New Zealand Part I

Ken — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:18:05 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I went to New Zealand on a business trip. Amy came along for fun. I think we've mostly recovered from the jet-lag. Mostly.

New Zealand is a beautiful, beautiful country, even in winter. (Apparently, summer is winter in New Zealand. Also, left is right. For the first day or so, I even got up and down confused.) The locals tell us we got lucky when it came to the weather; it was mostly clear (or "fine", as they call it) with temperatures in the 50s (er, 10s).

It's just getting there that's the horrible part. Our trip there spanned thirty hours and four different flights... each way. The flight from San Francisco to Auckland (the third leg of the flight out) was nearly fifteen hours long. And the flight was completely full... full of about 300 Catholic teenagers headed for World Catholic Youth Day in Australia. (At least they weren't rowdy.)