2020

As any may have gathered from lack of updates, Kiwiland 2 is nor happening this year. It's very disappointing, but it's what has to happen.

New plan: Kiwiland 2 in 2020.

Instead, this year we'll be doing American Nomads Season 2. Which is cool too.

I didn't keep a log on the first season, way back in 2011, which is something I've always regretted. I'll be doing that, in some capacity, this time around.

Kiwiland 2: There and Back Again - The Prelude

A few days ago, the three of us went out for Mod Pizza and began discussing our return to New Zealand in earnest. We've been saying pretty much since the first voyage that we'd like to return for the tenth anniversary, or at least i have, but over the past decade it's just been idle talk. Now that 2017 is drawing to a close and that deadline is looming, it's time to get serious.

I was pretty set on going back in March again, roughly on the same time frame as the original trip, and take a similar route. It worked out really well for us before, as that schedule was by design. Going to New Zealand in March offers a few advantages: it's the end of their summer (seasons being reversed in the southern hemisphere and all), and thus the end of their tourist season. This means good deals for tourists, as well as smaller crowds at popular destinations. But perhaps the biggest one is the car rental, which makes use of another abnormality in our travel plans. We started in Christchurch and ended in Auckland; most tourists go the other way. By starting in Christchurch at the end of tourist season, when you rent a car, you're more likely to get an upgrade, due to them needing to get the vehicles back up north before next season. We paid for a small car last time, and were given an eight-passenger van (our girl Lucy! <3). We're hoping to have the same luck this time around.

Other ideas were bandied about, such as going in the fall, due to Amanda's roller derby schedule, and taking the more typical route of Auckland to Christchurch, just to make the experience a little different. However the takeaway from our meeting seems to be that we're best off doing things the way we did before, and we've set tentative dates for March 4 - 25. This does have us leaving on a Sunday, since Amanda's got a bout on March 3rd, but i think it'll be worth it. These dates aren't set in stone yet, we may yet choose fall, but i have gotten those dates approved off from work already. My primary concern about pushing off until fall is that i'm concerned we'll end up not doing it at all, as we are hoping to be in the midst of moving west around that time.

Taking the same route, Christchurch to Auckland, will offer us the advantages i discussed above, and i think we all finally agreed that those are more important than varying up the direction of travel. We definitely already have a list of things to do that are very different from the last time around, and i think that a little more preplanning will allow us to increase the efficiency of the trip.

So yeah, seeing different things is a priority, but also seeing some of the same things. We want to see how the country has changed in the last ten years. The Christchurch Cathedral is number one on the list for that exact reason. Abel Tasman park is on the list, because the last time, we'd planned a whole day there and only got about an hour due to the Farewell Spit debacle. Speaking of which: i'd really like to skip Farewell Spit altogether, but Alyssa wants to drive out there just to take a picture of the three of us standing at the cafe, looking out at the spit, and flipping it the bird. I may be okay with that.

Plus, my video production value is going to be off the chart compared to last time. Holy shit. This'll be Travel Channel worthy, i swear to the old gods and the new.

Alright, now i have a few solemn vows to take.

During this preparation time, i've reread excerpts from the log i kept last time, and i was...less than impressed with myself. I mean, my writing's gotten a lot better in the last ten years, but beyond that, the bitching. Jesus. I used the log to complain about so much more than i should have. I was a whiny post-teen who was too concerned about money and not focused enough on the life-changing story unfolding around me.

So, i hereby solemnly swear:

-Not to complain about how much things cost; i'm paying $2000 for a plane ticket, a nine-dollar cup of soup isn't going to break the bank.
-Not to whine about how touristy things are; i am a tourist, this is what i wanted, i'll enjoy it, dammit.
-Not to complain about naked men in showers. They're showers. People take their clothes off.
-Not to talk about bathrooms unless they are truly noteworthy.
-To make sure my camera batteries are always charged.
-To make the absolute most of this experience.
-To always have a sunny disposition and look on the bright side of life.

Our last trip to New Zealand was, as Amanda put it years later, our coming of age story.

This trip will be the end cap to our lives in Wisconsin.

Fuck yeah.

Oh, i'm still going to swear a lot in the log, it's probably fine.

Day 20: Saturday, March 22

Today is actually May 3rd, 2008. I have failed to recount the events of our last day in New Zealand until now, first because while I was on both planes, the asshole in front of me leaned his seat all the way back, leaving me with no room at all. Both fucking planes. Then, since we've gotten home, I've been procrastinating. Today Amanda is making me do it. So, while this entry will convey what actually happened, it will lack the eloquent grace of my previous entries (as Amanda put it) and probably leave out some of the finer details, which might be for the best.

We began our day by gutting the hotel room and repacking all of our stuff as haphazardly as we pleased, determined to simply sort it all out after we were safely home. We packed Lucy loosely and set out into Auckland to do the last of our souvenir shopping, which for me at least amounted to most of my souvenir shopping.

We parked under the Sky City tower again. As we left the ramp via the elevator ("lift"), we decided to go get our parking validated immediately, so as to avoid the hassles of trying to do it later as we had previously. We knew there was a validation machine where you could do it yourself, we'd done it the previous day (I don't think I mentioned this before…it was sitting outside the casino, which is within the Sky City Tower's lobby-building-thing, since the casino was closed for Good Friday). We went into the casino looking for the validation machine and ended up gambling. This was my first time gambling, ever. Alyssa's too, I believe. Amanda was our guide. She taught us how to run a slot machine. I frittered away ten dollars and that was enough for me. I had gambled. I was cool with it. Done.

We walked up and down Queen Street, pretty much their main shopping area, while Alyssa dove in and out of every single bookstore we saw looking for some books she could just as easily have gotten back home. She spent like $1,000,000 on books. Once she finally found her things, she started whining about wanting to go even though the rest of us had not finished our shopping yet. We are coming close to the point where I finally attempted to slit Alyssa's throat.

After that, we drove Blue Lucky Lucy to the New Zealand Rent-A-Car in Auckland, where we had naively assumed they would take the van and drive us over to the airport, like how they had picked us up from the airport in the beginning. How foolish we were! No. We had to pay five bucks a person to ride the shuttle bus to the airport. The lady at the front desk, when Amanda had asked about transportation to the airport, had said nothing of the fee. We thought it was free. Somehow we managed to scrape $15 out between the three of us.

Getting through the airport was an adventure into hell, and I don't mean the pizza company. First problem: the weight was not distributed evenly in our luggage, something was too heavy. I frantically unpacked everything and repacked it, throwing shit all around and into bags wherever I could, until I eventually ended up with a carryon bag full of dirty laundry, something which, the previous night, I had insisted I was not going to do. Alyssa blames me for buying so many CDs. I argue that my CDs all fit nicely into the bottom of one bag, whereas all her fucking books and the odd-shaped fragile souvenirs she bought for every single person she knows, including stuff for the kitchen at the pizza place she USED to work at, and people she hasn't seen in over a year, were the reasons for the packing difficulties. We should have just separated our stuff out and packed our own belongings so that Alyssa could have dealt with her own fucking shit. Bitch.

Airline regulations state that you can have two carryons which cannot be over 7kg each. I ended up with two which each weighed almost 12kg, but the one fortunate thing that happened in the airport was that nobody harassed me about my carryons.

We wanted to proceed to our gate, but apparently there is a departure tax that everybody must pay to get out of the country WHICH WAS NOT INCLUDED IN OUR TICKET PRICE. Why the hell wasn't that included?! There were over two hundred dollars in various taxes on those tickets in the first place! Even typing this now, over a month later, I can feel my rage returning. These are things which should have, at the very least, been explained to us ahead of time. Like maybe when we purchased the tickets. Me being completely broke at this point, Amanda paid my departure tax. She had also picked up the bill for the last few souvenirs I'd purchased.

That paid, we proceeded to our gate. I got up after a time to use the bathroom, which had the stupidest doors I have ever seen in my life. I opened the door and found a man using the toilet, excused myself and shut the door and walked away sheepishly. I had first said, if they're single toilet rooms, why don't they have locks on the doors? Because I had figured I was walking into a normal restroom. But no, once I got into one, I found that it was because they had some sort of electric lock which you had to activate by pushing buttons or something. I can't really remember, now, how all that worked, just that it was stupid.

So we're about to board the plane and they introduce our friend, Mr. "I have to randomly search bags because the United States government requires that of us for every plane coming near their airspace." I am holding a bag full of dirty laundry. I do not want the security guard opening my bag full of dirty laundry. As we stood in line, I saw him grab somebody for a random search and I said to Amanda and Alyssa, "Go! Go! GO!!" but quietly, because I didn't want anybody to know that I didn't want to be randomly searched because I did not want the security guard opening my bag full of dirty laundry. We managed to escape him.

Now on board an Air New Zealand 777, just like the one we'd rode over the ocean on the first time. Unfortunately, this time, we did not get window seats. In fact we were stuck right in the middle of the plane, but at least we were all together. The food was spectacular again. Seriously, that's some of the best food I've ever had in my life. On the plane I watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was excessively long and thoroughly boring. I think it would have been better if it had been an hour shorter, it's kind of like the first Star Trek movie that way.

Apparently we flew through some sort of severe storm, the captain asked that the windows all be closed and we felt the plane rocking more vigorously than before. We're still not entirely sure what was going on, but Amanda and I both said that if we'd have had window seats, we'd have left the windows open.

Nearing the United States, an announcement was made that we had some paperwork to fill out before we could be let in. The captain specifically said, do not scribble or cross anything out, they would provide a replacement form if we made mistakes. So what does Alyssa do? She screws up, and then scribbles stuff out and does it again. I told her she had to get a new form. At first she wouldn't listen to me, but eventually she did.

This included a list of all items purchased in New Zealand which we were bringing back to the US. At first this was imposing to me, because I said there was no way I was going to remember everything that I purchased or how much I paid for it. If I was supposed to be saving receipts, they should have told me that beforehand! But seeing the small amount of space they gave for it, I just lumped everything into three broad categories and it totaled out to about $200. The rules, as printed on the back of that sheet, state that everyone is entitled to up to $800 before they have to pay duty on it. Amanda's also came out to between $200-300. Alyssa's came out to $1100. I told her she was going to have to pay duty on that, and asked if she just wanted Amanda or me to claim some of that so that she could get through customs. She said no and changed her estimates on her form, by scribbling them out and writing new ones in. I told her to get a new form and she said no. She said she had already filled it out twice and she was not going to do it again. This was where I threatened to slit her throat and actually meant it. I said, "We are going to get detained in customs. If they go searching through your bags and steal my shit, I am going to slit your throat." And I did mean it. It's such a simple form, there are like ten fields to fill out. If you've already got your numbers, like she did, it takes two minutes. After a heated argument Amanda finally somehow convinced her to do it. Given the opportunity right at that moment, if Amanda had not been sitting between us, I may have actually strangled her.

When we'd gone to New Zealand, we checked out baggage in Chicago and got it back in Christchurch, no problem. On the way back, for some reason, they unchecked all of our luggage in San Francisco, made us haul it across the entire freaking airport, and check it again. They didn't even look at it or anything, they just had us carry it across the airport for no apparent reason.

In customs, the guy read our immigration forms and saw that we were bringing food, so he asked what kind of food. I gave him a complete itemized list: three cans of macaroni and cheese, a bag of uncooked noodles, one jar of cheese sauce, one bottle of pancake mix, two bottles of soda. That is all. He told us to take our luggage over to a scanner across the room. So we hauled all our stuff over to that scanner, waited in a ginormous line, and when we got to the front of it, the guy asked us what we had, and I gave him the same itemized list. Then he said, "oh, you don't need to go through here. This is only for fresh produce and meat."

…

Assholes.

So we hauled our luggage across the great expanse that is San Francisco's International Airport, checked our luggage again, and waited at the gate.

We got stuck with about four rows in between each of us, and all of us exactly in the center of our rows with two people on either side in this American Airlines 777. It was seriously like, "Back to the ghetto with you!" The in-flight movie was Alvin & the Chipmunks. I strapped on my iPod and read Everything's Eventual by Stephen King for most of the flight, including the story "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French," which is about Déjà vu and a plane crash. King's own notes after the story say that he thinks the story is about Hell. Also not the pizza company.

By the time we landed, I had to pee so very, very badly, probably worse than I ever had in my life. I'm far too polite to ask two people to move for me so I can get up to go potty, and I figured that a four-hour flight shouldn't be too bad, right? Eh. The exceptional bumpiness as we taxied across Chicago's airport for over half an hour did not help matters.

We waited for probably half an hour for our luggage to come through the thing. We found Amanda's parents, and we went home. We dropped all of our luggage in a disorganized pile in the middle of our apartment, found out some of the souvenir gifts, and presented them to people at the homecoming/Easter party my mom threw for us at 10:00 at night.

And that's the story of why I hate airports.

pumpkins

Today we were at some kind of store (in New Zealand) and i saw the new Smashing Pumpkins album in the discount bin, right next to Who Let The Dogs Out. i laughed tauntingly.

Day 19: Friday, March 21

We stayed in bed pretty late, using the last of the internet I'd purchased the previous night. We also took full advantage of the fact that we had the same room for two nights and did not need to check out at 10am. Alyssa stayed in bed until 11 at least, I think. Then, we ventured out into Auckland.

Only to find that freaking everything was closed for Good Friday. Why the hell is everything closed for Good Friday?! Whose idea was it to make Good Friday a federal holiday?! It's ridiculous. We walked around downtown, which is a huge shopping district, and found the streets to be largely empty and nothing was open except for convenience stores and a handful of restaurants. We found one place that was open that touted itself to be a tattoo and body piercing place. The front door opened into a staircase (a fairly common setup for businesses in large cities in New Zealand, I've noticed. Even Burger King in Wellington was like that) which we climbed. At the top we found a sparse lobby where there were about eight people and a dog. Why would you have a dog in a tattoo and body piercing shop? Public Enemy had a dog there while I got my eyebrow and first tattoo done in 2005 and it struck me as not good. I don't want to say unsanitary but that is what I'm thinking. Somebody said, how can I help you? and I said that I just wanted to check out eyebrow rings, but I didn't see any there. The dude said that they don't do piercings anymore, just tattoos. So we left. At the bottom of the stairs, we saw a dry erase board which said something to the effect of "Body piercing and ring combo $35" or something. Makes you wonder. Why turn away business, especially on a day when just about nobody has left their homes?

We passed some musical instrument stores and some used record shops that were closed and it made me sad.

Then, we found Real Groovy.

They were open.

Alyssa said she had never seen so many CDs in one place in her entire life. They also had a massive selection of DVDs, music-related clothing, books, many racks of magazines, and other stuff. We were there for four hours while I paged through seemingly endless racks of CDs. NZ$125 later, I had 85 new CDs in my collection. Some of those are 2disc sets so it's actually a little higher than that but I'm not sure exactly. 40 of those cost me only fifty cents. Add in the ones I bought other places on this trip and I'm carting home nearly 100 new CDs. Some of it is stuff I already owned, but they're Australian versions with bonus tracks and such. Then there's the confusing issue of Dubstar. I have Dubstar's album Goodbye at home, or at least I thought I did. I had thought that this was Dubstar's only album. I found one in there with a different title, Disgraceful, that looked to have the same track list as my copy of Goodbye but different artwork and, obviously, title. I grabbed it. Later on I found Dubstar's Goodbye, but it was in a cardboard box rather than a plastic jewel case, so I inspected it, expecting bonus tracks, and instead found that the track listing was completely different than mine at home. So I bought that, too. I could probably yammer on and on about the stuff I bought in there, but nobody wants that except me. Some of these CDs I intend to make gifts of.

We returned to our ramp, which was once again under the Sky City tower, and we discovered that the tower was open, so we went up in it and watched the sun set over Auckland from 220 meters up. The Sky City tower in Auckland is the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, by the way. Auckland's pretty at night from up there.

We stopped at Hell for some dinner and tomorrow's breakfast, and tried like hell to pack all of our shit. There's so much more of it than there was, but somehow, somehow, we did it. It was truly fucking amazing. I cooked a bowl of spaghetti in the microwave, just to use up the sauce and some noodles, since we're fairly certain that transporting unsealed food products is not allowed. We left two cans of macaroni and cheese out for breakfast (yeah, I know) and packed three more cans of food, a plastic jug of instant pancakes, a jar of cheese sauce, and a bag of uncooked elbow noodles. All of this food was purchased in our first few days here. We had intended to cook it over a fire as we camped one night, but apparently the whole damn country prohibits campfires. Also, we only hauled out the tent once in the whole trip, and that was the third day, before we even bought all this food. I realized, just then, our true genius though: we'd bought five cans of food, but we had no can openers, and only two of them (the macaroni) had pull tabs. Yeah. Brilliant.

It is now just past two in the morning. We plan to wake up in about five hours for our final day in New Zealand. I'mma take a poop and go to bed.

I'm ready to go home now.

Day 18: Thursday, March 20

We woke up and drove back into town, stopping first at The Long Black Café for breakfast. It was expensive and shitty. My toast was burnt, my eggs were burnt, my bacon was in these weird little patties that were tough to cut but tasted ok. Alyssa’s pancakes, which I ended up finishing, were burnt and eggy and kind of tastes like suck. Amanda’s French toast was good but small. We all had shakes. Amanda’s was supposed to be vanilla but it tasted like marshmallows.

When we went to buy tickets for the glowworm cave tour, the lady at the desk asked if we were students. I said not here, and she said, "do you have student ID from any college in the world?" so I whipped out my MATC ONEcard and she asked where that was from. I said Wisconsin, and then she got excited and told me all about how she loved the Dells and Noah’s Ark. I get a little fuzzy inside every time somebody here recognizes Wisconsin as, you know, existing. Because some people have never heard of it. We got a damn good discount for being students, and since she loved Wisconsin so much she didn’t even bother Amanda and Alyssa to go find their ONEcards, which they’d left in the van, she just took them at their word.

Our tour guide was a funny guy named Matt. They wouldn’t let us take pictures or video in the glowworm caves, I don’t see why not though really. I can understand no flash photography, probably damaging to the glowworms, but why can’t I bring my camera? Probably just so they can sell their $25 DVD in the gift shop. Amanda bought one. I’ll probably splice footage from it into my vacation video. Today I learned that fireflies are found only in the northern hemisphere. Glowworms are found only in New Zealand and Australia.

That was about all we did today. Then we ended up in Auckland, a journey which included a lot of travel on roads that were like interstates. In Auckland, we at one point found ourselves on a road that was eight lanes wide. Pretty impressive for New Zealand. The four laners were novelty enough, in a country where probably 90% of bridges (and there are a shit ton of bridges) have only one lane. Seriously, each bridge is marked in a way that gives one side right of way all the time and the other side always has to yield. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Auckland looks like Milwaukee but feels like Madison. We parked in a ramp, just to use a payphone, and the rates were astronomical. It was $7 for the first half hour, $14 for a whole hour and after that it just climbed until it reached something like $35 very quickly and tapered off. The way around that was getting your parking validated, which could only be done in certain places and only if you paid for stuff. We really only needed to use a payphone, but ended up eating some expensive ice cream and having a round of drinks just to get that parking validated. That brought our total for an hour and a halfish to five dollars for parking, which is reasonable. I guess it makes sense, that ramp is probably only supposed to be used by people who are patrons of the building above it. Still, when we stuck the ticket in the machine to pay, it said the total would have been $19 if it weren’t validated.

We ended up at the Ascot Star Motel, our main reason for choosing this one, which is relatively out of the way, being that the ad said free Wi-Fi internet. After getting the room for two nights and moving all our junk in (everything, literally everything from the van, since we need to repack for the flight home), I tried to log into their network. It told me I needed a password which I needed from the reception desk. I went to inquire and they told me I had to pay. Apparently, the free internet is only available in the lobby and it’s not Wi-Fi. I think that means false advertising, but since the guy at the desk was old and looked confused and gave me a deal on the internet, I didn’t complain too much. It was supposed to be five dollars an hour, but he gave me the whole night for five dollars. I let it go.

Tomorrow, we adventure in Auckland! This is what I have waited the whole trip to see. I’m excited.

Day 17: Wednesday, March 19

The Cosy Cottage was not very cozy. We all woke up with sore hips. We were only slightly better than when we’d slept in Lucy the previous night.

We didn’t do much. We went to the Hot Springs Beach in the city of Hot Springs Beach. People are really good at naming things here. The idea behind Hot Springs Beach is that there are hot springs under the sand, so people dig themselves holes in the sand and the hot water comes up and they sit in it, like a hot tub, and then the cold waves from the ocean wash over your hot tub and you just kind of relax there. Well, we started digging a hole, it kept collapsing in on us, and we started with a kind of already used hole that was full of cold ocean water. Well, we dug down a foot or so and then I just shoved my arms into the sand as deep as I could, got them all the way to the elbows, and found no hot water. People kept coming by asking if that was hot water we were sitting in, because there were a bunch of people but nobody else digging, maybe just to watch us fools first and see what we came up with. We’d say no, they’d be on their way, we’d be about our digging. The waves from the ocean kept washing into our hole and taking away all our progress, so we built up a wall around the hole tall enough to impede the waves. After maybe twenty minutes’ work on that hole, a big wave came and smashed our wall and flooded the hole. We were all facing the other way when it happened and it came as quite a shock. You should’ve heard Alyssa cry, I thought it was hilarious. We gave up on the hole, deciding that the hot springs were a myth and it probably came about because the first person there dug a hole for some reason, the water came in, and his body heat plus heat from the sun warmed it.

We instead decided just to play in the ocean, which was a lot of fun. I ran quite a ways out from shore and it was still shallow, up to my waist maybe, and as the waves would be coming in which were about as high as my head I’d jump into them and let them throw my lower half out from under me. I felt limber and young again. J slash k. Amanda and Alyssa took to waiting while facing away from the waves, and when the waves came, they’d leap the other way and swim, using the wave to propel them faster than most people are able to swim. Eventually, somebody found the hot springs; they were farther out on the beach and you can really only dig yourself a hot tub while the tide is out. I stuck my foot in a hot spring and felt like it was going to get burned, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sit in one. Amanda probably could, when she sets the temperature on the shower it burns my sensitive skin.

After our noses and eyes were sufficiently filled with salt water and uncomfortable, we drove away, toward the Wautomo Caves to see glowworms. The Wautomo Caves are located in a city called – wait for it – Wautomo Caves. We got there pretty late so we just found a hotel (a little pricier than usual for us, but also a little nicer). Finding a hotel was kind of an adventure. We’d first planned to stay at their holiday park in a cabin, as we typically do, but got there a scant twenty minutes after the park’s office closed. Bastards! Sorry, Tourette’s moment. We stayed in their parking lot a moment, using their lights to look through our Bible (the New Zealand Accommodation Guide we’ve been lugging everywhere for three weeks) to find someplace else that might have an open reception area. While we waited an employee of the park knocked on our window, wanting to know what we were doing there. We explained the situation, he told us all the cabins were rented anyway. At our next stop, the cheapest room available for three people was $140 for the night, but that included free breakfast. We drove out of Wautomo Caves, back to the main highway something like 10km away, and found ourselves in a more reasonable $105 room (still more than the $45ish we’ve been paying, but as stated, it was pretty nice).