Kia Ora!!
After a VERY long journey, we have officially made it to Auckland!! Our adventure is finally beginning! I will start with a quick summary of what our long journey involved. First, we drove 1.5 hours to Minneapolis airport. This was actually the scariest part of the whole trip! We got a couple of inches of snow on Tuesday night which made for a slick drive in. The roads were not bad until we got off the interstate to fill up with gas. Luckily, Dan was driving and knows how to handle an out of control sliding jeep. He managed to avoid the car ahead of us and the ditch and luckily no cars were coming because there was definitely no stopping us. Once we got our heart rates back to normal and our gas tank full we made it the rest of the way to the airport.
From there we flew about 3 hours to Houston. Neither of us have ever been to Texas but did not have any time to explore outside the airport.
After a 3 hour lay over it was time to gear up for the long haul. At 8:00 pm Wednesday night we stepped foot into our new home for the next 15.5 hours. Yup, 15.5 hours on an airplane... it was just about as fun as it sounds! Considering everything it actually went quite well. We slept on and off and mostly passed the time with movies and music. We did get two meals which were actually very good!
Now the fun begins! It is 7:00 am on Friday (Thursday just did not exist for us I guess), we easily made it through customs, and we had an entire day to explore Auckland! The only thing weighing us down was the 50 pound backpacks that we each had to carry (and maybe a little jet lag from our not so good night sleep).
Mission number 1: Find our way to our Air BNB using public transportation with no phones or internet to help us out along the way :( Luckily, we found two super helpful bus drivers who got us on the right buses, told us when to get off at the right stops, and helped us find our next bus connnection. It would have been a long day carrying a lot of weight if it weren't for these two wonderful people!
Once we got to the heart of Auckland we stopped for breakfast. I had one of the best chai teas I have ever tasted (maybe just because of my need for caffeine or because of the exhaustion from that large pack behind it). Either way breakfast was great and we were ready to continue! Eventually, we found our way to our second bus and on our way to Birkenhead the suburb we will spend the next two weeks.
One thing we did not realize is that Auckland is built on many, many hills. We had about a mile walk down a very steep hill from the bus stop. All I know is by the end of these two weeks I am going to have some very strong calves! (For now, they are just very sore calves)
Mission number 2: Take a nice long nap!
So far we love Auckland! It is very green everywhere despite being a large city and after the snow and cold of MN, I very much love the lush green! They have some amazing trees, plants, and flowers here! It has been very rainy so far but that has not stopped us from exploring the city. We plan to do some hikes here in Auckland and see what else the city has in store for us! For now, I will leave you with our view from our new home. It sure is a sight to see :)
All our Love,
Kim & Dan
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