Our New Home

From Rotorua we drove directly to Palmerston North which is about 340 km. We stayed on the main highways but even those are twisty so the drive took awhile. As we headed south the vegetation changed and some of the surrounding areas looked very similar to Kamloops. Most of the drive was through agricultural areas and although we still saw many dairy cows we started to see alot more beef and sheep. I need to get a plant book and do some hiking around as it is hard to identify grasses when traveling 85 km/hour!

When we got to Palmerston North we went directly to our new place and were excited to find that it is more than we had hoped for. It is a great 2 bedroom fully furnished flat. The back sliding doors open to green space and then a park which has a large playground area that Bree has already checked out. It is very bright inside and the inside furnishings are modern. The pictures I had must have been of the other rental or this one before it was refurnished. Bree is a little sad that we don’t have all the pink furniture that was in the photos I had but I am ok with it! Russ is happy with the flat screen tv (with free access to channels) and the ipod deck. We also have our own little driveway and a shed that we can store all our bikes in.

The surrounding area is quite nice. We went for a walk last night and within 1 km there are stores (large and small ones), restaurants and small businesses. We had a lovely dinner at the Rose and Crown pub which is just a 10 min walk away. Today we need to get internet connected, visit Bree’s new school and stop by the University. We want to get everything settled here so that we can go and do some travelling before Bree starts school in February.

Travelling we have noticed how difficult it is to get wireless internet access. At the campsites you can pay for packages but they are limited by data transfer size and minutes. Every time I log-on and download my email I use up all the data transfer allocated! Finding free wi-fi like we have at coffee shops at home is very difficult. We have just bought a USB stick from vodaphone that will allow use internet access anywhere on a pay as you go basis. We have just found out that here you pay for internet by the GB of data and there is no such thing as unlimited use! It appears that using the internet will be much more expensive than at home but now that we are addicted to “being connected” it is hard to go without.