I can't believe this is our 10th trip to New Zealand but then I can as the South Island is awesome. I here with my Wife and Son and hope to get some landscape photography done as well.
After a rather early morning start, 4.30am, we got the house ready to leave for 2 weeks and off to the parking garage near the Brisbane airport we went. I have used Andrews Parking for some years now and found their service to be awesome and are a very polished operation and you can even get your car serviced while you are away.
We arrived at the airport 2 hours prior to our departure time which gave us time to get a coffee and a second breakfast . No duty free to be done as every dollar is accounted for and I drink alcohol or smoke so I'm pretty boring :)
Our Flight left on time and it was a full plane with mostly holiday makers on board with the occasional Kiwi.. The in flight meal was nice and the service was as expect from the Virgin Atlantic team. Most of the flight was cloudy but cleared as we got closer to the coast line of NZ.
Three hours later we landed and after a short while we were through immigration and customs. We then got our Spark phone SIM topped up with data and international calls credit and made our way to Apollo Motor homes. We arrived at the office to fill in the necessary paperwork and pay for the insurances to bring our excess down to $0 and then left for the caravan park as is was 5.30 and the family was getting hungry.
There is a caravan park just around the corner from the rental place called the NorthSouth Holiday Park and it is perfect as the first night you have to set up beds and get your clothes organised. A quick meal at a nearby Burger King as we have no supplies yet was in order and we never eat this type of food so we are feeling it. Yuck.
All the jobs have been done for the night and we are planning on going to Ashburton tomorrow to do a shop and have lunch at Timaru before ending up at Oamaru for some sunset shooting.
Catch you in a few days.