Headng North

November 4

It's interesting being 20 hours (soon to be 21 hours) ahead of home.  It means we're getting college football scores Sunday afternoon and evening.  And Tuesday's election will be Wednesday here.  It's interesting how much of a news story the election is here....it's reasonable to assume that NZ is more impacted by the US president than vice versa, but it's still surprising how often we hear or see something about the election over here.

We're now on the North Island.  It's welcomed us with cool, wet weather -- highs in the low teens.  The ferry crossing was rather foggy.  It was raining hard as we picked up our new rental car yesterday....yes, a new car because rental vehicles don't change islands here.  It was windy yesterday when we went to Te Papa, the national museum, in Wellington and when we found our first North Island cache. It was cool but mostly dry last night when we walked to dinner.  Today has felt a lot like home....we've had a variety of alternating sun, clouds and rain.  We're now in Napier which is on the east coast. Alas, the one pocket query that failed us was for the drive here from Wellington, so we didn't do our usual "cache along the way" from Wellington.

The main touristy thing we did today was visit the New Zealand National Aquarium. Granted we've been spoiled by some very impressive aquaria -- Sydney, Atlanta, Osaka -- but this one was quite disappointing...very small, not much variety, no marine mammals. We did get to see penguins being fed which was fun. That said, it's impressive to be this deep into a trip before the first significant disappointment. And there was a fun cache outside of the aquarium in a statue that was in the middle of a fountain -- so Jeff took off his shoes and socks, converted his pants to shorts, and waded in to make the find (GC2YXP3, currently our easternmost find).

I drove back to our motel after dinner.  I only hit the windshield wiper once when I meant the turn signal.  And I successfully navigated a few roundabouts.  Looking up and to the left at the inside mirror was odd.  Of course, I've been here for nearly 2 weeks, so being on the left side of the road feels pretty natural at this point.