It’s time to retire our Auckland city map and give away our ATHOP public transit cards.  We’re leaving New Zealand and moving to our next destination.

The month flew by, but we did our best to see as much as we could. We were in Auckland for a majority of our trip and our urban location certainly had a lot to do with the version of New Zealand we experienced.  New Zealand is English speaking, listens mostly to the same music, eats similar diets, and feels like an exotic location but with a vaguely familiar lifestyle. However, there are a few fun little differences we discovered along the way.

• The people are the most helpful, generous, and friendly people I’ve ever met. Even people who have no business being cheerful, like the person checking your public transit card to make sure you paid for your trip, were polite and smiling.  Living in paradise obviously has a positive effect on disposition.
• January is their summer, and their days are LONG.  The sun didn’t set until about 8:30pm.  It was great for doing activities after work and also making sure a late-afternoon load of laundry had time to dry on the line.
• The summer sun is very strong and their ozone layer is thinner than in the States.  We learned a classic tourist lesson about sunburn happening quickly and fiercely. Don’t let the clouds fool you, sunscreen at all times!
• They drive on the left side of the road, and that also means they walk on the left side of the sidewalk and enter doorways on the left. It took us awhile to get used to breaking our second-nature habit of always veering right.
• Overall they seem to be right on par with the USA regarding labeling allergens, but they are way ahead in the dairy-free and gluten-free options. I could have eaten yogurt every day and still not had time to try all the different dairy-free options that were available.
• One of the most common flavors of potato chips are Chicken Flavored chips.  We were a little afraid to try them at first because what the heck. No, they don’t taste like chicken meat, but yes they are delicious. I can’t explain the flavor but I can see why they’re so popular.

Our favorite slang:

• “Sweet as” – not “sweet a**” that we thought we were hearing, but sweet AS.  It can be subbed in for “that’s cool”, or “that looks great” or “nice butt”…just kidding on the last one. 🙂
• “I’m keen for a feed” – means I’m hungry, but is much more fun to say.

It’s very hard to imagine that this will be our only visit to New Zealand. We didn’t even set foot on the South Island, so we missed out on seeing some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Maybe not this year or the next, but we’ll return at some time in the future and I’m already looking forward to it.