A LEARNING DAY!!!!

Day Two of our New Zealand adventures was a bit of a learning experience. We woke up this moring with good intentions of getting our rental car and having some fun tooling about the city. Our intentions were not what we expected as we spent most of the morning waiting for a bus to take us to our EZY rental car...the bus came and went- we missed it and had to wait a long time before we finally waved it down. Back at the airport we found our car! Take a look at the picture above - 'what is wrong with this car???????' Yes, Clint is sitting on the wrong side...so is the steering wheel. Not only do we have to learn how to drive with the wheel on the wrong side, but we also have to learn how to shift with the opposite hand, drive on the other side of the road and use the blinker that is on the wrong side of the wheel...Clint said that the blinker is the hardest part. Every time he wanted to turn he turned on the window wipers instead of the blinker. It is nutty...and hard! It was, and will be for the next couple of weeks, a learning expereince. Clint stalled the car about 20 times today; got flicked off bye a local surfer who was in a hurry, got beeped at two times, and had an old man wave his hands at us to 'get going'!!!! Funny crap! Since our 'car adventures' took us all morning we missed a ferry to a near bye volanco/island we wanted to hike. Thus, we ended up at a fancy resturant for lunch instead and spent way to much money on very skimpy portions of sea food! As our expectations of the day contined to dwindle.....WE MET GEORGE. Our waiter at the fancy pants resturant. We asked him what cool things there were to do here in Auckland on a Sunday afternoon. He mentioned 'the west coast' where he life gaurds. So he gave us directions, a map and some detailed instuctions on what to do. GEORGE was our life saver in chaning our pretty crappy morning into a awesome afternoon. We drove the 35 minutes out to the west coast where we found some pretty intense waves at a beautiful black sand beach. Cllint got drenced by a massive wave, we sow tons of jelly fish, I climbed a tree, and we took in some great secerny. This place has to be crazy busy during the summer months- it was so beautiful. It was again a bit to cold to swim. On our way home we sow tons and tons of sheep. Mom, you will love some of the pictures I took. We found out from a friendly Brit earlier on that there are 40 million sheep on this island- we sow some of them!!! We toped off our 'learning day' with some converstation at a local bar; again the people here are so friendly and so helpful. Clint is laying on floor bye the fire and I am drinking some tea....a great way to end our learning.
Yes Mom, that really is Clint in the picture. Weather is still cold and rainy, but we are dealing with it and still enjoying our time here. Best wrap things up - i am getting charged for internet!!! cheerio. no worries. see ya later mates.