Mari-Wanaka

8:54 PM 2 Comments

I stole this pic because I haven't taken many yet. Going paddling on the lake tomorrow so many pics are coming!

You know how they say that it is more about the journey than the destination? When referring to the traveling experience from the United States to New Zealand, that is a lie. The journey here was HORRIBLE, and I don't think I'm ever going to leave based on my experience getting here alone. I'd like to start this by apologizing to my older brother, Dustin, who is moving into our apartment in a couple of days and will arrive to a house that looks like people just ran out of it with their stuff still everywhere, because that is exactly what happened.

We learned the morning of our departure via Air New Zealand that, because we booked our trip from Denver to LA seperate from our trip from LA to Auckland, we would have to pick up our bags in LAX ourselves then run them across the airport and check them in with Air New Zealand on our own. Not to mention, the ANZ bag drop closes 75 minutes to departure, and we had a total of two hours from touchdown to takeoff. Talk about pressure. Non refundable trip around the world, with about 45 minutes to accomplish LAX bag pickup, security, and international check-in. I know mercury is in retrograde, so it is a MIRACLE that we made it to our NZ flight. New Zealand immigration also messed up both Dan and I's birthdays on our visas, so we almost got flagged for customs secondary security check and not even allowed onto the NZ flight. Good times.


Our 13 hour flight from LA to Auckland could have been fine. I was pumped full of Xanax, we had backpacks full of shooters, and ANZ's airplanes are fully equipped with awesome in-flight entertainment screens. I was the proud owner of a new neck pillow, and I was ready to conquer my aviophobia. Xanax basically makes me feel like this: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

I was doing fine for about an hour, but then there were the clouds...


Non-stop turbulence on a 13 hour flight was absolutely horrible. All we wanted to do was sleep and there was no way it was going to happen for us. When we finally landed in Auckland we were happy to be in New Zealand, but seriously so angry that we had one more flight to get on that we couldn't really even enjoy that fleeting moment of "aha, we've made it." We also had to transfer all of our luggage ourselves again for the 3rd flight, at 5 in the morning, right after dealing with customs. Ugh.

So yeah, blah, blah, blah. Jetlag. Blah. Anyway, the traveling part just really sucked.

When we finally got to Queenstown, our friend Cory and his lovely friend Emmy picked us up. We had planned on living there actually, but he quickly whipped us through Queenstown...pointing out all of the in-your-face tourism advertisements everywhere, and talking up the town he lived in, Wanaka. The best way I can describe their relation is that Queenstown and Wanaka are a lot like Aspen and Snowmass, just on a much larger scale. Wanaka is about an hour from Queenstown. It's sort of the "down valley" of the area. Once we got to Wanaka, we reevaluated our game plan, and decided maybe we should just settle here too. Things have gone strangely well since arriving two days ago. We stayed at a little cabin in the Lakeview Holiday Park the first night. The next day we picked up a copy of the local classified magazine and set out to grab a beer and take a look at it. I found an ad for a "two room sleep-off" for rent and gave the lady a call. Apparently a sleep off is like a guest house. We were able to score the little place and we moved in yesterday! Everyone says it is usually really hard to find a place to live here, so we took our quick success as another sign we were doing the right thing. I also got a job at a really cool little art gallery/coffee shop/wine bar called Lot 3, and I start Monday!

New Zealand is funny in that it is really a lot like the U.S, and the South Island is specifically a lot like Colorado. However, there are so many little quirks that make it really different. Let's start with the people...Kiwis are amazing. They are the friendliest, most welcoming kind of people I've ever met. Our 'flat mates,' Faleah and Hugh, are two of the nicest humans on Earth. They're like "take our kayaks, borrow the car, take my bike..." all of the time. I'm amazed at how well people share here. Faleah (who will probably read this and make fun of me for mispelling her name) has a 5 year old daughter, whom I briefly met yesterday. She was wearing red flannel pajamas and the first words out of her mouth (in reference to her attire) were "I spewed all over myself on the drive into Wanaka," as she was giggling and making snow angels on the carpet. Kids are weird, but kids with accents sound so proper, even when they are talking about puking on themselves.

Cory was kind enough to immediately introduce us to all of his friends, which are mostly a cast of characters from England. The girls all love drinking wine with me and the guys are super awesome to Dan...so it already feels like we kind of a have a crew, and we've only been here 3 days. We're having people over for dinner tonight to thank them for their kindness and generosity the last few days.

I guess I should probably talk about coffee as I sit in the Urban Grind typing this. Kiwis do coffee way better than we could ever dream of in the states. I'm laughing at the idea of Starbucks introducing the "flat white," which is literally the best coffee drink I've ever had in my life. Kiwis and Australians argue over who actually came up with it, but Starbucks trying to make them is a total joke. Coffee is an art form and a serious business here. Being a well-trained barista is more valuable than being a well-trained bartender. What New Zealand doesn't seem to do so well is food.... ugh. Day 3 and I'm already so sick of "chips" that I would be ok not seeing another potato for a long time. They also don't have ketchup to go with these "chips." It's called 'tomato sauce,' and its basically just ketchup with a lot more sugar in it. It's disgusting. Oh God, and I also tried Vegemite. Vegemite is a real thing and it is absolutely horrible. It tastes like a mix of fish sauce and soy sauce concentrate, but is the consistency of a really thick molasses. I highly recommend never eating it. Fruits and vegetables are really expensive here, so most meals seem to be meat and potatoes. We're at the coffee shop drinking smoothies right now because we woke up feeling like we needed something healthy in our systems, and this is about the only way to get it. They do bake a lot of good bread here though, so there's that. Good luck being gluten-free in NZ.

I just experienced my first real grocery shopping trip. The super market here is called New World, and is set up pretty much the same way as the states...except they put frozen dog food in the same section as frozen meat, and if you're not careful you may end up with dog food burgers instead of ground beef later. Don't go grocery shopping drunk or tired. I about had a meltdown trying to order sliced lunch meat in grams instead of pounds. I thought I ordered 200g of sliced beef, but she gave me 2 slices. Then I ordered 400g of sliced ham, and she gave me a reasonable amount of ham. I don't understand. I gave up. The deli doesn't offer sliced cheese, so we had to go find that elsewhere in the store. When I asked a store employee where sliced cheese was, she pointed right at American processed singles. There are hardly any Americans here and she probably really thought that is what I wanted. 2 laps around the store later, I discovered actual sliced cheese. The struggle was real. The grocery store really made me finally feel like I was in a foreign country. Also, there is no sriracha anywhere, and that is a problem. They have some other version of it, and I bought it, but I'm sure it won't be the same. I'm going to just make some penne pasta tonight because anything more complicated was going to give me a heart attack after that grocery trip.

All in all, I couldn't have asked for anything to work out better here the past few days. We were so lucky to be sleeping in a bed of our own our second night here. I seriously have everything I could ever want in life right now...an amazing man, a little bungalow in NZ, new friends, a new job, and endless adventure out my front door. We are going to stick around Wanaka until the end of the season, then embark on our campervan journey around the rest of the country.

I could go on forever about the weird things I've noticed here the past few days, but I'm starting out the window of my new little house watching the prayer flags blowing in the wind with the mountains in the background. I have an absolute feeling of bliss washing over me.  Dan and I made a pact a year ago that we would move here, and here we are a year later. I am staring at a New Zealand mountain range from my living room, with my neighbor's laughing outside and chatting in their kiwi accents. We are here.
We LIVE here.

Woah.




Life is short. Time is fleeting. Do what makes you happy NOW, and don't ever apologize for it.