January 18, 2019
On the flight to New Zealand we experienced a 20-hour time change, essentially skipping a day. We departed San Francisco on the evening of January 16 and arrived in Auckland on the morning of January 18. The flight from San Francisco to Auckland went remarkably well. I was able to sleep for at least a few hours, so when we arrived in Auckland I did not feel jet lagged. There were a lot of periods of turbulence, nothing terrible but one episode came while we were served dinner which made eating and drinking difficult. The two seats we picked at the back of the plane worked out well. There was no third seat so I had a little more room to stretch my feet.
The plane was able to make up the time lost for the delayed departure, and we actually landed a few minutes early. There was no jetway. We used stairs to exit the plane and got on a shuttle bus that drove us to the terminal. We walked through the duty free area and found a good deal with Vodaphone for a New Zealand SIM card for the cell phone and enough data to last the entire trip. Heinrich and I both got coverage.
We were relieved to find that our luggage had arrived. Going through customs was fairly easy, although we had to wait in the “Something to declare” line since we had brought hiking boots that needed to be inspected. Kauri dieback disease is a real problem, so the Kiwis want to make sure the soles of the boots are clean.
We arrived early at the Ace Rental Car terminal, and our car was not ready yet. By the time I filled out all of the paperwork it was ready. The woman at the counter waived the $2 per day extra driver fee, which was nice savings for us. We ended up with a Nissan Tiida. It is a good size for us, with a small trunk that easily fits our luggage. I did all of the driving that day since Heinrich had never driven on the left before. It was a little nerve racking getting out of Auckland but nothing too bad. I still don’t like roundabouts! I find them confusing when I am not familiar with the roads.
Since it was still early in the day and I was not feeling tired, we took the longer scenic route to Thames. It added about a hour to the drive, but I am so glad we did it (total expected drive time was 2 hours). It got us off the busy highway fairly quickly, and we got to see the countryside. We drove along the coast of the Firth of Thames, passing a few small towns, regional parks, and wildlife refuges.
We stopped briefly at Waitawa Regional Park and Orere Point. Both had nice views of the shoreline. The weather was cloudy but fairly warm, and we encountered sprinkles shortly after leaving Orere Point. The Pacific Coast Highway passed through some beautiful forest (“bush” in New Zealand) with lush tree ferns that reminded me a bit of the Big Island of Hawaii.
We drove onward to the town of Thames. We stopped at The Warehouse to buy our cooler (“chilly bin” in New Zealand), some blue ice blocks, paper plates and plastic silverware, and other picnic supplies. In the same shopping center was a Pak N Save supermarket where we stocked up on our initial supply of food. We also bought a reusable jute shopping bag for the groceries since the markets do not distribute single use plastic bags. That started happening in all of New Zealand on 1 January 2019. I had brought an initial supply of plastic bags with me, but it was so much nicer to have the reusable bags to store our picnic supplies in the car.
We found our lodging at the Sunset Motel and checked in. We had a room with kitchenette and private bath. After seeing what was available, we drove back to The Warehouse and Pac N Save a second time to buy another blue ice block and a bacon and egg pie for dinner. We found out that nobody sells block ice in New Zealand, and we did not want to rely on buying ice cubes all of the time.
Back at the room, we sat outside on the front porch and had our pie for dinner. Afterwards I walked out to the beach. There was a bird nesting site that was roped off. There were huge numbers of gulls and other birds everywhere! Later in the day we both walked out to the beach to watch the sunset.
Overall the day went very well and I was happy to get the initial traveling over and done with.