The Hunt is On

For their first days in Auckland, Bryan and Jane had arranged to stay in the Formule 1 hotel in the center of the city. Though their room there was small, it was a decent, not very expensive place to stay and, most importantly, it had internet access. Its exact location may have left something to be desired as next door to the hotel was a chain sex shop. But they would not be here long, they thought, because they were in search of more permanent lodgings.

Bryan and Jane's hunt for a place to live had begun before they had even left the US. In the weeks before their move, Bryan and Jane had spent some time looking through the property listings on the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay, TradeMe. It had seemed, from a distance, that they should be able to afford either a nice apartment near the center of the city or a small cottage in one of the farther-out suburbs; the pictures online looked nice, and they began their search with much optimism. The reality,however, was not as pretty as it had looked in the pictures.

Bryan and Jane decided not to meet with any real estate agents until they had some clean clothes, and those came through, with Air New Zealand's apologies, two days after they had arrived. Freshly bathed and in clean clothes for the first time in four days, Bryan and Jane set out to find a place to live.
Their first foray took them to North Shore City, the collection of suburbs to the north of Auckland, accessed by either ferry or a single bridge across the Waitemata Harbour. The landscape in the suburbs of Takapuna and Milford was beautiful: volcanic beaches giving way to white sand and awe-inspiring views out on the water. Bryan and Jane took the mile-long rock-strewn path along the beach between Takapuna and Milford while on the quest for housing. If only the residences had been as nice as the environment, they thought wistfully.

The weekend saw Bryan and Jane in the slightly less picturesque surroundings of the inner suburbs attending a series of open houses. The first two apartments they saw were nicer than those in North Shore City, but not quite enough to tempt them. Like Goldilocks, though, the third apartment they saw was just right. Located on the lower level of a two-level house, the apartment is a one-bedroom with study on an open plan. For Bryan and Jane there were two factors that drew them to submit an application for this particular apartment: its address in Parnell, with Bryan's office less than a mile away, and its large deck overlooking the Parnell bush and a bay. The current tenants didn't move out for two more weeks, so Bryan and Jane would have to continue to live a la traveler, but they had, at last, found a place to call home.

Fush and Chups

Emilio picked Bryan and Jane up at the airport in his fiance's station wagon. "Plenty of room for your luggage," he told them. The weather was much different from that Bryan and Jane had left behind in Chicago: around 70 degrees and sunny. There was a little bit of rain, but Emilio explained to them that it rains often in Auckland but not for long, an observation that held true as the rain stopped just a second after you noticed it.

"You must be tired," Emilio said as they drove out of the car park, "but you may like a little tour of Auckland. I'll drive around a bit if you don't mind." Bryan and Jane assured him that they didn't. Emilio drove them down the windy roads of the suburbs of Auckland and pointed out the important parts of the landscape: the race tracks and the roads to the beaches. Horse racing is very popular in Auckland, Emilio explained, chalking this popularity up to New Zealand's not-so-distant agrarian past. Beaches, of course, are popular the world over, and Auckland is blessed with dozens of them within a very small radius around the city. Emilio himself lives in a suburb called Mission Bay, just blocks from one of the beaches closest to downtown Auckland.

Continuing on with their introduction to Kiwi life, Emilio took Bryan and Jane out for some fish and chips, or "fush and chups" as it's pronounced in New Zealand. Their tasty, fried bits of Commonwealth culture came wrapped in newspaper and extremely hot. Emilio suggested that they take their lunch to the beach, where there was a entle breeze coming off of the Waitemata Harbour, the harbor that connects Auckland to the Hauraki Gulf of the Pacific Ocean. Bryan, Jane, and Emilio were not the only ones to think that the beach was a good place to eat lunch. They were quickly joined by a large flock of white and brown seagulls as well as a small family of wren-like birds. Bryan made the mistake of dropping one of his chips in the sand, and ten seagulls quickly pounced and then kept a watchful eye on Bryan's slippery fingers. While they were protecting their lunches from the snapping beaks of the gulls, however, the wren-like birds moved in. One even got as far as jumping into Jane's newspaper wrapping and standing on her fish; it took a small scream and a flick of the hand to get it to go away - though it didn't go far. "The birds here are very cheeky," Emilio explained. "They're not afraid of people, and they love to eat." There are so many things for Bryan and Jane to learn about their new home.

Paging Passenger Smith

Fiji's airport consists of eight gates surrounding a small commercial island of souvenir shops where one may purchase brightly colored shirts, tiki ornaments, and duty-free alcohol. One wall of the airport - or airroom perhaps more appropriately - is made entirely of glass that looks out over a volcano and the lush countryside of Fiji. This is the wall that Bryan and Jane navigated to after leaving the plane that had carried them across the International Date Line. That flight had gotten in at 5am local time, so Bryan and Jane were able to watch the sun rise over this tropical paradise. There's some political unrest in Fiji right now, but you wouldn't know it from the airport. Everything there is serene and a little sleepy.

Jane and Bryan are feeling a little sleepy too as they try to get comfortable in the plastic chairs and wait for their next flight. Any ideas of a leisurely layover, however, are dashed when over the intercom comes the following message:
"Paging passenger Smith, Mr. Bryan Smith, could you please report to gate 7?"

Reporting to gate 7, Bryan and Jane learn that, though they had made their connecting Air New Zealand flight in LA, their baggage had not. "I'm afraid your bags are still in LA," the efficient Fijian tells them. "I'll get in contact with LA and have them sent out on the next flight to Auckland. They should arrive a day after you do."

And so Bryan and Jane boarded their flight to Auckland with the knowledge that when they landed, they would have no luggage. Jane saw the brighter side of this situation: "At least we don't have to worry about whether or not Emilio's car will be able to fit us and our luggage." Emilio was one of Bryan's new colleagues at Industrial Research Limited, and he had volunteered to pick Bryan and Jane up at the airport when they arrived in New Zealand.

The plane ride from Fiji to New Zealand took four hours - Bryan and Jane's shortest flight yet. Upon landing, they stood in the "Other Passports" line with people from all over the world, except, it seemed, the US. Australians and Kiwis, as New Zealanders prefer to refer to themselves, got to go through an expedited line. New Zealand and Australia, Bryan and Jane learned, share a special relationship, similar but closer than that between the US and Canada. With their US passports, though, Bryan and Jane were sent to the other line. After getting their passports stamped, Bryan and Jane proceeded through the rigorous Kiwi border patrol, who protect their country from such dangers as foreign bugs and alien seeds. From there, after 27 hours of travel, Bryan and Jane entered New Zealand for the first time.

Crossing the Date Line

"You ready for another one?" Bryan leaned over and asked his wife of just over a month Jane.

"Another one I think I can handle," she replied, "it's two more that I'm not so sure about."

Their flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles had gotten a late start, and Bryan and Jane would have only an hour and a half to make their connecting flight to Fiji. From Fiji they would then catch another flight that would take them to their final destination, Auckland, New Zealand. Neither one of them had ever been to New Zealand - Jane had never seen the Pacific Ocean - but when Bryan found a job online with a research firm in Auckland, it had seemed like just the kind of adventure they'd like to go on. Exotic location, but still English-speaking; an interesting job for Bryan that would give him some industry experience after his decades in school and a nice retreat for Jane to finish writing her own dissertation. Sitting on the crowded 767 for five hours, though, had given them just the right amount of banal reality to make the impending adventure seem real and a little daunting.

A cranky Delta stewardess informed Bryan and Jane that the Pacific Airways flight to Fiji left from terminal 2 - the international terminal. Unfortunately, upon arriving in terminal 2, sweating from the excursion of their over-packed carry-on bags, there was no flight to Fiji; "No Pacific Airways flights at all," a jolly security officer told them. "What you want," the officer explained, "is an Air New Zealand co-chair flight: that's on the other side of the airport, terminal 4." Rushing along as fast as their laden computer bags would allow, Bryan and Jane reached the Air New Zealand counter twenty minutes before their plane was due to take off. "When do you return to the United States?" asked the interminably slow ticket counter worker. "Not for a while," answered Bryan, "we have two-year work visas. We don't need a return ticket." Though the ticket counter worker did not seem to be completely convinced, he allowed Bryan and Jane to pass through anyway, taking their baggage numbers, issuing them boarding passes, and wishing them a good flight.

Once inside the plane, Bryan and Jane settled in for the second leg of their trip. Periodically, a map would appear on the screens strategically placed around the cabin, detailing the path that the plane was taking: lots of blue punctuated by tiny dots as they flew within 100km of tiny islands most Americans have never even heard off. There was no turning back as the garrulous lights of LA faded away. Bryan and Jane dosed on and off over the 11 hour flight, but both were awake to mark the passage of the little pixeled airplane as it crossed the jagged edges of the date line. Tuesday, March 4 had just completely disappeared; they were in the future now.