What Comes Next

If you are planning to travel to New Zealand, you should know that there is not much free WiFi available anywhere in the country. I used to find that unusual, but now I double-guess myself. Is free WiFi normally available in coffee shops around North America? Well, regardless, if you are expecting to be able to check your Facebook from Starbucks, think again. Coffee shops don't necessarily offer WiFi at all, or if they do, you'll have to pay by credit card. Broadband internet is not yet available in New Zealand, so the connection speeds are superslow, and internet companies charge by the megabite, so it's also expensive. Generally, you can expect to pay ten cents per megabite, or ten to twenty dollars per hour, for a connection speed of about 20 Mbps.

As someone who's grown up on the net, this situation makes me feel more isolated than ever. I normally download programs, television, films, and music as I desire them. I surf when I'm bored, checking out things that interest me on Wikipedia, or browsing for jobs, goods, or apartments on Craigslist. If I need to know how to get somewhere, I Google Map it, and if I want to get in touch with someone, I use Facebook. On a normal day at home, I use the internet at work, to order books, look up authors, e-mail customers, and keep on top of sales trends. Then I go home and use social networking web sites to look at what my family and friends are doing, what makes them laugh or what they find interesting. I might download a recently released album to play while I make dinner, or watch a digitally streamed television show. If I want to order in, I look at online menus before calling the number on the web site.

Here in New Zealand, it has taken us several months to download 1 GB of data.

Maybe we should just give up on being able to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. But we are way too nerdy to give up.

In Blenheim, there is free WiFi available at the public library, so backpackers flock there in droves. You can't download anything, but you can browse web pages (slowly). On a given day, every seat in the library is occupied by a backpacker with a laptop. Me and John are two of them. We huddle around our little computer, looking for jobs, plane, train, and bus tickets, hostels, work-for-accomodation schemes - anything. Looking for a direction to go next.

We stumble across the following ad on the New Zealand Backpacker's Board:

Wwoofing opportunity: Tonga (South Pacific).
Looking for 2 people to help with gardening, cleaning, etc. in exchange for food and accomodation.
1-2 week stay or longer.
Please e-mail with inquiries.

We look at each other for a moment before I pull the computer over and type a response, introducing ourselves and asking for more information. A flight to Tonga is $200.

Interesting.

We let that idea sit, and address more pressing concerns. We want to spend the weekend at Donelle's, so I can get my fill of her before we head elsewhere. I really want to meet the rest of my family, who live in Westport, before heading south to ride the train over Arthur's pass. Afterward, we will probably fly from Christchurch to Wellington - or Tonga.