To Seattle and beyond

The longest part of the gloomy rain sodden four hour bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle was getting through customs. Everyone has to get off the bus with all their belongings and the driver has to get everyone's bags for checking by US officials. Thing is it's very slow. Every single day 3 buses from different companies arrive 4 times during that day at roughly the same time. You'd have thought there would be some kind of preparation for this influx of people but no. One guy on the customs desk and three guys behind standing around talking crap. I'm still not sure why we had to pay $6 to re-enter the US either but we did.
We arrive in Seattle, spotting the famous Space Needle from a distance like we were looking for Blackpool Tower. It was throwing it down, but luckily our bus dropped us only a couple of blocks from our intended hotel. We still got soaked. Seattle definitely lives up to it's reputation for being wet!
We needed to get down the coast fast so hiring a car turned out to be one of best ways to do it, that way we could see a bit on the way too. We didn't see anything of Seattle other than the car hire place because we knew we'd be back to drop the car off anyway. Unfortunately, the car hire contract we signed didn't allow us to go any further than Oregon state, in other words into California. On the second day we were driving through the snow covered rolling landscape of the California mountains. Excellent.
From Seattle it didn't take long to get into the hills and the snow. Even on the main interstate the snow is piled high at the roadside whilst we drive into thick flakes. Endless green hills covered in snow and a eerie mist. It looked like the opening credits of a film. Now this is America.


Further along the highway we pass endless signs telling me to buy any item you can imagine. The road signs here not only tell you what petrol stations are coming up ahead but also what motels and fast food joints are in town. I'm constantly feel the need to eat after being bombarded with KFC, Subway and Taco Bell signs.
Stopping in an no nothing town that mainly consists of one road of generic fast food places and petrol stations is a cheaper alternative to a tourist attraction town. When night comes round I'm quite glad to come across yet another strip of this glowing signs of the night.
Our aim is to get to San Francisco for the day before New Years Eve and stop for a couple of nights. We manage it in two days, not bad from Seattle. The stop outside San Francisco was a motel by the side of the highway, standard. A MacDonalds was next door and a guy is getting beaten by a group of blokes in the car park. Various shouting and noise continues for a while. There's nothing like a good beating to make you feel at home.
Driving in America is easy enough. It seemed a bit confusing in Seattle with the constant Stop signs and bad signs but once on the highway you see another side to American life. Huge trucks and absolutely massive bus size campervans are everywhere.
California looks good though even though I didn't quite expect there to be this much snow, I thought it was sunny and hot all year round. Damn you Hollywood!

New Country, New Zealand

A new start for the first time in a while and we're totally unprepared and researched for New Zealand. All we know is that it's cold and wet, like England.
It's also further from Australia than I thought, about a 4 hours flight. You could get to Italy from Manchester in that time!
We land and it rains. Then it rains some more. This continues heavily for the next 4 days, I suppose it was due considering we've had about 3 days of rain on the whole trip!
From the plane it looks like England, overcast and very green, which is quite a good sight after all this time.
Once we get into Auckland, our home for the next 4 days, we notice how unbelievable steep this place is! Why is no-one telling me how incredibly difficult to walk around these places are!!? Turns out not all the streets are steep but the one near our hostel is the steepest street I've ever seen, gasps from most people in the bus on the way down meant it wasn't just me with vertigo. As we learn Auckland is built on 48, 49 or 52 volcanoes(depending on which book you read), so at least that explains the insanity of the roads but why they just don't build curves in the road to stop everybody skidding in Winter I've no idea.
There are moments of dryness and we do get a lot of walking under our belts. We walk up to a dormant volcano on the edge of town to look back on the city. It's a decent looking place, quite moody with the grey clouds rolling by and the amount of water that surrounds here. It's windy almost constantly too. We again learn that Auckland is nicknamed the 'city of sails' due to it's winds and competitiveness in all sports that utilise it - Windsurfing, Sailing, Kite-boarding and so on. Great for them, crap for us walking around it!
Either way I quite like it. There's not a great deal to see in Auckland other than the large communications tower they have that dominates the skyline but there's just something about it that appeals. We hear that the land and islands are beautiful further north but as we have no transport of our own and not too much time we'll give that a miss.
After strolling around the city and park over the next few days we feel like we know the place too well. 4 days is definitley too long. Still the people seem friendlier than Australia and the mix between the Moaris and the white folk is totally different. Also, for some reason Auckland is absolutely swamped with Chinese. Which is great for cheap internet and food!
We spend the last day or so on the internet and reading up on a bit of the history of the place, of which I'll go into as and when.
One thing is for sure though, the native people of New Zealand did not lie down and roll over like the Aboroginies did. Oh no. The Maoris are a totally different brand of people. Landing in New Zealand tells you something different straight away, the sign reads 'Welcome to New Zealand' and underneath is the Maori version in equal size letters. As we find out, Aotearoa was the old name before the Pakeha(white man) came along. This name is everywhere, as are the many names of townships and settlements that have remained in the original Maori name. This was no British conquest, more an agreement, and I think the settlers act differently than the Australians do because of it. Aussies are often brash, loud and cocky. Not so in New Zealand. It's no wonder when you see the size of the Maori blokes!
We get a flight to the South Island, it was only a couple of years ago that I found out that New Zealand was in fact 2 islands, the north and the south. The North is more populated, Auckland being the most populous city. But even Auckland isn't exactly crammed. I wonder what the south is like then.
Is Auckland worth a visit? Not particluarly, but we had a great curry and a slight taste of Britain so it made it better than it was. A couple of days is plenty.
Off to Queenstown(and getting our own tranpsort in the form of a converted people carrier) we head, in a roundabout way.