Becoming even more of a part of NZ

We are fast approaching our 12 month anniversary of when we first arrived in New Zealand. For us that means we have to convert our UK driving licenses into New Zealand ones. It's been something we've been meaning to get sorted for a while because I need a license to be able to drive Cassidy to preschool so it is essential for my job that my license is correct. We found out there is an AA centre in Tauranga, the biggest town in the Bay of Plenty, so we thought today is as good as any to get this sorted out. After finding a pretty good place to park we joined the queue at the centre and were given a form to fill out. Turns out we filled it out quite wrongly but luckily the ladies behind the counter didn't mind too much and found it quite amusing. We had to do a quick eye test and get out passports and UK licenses copied. The last step was having our photo taken and unlike back home we could actually smile for it. It'll be nice having a license where I look less like a convict! What we didn't realise is doing this today makes our UK licenses now invalid in NZ. Luckily we have paper temporary licenses which they gave us that cover us for 3 weeks and we will be back on farm by then to collect our actual licenses which are getting delivered to Bruce's house. Turns out being so organised wasn't such a good thing after all but luckily we did it just late enough to be covered during all time periods of driving. After everything was completed we went and had a celebratory coffee in a cute little cafe next door. While we sat and waited we then saw food being delivered and we just felt we couldn't miss the opportunity to support a local business so ordered two breakfasts and even a cake for after. We had a little wonder around the town which has a very street art vibe and cool mosaics on the pavement. It's a nice little place and we plan to look into this art a little bit more. We did some shopping and raced back to catch our parking just in time to pop another dollar in the machine as a ticket warden started doing her rounds. Although we hadn't really done much we weren't really in the mood to do much either. We decided just to head to a campsite in town and make the most of having time to relax. They also have a TV room and heaps of books so we've just spent time doing our own thing and having a mini pause from driving and being a tourist. It's quite intense all the time especially finding things to do each day so it was so nice to have this opportunity to switch off from it all. Hopefully we wake up tomorrow more in the mood to explore but at least today we achieved getting our licenses sorted which will make awesome sounvenirs for when we are home!Read more