Arriving in and . . . Walking Across New Zealand!

Bob and I arrived at the Jucy Hotel (part hostel/part hotel) in Auckland at approximately 5:00 p.m. Auckland time on Saturday 8/15 (12:00 a.m. Saturday in Austin), after having begun our travels approximately 38 hours earlier. The trip was a much more enjoyable experience than that number might indicate and certainly better than I had feared (which should teach me, yet again, to not borrow trouble by fretting!).

We loved LAX — both our time in the Admirals Club as well as the relatively new international terminal that is almost Vegas-like in the many video displays that they have going. The trip on Qantas was great. We have always had good luck with that airline. They have pillows that look and act like pillows, great blankets, friendly staff, and good entertainment options (though I stuck with my book and crosswords — English-major nerd that I am). We also managed to get enough sleep (having a free seat between us helped) to keep us human-feeling for the rest of the trip.

The only down-side of the whole travel episode was the Sydney airport. We had a 4 hour layover between the flight from LA until our flight to Auckland. The international terminal is little more than one cacophonous duty-free shopping mall. Seriously, you can’t walk anywhere without tripping over or walking through one duty free shop or another, and they announce every flight throughout the whole terminal — multiple times, including the names of the individuals who are late and need to hurry up and board (though they also call their names multiple times). I don’t think there was 2 minutes of non-announcement time the whole time that we were there.

Luckily, the flight to Auckland was lovely (a short 2.5 hours), and the bus trip we had purchased on line was an easy ride into downtown. Then we just had a short walk (up hill — just like home!) to our hotel.

Last night and today the weather has been perfect — good jacket weather but not too cold. I’ll let Bob tell you about today’s adventures. Let’s just say that we can now brag about having bicycled across one country and walked across another!

Beth has it right, no problems at all with jet lag coming this way. I thought I would feel as bad as my nephews look but, I really can’t believe the transition.

Have you ever biked across the USA? Well, we did that in 2012 (and hopefully, will upload that blog sometime in the near future for those that are interested and didn’t follow along then). Well, now, we can say we walked across a country — New Zealand! The city of Auckland promotes a coast-to-coast 16km (10 miles) trail from the Waitemata Harbor on the north/east side of the island to the Manukau Harbor on the south/west side. The trail basically runs across the width of the country rather than the length of the two islands.

Getting up this morning, we did in some in-room instant coffee compliments of the $57 Jucy Hotel and set about to conquer the country! Went to t

he start, grabbed some breakfast and set off. It was a wonderful hike with two good hills/mountains to ascend — Mt. Eden and One Tree Hill. Both had awesome Auckland views and the latter had all kinds of sheep and even a few lambs — probably should have been called sheep hill. Ended up in a suburb, Onehunga, and took a train back after we had a quick snack in Lucious Cafe and now are sitting planning the rest of our day and our ferry ride to Waiheke Island tomorrow.

We are having issues with WiFi/cellular service so hopefully we will get into a blogging routine once we have regular internet access. The following are some photos from today’s cross-country hike.