The first thing to learn after arriving in New Z. is the lingo. It sounds like English, but the Kiwis,for some reason, have swapped a couple of vowels!
For example: an 'e' is pronounced as an 'i' (i.e 'pen' becomes 'pin')
the short 'a' (as in 'hat') is pronounced as an 'e' (i.e. 'het')
Applying these simple rules allows you to speak Kiwi very quickly: Try the following example and see how easy it is:
English: "Yes, last Saturday, seven year old Kevin built a pen for his sheep"
Kiwi: " Yis, lest Seturday, sivin year old Kivin, built a pin for his shiip" !!
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Progress to date:
After mastering the lingo, we have settled into the NZ way of life quite easily. It is nice and relaxed, everyone is very friendly and, as the pound is so strong at the moment, it is cheap for British travelers.
We have now completed 3.5 weeks in the North island arriving in Auckland, ending in Wellington. 1 week relaxing, 2 weeks cycling and 4 days in a hire car (well, we never said we would cycle it all!!). We covered 500 miles on the bike from Auckland, down to 'geo-thermal' Rotarua, and then round the East Coast, which was stunning but very hilly (and we thought The Rockies were a challenge!) The cycling was really tough in parts due to the distances between accomodation, and the hilly terrain: - An extract from Caroline's diary:
" getting up the hills caused pain on my whole body, I had to grit my teeth to get up them.This is the most pysically exhausting thing I've ever done. I feel completely drained"
However, the scenery and quiet roads compensated for the pain - it was georgeous. The vegetation was so green and lush, there was so much variety in the plants, the hills, the birds, the animals. Constantly, there was a bend in the road or a brow of a hill which brought something new and different into view - this made for our most enjoyable times on the bikes to date. Also, the roads were very quiet, so often there was just the noise of the streams or the animals or birds.
Also, our accomodation has been excellent and cheap. A motel room (or Tourist cabin on a campground), complete with cooking facilities, costs us around 17 pounds, with the chepaest we have paid to date being 11 pounds - although this was not en-suite.
Other points of note:
Extreme Activities: As we were in the country known for it's extreme activities, we decided to take the plunge - Caroline with a Bungy jump, Dave with some sheep shearing. The only difference being Caroline's bungy was a "virtual" jump in a small cage and Dave's sheep was plastic, with a barcode scanner for the shears!
Classic Film Moments Re-lived: Like a scene from Hitchcock's "The Birds", whilst on the bikes, we were regularly attacked by dive-bombing magpies. They would attack from above and behind crashing into the head or neck and then return to the trees and look very sinister!
Top NZ sport: Pig Hunting! This is serious stuff where, on a specified day, competitors go into local forests to hunt wild pigs.
Some competition rules we saw: (1) No guns allowed - only knives
(2) Winner is the heaviest pig captured and killed
(3) Testicles and offal to be removed!
All pig hunters no doubt subscribe to the monthly publication which is suprisingly available atmost newsagents - "Bacon Busters"!!..............continued..................NEXT