Musings, considerations … literal appointments. A 30 hour transit FRA to AKL by way of LAX has it all. And we made it, on-time. To Auckland. To our rental car. But we are also out of our time … jet-lagged by a 12 hour shift in timezones. Removed by time, coming back after almost 10 year. On borrowed time, as this is not a “as long as we feel like needing” this time. New and interesting times, and for Number 3 and the Agent of Entropy the first time as well.
New Zealand has us back, and we are so elated to be back here, despite all the exhaution. The kids loved their first days, after getting over some of the trauma of the brutally long transit. Air New Zealand helped … sunshine helped, the beach definitely helped. And even the Peanuts helped a good bit.
Now, three months ahead of us. A lot of time … not enough? Who knows …
Nina: And also an inbetween…not quite a holiday as three out of four of us have to work for a good while. But also not only a work visit as we do get to see people and places we haven’t seen in forever. Or ever.
Luggage ready for New Zeland
dropping off the bags the day before spared a lot of nerves
Our tubular prison for the next 12 hours. Off we go …
The agent takes good care of her Rory on the first flight
Trying not to sleep, after 16 hours awake. 5 more to go, then we have a good start in New Zealand
boing with a cheeky smile, ready to take us through the night
Wow – we look wasted. 30 hours on little sleep does terrible things you
we arrived at 5am, the day had to be filled
stay active stay awake – fighting against jetlag
play with the tuatara
Some fantastic dinner at Frasiers
Rental had to be an EV – Polestar is nice
First beach in NZ
Takapuna Beach explorers Inc.
underneath the white lies the black volcanic sand
baby mussles – between grains of sand
This looks prehistoric, right next to the barnicles
see how tiny the mussles are (black dots)
Hike to work an appetite for lunch
the hole in the middle represents the tree that diverted the lava flow
Auckland from the North Shore
the champion finished a weeks worth of work in one session
A lot of little things to do accumulate when we are travelling. Most of the time, we do not get through all of them in our evening downtime. Or the required facilities are not around (WiFi, Laundries etc). So the little scratches, tears and aches accumulate, until it is time to just not move, rest, watch a movie and get through our homework.
We stayed in our Probbolingo hotel for one more day. They had WiFi, a good warung across the street and bug-free beds (I murdered a lone bedbug, but I feel that we have brought that with us).
We got our mid-term plans for Indonesia to Malaysia shipping and a visit to my dad in Thailand over Christmas / New Year’s sorted out in concept. There is even time to finally do the Timor-Leste stats post. So here we go. Continue reading →
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