Of course, the really long haul was Los Angeles - Fiji, which was supposed to be 10 and a half hours, but turned into 12 and a half because we sat on the tarmac for two hours before taking off.
Fiji is hot and humid and full of extremely expensive duty free items and deep fried food. As you might have guessed, we did not make it out of the airport - but the walk from the plane to the waiting room was outdoors, so I at least experienced a bit of Fiji.
We then flew to Auckland, which is only 2 hours, so that was an easy trip. I watched "Balls of Fury" - high culture indeed!
Susan and I landed at 2 pm, and quickly grabbed the airport bus for the hour long trip into the city. We're staying for the next few nights at the Auckland Central Backpacker's hostel. We met up with our tour group, which is comprised of a bunch of young British girls, a couple of older guys from Edinburgh, an English teacher from Germany, a young couple from England traveling the Pacific for a few months, and some other guys I haven't really talked with yet. We all went for dinner tonight to a pub so we had an opportunity to get to know each other a bit, but the table was so long we ended up just talking with the people nearest us. Not much in common with the British girls - they are the dancing and drinking all night types, and I am old. Luckily Susan and I are in the old lady room with the teacher, so we won't have to deal with drunk giggly girls all the time (hopefully).
Tomorrow the adventure begins as I go canyoning with most of the group for half a day at Piha. I think I'm going to sleep in tomorrow morning - actually, I'm probably going to go to bed soon.
Oh, and books are insanely expensive here - yes, I checked :)
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