this morning we checked out of the hostel and went to pick up the rental car i had reserved. i had been really nervous about driving on the other side of the world, especially since i haven't driven for over 6 months. but once you sit behind the wheel, instinct takes over. except, instinct doesn't realize that things are a little different on the other side of the world. i must've turned on the windshield wipers 6 or 7 times when i meant to signal a turn.

we drove out to pick up nopalita at the airport super early and there was no traffic getting there, so we just drove around the streets of papatoetoe and ended up at the manukau mall. i went to dick smith downtown earlier this morning to get itrip for my ipod so that we could listen to tunes. the rental car has a pretty crap stereo and the radio sounded like shit. i let my innate electronics store locator do its magic and while we we wandering papatoetoe, it lead me to the dick smith across from the maukau mall. i exchanged itrip for a cassette adaptor--wasn't sure if the rental car would have a cassette player when i bought itrip.

the cassette adaptor sucked. the player wasn't recognizing it and it kept changing sides every two seconds. after eating lunch at the mall and picking up nopalita at the airport, we returned to dick smith and i exchanged the cassette adaptor for a new one. this new one was a little funny at first, but once it warmed up it was all good. let the road trip begin!

watch out kiwis, i'm behind the wheel now!

we drove south through hamilton, a town which i would call a suburb of auckland, but it's too far away for that label. it's just a town that's pretty big where people live and work with nothing special going on. at least i don't know of anything special or any reason to go there. it's just somewhere i haven't been and big enough that i wanted to at least go through there. there was a rugby game going on tonight, which is perhaps why the supermarket wasn't crowded. at one red light, this asshole teenager ran up to the car, squired some liquid and started washing the windshield. we were practically screaming that we don't want him to do that, "you fucked it up!", etc. but i didn't have the window down. it was like we were in mexico. i guess the mexican pull of the car was just too intense with two mexican-americans inside. we reluctantly gave him about 60 cents. i think he muttered something negative, pissed off at how little he made. but we never wanted him to wash the windshield! i never ok-ed it.

we arrived in the small town of waitomo, checked in to the kiwi paka yha, oriented nopalita as to how hostels work, and crashed.