Voyage (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second of two posts detailing my trip to Auckland. If you haven't read the first part, scroll below this post to read it. This post was written after I arrived in Auckland on Tuesday, July 6th.

Since my Southwest flight was early, I spent a little over four hours in the gate area in LAX. My theater for most of that time was a group of American tourists who took most of the seats surrounding me in the gate. The group was made up of a mother, her two daughters and their husbands. They were going to Auckland to visit a woman who had stayed with the mother as a foreign exchange student some decades ago--it would be the first trip out of the country for most of them. They were a fun group to watch--especially during the frantic repacking and weighing of carry-on luggage after the Qantas lady made an announcement that carry-on weight was limited to 15 lbs. ("The travel agent never told us this!!"). Ironically, after all the fuss, my bag, along with most of those of the other passengers, was never weighed.

I also met a British girl who was traveling to NZ and Australia in a two-month break she had before she began a student teaching assignment in the UK. She was starting in Christchurch, on the South Island, and continuing to Australia later. She also whined to me about how Americans don't know how to queue correctly, which I think is the most stereotypically British complaint about the US, no matter how true it may be.

A quick shot of the midsection of the 747-400. I was sitting in the window four to the right of the second boarding door

The plane pulled up to the gate about an hour before takeoff, and an army of pilots and flight attendants boarded at that time. If you've never seen a 747 in person, it's hard to convey how massive it is. I'm used to dinky little regional jets flying the Baltimore-Boston route--seeing a jet that size reminded me once again how technologically amazing flying is. We queued for a while, then boarded. I had seat 49A, a window seat in the second of four larger sections of seats separated by either galleys or lavatories. As I had predicted earlier in the day, there was no one in the middle seat, which was a great relief. The aisle seat held a mid-fifties woman who was an Auckland native. She went to sleep for most of the flight and we interacted very little, except when I prodded her to get up so I could walk around or use the bathroom.

The flight itself was unlike any I've ever taken in so many ways. For one, the army of flight attendants. Heck, there was even a "Customer Service Manager" on board, a cheeky Australian named Adrian Bond who was capable of producing the most amazing fake smiles I've ever seen, turning from expressionless one moment to a toothy grin in the next as he asked "Hot chocolate or warm mint tea, love?" Of special note was the purser (the lead flight attendant in charge of preparing all the meals), an Asian-Australian in his sixties named Dennis Lam. My friends from home will appreciate how hilarious I found that.

After a lot of fussing about and taxiing, we took off around 12:20am PST. Movement is nearly imperceptible when you're flying in a 747--you definitely don't feel like you're aboard an aircraft. We climbed for no longer than 90 seconds before the Fasten Seatbelt sign came off (it never turned back on again at any point in the 12 hour flight), and people in middle seats scurried about to find a better seating assignment elsewhere.

This looked slightly better before I started tearing into it.

Also, Schweppes Australian ginger ale is darker, more gingery, and thus better than its American counterpart.

Qantas provided each seat with a pillow, fleece blanket, "comfort kit" of a eyemask, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a broken headset (at least mine was, the audio only came out of the right earpiece). I tried to get comfortable and get some sleep, but dinner service started pretty soon after takeoff. Since I had requested a special vegetarian meal, I actually got my food about 20 minutes before everyone else. The meal, which consisted of penne with cheese and marinara sauce, a roll, and a salad with lettuce, tomato, balsamic vinegarette, and some sort of buttery-tasting cheese, certainly wasn't inspired, but it hit the spot. I had been satiating my hunger with Ritz Chips and little snacks all day, it was nice to get a "full" meal. After everyone was served, the flight attendants came around offering tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and "hot mint tea," and then the cabin lights were turned off.

Transcontinental flights are a feat of endurance and stamina that I will fully admit I was not ready for. I'm a light sleeper anyway, and even though I was exhausted, I wasn't able to let myself easily fall asleep in that stiff chair. It was really cold in the cabin (hence the fleece blanket), and I started to envy the woman next to me who simply put on the eyeshade and conked out. I probably got a cumulative total of 3 hours of non-restful "sleep" over the 12 hour flight, most of it in increments of 15 minutes or so.

It was perpetually dark outside, and the concept of time started to slowly congeal. The flight attendants would walk by at regular intervals wearing halogen LED lapel pins and presenting cups of apple juice or pitchers of water as if they were offering them up for bids on the Price is Right, before disappearing into the bathroom to pour it all down the sink. I popped out my iPod at 3:30 am PST (or, if you like, 6:30 EST, or 7:30 PM NZST) and listened to some music, which didn't help me fall asleep either. After waking up from a micronap at 7:00, I decided "to heck with sleep" and stayed awake for the duration.

The rest of the flight was an exercise in patience. I sat, listened to music, looked out the window, sat, watched "Lost in Translation" in mono sound out of the right earpiece only, and waited some more.

Let's pretend this is blurry because I was being artistic, and not because I missed the shot...

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of darnkess, some lighter blue notes started to punctuate the night sky. The sun was starting to rise over Aoteroa, and it was finally time to land. Amazingly, after 12 hours of flight time and a half-an-hour late start, we landed at precisely the scheduled time on my itinerary.

I couldn't stop grinning as we were landing. This was the real New Zealand, not some vague idea or postcard. I had arrived. I had made it.

I passed through immigration and biosecurity without a hitch, and met up with Maarten, my contact from Univ. of Auckland, in the arrivals hall. His colleague, a fellow South African named Jung, took me and two other students through the rainy morning to our residence halls, from which I am typing this now. This was really only the start of my first day in Auckland, but I'll save those details for another post. Now, I'll just leave you with the nondescript view out my dorm room window, with promises of prettier pictures to come.

Certainly not Auckland's best view