40 hours of travel

If you have 40 hours of travel ahead of you, why not top it off with starting your day at 3:00am? That’s when my alarm went off on Tuesday, March 26. Mom, Dad, and I got to the Minneapolis airport at 5:00am and checked in for our trip to NEW ZEALAND! New Zealand isn’t a destination one just goes to, usually it’s years in the making. But when my younger brother, Charlie, was accepted to study abroad there last fall, we got to planning.

Cable car ride!

Our flight itinerary included a nearly 11 hour layover in San Francisco, so we treated it as an extra “mini” trip. Luckily, Charlie had a similar layover a month before, so he gave me a heads up about BART (Bay Area Rail Transport) which allowed us to get out of the airport and downtown San Francisco in no time. 

After coming up out of the BART station, we got in line for the historic cable cars. The line was long and the cable cars were slow to let people load (even though several were lined up ready to go), but we eventually did get on the only moving historical monument for the ride to Fisherman’s Wharf. When they talk about the streets of San Francisco being steep, they aren't kidding. When we went downhill, you could occasionally smell burning from the car’s brakes! I was amazed at how the cable cars run on literal manpower. When the car comes into the turnaround, it is on a giant lazy-Susanesque wooden platform. The brakemen then unlock the platform and PUSH the car around so it’s facing the correct direction. They then, again, PUSH the car off the platform. Then one hops onto it and brakes it just in time so it stops at the precise spot to pick up passengers.

Cable car on it's rotating platform.

Doing the tourist thing with the Golden Gate Bridge
in the background.

Once at Fisherman’s Wharf, we walked around, looking for lunch and settled on “The Cafe Crepe” where I enjoyed a strawberry, banana, Nutella crepe. We then wanted to check out the ships on the wharf of the National Historic Maritime Museum. We got partway down the wharf, but then hit a ticket booth where we couldn’t walk any further, so we abandoned that idea.

Instead, we walked the Municipal Pier, with great views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the San Francisco skyline. We ended our “mini trip” with a salted caramel brownie sundae at the Giradelli store, then cable car and BART rides back to the airport.

Ready for 13 hours on a plane!

On our 13 hour Air New Zealand flight, the personal in-flight entertainment included “seat chat”  where you can message another seat on the plane. Sitting next to each other, of course, Dad and I tried it out. The flight took off late once we were already boarded because some cargo (not passenger luggage) didn’t have proper paperwork and they had to unload it, leaving us all curious as to what the contraband was.

I slept for a few one-hour segments on the plane before landing in Auckland, New Zealand where we went through customs and caught our connecting flight. For customs, we scanned our passports instead of someone looking at them. It was fast, but also meant our passports didn't get stamped. What's the point of a passport full of empty pages, if you can't collect stamps from places you've been?!

Dwarf statue from Lord of the Rings
movies in Auckland airport.

New Zealand is very strict with it's bio-security. Being an island, and with a history of imported species destroying their ecosystem, they don't let certain things in such as nuts, fresh fruit, and seeds. I declared that I had snacks with me and they looked them over. Everything was fine except the venison jerky homemade by my Grandma which they confiscated because they couldn't tell where it had been manufactured.

During our four-hour layover, we got to see movie props from Lord of the Rings (filmed in New Zealand) that are on display in the airport. The towering dwarf statues were very impressive. However, the "movie magic" was spoiled a bit when Dad pointed out a chip in one of them, revealing they're made of styrofoam, not stone.

Landing in a field aka the Dunedin airport
(note the farm in the background).

We got on a plane yet again, this time for a much shorter flight to Dunedin (pronounced Dun-Eden), New Zealand, where Charlie is studying. As we descended to Dunedin and I looked out the window I was very confused. We were nearing the ground and would land soon, but there was nothing but fields around. Not even a small town, literally fields, cows, and mountains on one side. The airport is a small airstrip in the middle of farms and fields. At least we wouldn't have to get used to driving on the other side of the road AND navigate a big city!

Charlie met us at our gate (yep, the airport's that small), we picked up our rental car and were off!

I was first to take a turn driving on the left side as we traveled 3.5 hours to the city of Te Anau on the other side of the island. It was extremely stressful at first, but I did pretty good, other than I kept hitting the windshield wipers when I wanted the blinker! The roads were very curvy and hilly! Distance is measured in kilometers and the usual speed limit on highways is 100 kph, though on many curves they have signs suggesting you go 75-85 kph (and you better slow down - it's more than a suggestion, but rather a warning of impending doom if you don't slow down).

Around 7:15pm on Thursday, March 28 - approximately 44 hours since I woke up at 3:00am - we arrived at the Red Tussock Motel in Te Anau. We dropped off our luggage in our comfortable two-bedroom "apartment". The term "motel" often means lower quality accommodations in the United States, but in New Zealand it refers to more like vacation apartments, with kitchens and options of multiple bedrooms. Nothing sketchy here!

We took a stroll down Lakeside Drive to catch the sunset before turning in for the night and the first real sleep in days!

Sunset on Lake Te Anau, the second largest lake in New Zealand  by surface area.

Reunited with Charlie and ready for adventures!