Sizzlin' Sausages!

Flying over Great Barrier Reef

Our adventure began at about midnight last Sunday night.  Andrea arrived in Auckland and was greeted at the airport by Sheree, which was where we had our first face to face meeting.  We had a started to get to know each other on the way back to Sheree's hometown, and in the morning we jumped right into planning mode! 

Jeremy driving us to the Airport

We went back to Auckland on Tuesday where we met our first Couch Surfing host, a wonderfully pleasant guy named Jeremy.  He was sweet enough to offer to wake up early and drive us to the airport in the morning, even after working late the night before.  Thank you Jeremy! 

The flight from Auckland to Dunedin was super easy, without even an ID check!  We just hopped on the plane, slept a few hours, and woke up in Dunedin.  We were offered a ride into the town center by a local artist couple.  Euwin is a painter, and we found his beautiful photos in a book in the local art gallery, and Sarah is a playwrite, who is was quite well known within the Dunedin community, and her plays are also perfomed in London! 

Paul and our New Bikes!

When we got to town we spent most of the day getting our bikes sorted out.  We want to thank Cycle World, and our new best friend Paul for giving us a great discount on our bikes and all the gear we could think of, and lots of lessons on cycling and repairing, and also for putting up with two clueless girls taking up all of his day with a million questions and comments and giggles!  And also thanks to our French friend at Cycle World...we appreciate all your help as well!

Us with Miriam and Jordan

So we got our bikes!  We were super excited and started out by riding them to our next Couch Surfing host...Jordan!  Jordan and his roommate Miriam were both so nice and our plan of sleeping early turned into chatting at the dinner table until we were in complete darkness, but we didn't seem to notice as we were talking the night away and realized it was once again another late night.  But definitely worth it!  We got caught up again in the morning with another breakfast chat, which made us 2 hours later than we expected, to get on the road and head off to Invercargill.  But it was no problem because hitchhiking was so easy for 2 girls in New Zealand...we got 4 rides, and a normally 2.5 hour ride, took us a total of 3 hours, and the most we waited was 20 minutes!  We had amazing luck because our last ride was from a guy named Chris, who was an Invercargill local who knew the city in and out, and was staying around the corner from where we were staying!  After taking us to our next hosts, he even took us around town and we had dinner together.  I must say...I love hitchhiking in NZ!  Way better than Thailand (for any of you who've heard my Thailand hitchhiking story :))

Our First Fundraiser ~ Sausage Sizzles!

Today we did a kickstarter fundraiser to get us excited about this trip.  So we did a sausage sizzle (or bbq, for my Canadians ;)) outside the Warehouse.  We stayed all day since there were constantly people wanting to buy them.  We got there around 11:30am and by 8, we had sold 14kgs of sausages, making a profit of $268!  We were pretty happy with that, and we had lots of encouragement from the locals.  Thanks to everyone who got a sausage, made a donation, or even stopped to talk to us!  We really appreciate it!  Also, a special thanks to THE WAREHOUSE for giving us the BBQ and gas, and for the perfect location!  Obviously this wouldn't have been possible without you!  And thank you so much to Pak 'n Save, for the voucher which let us buy the first batch of sausages and bread.  Everyone loved the sausages! 

Well...a lot has happened in the last few days!  We are pretty exhausted, and we haven't even started!  But I know that if you're determined, you can get through anything.  Tomorrow is the big starting day, so we're hoping it'll be as good as it's been leading up to it.  We've had nothing but good luck so far, and I know with this long of a trip, bad luck is bound to come our way on some days.  We're just hoping it's not on our first day!  I hope lots of you keep on encouraging us, and following us on here.  You've all been great so far...don't leave us now!  I'll be posting again tomorrow to let you know how Day 1 turns out...