Luggage Reduced and Car Hired

Tuesday, December 29, 2009     Auckland, New Zealand

The next adventure is starting to take shape.  We have been exchanging email with Heather, a master gardener who is a friend of our friend Helen back in the US.  Heather and her husband have invited us to spend a couple of days with them at their house right on the coast near Tauranga.  So we have arranged to rent a car (in NZ it's called "hire a car") beginning Thursday, Dec. 31.  We will keep the car at least until the middle of February, taking it on down to the South Island with us in a couple of weeks.  When we were planning our NZ stay we thought we could get around by bus and train and avoid renting a car.  But when we really looked into the prices, it's not significantly more expensive to hire a car.  One can buy a bus pass that is good on most of the intercity bus lines.  It is priced by the travel hour, and can be refilled, or "topped up" as they say, and it costs NZ$10-12 per hour per person.  This makes it a reasonable deal for a solo backpacker, but since there are two of us, that's NZ$20-24 per hour.  Travel times between several of the major cities and attractions are on the order of 3-5 hours, so that's on the order of NZ$80-100 per connection for the two of us.  Our car rental is NZ$42 per day, including taxes and insurance.  Of course, we pay that every day, even when we are staying put someplace, but on the other hand it will allow us to get to lots of scenic places that simply would not be accessible if we had to rely on the bus lines.  And there is the issue of carting all that luggage we brought with us.  So, for the next six weeks we will be real gypsies, traveling from place to place, staying in a different town every night.

Speaking of luggage, despite our best intentions, we counted up a total of 8 bags to  manage.  Each of us has a check-through suitcase.  Tyler has a carry-on roll-aboard and a CPAP breathing machine (for sleep apnea).  Paula has a roll-aboard and a CPAP and a small backpack and a purse.  We got away with it on the flight over by stuffing Paula's purse in her backpack and calling that her purse.  The CPAPs are exempt from airline carry-on limits because they are medical devices.  Anyway, before we leave this place on Thursday, we are going to pack up as much as we can possibly do without (including some stuff we have acquired here) and ship it back home.  At the very least we need to reduce the weight of the stuff we're carrying around.  At best we may be able to send back one of the roll-aboards.