Air New Zealand are generous hosts, and perhaps the biggest drawback with Steve’s remarkable idea of replacing this flight path with a slingshot is that we’d miss out on the in-flight sustenance of a plastic container of mineral water. Oh well, not all plans are born perfect.
Arriving in Nelson there was, for the first time in my entire travel history, someone waiting with my name on a piece of card. The card read “Green Schier” and already I was starting to like the South Island. The girl behind the card was from the car hire company, who apparently don’t have an office at Nelson Airport. She took us outside to where the luggage truck would drive up the luggage trailers and gave us some forms to fill out. Bryce excused himself to go off and do whatever it is that Bryce does, while Steve and I, feeling heartily jovial, shared some jokes with the hire car girl, causing her to giggle, at least at us. The luggage trolleys came and went before Bryce returned, but he did make it back seemingly alright, and we were directed to our car. It was a late 90s Corolla hatch, with an auto box and no CD player, but it was our baby for the next week or so.
As we’re loading our luggage in I could have sworn I heard someone mispronounce my name over the PA system, and headed back inside to investigate, leaving the mocking of “where’s your wallet, where’s your iPod” behind momentarily, only t o find that I had in fact left this very journal {the book that I first write these entries in} on the plane. I secretly thanked Bryce for taking his time, and we promptly bailed into the car ready to rock and roll. As I started to pull away, I stopped and told Steve to ask the girl if she wanted a ride back into town. She told us No, and pointed to a lady sitting on a bench next to our car who’d taken quite an amused interest in us, saying “My mum brought me in”. Our laughter roared louder than the measly engine as we took off from the airport in an attempt to find our hotel using the barely adequate map provided for us.

We ditched the map idea and drove in what we figured was the general direction of the beach, or the town, or whatever the signs pointed us to. After a couple of bemused minutes we found “Beach St” and the place our Connections mates were staying. And just around the corner was our street, and our hotel not far down it.
The date was Jan 26th – Australia Day, and we three were keen to celebrate it in style. A few questions and an amazingly back-of-Burke search later we came to realise that there were no public BBQs to be found anywhere in Nelson, not even anywhere near the beach! Oh well, the backup plan was to use the hotel owner’s own BBQ that was set up on the front patio area of the hotel’s 1st storey. Great, a plan! Steve and I bail down to the supermarket while Bryce snoozes.
Supermarkets in NZ are strange. Canned fruit is not with the canned veges, half a dozen eggs come in boxes with a great big 7 on them, and single potatoes are stored in a completely covered box not near the bagged potatoes. These problems aside though, Australian wine is cheaper there than here, and a 6-pack of Fosters (a must surely for ex-pat Aussies on our national day) was a whole $7.50.
In no time we were laughing. We even bought beetroot and pineapple to go with the regular compliment of BBQ’d meat and veges, and we had a ripper, finishing off the night by falling asleep to Australia beating Sri Lanka in a narrow 1 day cricket match.
The bedding arrangement was interesting though. When we first saw the room for three Bryce asked “can we possibly have three beds please?” – they’d given us a single and a double only… and some mirth wa put into determining who they thought was whose bitch.