The Smartest Sheep of All

Erin thought she’d navigate the sheep-proof gate herself.  I started videotaping her noble effort, but she thought I was taking a photo, hence the long, awkward pose and embarrassed laugh afterwards.

A Smart Sheep

Seth: When Erin and I stopped to see some Maori rock art by the side of the road, we had to go through this weird gate. Since there were sheep nearby, we assumed it was a sheep-proof gate. But it couldn’t keep out this sheep!

Unrefined Jedi Powers

Seth: When we were at Mt. Cook (tallest mountain in New Zealand) we took a hike to Hooker Lake. There were these little iceberglets that floated in the glacial melt and I wanted to take one back to the van to make it my pet.

Unfortunately, there was a gushing, cold-looking river between me and the icebergs, so fording the river seemed somewhat unappealing. I thought I’d give the ‘ole Jedi powers a whirl as an alternative.

Needless to say, I was a little rusty, and thus remain petless.

Hitchin’

Couldn’t pass this sign without the obligatory photo. Fun fact of the day: both prostitution and hitchhiking are legal in New Zealand.

4:08

Erin: After one of our hikes near Mount Cook, Seth asked what time it was so we decided to play our usual guessing game. We both independently guessed that it was 4:08 and then checked my iPod to discover that it was, indeed, 4:08. Spooky!

Kiwi Traffic Jam

Seth: The closest thing we’ve seen to a traffic jam here…definitely more amusing than what I’m used to in California…

Don’t Tell Erin!

A couple of days ago, I went to go talk to someone and Erin went to go brush her teeth. We were both gone for no more than five minutes, but in the ensuing time, a bunch of asshole sparows had invaded our van, and were just chilling in the back of the van like they owned it. We speculated that the male sparrows were saying something like “Hey ladies. Yeah, we own a van. It’s pretty sweet. Wanna come here for a ride?”By the time I scared them away from my van, one of the little jerks had crapped on my pillow. Luckily Erin wasn’t around, so I took matters into my own hands… She won’t know what I did til she watches this video.

Teehee…

A puzzling event…

Erin: Is it bad when the key falls out of the ignition while the car is speeding along the highway? The van kept moving as if nothing happened, so we just put it back in and continued driving. Any thoughts? When we asked a locksmith about it, all he said was “oh man, you’re screwed!”

We expect that this is just the first of many surprises the van has in store for us. A couple days ago, we started to hear a squeaking noise whenever we turned the wheel to the right. We took the van to a mechanic today and found out that the front brake pads had to be replaced. Better finding out this way than at the bottom of a steep hill I suppose!

Our van makes pretty much any other vehicle on the road look like a Ferrari, but luckily we’re not in a hurry to get anywhere these days. We just turn up the music and enjoy the chance to watch the countryside pass by (and try to avoid the annoyed stares of other drivers as they speed by us).

Campervan tour: 3 of 3

Seth makes dinner in bed. As you can see, we store all the rest of our stuff under the platform that supports the mattress. Of course, our campervan only serves the classiest boxed wine.

Campervan tour: 2 of 3

View from the bed through our awesome skylights, which open slightly to allow fresh air to move through the van. I think this must be the “Super Extra” part of our van’s name. We have curtains on the side windows that we close at night to give us privacy and keep some of the light out in the early morning.

With the campervan, we’re able to just pull into a campsite for the night and already be set up. It’s comfy, convenient, and a great way to see some beautiful places that would be a hassle to get to if we had to rely on public transportation. We pay between $12 and $28 per night for a site and generally have access to kitchen facilities, restrooms, and sometimes showers.

Campervan tour: 1 of 3

A view of the interior and the bed. We bought a nice warm wool duvet and new sheets since the ones that came with the van were pretty scrappy.

Home sweet home

Erin: We bought our campervan from Antony at Chester Street Backpackers in Christchurch for NZ $2,550 (approximately US $1,970). It’s a 1988 Toyota Town Ace ‘Super Extra’ with about 275,000 km (about 170,000 miles) on it and more than a few dents in the sides and front, which we think give the van character.

It’s fairly common practice for travelers to buy old vehicles here and use them to tour the country, then turn around and sell them to a fellow traveler to do the same. We’ll be looking to sell our van right around the start of summer here, which is apparently the best time to sell a van because of the high demand. Our hope is that we can at least make back the money we paid for it. We had to pay cash for the van, so we hung around Christchurch for several days withdrawing the daily maximum from the ATM until we could get enough cash.

It didn’t come with any cooking equipment, so we were told we should go to a place called the Super Shed to find what we needed. It was described as the last stop before the dump, a place for people to bring household items that they would otherwise throw away. Many items are also salvaged from the trash and cleaned/polished/fixed up. Based on these descriptions, I was pretty hesitant to go there to purchase the items we’d be using to prepare our food. I pictured a huge warehouse with piles of trash that we’d have to pick through. Seth, on the other hand, was thrilled by the prospect of such a place and convinced me that we should take a look.

He was totally right. Although everything needed a thorough scrubbing, we got some incredible bargains and walked out with all of our cutlery and an organizer, two kitchen knives, bowls, plates, cups, mugs, a can opener, a bottle opener, a straw basket, two camping chairs and a sun umbrella for a grand total of $7.50. My personal favorite section was the “10 items for $1″ aisle. None of the outdoor furniture had a price on it, so you had to just find an employee, show them what you had picked up, and they would eyeball a price. We still had to purchase some cookware that we weren’t able to find at the Super Shed, but we left that place with huge smiles on our faces.

A Profitable Way to Volunteer

Seth: So we were supposed to leave San Francisco for Auckland via Sydney on October 10.

Unfortunately, we had triaged out lots of things on our to-do lists that we just didn’t manage to get done by the time we had to go to the airport. The preceding weeks had been exceedingly busy, with only a few off days between Burning Man, a two week bike trip from Seattle, WA to Eugene, OR and a wedding in Wisconsin. We both had battled that nagging feeling in the pits of our stomachs that we had forgotten something important or neglected something huge.

Luckily, we arrived at the airport and were told that the flight was overbooked. I’ve always been quick to volunteer for a bribe of airline vouchers and upgrades, and it didn’t take Erin much convincing when they offered us $400 each in travel vouchers and an upgrade to business class the following night. Apparently it was the end of spring break in Australia, so everyone was trying to get home. So we giddily went back to my Aunt Randy’s house, knocked out a whole bunch of our chores the next day, and went back to the airport.

The flight was overbooked again, and we were offered $200 more in vouchers each, and business class the next night. So we caught a cab back, did more errands the next day, hit some of our favorite spots, and went back to the airport.

Ditto. This time, they offered us another $400 in vouchers each, and an upgrade to first class. Randy had left town, and Erin thought it was nigh time to start accepting their offer of hotel vouchers. So off to the Doubletree (thanks, United!) to bask in our profitable volunteerism.

By this time, Erin was sorta tiring of this game. We’d gotten first class seats, $1000 each in vouchers on United, a nice hotel room, and had completed our painfully large to-do lists. But I was enjoying the game, and as we only bought a one-way ticket to NZ, was relishing the fact that we could probably fly home for free at the end of our trip. Plus, I wanted to watch the Cowboys-Patriots game on Sunday (we lost, it sucked). So we agreed that our last night of volunteering, if it was still offered, would be Saturday, as long as they kept us in first class. How quickly we had become snobs.

So the next night we went to the airport, had dinner (thanks, United!) at our usual spots (the sushi people had taken a liking to me), and we’re pretty blase about the whole thing.

Side note: when my bag went through the X-ray machine for the third time in three nights, the TSA guy pulled out a pocket knife that I’d mistakenly tucked into my stove pouch on our last backpacking trip. Wonder why the knife wasn’t detected the first two nights I went through security…

Anyway, we thought we’d check out the first class lounge just to see what kind of ridiculousness we could find. But the host took our boarding passes, and said that first class was overbooked with paying passengers, so we had to go back down to business class. We were actually pissed off for a little bit, until we reminded ourselves that we were still going business class and had made $1000 each in United vouchers.

This night, people were really freaking out. One lady was sobbing because she wasn’t going to get on, another guy offered me $200 for my confirmed seat, and there were hordes of people claiming that they’d be hated/fired if they didn’t make this flight.

Up to this point, we’d been pretty confident that we were heartily screwing United. But we actually, and bear with me here, began to see ourselves as good samaritans. After all, two people made the flight that night because we volunteered to stay for a few hundred bucks, and United got to avoid having two people permanently hate them. But this time, when they were processing our vouchers (only $200 each), they didn’t even give us confirmed seats for the next night because they knew we’d keep taking vouchers and it was still overbooked. Unfortunately, by this point we were ready to go.

So the next day we went through the same drill. It had begun to feel like work. We caught the train. We made small talk with our friends (United ticket agents, Sushi purveyors, TSA agents, etc) hung around, read stuff, paid attention at the right times, filled out paperwork, got paid $200 each again) and took the train home.

By this point, Erin was past being ready to leave. So on 10/15, our sixth night at the lovely San Francisco International Airport, after getting bumped off five nights in a row and amassing $1400 each in United travel vouchers, three nights stay in expensive hotels (DoubleTree, some crappy airport hotel and the Westin) and hundreds of dollars in food vouchers, we actually boarded the flight. We relished our moist towels, warm nuts, free booze and bulging money belts.

It was the perfect start to a trip. Heaps of money, free stuff, helping people and amply flexibility. Let’s hope it keeps up like this…