New Zealand

Since this will be a travel blog, and since this is my first real post, I figured it most fitting to make my first post about my first real big international journey. I unfortunately don’t have any of my pictures since they are not digital and are locked away in storage, but my aunt was kind enough to provide me with some of hers, so I will show some of those throughout this post.

My Aunt lives in New Zealand, and she was kind enough to invite me there for a few weeks, so I went during the 2 spring break in high school, plus an additional week on both ends, so I was down there for 4 weeks in total. I was only 14 at the time, and while I had done some traveling with my family within the United States, this was my first international experience, and the first big trip that I at least traveled alone for a portion of the journey.

Like any trip, it first involved me getting to the destination. I lived in Jackson Hole, WY, and since it was such a small town, I needed a few connections. I flew from Jackson to Salt Lake City, where I had a layover, then I flew to Los Angeles International. Since the terminal that I had to get to was completely separated from the terminal I flew into, I had to leave and catch a shuttle to the other terminal. Once inside the correct terminal, I had to wait in an office for a few hours. I was under 18, and marked as an unaccompanied minor, which meant that I wasn’t really allowed to wander around by myself, and someone from the airlines was always escorting me to where I needed to go to. Since I was so young and inexperienced, this was very welcome. Once I got into the LAX building though, I was shuttled into an office where I was “watched,” but they really just didn’t want me roaming around (and they weren’t supposed to let me either, so good job I guess). I just remember it being dreadfully boring as I just sat in there for a few hours with nothing to do but watch employees clacking away at their computers. After that long wait, my flight was eventually ready and I boarded the plane. It was a huge plane, I am pretty sure it had a partial second level (so likely an Airbus A380 or Boeing 747), and I was lucky enough to get my own 3 seats next to each other. How great is that? Too great. Since I was an unaccompanied minor, the flight attendant decided to move me next to 2 other younger people for “company.” The 2 others were also flying to New Zealand, but they were coming from the UK, and they had been traveling all day, were tired, and promptly fell asleep. A funny way to start the trip, but that was luckily about the only annoying thing that happened.

My flight landed in Auckland after about 16 or so hours of flying from LAX, which meant that I had been traveling for more than a day at that point, after you took my layovers and now 3 flights into account. I wasn’t quite there yet though. Another short layover and then I flew to Palmerston North, which is where my Aunt was living at the time. I was incredibly relieved to be only 14, unsure that I was even in the right place, but then to see my aunt and one of my cousins at the airport to pick me up.

I stayed at my aunt’s place, and had to get used to things. The jet lag was incredible. Even though I flew to the west, New Zealand is actually 19 hours ahead of my timezone in Wyoming, so that took some getting used to. Since I had spent my whole life getting into the passenger seat of a car on the right side, I kept instinctively going to that seat in my aunt’s car whenever we went somewhere. A few times I even got in the car, only to be greeted with the steering wheel, which obviously wasn’t what I intended. I would then have to shamefully walk around the car and get in the correct side. The other thing that really stands out in my memory is the spiders. The spiders in New Zealand were so big, and they freaked me out. I am told that there are practically no venomous animals in New Zealand, and the spiders I were seeing were harmless, but when their leg-span was about 6” (roughly 15cm), it freaked me out. One time I went to get a coffee cup from the cupboard, and as I was pulling the coffee cup out, I noticed that there was a spider inside the cup. Its body was at the bottom of the cup, and its legs snaked up the sides of the cup with its “feet” sticking out of the top. As soon as I realized what I was holding, I half dropped, half threw the cup on the ground, which of course resulted in it shattering on the floor. My aunt then came down and cleaned up my mess because I was too much of a baby to go near where the spider had been.

After a few days of adjustment, we started traveling around New Zealand a bit, seeing what it had to offer. I can’t quite recall the exact order of things that I saw while traveling, but I arranged them as best as the albums and logical sense would make.

One of the first things we went to was the Ohakune carrot, which is supposed to be the largest model carrot in the world. It was originally made for a TV commercial by a bank, and it was then donated to Ohakune in recognition of how many carrots are grown in the surrounding area. While driving through the area, I remember asking about a sign I saw for a “Gumboot throwing contest.” Apparently, gumboots are what they call “rain boots,” and they have an annual competition on who can throw one the furthest. I thought it was such an odd thing to throw :-D.

We also drove by Mt. Ngauruhoe. That name may not mean much to you, but what about Mt. Doom, from Lord of the Rings? Yes, most scenes in LotR was recorded on the south island, but Mt. Doom is on the north island, where we were. We didn’t have time to ascend it unfortunately, but it was cool to see. I also don’t have a picture handy, but if you have seen LotR, you kind of know what it looks like (or just look up pictures of Mt. Ngauruhoe).

Afterwards, we went to the Huka Falls, which was a brilliantly blue-colored waterfall.

We then saw the Shearer statue in Te Kūiti. Te Kūiti is the sheep shearing capital of the world and home to one of the best sheep shearers to ever live, David Fagan.

The Waitomo Glowworm Caves were really beautiful. There aren’t really pictures from the inside unfortunately, but I think that’s because you weren’t supposed to take photos, or even if you did, they wouldn’t process very well. The cave is filled with glowworms that live on the ceiling of the cave, and as the name implies, they glow. They do this to attract other insects which then stick to their threads that they hang from, in which case they will then be eaten. The worms themselves were glowing intermittently, making it seem like a sparking night sky which truly was breathtaking. I would highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the area.

We then spent some time in Rotorua, which was a really cool city with lots of things to do. One of the first things we did was go on the sky swing, which was on top of the hill that overlooked Rotorua. As you swung out, you were above the part of the hill that was downhill from you, making you even higher off the ground. My memory wanted to say it was right on a cliff, making the distance between the swing and the ground hundreds of feet. But as I looked up a video to refresh my memory, I see that the grade wasn’t that high, although it was still pretty intense.

After that, we went on a really cool go-kart ride down the hill, back to the base. If that wasn’t enough, we proceeded to go zorbing, which is a sport that originated in New Zealand (in Rotorua in fact), but it has spread far and wide due to how amazing it is. Basically, you go up a hill and get inside a giant inflated ball that has another ball on the inside. You then run down the hill as if you were in a human-sized hamster ball. It was a lot of fun, and I think I did it 5 or so times. I think each go was also about $40, so yea.. I spent more of my parents’ money they had given me for the trip than I should have. They put water on the inside of the ball, and if you could manage to stay standing the whole way down, they would give you your money back, but I never managed to stay up the whole time. Whatever, it was a blast, so I have no regrets.

After that, we went to a hot spring that was near Rotorua. The hot spring was cool (in a figurative sense), and it reminded me a lot of Yellowstone, which is near where I grew up. There was a Maori village nearby that we checked out, and we were hoping to see some show that they normally put on like a Haka dance or something, but nothing was really happening in the time-frame that we were there for unfortunately.

I remember that we also went to the beach quickly, and since it was April (which is their fall, since they’re in the southern hemisphere), the water was quite chilly. I think I swam for half an hour at the most in the Pacific before deciding it was too cold.

My Aunt and I then went to Auckland, which is where my cousin that was there to greet me at the airport was living at the time (if I recall correctly). Auckland was a cool city. It was big, impressive, and it was nice to get on a boat and go out into the bay. I remember watching a rugby game while I was in New Zealand, and I believe it was in Auckland that I saw it, and it was particularly special because it was the All Blacks, New Zealand’s national rugby team. I recall it raining on us while we were there, and although my jacket was not a rain jacket and that was my first experience really using it in the rain, I was amazed that the rain just rolled right off of it. It was a fleece, and that isn’t what I would have expected, but my jacket was perfectly dry after the rainstorm finally passed. Not to diminish the game with my amazing jacket, the rugby game was really cool to watch. It was similar to American football, but yet so different. The way they would all make a giant huddle and push against each other, or how they would lift up one member really high to catch the ball were really interesting. I think the most impressive part was that they didn’t wear nearly as much protective gear as football players do. We also went to an aquarium, and then a zoo, where I managed to see an actual kiwi!

Sometime after that, I went to visit my other cousin on the other side of the island in Wellington. My cousin showed me around the city a lot, but he also worked during the day. While I could have checked out the city on my own, I unfortunately ended up spending most of my time without supervision playing video games (I will talk about that more at the end of this post). Otherwise, Wellington was nice, and we went up on top of a hill that looked down to the south island. You could just barely see the south islands, and while my family said I should go there if I got the chance, I never really did because there was enough to see on the north island. One day when I go back to New Zealand, I definitely plan to visit the south island, particularly locations featured in Lord of the Rings.

That was the majority of things that I recall doing in New Zealand, either through my memory or because of the pictures we took. It had taken about the whole 4 weeks to do the previously mentioned things, and it was almost time to go home. Before I went home though, I didn’t want to have brought my Xbox with me in vain. Yes, I had brought my entire Xbox with me (I was really into Halo at the time). It even got pulled out and checked for bombs when I went through security at the airport because it was such an odd item to bring in a suitcase. We hadn’t really plugged it into the TV at all up until the last leg of my journey, and I decided I had to make it worth it. I had also brought the bulky and heavy voltage adapter that I would need (since the USA uses 120v and pretty much everywhere else uses 240v). Both of those made my suitcase quite heavy, and took up a good portion of my available space. Regardless, the voltage adapter wasn’t the only thing I needed. One thing I didn’t plan on was the fact that New Zealand uses PAL and not NTSC like the USA does. So in order to get my Xbox working, we went to the store and bought an NTSC to PAL converter. Finally. We plugged in the Xbox, and Halo was finally working! We played for maybe an hour or so, and that was it. Stupidest thing to bring on a trip. What can I say? I was young and stupid, and too much into video gaming.

On that topic, let me return to what I mentioned before, when I played too much video games while in Wellington. It wasn’t just while I was with my cousin, but also when my aunt went to bed, I would usually stay up on her and my cousin’s computer until the late hours of the night, sometimes even into the morning. I was really into Runescape at the time as well. Runescape is an online RPG that doesn’t actually require you to install anything, you can play it right in your internet browser, which meant that I could easily play it at my aunt’s and my cousin’s houses. They both gave me a bit more freedom to stay up late than my parents normally would, which I woefully abused. I would stay up till the late hours of the night playing games, sometimes until one of them might use the bathroom or something in the middle of the night and catch me still playing and then finally send me to bed.

Despite how great going to another country at such a young age was, I was still young enough to not appreciate the opportunity in its entirety, and I spent many hours trying to play that damn addicting game that I should have spent exploring that amazing country. Again, as I said earlier, I was young and stupid, and I luckily no longer really worry much about gaming while traveling anymore. On another note, I recall how I would also look at adult websites while I was at my cousin’s house in Wellington, since I had the privacy of his bedroom. I went to the wrong websites and got quite a few viruses on his computer. Either I told him that his computer was slow and giving weird popups and stuff, or he noticed it himself. In any case, he asked me if I did anything, and I swore up and down that I only played the game that I was. So… yea, sorry for nuking your computer L!

That was about my entire trip to New Zealand. It was time to go back home, and I had another long series of flights. I recall the flight from Auckland to Los Angeles was also long, and this time, I was given a window seat, how cool is that? Not so cool actually. There were 2 heavier-set people that got the seats next to me, and like my original UK-based travel partners, they fell asleep immediately. Not only did this mean I simultaneously didn’t have seats to law down in and nobody to talk to, but since they were both a bit bigger and had fallen asleep, I was trapped by the window and couldn’t get up to pee for a long time.

I eventually got back home, and when I went to get into the car, I got in on the wrong side of the car. I had finally gotten into the habit of getting into the left side of the car after 4 weeks in New Zealand, and now I was doing it wrong in America. It was a funny experience to be unfamiliar in your own country, but it only took me a week or so before I was back to getting in on the correct side of cars.

And just to wrap it up, and because I am not sure where else to mention it, New Zealand (at least at the time) offers lots of child discounts for people 14 years old and younger. I was just a few months before turning 15, but I was still legally 14, so a lot of the time when we went out, I would ask for that discount. I don’t think a single person believed I was under 14, and I was always pulling out my passport to prove that I should get the discount.

And that was about it, 4 weeks in an awesome country, at a very young age, thanks to a very generous aunt. It was great to visit a country like that at such a young age (even if I focused on games a bit more than I should have). It sparked a travel bug in me though, which has not diminished to this day. I have traveled quite a bit since then, and I plan to travel to so many more places, which is why I decided to create this blog. I also enjoy beer, particularly new ones when I am traveling (I was unfortunately too young to drink beer while there), and that’s the focus of this blog: Backpacking and Beer. I hope you will come back every week or two to see if I have posted anything new!