So one of my trip goals for this ride is to meet people, and talk to strangers. I’ve given myself the goal of chatting with three people each day, finding about what’s the haps in their world and what’s their background.
Janet and Susanne
Janet and Susanne are a couple of Canadian travellers from Ottawa hanging out in New Zealand for a month.
I first met them in the queue for standby, but met Janet again on the ferry. Neither of them had any idea of the kuffle which was going down with delays and cancellations, so were unaware they’d dodged a bullet with thier bookings.
Hands on Adventure Tourism
What makes them really interesting is they’re both amateur pilots. They’re on their way to Queenstown to hire a plane and see different parts of the country whilst based in Queenstown.
The plane hire comes with a local pilot who’ll sit in one of the seats and point them in different directions, but other then that, they’ve got their own adventure holiday going on.
Working around the Globe
Janet is a phys-ed school teacher from Ottawa who spends her time doing working holidays around the place. Her best working holiday experience was teaching English in Austria in a castle, but she’s used that gig to visit China and latin America.
Janet sails, and I pointed out the standing waves of Barings Head (which weren’t doing too much standing as were got there at the change of the tide). We swapped nautical stories including hair raising accounts of Chinese Gybing. 🙂
Janet has visited virtually every continent except for the one which Susanne trumps her: Antartica.
Susanne is a mechanical engineer specialising in geothermal energy. At the tender age of 62, Susanne decided to change her career and now works on electrical air conditioning systems for skyrises.
Canadians are very interesting and outgoing people 🙂