On the Road...Again

Well, my friends, here I am again. On the road again. Most of you already know the story of why and of what I am doing this time. For those of you that don’t, here’s a short summary:

My traveling companion-turned-boyfriend, Bjorn, had just left for Sweden when I last wrote. We had a big pow-wow before parting, and agreed that we wanted to stay together, knowing it was slightly insane and totally impractical. That staying together was going to entail a summer’s worth of time apart, not to mention, where would we meet up again? Would he move to the United States? Would I move to Sweden? Was anyone ready to be MOVING to another country? Well, why don’t we just take another trip? we said. Why don’t we go somewhere that is neither your country nor mine, and why don’t we try to go somewhere we can both work and live and try to have some semblance of a normal life? Why don’t we…go to New Zealand?!

I’ve told this story so many times over the past few months. It’s annoying and exhausted, but it’s the truth. It’s still seems slightly insane and totally impractical, but that makes it completely wonderful. The outcome is not known, the path is not clear. It’s a real leap of faith. So, we shall see!

It’s 7:15 AM here on Monday morning. My family and friends in Nashville are an unbelievable 17 hours behind me, which makes it 2:15 PM on Sunday afternoon for them. Is that crazy? It is crazy. This time difference makes me feel like I have traveled to a different planet altogether. It’s so odd to think of your family and wonder what they’re doing and realize that they’re not even living the same DAY as you are.

And the jet lag is real. We arrived on Saturday afternoon around 1 PM after a 28 hour journey. Four hours in the plane from Nashville to LA, four hours in the LA airport, 10 hours in the plane from LA to Fiji, 5 hours in the Fiji airport, and finally 3 hours in the plane from Fiji to Auckland. It sounds like hell, but it was somehow not so bad. But we SKIPPED an entire day in the process! We left Nashville on Thursday evening and arrived in Fiji in the early hours of their Saturday morning.

My body doesn’t know what to do with itself. After we arrived, we fought to stay awake til an early 8 PM, hoping that falling asleep in the evening and waking up in the morning would get us right on schedule. Well, it sort of worked. But I’ve woken up at 3 AM both mornings so far, feeling pretty keyed up and ready to get the day going.

I feel like I am on drugs in the evenings. Starting about 7 PM I just sort of turn off. My mind turns to mush and I feel like I am in a wakeful sleep. Or living a dream. I’m not sure. It’s very bizarre. But the mornings are good. And I know that it will just take a while to get adjusted. That’s just part of it.

Aside from the jet lag issues, I feel like I am just about the luckiest person on the planet. It’s spring here. The loveliest of springs. We were wandering through a park yesterday, and we said to each other at about the same time, this is absurd! The beauty of the flowers and the trees feels surreal. It’s some odd suburban tropical paradise. It’s like Nashville meets Hawaii meets San Francisco (even though I’ve never been to Hawaii or San Francisco – I am certain of this). Bjorn said he felt guilty, getting spring right after summer, and that’s pretty close to what I am feeling. Do I really get to do this? After six months in South America? I feel guilty. But I’m going to get over that quickly, I have a feeling.

We had a typical tourist day yesterday. We climbed up Mt. Eden yesterday morning. It’s more of a hill than a mount, but I guess technically it’s a volcano, with a huge crater at the top. Regardless, it’s a lovely viewing point of the whole city.

Auckland is situated on a bay that leads out to the South Pacific Ocean. The downtown area itself sits right on the bay, and then the suburban areas sprawl out behind it. It’s a fairly small city – only 1 million people – and it feels much more like Nashville than New York or Buenos Aires. Lots of quiet residential areas, beautiful houses with large green lawns, sidewalks, trees, parks. It also feel very cosmopolitan, though. There is a large Asian presence/influence here, as well as the obvious British influence (NZ is a colony), so the downtown area feels like some everyman’s city. Like the quintessential city. It feels very familiar and un-foreign, but it also feels totally removed from the rest of the world somehow. I think I just left the world. I keep saying that to Bjorn. He thinks I am loco.

So we hit Mount Eden yesterday, the Auckland Museum, wandered around the downtown area, sat by the harbor and drank coffee. It was a lovely first day.

We are slowly formulating a “plan”. We are going to hang around the Auckland area this week, do a couple of side trips to the surrounding islands, and go to the City Car Fair on Saturday. Oh boy! That is correct, we are going to buy a car. It’s the only way to travel around here, so we are told (and according to Bjorn, who has been here before). People buy station wagons and camper vans and drive around with mattresses in the backseat. I want to travel around and sleep in my car at night! Sounds so...hippie-ish and fun.

We are then going to drive ourselves down to Wellington, try to find jobs and an apartment, and hang out down there for a couple of months. Then, we will have the whole summer to play. This plan is, as always, subject to change.

So. It’s 8 AM here now. I’m juiced up. We’re taking a ferry out to Rongitoto island, which was created only 600 years ago by a volcano eruption! We’ll do some hiking and then return later this afternoon.

On the road again…thank goodness.