Longest Day Ever

3/10/10

We spent the night last night at the Auckland airport because our flight out to Sydney was at 6am and we didn’t want to worry about getting to the airport at 4am. (This makes two nights spent at the Auckland airport, and I have to say that I much prefer Changi.) Accordingly, I woke up at 4:15am to the sound of my alarm, sat up in my sleeping bag liner, rubbed my blurry eyes and saw Kevin wide awake sitting on the chairs across from me, just looking at me.

Z: Did you not sleep?
K: No, I just spent the whole night staring at you.
Z: I know we’re married now, but that’s still creepy.
K: No, I’m just kidding. I slept, but there was so much noise going on that I thought we missed our flight.

But, as Kevin should have remembered from our other night spent in the Auckland airport, it’s quite the happening place at four in the morning.

Having spent only four hours sleeping, we debated the merits of brushing our teeth but then decided against it. We checked into our flight and sat at the McDonald’s while Kevin ate our entire remaining stock of food – two hard-boiled eggs, five or six Ritz crackers and two pieces of bread. I couldn’t stomach the idea of eating anything at that hour, and I marveled at how Kevin had the fortitude to eat all those unappetizing things before five in the morning – especially the Ritz crackers. Ritz crackers are great in their place (like under tuna or cheddar cheese), but they are most definitely not a breakfast food.

We then both slept through the flight to Sydney, waking up only to eat a delicious airplane breakfast of gelatinous egg and some kind of muffin. After a few hours in the Sydney airport sitting next to approximately 1,000 giggling Japanese schoolgirls, we boarded our flight to Buenos Aires, where the guy next to me hogged the empty seat between us and made me very passive-aggressively angry. I imagined all the things I could say to him, from the polite, “Do you mind sitting in your own seat?” to the more abrupt “You over-cologned, seat-hogging, inconsiderate space-taker! I hate you!” But I never said them out loud.

I think I need to learn to become more assertive.

Finally, 22 hours after waking up in Auckland at 4:15am, two flights, three movies and a few naps later, we landed in Buenos Aires at 10:15am with a full day ahead of us. And I have to be honest with you, I thought that it would feel so great to gain that extra 14 hours and be able to see into the future, but now that we’re here in the future I can tell you with confidence that it’s not all that it’s hyped up to be. Turns out time-traveling really tires you out. Who knew?
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Puzzles for Postcards

This Anagram Is on Fire!

Feared Luge Riot
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Picture of the Day: Since we can’t really read the menus, when Kevin saw the word “pollo” (pronounced posho here in Argentina) in a cheap sandwich, he went for it. Hmm.

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Let Me, Let Me Upgrade Ya

3/8/10: Auckland, New Zealand

Sometimes I almost forget that Zhou and I are on our honeymoon. On one hand it feels like we were married years ago while on the other many people think we’re a teenage brother/sister traveling band (our big hit song was clearly “All My Life”). On both hands though there’s one big thing missing from our honeymoon: free upgrades!

Today I definitely did not forget that we are honeymooning.

After cooking ham and cheese melts for lunch in a kitchen that was dirtier than Orlando Pace’s jockstrap after an overtime game (I’m just guessing here, I don’t know this firsthand), we finished a couple games of Scrabble amidst a flurry of flies which we can only assume were big word freaks themselves. Then, in the same clothes that we’d been wearing for the past three days, we headed to the bus stop to catch the cheapest ride we could find back to Auckland.

Then our Nakedbus pulled up in all its glory. (For those of you who are curious, the bus company name in no way refers to the attire required on board.) Based on our past experience, approximately 50 people would cram into this bus and suck all the fresh air out in the first few minutes of the ride. Not today. We climbed aboard to find 12 of the most comfortable-looking recliners where the tiny rigid seats should have been. The driver claimed that the crew was too lazy to change the seats since the bus wasn’t full, but I’m almost positive that the Nakedbus crew in Paihia are all avid readers of nohurrycurry and they saw Zhou and me wandering the streets the day before. It’s amazing how popular this blog has become.

Anyway, the ride itself was actually incredibly uncomfortable as our driver seemed to be trying out to be a stunt driver in the next Jason Statham movie. She zigged and zagged all over the road and I’m pretty sure I saw her drift like an expert Mario Kart driver around one corner. But by the time Zhou and I wanted to throw up as we got off the bus in Auckland, the only thing that mattered to me was our upgrade.

And it wasn’t even the last upgrade of the day. We showed up at our hostel ready to relax in our version of a honeymoon suite: two beds in an eight bed dorm room. However, the manager had overbooked the dorm room, so he sent us down the street to another place. At this point I would have been a bit leery, but I had noticed the “I LUV NHC” bumper sticker on his car so I knew he too was a fan of the blog. Sure enough, we had nothing to worry about. We were escorted into the family’s guesthouse where we were shown a nice large private bedroom complete with decorative pillows on the bed. Turns out we were sharing the entire guesthouse with only one other couple, so we only had to compete with the two of them for the bathroom, kitchen and common area. It was definitely the kind of hostel living I could get used to.

Now if only we can continue our roll and get bumped to first class on our flight to Argentina…
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Picture of the Day: Reminds me of a Dr. Seuss flower.

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Chile Dogs Will Just Have to Wait

3/3/10: Auckland, New Zealand

When we planned our trip, we didn’t make a lot of ground rules. Having no idea what a world trip like this would be like, we decided it would be best to figure things out along the way. However, I do remember one request of Zhou’s: every now and then we had to stay at a nice hotel room instead of the run-down hostels I like.

Yesterday, we stayed in that nice hotel room at the Hotel Grand Chancellor. As it turned out, I think I ended up needing it more. Ever since I began planning this leg of the trip, I have been cutting costs by booking us into dorm rooms. In fact, before last night we’d spent 26 nights in Australia and 19 had been in dorms. Of the remaining seven, two were on buses and one was in the Auckland airport, so we’d only had four nights where we were able to unpack our bags and spread out. This lack of personal space had finally been catching up to me. Zhou, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the fact that she didn’t have to spend too much time alone with me. (Who can blame her?)

Anyway, the point is that I loved every minute of our time at Hotel Grand Chancellor. It was so enjoyable that I voted to stay there as long as LAN would pay for it, rather than going out to explore the most beautiful country in the world for one more week. Notice how I said everything in past tense there? Today we were kicked out of the hotel.

No, they didn’t kick us out because we were too rowdy, or too smelly, or too backpacker-y. I didn’t make the hotel go bankrupt by eating the entire buffet. This morning LAN issued a statement saying they would no longer be paying for the accommodation of travelers waiting on flights to open back up to Santiago. And even though our room was still available tonight, that was as good as kicking us out. (By the way, I was incredibly angry at LAN for ruining our fun, but can you imagine how many travelers all over the world they had been paying for because of an earthquake that I believe was completely out of their control? No wonder airlines never make any money.)

Doing our best impression of backpackers again, we decided that $8/hour for internet at the hotel was too expensive and we wandered the streets trying to find something cheaper. Eventually we struck a deal with another lodge to use their internet all afternoon for $7. We booked – you guessed it – a dorm room in the city (and of course watched the gamecast of the Vandy/Florida game online), much to the delight of Zhou. Me, I felt like I had gotten pecked in the gut by an angry kiwi bird.

The whole reason though for my false hope that we could stay somewhere nice for a while was the earthquake in Chile. And really, I hated even thinking that we were benefiting from all the suffering that is going on there. I’m no expert on earthquakes, but I’ve never heard of anything even close to an 8.8 before. I can’t imagine how bad it must have been to create waves so large that Japan had to warn their coastal population.

It’s never easy to rearrange flights and travel plans during a time when everybody else is doing the exact same thing. Normally people treat cancelled flights as if their lives have been ruined, and in this case we’re pushing all our plans back an entire week and then flying into a completely different city than before. But what if we had planned our wedding two weeks earlier (as we originally wanted to do) and started our trip right after? We might have been taking a bus right through the area that was impacted worst by the earthquake. So I guess in the grand scheme of things, getting stuck in New Zealand for an extra week isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to us. Rather than spending more time writing this blog, perhaps we should go enjoy ourselves.
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Picture of the Day: All Curries $14? That includes you, Zhou!

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In Which We Become Stuck in Auckland

3/2/10: Auckland, New Zealand

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Today should have been our longest day of the trip. Here’s what should have happened:

3/2/2010 6:30am – wake up in Wanaka, walk to the town center
3/2/2010 7:30am – take the bus to Queenstown airport
3/2/2010 11:50am – land in Auckland
3/2/2010 4:40pm – take off for our 14-hour flight to Santiago
3/2/2010 12:10pm – land in Santiago, 4.5 hours before we take off
3/2/2010 10:00pm – hit the hay, ending our 42-hour day

And I was so excited, because think of all the possibilities for a blog post on a day when our flight lands 4.5 hours before it even took off in the first place! It means we would be able to see into the future! I could have told you all sorts of things about what’s going to happen, like the Powerball numbers and what you’re going to eat for dinner. Sadly though, that’s a post for another day. Because though all went as planned until we reached Auckland, when we arrived at the airport, we were greeted by the news that our flight to Santiago had been cancelled. This didn’t come as a huge surprise to us since we knew the Santiago airport still wasn’t operating because of the damage caused by the earthquake, but I have to say that we were still a bit thrown off.

We checked into our hotel, courtesy of LAN and then spent the next five hours on the phone with three different people from two different airlines trying to somehow book ourselves on the next available flight to Santiago or reroute ourselves to get to South America. Out of those five hours I spent on the phone, about three of them were spent on hold. Kevin, being the loving husband that he is, entertained me by starting an impromptu game of Pictionary.

“Jamaican bobsled team! That’s an easy one. But where’s the lucky egg?” I asked. “There wasn’t enough room for the lucky egg,” Kevin replied. I studied his picture and drew a little egg next to one of the team member’s hands. “There!” I said proudly. “Um, nice try.” Kevin said matter-of-factly. “But that’s not Sanka. Sanka’s the brake man.” As if that were the most obvious thing in the world, and how could I be so stupid to not realize that Sanka is the brake man?

That cracked me up, but maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, after speaking to Qantas, who told me to call American, who told me to call Qantas again, we finally got our ticket re-issued with a flight to Buenos Aires on March 10th. This meant that we would have to rearrange our South America travel plans a bit, but it also meant that we now have an extra week in New Zealand. And even though that won’t be too nice on our budget, who am I to complain about spending another week in the most beautiful country on Earth?

[By the way, I'd just like to mention here that the American Airlines person was not very nice to us at all, but Qantas – oh man – they are the kings of airline customer service. They were the nicest people ever, and thanks to them we're now on a Qantas RTW ticket instead of an AA RTW ticket, which is what we should have done in the first place!]

[Also by the way, I felt super awkward when spelling my name for the Qantas people, because I knew had to say “ZED” for “Z,” but it felt like I was lying to say “ZED.” So unfortunately it came out: “Um... ZED? Um... H – A – N – G.” I ended up just sounding like an idiot, as if I wasn't sure how to spell my name in the first place.]

After we got our plane tickets sorted out, we went to eat our complimentary hotel buffet dinner. Kevin had one bowl of soup and three plates of food, and I finished off my dinner with a bowl of fruit and three slices of cake. So even though we didn’t end up having our 42-hour-longest-day-ever, hey, at least we got to eat until we felt sick! Which is always a good way to finish the day.
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Pictures of the Day: Acting like the small children we are in Wanaka.

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