The Adventure Begins

Tuesday, January 10, 2012


Our long-awaited trip to New Zealand is underway.  It began at PDX and saying goodbyes to Catherine and Snickers.  He knew something was going to happen when he saw suitcases going to the car, and his care equipment being unloaded at Catherine’s place in Lake Oswego.  

We caught the 5:30 pm flight to LAX and arrived with out bags checked for Auckland, or at least that was the plan.  We learned that the Alaska clerk had instead checked them to Tahiti but the airline was helpful in fixing that mistake.  The big schedule board showed our departure for 11:40 pm.  At about 10:15 pm we got into the first of many lines of people headed for the plane.  Apparently there isn’t room for all the flights to exist from the terminal as we were bussed out to a remote little building next to our parked Air Tahiti Nui plane.  We boarded and a full planeload took off just before midnight.  

Waiting at LAX

Eight and a half hours and four thousand miles later we landed just after sunrise in Papeete, Tahiti out in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.  We were greeted by singers and dancer and tropical warmth.  They cleaned our plane, refueled and did an exchange of passengers.  Some stayed in Tahiti, some new ones took their place and the majority of us returned to our seats and a new crew for the next leg of the trip to Auckland or “Oakland” as the announcers pronounced it.

Five and a half hours and 2500 miles later, we again saw land below. This time it was the northern neck of New Zealand.  Touchdown was around 2:00 pm.  We left Tahiti on Wednesday morning and arrived in Auckland on Thursday afternoon.   Enroute, we crossed the International Date Line.  I remember hearing about drinking parties aboard ship to initiate those who crossed this line at sea.  We did it rather unceremoniously.

Arriving in Papeete, Tahiti

Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand with over a million people, is where we begin and where we end our adventure.  It looks like a combination of Hawaii, Mexico and Southern California.  Today it is overcast and cloudy and temps are in the 70’s.  In many ways it looks like home.  The people we’ve seen come from many backgrounds.  Some are European like us.  Others have Maori blood and still others look Oriental.   Food prices are high - we spent $16 on two “cups of soup”, two bottles of orange juice and a bag of chips.  But that was at a BP convenience store down the road from our motel.  A night in this 2-star motel is $79.  Tomorrow we head back to the airport and take a domestic flight to Queenstown, the “adrenaline capital of New Zealand.”

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