Goodbye New Zealand

While writing these words I am onboard of an Airbus 340 from LAN airline. Fling with speed of 940 Km per hour and at 10,600 meters of altitude above Pacific Ocean level. Up to here nothing very different to any other flight. The surprising thing on this trip is that I departed on the 17th of April at 18:00 and I would be arriving to Santiago same day (17th of April) at 13:00. Therefore, I will be arriving 5 hours before departure time, after flying for 11 hours… The trick are the 16 hours different between New Zealand and Chile.

Thank you Mrs. Vidal for the information provided yesterday on the status of the flights. By the way, I saw your picture at the LAN onboard magazine and you very beautiful.

I have decided to depart New Zealand few days before my original plan because the situation of the flights was a bit complicated and the thermometers in the south of Chile (where I plan to go now) keep lowing down and down… And I do not have the long underwear because as you can Imagine they do not fit in my backpack…

During my three weeks in New Zealand I have been mainly in the southern island, which is very pretty and the nature is just amazing.
To finish I will let you know how the maori people greets. It is called “Hongy” and consists on pressing noises and foreheads three times symbolising past, present and future. Now time for you to practice…

Some comparisons

Tonight I was asked by German guess in the hostel where I am that what were the main differences I founded between Australia and New Zealand.

On of the first differences that comes to my mind are the licences plates on the cars. In New Zealand plates are clean with not decoration. However, in Australia the licences plates have a slogan attached to the licence plate number, which is different for each of the 8 different states. I thought that this may reflect some differences among both societies.

Some of the slogan used in Australia, which very often change when new political party comes into power are: Queensland (“Sunshine state”, ó “The smart state”); Victoria (“The place to be”, “the garden state”, ò “on the move”), North Australia (“The outback – desierto- state”). I was thinking what the slogan would be in Spain now that elections for the states will be quite soon. It is very probably that slogans in Spain would contain some kind of political mention as they do in Quebec – Canada, where the slogan is “we remember”. By the way this is very nice to be long away from Spain in order to avoid listening the political battles all the time before the elections.

If you have a look to both the Australian flag and the New Zealand flag you realise that they very similar and largely influenced from the Union jack of the British flag. The only thing that makes you think that those flags are from this part of the world is that both have part of the southern cross which cannot be seen from London. My personal perception is that on top of the flag the influence of Britain is a bit greater in New Zealand than in Australia.

Before I started this trip I thought that it was very expensive for Australians to travel to Europe. I presume that not a lot as prices are not very different. New Zealand has a bit lower prices than Australia and the cost of living is a bit lower.

In Australia the aboriginal people were there before European migrate there. In the case of New Zealand Maori people where here before European came. The share of Maori people (16% of a total of 4 million people) is greater than the aboriginal people in Australia (2% from a total of 20 million people).

Thank you Bloggers

Thank you to all of you that follow this blog. I would like to say sorry for not updated it as often and with all the content all of us would like to.