The first ten days in Dunedin have been busy finding a place to live, a car, a job for Philip, mobile phones (as cell phones are called here), and Internet. The usual trappings of a modern life. We also own a SodaStream machine, but more about that later.
We found success on the car first. We had a pretty specific budget and wanted neither a tin can lawnmower nor a jalopy, so we had some shopping to do. Esther (who, it turns out, is a bit of a petrolhead ;-) and knows lots about cars) and Kevin helped us over two days of car and house hunting. There's lots to learn about cars: age, mileage, and New Zealand New. That last one is significant because many cars are imported second-hand from Japan and so they don't come with any service or maintenance records, or a guarantee that the mileage hasn't been tampered with. We wanted something post-2000 and with fewer than 100,000 km on it (don't panic! that's only 60,000 mi). With, preferably, space for a dog, kids, and camping equipment. Just in case (no news there).
We looked at many cars, asked lots of questions, and took our first test drive. It drove like a boat floating on a big lake of chewing gum. We gave it miss.
Onwards and upwards: one dealer wrangled us a sweet deal based on Philip's parents 30-year history of buying and servicing cars there. That one had awful seats, which we were figuring out how to deal with, when Philip rounded a corner and asked, "hey guys, is that my hub cap? I think that was my hub cap." We stopped as soon as we could and verified that it was, indeed, our hub cap, so we picked it up on the way back. Kevin had to wave it at us from the other side of the very busy road because there were two hub caps lying beside each other. Busy day for test drivers, I guess. Continuing back to the dealer involved backing away from the curb, and the car started beeping, like a cement truck backing out of a quarry. Then "WAH CHING GUA HEI SHAJI" an angry-sounding Japanese woman's voice yelled at us. WTF?! No wonder people here don't want Japanese imports. To round out the day we also tried a VW that drove like a tank.
After later test-driving the world's largest old-school Nissan tuna-boat grampa wagon, and the world's smallest, tinny, Flintstone foot pedaling Kia hatchback, we ended up with a ... Ford! A Mondeo wagon, manual transmission, white. We were stoked and, honestly, a bit surprised to be buying an American car, since we usually seem to lean toward non-American brands. I know Uncle Don will be proud, and we love the car.
What a relief! Car: check, done, moving on. Well, almost. The dealer, a nice guy named Tony, didn't want us to pay the whole sum by credit card because he has to pay the 3% Visa transaction fee, so we only used that for the down-payment. In the meantime, we had the car checked out independently and it needed a couple of things done, such as making sure an apparent oil leak was innocuous. For the final payment, we logged onto Internet banking on the dealer's computer to do an account transfer. (Yup.) Only: the amount exceeded the daily limit! So the dealer said, no problem, just pay the rest tomorrow. And off we drove with our new wheels.
Next on the list was finding a home. We have lots of help with this one, Esther and Kevin, Andrew and Kathryn, and Philip's parents. Nonetheless, it turned out we couldn't find our dream home in the first weekend. As a guide, Esther looked at 88 houses and Kathryn at 70-some before signing on the dotted line. While the house-hunting continues, we thought, no worries, we'll just get a short-term rental. Despite fantastic company and food at Philip's parents's house, having lived out of a suitcase for the last two months meant we really wanted somewhere to unpack all of our stuff. As it turns out, finding a short-term, furnished apartment without dorm-style living is a big ask. There was, in fact, only one option. And it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. Luckily, we like the place, it has a view to the ocean a stone's throw away on one side, a view to a lagoon on the other, and hills and sky in between.
The rental agent, Jeanette, needed us to pay a pretty hefty damage deposit, called a bond here. And wouldn't you know it, that was the same day we were supposed to finish paying the car, and together- boom! - over the daily limit for account transfers again. So, with a little bit of creative accounting, and bringing the car dealer a medium-sized wad of cash to make up the shortfall, everyone was happy.
Exactly two months after we stepped out of our apartment in Fort Collins, we hung up our safari hats, kicked off our travel shoes, and slid the suitcases under a real bed. It has been an unbeatably awesome experience. This is not the end of the adventure, but the beginning of another.
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