Day 1 - Auckland, New Zealand

It's unreal to imgine that I've leaped forward 20 hours, 2 seasons, and a distance of around 9,000km in just under a night. But, here I am typing away next to the wide open window of my 3rd story hostel room in downtown Auckland. Compact, oddly shaped economic cars whir by over the chatter of Kiwi's (New Zealander's) on the sidewalk, who are happy the weather has dried up and is no longer "weet" (wet).

At around 5:30pm I boarded my flight. I was sitting there thinking about how they decide where to seat the many varying personalities of the international flights. Was it random, or did they try making what they thought would be good matches, considering some of the information we gave beforehand when checking in. A few moments later, Kasper, as I later found out his name was, was seated next to me. We got along really well, and over the next 8 hours + 2 hour lay-over in Tahiti + 7 more hours until Auckland, and a few games of virtual chess, we talked about a little of everything. Kasper, originally from Holland and now fluent in 4 languages, has been traveling around the world since 2004. He's all about paying for only what he has to and has gone far because of it. He's a co-developer of a website, http://www.couchsurfing.com/. With over 200,000 members across the world, couch surfers is about people helping others to see the world by offering a place to stay for 2 nights to 2 weeks at no cost. Over the last year, he has used nothing but this service, meeting hundreds of people, and seeing Africa, India, Australia, South America, Europe, and most of the US without paying for a place to stay, once.

So we arrived in Auckland around 6:00am Friday, losing Thursday completely to the time lapse. After a 2 hour journey through immigration, we walked out the doors of the Auckland International Airport and were in search of a means to get into the city (21km from the airport). It seemed the cheapest option was the air shuttle at $10 NZ... it seemed. "That's bullsheet!", claimed Kasper. While I thought it was a pretty good deal for what would be an hour drive in traffic; he thought it was outrageous. He was sure we could hitch-hike there faster and free. Sure enough, the first person we asked was headed to the city and was happy to give us a lift. We toss our bags in the trunk of her Civic and we were off.

Sadly, I forget her name, but she was a married woman in her early 30's. A Fijian, but born and raised in the UK before moving to NZ 8 years ago. Her and her husband own 3 businesses in the city but she claimed not to work very hard, planning to head to the gym and taking the rest of the day off after dropping us off in Auckland. She said she hitch-hiked a lot when she was our age traveling around Europe and was happy to pay back the favor. She was pretty hilarious, no matter what it was she was talking about. I think the accent had something to do with it. Calling one guy that cut her off a "Tucker", and telling us that we'd have our choice of girls in NZ with the girl to guy ratios way off, claiming it was 4 girls for every 1 guy. A lie obviously, but both Kasper and I couldn't help to notice the odd case that just about every guy was with a disproportionally hot girl. Like seriously, some of these girls were pretty attractive then you look to their male counter-part and you're like... really?!

Anyways this is longer than I had planned on and I want to get back out before the sun sets. Long story short, we found the hostel, walked the city for a couple hours where we purchased AC outlet adapters, a couple sandwiches, and led what seemed to be an endless search for a free wireless connection. Kasper left a few hours ago to meet his latest Couch Surfing host across the bay and I took a much needed nap. Strangely, I'm still the only one in this hostel room at 7pm. Kind of a shame to not have the opportunity to meet some roomates, but I can't really complain about a private room for $16 NZ a night.

And so, from a hunched over position where my laptop atop a dresser is just barely able to gain a signal, I'll end this post before I push my free internet luck too far. But, "DLINK Unsecured Wireless Connection", whoever you are, just know that I love you.

P.S. - Sorry for the lack of pictures. I forgot to bring my CF Card Reader but will post them very soon.