Kia Ora from Auckland

Saturday (formerly known as Friday), 13th January, 2007
7:06 AM NZST

We made it! The whole flight seems surreal now that we're here in Auckland at a backpackers hostel on the middle of a very steep hill. The flight was long (13 hours) but Air New Zealand is as posh as airlines get: we had on-demand music, tv, video games, and 50 movies to choose from. Provo and i had booked our tickets separately and so had seats apart from eachother before we checked in. We requested to sit together, and the seats we got were right smack in the middle of the second to last row. Advantage: you get dinner before anyone else on the plane. Disadvantage: you're the last to get off. It was night for the entire flight so I didn't miss sitting by a window too much, but on one of my strolls around the plane to keep my muscles away from atrophy, I looked out the rear window and saw stars and the moon shining on the tops of the clouds.

We slept a bit, got to know our fellow passengers, and finally got into Auckland at 5:00 this morning after crossing the whole of the pacific ocean, the international date line, and the equator. The time here is actually only about 3 hours earlier than Pacific Time, but we're a day later. Weird, that. We cleared customs just fine (they had to wash off my hiking boots to I didn't carry any foreign soils into the country) and caught a bus into the city just as day was breaking.

My first impression of New Zealand: It's WARM. Huzzah! Summer! It's incredibly humid, a bit rainy right now, and I felt sticky as soon as I stepped into the jetway. It's lush and green and the lay of the land is very dramatic-from what I've seen in my 2 hours here this morning, Auckland is full of hills, with lovely green house-free buttes rising up from between the buildings. Our hostel is about 2 blocks from the famous Sky Tower (the space needle of the southern hemisphere from what I gather). The trees here are amazing- they have the most interesting shapes, and look prehistoric, like they should have dinosaurs feeding on them.

It's really unbelievable that I'm here. I know I am, but in my current sleep-deprived and sweat-ridden state, it seems bizarre. Part of it is that most of the road signs here look just like those in the U.S. The place looks less like an English city than I expected, but you can feel the European influence everywhere- especially in the half a roasted tomato served with breakfast on the flight over...

We can't check into the hostel till 11, so Provo and I are going to take advantage of our extra hours to go exploring and find some breakfast. And coffee. More updates later as we begin to rack up some adventures!