(2015/02/17) … to wake up in the car and have this view, still cuddled in the sleeping bag and blankets. Today’s goal was Christchurch and after some cups of coffee i unloaded my box with the HeArts art project and tried to reduce it’s weight. I want and have to ship the HeArts back to AfrikaBurn, where they initially was setup in front of the HeartSpace Camp as a beta test. I throw all backup stuff out, remove the battery from the notebook and the power supply from the fan and placed it in the boarding luggage, each small item which helped to reduce some weight and costs was removed.
Re-packed and ready for shipping my first destination in Christchurch was the company Pack & Send which offers world wide shipping of luggage, excess luggage and of course regular parcels. With the offer of 28 NZD per kg in my mind, the 29kg weight (which i did measured about 1,5 weeks before at the Christchurch airport) and the hope for an better price, i entered the store and told the man what i need. As he saw my parcel, he told me that there are two options how a parcel is calculated for shipping.
First is regular weight (okay, thats simple) and the second is volume-weight, which is based on the size of an packet they can assume an weight which might be transported. In my case the volume-weight counted due to the size of the parcel and the calculated rate for shipping would be 36kg (1000NZD!). The man behind the desk seemed already to know that face from different customers and he was really friendly and already had an plan how to reduce the total costs for the shipping. Instead using my huge cardboard box, he suggested to wrap and repack the items inside and to send them as two pieces which will be then calculated as regular weight. This reduced the costs to 667NZD/441Euro which made me very happy. They will pack and made a custom package for my stuff and in view days i will get my tracking number via email.
My last short stop was at an electronic store where i had to buy another external USB hard disk to replace the one which broke on Mueller Hut. I still had to think about that, what kind of crap that must be, felt down once, offline, on a wooden floor and breaks immediately. Sadly the store couldn’t do anything based on warranty, but i got a discount on my new and of course of a different brand. While heading to the Spencer Beach Park where i should stay for the next two nights, i was passing a lot of banners with advertising for the current cricket world cup in this city. Now it was very obviously why i didn’t had any chance to get a Hotel or Hostel for the last night and the pleasure of a good bed. The campground was very nice and definitely a better and cheaper choice instead of a Hostel. Tomorrow? Sightseeing in Christchurch and a hike to Mount Pleasant…