Just thinking about 24+ hours of travel from Flagstaff, AZ to Auckland, NZ is enough to make anyone's bum hurt, just imagine how we felt having actually experienced it! The flights weren't all that bad really, and we DID sleep about 4 hours on the long one from LAX to FIJI. The food on Fiji Airways was pretty bad, so we were glad we packed some snacks of our own. Bobby really wanted me to take a picture of the whitish colored sausage (?) we received as part of our breakfast, which neither of us was brave enough to try. But, fortunately, I spared you the disgust.

Upon arrival in Auckland we were, understandably, pretty stoked. Our rental car company, Apex, picked us up without a hitch. Our rental car was exactly what had been advertised and we think it's roomy enough to even sleep in the back with the seats laid flat if needed! Score. Driving it, however, was another story. Since I have actually experienced riding in a car being driven on the left side of the road by a person driving it from the right side of the car, I nearly insisted on driving us to the Airbnb we had booked for the first few nights. It still wasn't easy! For starters, it was raining. It was also rush hour traffic by the time we hit the road, but to be honest, I think I preferred driving 40km per hour in little spurts to driving the allowed 100 km/hr on the interstate for my first rodeo thank you very much.

Bobby was still in near tears by the time we reached our accommodation, having declared that we had almost lost our lives several times during our 30 minute trip. For my part, I thought I did very well; I only used the windshield wipers in lieu of a turning signal 3 times by my count.

Once we had both taken a much needed shower, we inquired of our host an economical place to eat nearby ("NOT by car!!"). She directed us right across the street to a few different venues. We landed on a place called Citizen Park. We had a damn good poutine with cheese curds and burnt ends, some subpar "Louisiana-style chicken wings" and a couple local pale ales each.

I paid as a peace offering to my still shaken partner. Bless his heart. We hit the hay right around 8pm local time and slept through the night a full 12 hours until 8am the next morning!