown/magic trick/high unicycle show that was great.

We rented another car in Wellington and ended up in Palmy, where we are staying with Sara, who is a distant but fun relation: Provo's Mom's ex-Boyfriend's Niece. Shes going to vet school down here and was nice enough to put us up and feed us!
Funny note- the new rental car has a "Rest Reminder Warning Light" that comes on after 2 hours of driving: it's in the shape of a coffee cup.

It's great to be back on the North Island-- I think I like it better than the shouth. The grandeur of the south island is great, but when all's said and done, the pastoral, green beauty of the North Island is what really affects me, and is more foreign to me than mountains and Alpine country. So today we continue the sojourn north, we'll traverse the whole of the island and stay outside of Auckland so that we'll be close at hand to catch our flights back to the states tomorrow.

It's been an awesome trip, and by now I'm looking forward to going home but not to sitting on planes for 17 hours in order to get there. By the time I get back to Portland (via Sydney!) I will have been in transit for over 24 hours.

So here's a lovely farewell to Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud, it's been marvelous!

Glad you could come along for the ride, thanks for tuning in.