Our new HOME!

These pictures were taken on our trek to Gisborne.  

It was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on!  It was a mixture of Hawaii, Samoa, Switzerland, and Cedar Mountain!! One minute we were in Pines, then Palm trees would be mixed with the pines etc....The pictures don't even come close to the beauty of this country!

This first picture was taken through the windshield of the car! Trees were covering the road in a tunnel.  We had driven a couple of miles before I finally decided to get out my camera and snap a shot of it.  It reminded me of Kauai.

The road to Gisborne goes through a gorge.  This river was gorgeous!  This picture doesn't capture the beauty! It makes me sad because I wanted to share it!

Most of the way to Gisborne looked like this...mountains with lots of green grass, cattle and sheep.

Elder Gubler standing next to a pretty river inthe gorge...

When we arrived in Gisborne, it was dark.  We got to our motel, and it was CLOSED!  Who closes a motel at 8:00 at night?  It said, "Ring the bell if it's an emergency."  Well we thought it was an emergency!  We were two little lost souls from Southern Utah, in a strange town, in a strange country

The motel was rather nice, but from the town of Hamilton down to Gisborne it had gotten HOT!!! There is no air conditioning in the motels!  I thought we were going to die! It was sooooo humid!

The next day, we were on a mission to find an apartment with air conditioning!!! We looked at a couple of properties, and decided on a privately owned apartment at the Portside Hotel.  It is right on the river's edge at the opening of Poverty Bay.  The Ships are directly behind our apartment.  We have a walking trail that goes along the river down to the beach right outside our back door.  It was more money than we were expecting, but after seeing our options....it was the ONLY option!! Ha! We spent the whole first day moving into our place and buying all the staple goods we needed to get us through till Monday.

The first thing we bought were some down pillows!! We are soooo spoiled!! We also bought food for our first Sunday Dinner together in New Zealand...Pork Chops, corn, salad, and fruit.  It felt so good to 

Let me just give you an idea of prices around here...

Gas:  $8.00 a gallon

Bacon: $12 to $20.00

One bedroom tiny apartment:  $400 per WEEK

I guess you can see the idea...New Zealand is a very expensive place to live.  I don't know how the people do it!  I've heard the electricity is out of this world...we haven't seen our electric bill yet!

All of the plugs have on and off switches, so when you aren't using it, you can turn off the power supply to the plug.  It's crazy! It just feels good to call this our HOME for now, and to get our stuff out of the suitcases!!! The closet is very small, but we were able to make it work!

 This is our kitchen.  The silver cupboard on top of the counter slides up...that's where the dishes and canned goods are.  The apartment had 4 of everything

This is where we eat and study!  There is a TV in the big cabinet

The pool is RIGHT outside out sliding door!

This is a view of the logging ships...right out our sliding door in the bedroom

Our first Sunday dinner in our new home:)

We took a drive to see the coastline...this is five minutes from our apartment...it's beautiful!

That's a little glimpse of our first couple of days in Gisborne.  There will be lots more to come!