5 cent cash discount

I feel kind of retarded for being in New Zealand for over two weeks now and just realizing this.  What is that you ask?  Let me describe what happened today...

We had just finished kayaking the Abel Tasman national park and were headed back through the small town of Takaka en route to where we were planning to free camp that night.  So it was our last chance to hit any stores.  Astrid has been fighting ear aches and an ear infection for the past week and hence needs to take ibuprofen to help with the pain, and we were almost out.  I stopped at the grocery store in town to pick up a new box.

I get to the till and the girl is really cool -- probably in her early twenties.  She's like 'That'll be $7.45'.  Then she continues, 'And you'll save 5 cents if you pay in cash'... I look kind of bewildered (and was going to pay in cash anyway) and while I was getting my money out she is like 'That's because we don't have anything smaller than 10 cents here in New Zealand'.

And then it dawns on me... she's right... I haven't seen much small change.  The 10 cent coin here is about the size of our nickel, but in copper (like our pennies)... all other NZ coins are silver until you hit the 1 and 2 dollar coins which are like British pounds -- sort of a brass colour.  The only have the 20 and 50 cent pieces in silver... so in general there isn't a lot of change.

I need to do some research, but the fact that NZ has gotten rid of their smaller denominations is super cool.  I only wish GB would get rid of their useless 1 and 2 pence coins like their emigrant cousins have already done.

And to think all this time I thought the people at the gas station were just being nice by always rounding my petrol down when I would go a few cents over...

Syd.