Young David

It’s now 5am. The jetlag monster woke me up at 3am, and at 4am, I got fed up with trying to sleep, and decided to do something constructive with my time. Here’s a summary of our first day of kiwification:

Touchdown

After flying from Johannesburg via Dubai, Bangkok and Sydney, we arrived in Auckland at 3:30pm yesterday, exhausted, hungry, and smelly (30 hours in transit will do that to you). After customs and biosecurity checks, we were met by our kiwi friends, Simon and Marie Young. (No blood relation, but we have a lot in common)

The kiwimobile

We’d pre-purchased a Ford Mondeo from an old SA mate, who happened to be leaving Auckland for a few years, shortly before our arrival. The arrangement was such that we even managed to exchange money and keys in South Africa, prior to our departure. We collected the spare key from a postbox belonging to a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, then found the kiwimobile sleeping outside the warehouse (pre-arranged) where it’d been for about a month. (Open air, public access - don’t try that in SA!)

The battery was completely dead, and a few spiders had started redecorating the passenger door.

With Simon’s assistance, we managed to jump-start the car, find the keyhole to open the boot (it’s not obvious!), and figure out the alarm / central locking / stereo system. Today’s trip to Taupo will be a good opportunity to stretch the kiwimobile’s legs, but it’s already obvious that it’s a “sweet ride”.

Pizza on the beach

We took the kiwimobile to Pizza hut, grabbed some pizza, Pepsi, and ice cream, and headed to the closest beach. Having forgotten a sitting-on-device, we went “rustic”, sitting on the beach, munching our pizza, and drinking out of the bottle. (Because I forgot that we’d been given straws). Turns out that Simon, Marie, and ourselves have more in common than we’d initially realized, and we made tentative plans to go camping / tramping in the future.

Sunrise, Sunset

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the sun sets around 9pm here in summer. It’s deceptive though, because it feels like about 5pm.. I’m sure we’ll get used to it, and it’s great that in summer, after a full days work, we’ll still have 2-3 hours of daylight to enjoy outdoors.

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