planes, trains and automobiles...

yahooweewooo! we made it safely and we are just loving it!

this is how we got here...

on friday december 3 we hired a cab at 1:00pm and zoomed off to the amtrack station in sacramento,ca.

after arriving in richmond, ca we took bart down to the sfo stop. 

it took us about 4 hours to get from downtown sacramento to sfo.

after getting all checked and passed through security we stopped at the buena vista cafe (in sfo) and had a much deserved guinness and giant stack of sweet potato fries. YUM!

our flight to la promptly departed at 8:15pm and we arrived at 9:45. 

we had to go to the international terminal and back thorough the security (including the NEW backscatter device...SCARY)we made it through in once piece although joh's bag got searched by the NICEST tsa worker-bee ever (who mostly just wanted to talk about cell phones and pretended to actually "search" anything.) whew!

we then found our boarding area, got some super deelishus tea and waited to board our flight that didn't end up leaving until around midnight. 

our 13 hour flight was definitely not as excruciatingly long as we both expected. the qantas in flight entertainment helped quite a bit. initially they had us seated separately (ummm...i don't think so) but when we appealed to the gate agent she found us some seats together. IN THE EXIT ROW!!!! they were fantastic seats. so much foot room it was crazy! practically business class without the extra charges. though i was freezing the entire night. i bundled myself up, popped a few 450mgs of valerian root, put my headphones on and got some airplane zzz....joh of course had no problem falling asleep.

we arrived in auckland at 10:15am sunday december 5 (we are in the future because we crossed the international date line)...this picture is a detail of the gate that greets you when you arrive at the auckland airport.

we passed through customs without any trouble. we did have some missing tasty cheese sticks from the usa that we had to declare, but couldn't find-but they were cool about it. (later we found the cheese sticks safe and sound then nommed them down!) we also brought 7 beers with us from the usa to share with kiwi beer aficianados-they made it safe and sound as well.

 this is our pimpin ride. a toyota corolla...a 1980-something toyota corolla from japan! so far it seems dependable. a2b car rentals gave us these three rules...

1. if you drive it on the beach, don't tell us.

2. when joh noted the "back-country pin stripes" the rental dude said..."I just scribbled all over the whole sheet so if you mess it up more, you will be covered."

3. DON'T FLIP IT!! and everything will be fine.

we LOVE this country already!

we are headed up north today and may or may not have interwebs but as soon as we do we will tell you more about our stay in Auckland and our adventures up North -including the brewpubs (we liked Mac's), our wonderful hosts at the Ascot Parnell B&B, the sweet link bus, Auckland Hospital Operating Rooms, the "spit", banking and grocery shopping adventures. 

Ta ta 4 meow!