New Zealand March 2017

It's 6:00 am Wednesday March 15th, in Miranda, New Zealand on the Coromandel peninsula on the east side of the North Island.   That makes it noon Tuesday the 14th for most of you reading this.   It is our first night in our tiny moving home, a camper van from Wilderness RV.   

OK, clearly this is not for everybody, and right now drinking our first coffee of the day, Shelley is saying,  "What are we doing here?"    We do not have our sea legs yet, as we try to figure out how all the systems work in this camper.    But I digress.   My initial concern was whether we would be suffering from major jet lag, and surprisingly, traveling for 24 hours, we are not.    Yes, we are six time zones away, and across the International date line, but it is easier to go north/south than east/west.    We left Los Angeles Sunday evening at 11:30 pm.   That is a busy time at the airport, as late evening is the time for all the Red Eye flights to the US east coast, and dozens of international flights headed across the Pacific.    For an airplane buff, I love walking the Tom Bradley International terminal as every big new jet is sitting there ready to take passengers to all the corners of the earth.   Several big Airbus A380's (as my grandson Luke will tell you is the world's largest passenger jet) are present, along with the long distance workhorse, the Boeing 777 ER.   Plus the new kid in town is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which many of you have taken, but I have not.   It is still on the bucket list of things to do.   All these planes take you on trips lasting up to 17 hours.

For us, we could not get our ticket on American's new 787 service direct to Auckland, as we were using Advantage miles for our Business class tickets.   320,000 miles to be specific and $149.    Not bad for Business class round trip to NZ, Australia and back.  But American sold all of its seats to "Revenue paying" passengers on its Flight 83 from LAX, so we got our seats on their One World companion, Air Tahiti Nui.    Not sure how many of you care, but Air Tahiti Nui has 5 airplanes that fly from Tahiti to Los Angeles, and on to Paris, with branches to Auckland and Tokyo..... all are 25 year old Airbus 340's.   4 of them have had a recent upgrade.   Guess which one we got...right, the one that has seats so old, they were like wood.   OK, maybe I exaggerate a bit, but it was not the best seat to try to sleep in overnight, plenty wide, but they barely lay back.   It is 8.5 hours to Papeete Tahiti, where we landed at 5:30 am.   We had to get off the plane, clear security and then stay in a transit lounge until our flight continued on to Auckland at 8:00 am.   Shelley says she slept just fine, me not so much.  

From our prison inside the Papeete terminal it was a spectacular view across the ocean to the island of Moreau.    Clearly this now becomes a new bucket list item, which is to come back to Tahiti and explore.   It is just beautiful from my limited vantage point.   Our flight on to Auckland took 5.5 hours, so we landed at 12:30 pm Tuesday, as we crossed the International date line.  Tahiti is on the east side of that line, just barely, so it is where the day ends.   NZ is on the west side, so the day start there.    Our course heading all the way from LA, Tahiti, and on to NZ was mostly south, 200 degree heading.   Hence, not much of a jet lag.  

It took an hour and a half to clear customs, and get picked up by the friendly folks from Wilderness RV.   For all of you who have been sailing with the Moorings, it is a very similar process to pick up a camper van.   You have to go through the rental contract and take responsibility with your first born child if you screw up, then give you a brief walk through of the camper.   That should be a cinch for us ole veterans of the RV world.   Not so much.   They do things different here.   

All the time, I am thinking that we can figure out how the systems work on the coach, but I am wondering how the hell to drive on the wrong side of the road.    Our camper van is really nice.   It is a Fiat diesel van chassis with a very nice 22 ft. camper.   We picked this one because of the king size bed in the back, a bathroom, refrigerator, stove, and table.   It is very easy to drive.  Everything you need for a month of exploring NZ.   To my delight, it was easy to drive....much easier than my big ole Class A back in the US.   After surviving the first drive, I am happy to say I did not hit anyone or anything, nor screw up by turning into the right hand lane.   In fact it was pretty easy.   Whew!!

We did not arrive at our Miranda Holiday Park until late, so have not had a chance to get into the NZ camping life yet.   Just trying to get our legs underneath us.   But we survived our first night without killing each other, so life is good.    Now we have seen our first dawn in New Zealand, and all is right with the world.   Time to explore.