One Day at Little Rock City – 36 Hours of Travel, 8 Glorious Hours of Climbing!

This weekend put the finishing touch on what has been for me an insanely busy month. It began with a week long, amazing bouldering trip to Bishop, CA, followed by two and a half weeks in Washington State for work, and in the closing moments of that adventure a new one was conceived! I was invited by two different friends to join them on a climbing trip to Little Rock City for the weekend (ironically the two people in question knew each other but didn’t realize I knew either of them so it was just one big happy climbing family)! As soon as I was sure work was finalized and we were indeed flying home on Wednesday I began to pull together a plan to get me to Chattanooga on Thursday…yep, fly home from Seattle Wednesday and drive to Tennessee on Thursday!

A quick version of the two day plan goes something like this: after traveling all Wednesday, starting in Richland, WA hung-the-hell-over at 5:00 am, I arrived at Tampa airport at 11:30 pm and by the time I picked up my luggage and made it home it was 12:30 am Thursday. I pulled out all my dirty clothes and threw them in the washing machine while unpacking the things I’d need to take with me in the “morning”. Fell into bed at 1:30 am and was up the next morning at 8:00 to finish my laundry, take a shower, and re-pack my clothes, camping gear, and some food by 11:30 when Eric met me at my house, we packed up the car and were on the road around noon. It just so happened that my friend Eric from Vertical Ventures had nothing going on this weekend and was pretty siked for a southern sandstone climbing adventure himself so on really, really short notice (less than 24 hours) he decided to join the fun! We made it to Chatty by 8:00 pm where we picked up some goodies at Greenlife and then met up with Dan, Margaret and company, who had been lucky enough to have spent the day climbing, for some simply amazing burgers at Urban Stack. Following this feast we all headed to Possum Creek Campground were we set up camp to a chorus of barking dogs in the dark and crashed into our various tents and hammocks as soon as humanly possible!

Friday was a simply phenomenal day of climbing! Good friends, lots of laughs, amazing amount of effort put into some unparalleled climbs, problems sent, fingers shredded and of course plenty of projects to come back to! On a personal high note I sent The Wave (V6), a problem that shut me down in a big way the last time I was at LRC. I’ve got to give a heaping round of thanks to Margaret for the beta that got me up it and to Jenny for brushing those slopey holds for me! Sending Swingers (V4) was another highlight of the day as was making progress with Margaret on Dragon Lady; a frustrating problem if you’re on the shorter side but it’ll go for both of us next time! We climbed until at least 7:00 at which point we were all to varying degrees cold, hungry and sore so we headed to downtown Chatty for dinner at the Terminal Brewhouse…we were well rewarded with some damn tasty beers and again, mouthwatering, gourmet burgers!

Unfortunately, despite Dan’s most earnest attempts to will the weather gods to favor us with no rain it began pouring sometime in the wee hours of the morning Saturday in what turned out to be a regional storm (i.e. nowhere in the southeast was dry) so greatly saddened we were forced to abandon day two of climbing and opted to head on home. However, prior to parting ways it was decided that we should have one more meal together and it had to be………waffles! Nothing else would suffice but waffles. So we packed up wet tents, loaded our wet selves into our wet cars, and rolled on into Chatty once more where we were led a merry and epic chase for the ever elusive waffle. Yes, after driving around downtown, stopping at super crowded restaurants with over an hour wait for breakfast (who knew that breakfast was such a popular pastime in Chattanooga), asking locals for advice, walking around in the pouring rain and splashing though puddles we finally found them, the nefarious waffles, at a diner called Longhorn Restaurant around noon! Here much food and many waffles were consumed as we were entertained watching it being prepared by a little old grandma who could flip, fry, scramble, boil, and sauté with the best of them! We then said a very wet good-bye to Dan, Margaret, Jenny, Eric and Tyler in the parking lot and began our journey back to FL. This trip included severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado and hail warnings, torrential driving rain and gusty winds until we were 90 miles from the FL border at which point Mother Nature relented a bit figuring she had successfully curtailed any further thoughts of climbing this weekend! We arrived at my place around 11:00 pm (poor Eric had another 45 minute drive to get back to Tampa). I don’t think I’ve been so exhausted in a long time, although that single day of climbing and catching up with everyone was worth it! I will admit I spent today recovering though, i.e. laying in a hammock in the warm, sunny, beautiful FL weather by the pool…I need to fill up my severely depleted energy reserves for the next adventure already affectionately known as 2^3, a week with Suzanne, Anne, Audrey and Austin at the beach!

The Hanford Experience

While most people would not, perhaps, include their work as an “adventure” there are elements of UXO field work that I feel could certainly apply. Honestly, I’ve had some crazy stories come out of my time in the field that rival some of my travel stories, a fact I believe anyone who’s worked at a UXO site can attest to!

For this particular job there is the actual nature of the site that makes it somewhat “original” and unique. The Hanford Site, where Roy and I have been working for the past two weeks, is a decommissioned (for the most part) nuclear production center that was originally established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project and was home of the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. To add to its infamy Hanford can lay claim to having developed the plutonium that went into the first nuclear bomb which was dropped over Nagasaki, Japan during WWII. Subsequently the project expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes from which most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal were developed. The manufacturing process has left behind 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste that remains on the site representing two-thirds of the United States high-level waste by volume. Currently the federal government spends $2 billion annually and employs about 11,000 workers on the clean-up effort, despite this Hanford still remains the most contaminated nuclear site within the U.S. In order to work on the site you have to sit though a veritable college curriculum of safety classes covering topics where you learn such things as the difference in the warning sirens you could potentially hear on the site, archaeological training, asbestos avoidance, how to handle potential targeting by foreign spies and terrorists, site specific safety, UXO specific safety, etc, etc, etc….

Given the above, the work Roy and I were out there doing seems the proverbial small potatoes - attempting to clean up UXO (unexploded ordinance) from a formal pistol range along the base of a scared Native American site within the Hanford complex. A typical day meant getting up at the bright and cheerful time of 4:20 am to arrive on site by 6:00 am for the daily safety brief (and stretching, can’t forget the stretching). We’ve spent the last two weeks pushing an EM61 (for those unfamiliar with this instrument it’s a time-domain metal detector) over, around, and through around 61 separate, 100ft x 100ft grids with about 40 pounds of batteries strapped on our backs. This was accomplished typically over varying terrain with the ubiquitous and often completely exasperating sagebrush scattered across the grids in typical Washington weather, cold, rainy, and blustery until 4:00 pm at which point we headed back to our motel (and to be fair this was actually an “easy” site compared to others I’ve been on). Afterward we would download the data, photocopy notes, write up a daily summary of work, charge the heaps of batteries that take up every outlet in your hotel room, head to the gym to lift (first time in years that I’ve seriously lifted weights again and it’s been fun…Roy’s been a great personal coach), then off to grab dinner and crash into bed to repeat the process the following day.

On the weekends things liven up a bit. The first weekend in Richland we stayed local and went out on the town with some of the UXO techs and personnel from the site. We had a great time partying it up at The Pub and Jokers, were many drinks were enjoyed, dancing (dirty and otherwise) took place, and quite a few laughs were shared. We also experienced Jason and Brandon’s combined cooking prowess when we were invited over for a BBQ and movie…the pork chops were spot on and a welcome break from all the restaurant food we’d been eating! The second weekend Roy and I headed west to Seattle where we enjoyed the hospitality of my dear friends Bill and Vanessa. We had a fabulous time hitting up some of Seattle’s plethora of enchanting, delectable, and unique bars and restaurants, climbing at Stone Gardens, eating scrumptious cupcakes (for breakfast nonetheless…at least in Roy’s case…Vanessa and I chose to eat ours at 2:00 am after hours of drinking and if my somewhat fuzzy memory serves me correctly they were scrumptious), seeing old friends and meeting new ones, and participating in a pub crawl that ended in the wee hours of the morning!

Bouldering in Bishop: March 1 – 5, 2011

Five days of bouldering the stunning lines of the Buttermilks, Happys, and Sads has left me in a somewhat bittersweet state of mind. Sweet because the climbing has been, simply put, amazing. Sweet because climbing there moved me along the path on my personal journey to overcome some of my bouldering hurdles/demons…among these, sending some of my tallest (by far) problems to date (and not having a complete melt down mid-way through), working on the mental aspects of my climbing such as not putting limits on what I think I can accomplish (despite this I still had a number of unexpected and very enlightening instances where I initially doubted my ability to work a problem or move but when I actually put effort into it the results were significantly better than expected), as well as the simple joy that comes with climbing a lot of extraordinary rock and sending some classic lines. Bitter because it feels like I was just getting into my climbing groove when I had to leave, because there were still so many incredible boulders I didn’t even get to see, much less get my fingers on, because there were so many projects left unfinished (but that just means I have to come back which, after all, is not a bad thing)!

The climbing in the Buttermilks and Tablelands is radically different but superb in their own unique ways. The Buttermilks are characterized by long, pure, often technical and beta intensive climbs up stand alone quartz monzonite boulders. The Happys and Sads are a jungle gym of rock and boulders – a veritable climber’s playground. The bouldering in the Tablelands tends to be more athletic, bigger holds and bigger moves with varying beta depending on climbing style, height, etc. However, not only is the climbing in Bishop remarkable and varied, but the scenery itself is stunning. The broad vistas afforded from the Buttermilks and the rim of the Tablelands across the breadth of Owens Valley, flanked by the snowcapped Eastern Sierras to the west and White Mountains to the east outlined against a huge blue sky is worth the journey to this majestic land in and of itself.

To add the obligatory hilarity that is a prerequisite for any climbing trip we piled six people (Eric, Jehs, Gus, Patrick, Katy and myself) into one cheap hotel room at the seemingly notorious Thunderbird Motel for five days straight. Sleeping arrangements were interesting – three to one queen sized bed, two in the second bed and me on my sleeping pad and sleeping bag across the floor. Luggage, food, clothes, climbing gear, towels and electronic gadgets strewn across the room in haphazard disarray added to the general chaos. Many trips were made to the delectable and locally famous Erick Schat's Bakery with their 35 cent day old baked goods shelf! As an additional perk we met up with Micah, Stella and Sarah whom we climbed with at some point every day of the trip. Micah served both as our local tour guide, personal climbing coach and spotter extraordinaire! We also met new friends along the way including a group of climbers hailing from Norway; these we met at the local climber’s camp descriptively called “The Pit” one evening on our way to soak in one of the regions many natural hot springs. We ended up having such a splendid time chatting with them that the trip to the hot springs was abandoned and the evening was spent around their camp fire drinking Tecate, passing around a huge bottle of wine, and swapping stories (some among our group consumed substantially more liquid refreshment than the rest of us which led to a fair number of entertaining stories and the obligatory hangover the following day)! In the end it was exceptionally inspiring and rewarding to see everyone climbing so well…to see projects sent, hard lines on-sighted, the effort, blood, sweat and tears everyone put into personal favorite climbs and new friendships forged!

On the last day of the trip I managed to send Fly Boy Arête (V5) on my final attempt! I have to thank Micah for talking us into checking out the Fly Boy boulder in that final hour Jehs and I had left in the Buttermilks, and again for convincing me to have that final go on it before packing up to leave. It was in incredible feeling to walk away with that send in my pocket! Jehs and I then had an enjoyable and leisurely journey back down south to Los Angeles making a stop at Gus and Nancy’s roadside stand along the way for some local honey and various samples of tasty goodies! Thanks to Jehs I was able to enjoy a totally new culinary experience once we reached LA as we dined out at an amazing little vegan restaurant where I sampled vegan chicken wings (delicious…and they even had a little drumstick looking “bone” and all), drunken noodles with vegan chicken, and to finish it off vegan carrot cake! We then had a bit of an adventure returning the rental car and getting back to the hotel but a long soak in the whirlpool bath tub and a gloriously comfortable feather top mattress provided the perfect ending to a wonderful trip!

The Trip West

I'm currently hanging out at an oh-so-fascinating terminal in the Nashville airport waiting out a weather delay. Thus far the trip west has been a classic study in air travel. Let's see, first there was the emergency pit stop for my Mom on the drive to the airport which put me behind, but not so badly as to be unrecoverable, usually. Today, however, just had to be the day that I experienced the worst security lines I've ever seen at Tampa International (the line snaked all the way back to the shuttle doors after zig-zagging like an oversized, coiled up, sleeping python and moved about as fast). The stewardess was making the final boarding call for my flight when the lovely security agent decided MY backpack needed a second look due to my offending (but empty) Nalgene bottle. After she studiously ascertained that my Nalgene was in fact empty, I was allowed to collect my various checked luggage and made a haphazard dash at full speed to the gate trailing personal items in my wake. All the running I've been doing lately must have paid off as I made it before the doors closed! I was then sandwiched between two rather large men as only middle seats were now available but as I was actually on the plane I didn't mind all that much. Just outside of Nashville the weather gods decided to frown on our flight and we were placed in a holding pattern, circling aimlessly round and round for about forty-five minutes until it was deemed "safe" to land. When permission was finally granted we of course passed through the offending storm to fairly substantial turbulence...at which point the little girl in the seat in front of me began throwing up...and continued to do so until we landed. This same beautiful weather has now also delayed my outgoing flight to LAX. Ah...air travel, how I have sooo missed you!

A New Beginning

Three years after my first trip to New Zealand, and my admittedly inadequate attempt at blogging my adventures while there, I'm back at it for round two! Round two of both traveling as well as attempting to write about those travels. I've learned a few things about both endeavors in the years between and sincerely hope I apply those lessons this time around!

Today seems an appropriate juncture to begin the writing process - at this point I'm fully committed to two amazing trips that should provide plenty of fun, excitement, adventure, sordid stories...oh wait, we're supposed to be learning from the first trip...nix the sordid stories, or was that increase them?! First, I will be joining some friends from my adoptive state of Pennsylvania on what promises to be an epic climbing trip to Bishop, California. Second, I'll be headed back to New Zealand with a couple old pals/climbing partners/work mates of mine from Tampa for a grand climbing tour of the South Island, my original traveling partner (and dear friend's) wedding, followed by a whirlwind tour of Australia's east coast! First stop though, Bishop....

Bishop is an area with over 2000 boulder problems on two different rock types, a virtual cornucopia of climbing. The Happys, Sads and Catacombs are part of the Bishop Tuff, a rhyolitic pyroclastic flow that formed during the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of the Long Valley Caldera 750,000 y.a. The bouldering here is characterized by an abundance of finger pockets and crimpy faces as well as gymnastic, juggy overhangs and low traverses with mostly flat landings. The Buttermilks, on the other hand, are massive glacial erratic boulders made of rough quartz monzonite, an intrusive igneous rock. These are notoriously rough on the fingers and TALL…one site describes climbing on them thus “…on many routes you’ll soon find your feet well above a height you’d want to bail at. Don’t leave any foam at home." Anyone who’s bouldered with me knows which type of climbing I prefer! I suppose it is good conditioning for my second trip to New Zealand and the high rocks of Castle Hill! Wow...I'm actually talking about volcanology and glacial erratics - knew I got those degrees for a reason!! (For any geology geeks our there besides me who are actually interested in the regions fascinating geology check out the USGS site: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/lvo/about/history.php).

The First Two Days - January 29th and 30th

I believe I could rightfully call my first few days in New Zealand my walking days. Having declined the ride offered by my hosts to return me to Lantana Hostel, where I would call the next two days home, (the ride left at 8:00 am and I wasn't inclined to get up particularly early after the previous two days of hell and exhaustion). I figured the extra sleep was worth the $1.60 I'd spend to catch the Link bus across town, especially since I now understood that you had to "ring" when you wanted the bus to stop I couldn't possibly go wrong. Unfortunately, I had no idea where to actually catch the bus so instead of doing the sensible thing and asking someone, I decided to set off walking toward the city center sure I'd stumble across a bus stop sooner or later. It was a beautiful day and having arrived downtown without running across a bus stop I figured I'd just continue right on walking. I literally walked from one side of the city to the other, an approximately one and a half hour journey, dragging my luggage in tow (thankfully sans fifty pound backpack as I'd left it at Lantana the night before knowing I'd be returning there). I arrived at my new home around 1:30 pm and discovered that I was not in the all female dorm I had reserved but a mixed dorm of three girls and two guys. It was small and cramped but clean. Not wanting to spend the day sitting around the hostel I decided to go find Auckland's largest climbing gym.

The climbing gym in question happened to be in a suburb of Auckland called Panmure. I looked up directions from the hostel to the gym and discovered it was 12.1 km away. For the second time that day instead of asking someone where I could catch a bus to take me where I needed to go I decided to just set out walking (I do concoct some of the most brilliant plans) with all my climbing gear, a bottle of water, a camera, and the little money I had to my name. Panmure being rather distant from the main city I also had no map of where I was going, just some scribbled directions off the Internet. Twelve point one kilometers turns out to be almost eight miles (also something I didn't bother to look up when I started out) and so I walked, and walked, and walked...until my feet burned with every step (I hadn't even bothered to wear my sneakers, just my floppy little casual shoes) and my calves were two balls of fire - it being very hilly in and around Auckland. Evening was falling and exhaustion had set in when several hours later I realized that somewhere I'd made a wrong turn (imagine that) and finally out of sheer desperation walked into a convenient store, bought a pear (hadn't eaten all day either) and asked where I could catch a bus back to Parnell. The man's eyes grew to the size of tea saucers when I told him I'd just walked there all the way from Parnell and now wished to return promptly...via bus. I'm fairly sure he was muttering about crazy Americans as I walked out clutching my precious pear in one hand and directions to the bus stop in the other! As I waited for my bus to arrive I consumed my pear eating every last bit of white flesh I could find...it's amazing just how little of a pear can be left when you've walked 9 miles on an empty stomach, I think I momentarily considered eating the stem too (I actually almost made it to the gym I discovered later...but tacked on another mile in the wrong direction just to make it that much better of an experience). Unfortunately for me I was so far outside of Auckland proper at this point the bus didn't run to Parnell but dropped me off about two miles away. I trudged the last two miles of my journey home, grabbed some dinner, and collapsed into bed having walked at least fifteen miles that day!

The next morning the lower half of my body was in agony from the previous days exertions and while there was no chance of me sleeping in due to my five roommates and the rest of the hostels occupants moving about I didn't feel particularly motivated to get out of bed. However, I did force myself to get up when Kristin popped her head through the door at about 8:00 am having just arrived from the States. Unlike me she'd had a perfect trip over having slept soundly for nine of her twelve hour direct fright from LA, not being threatened with jail time or given citations for fruit, being told to have an awesome year in New Zealand by her customs officer (having the exact same documentation as me), and her luggage having been shipped on the next flight so she breezed through inspections with promises of having her luggage delivered at the hostel doorstep in a few hours! She was completely rested and ready to go explore Auckland. Little did she know as we set out my current pension for walking...

We walked from the hostel to downtown, took care of Kristin's banking issues, did a little exploring and decided to check out Mt. Eden, the tallest volcano in Auckland with great views of the city and harbor. We actually did catch a bus to the base of the volcano and only then realized we'd be hiking to the top via cow path. It was a bit of a trek up to the summit but nothing too strenuous...if you neglected that Kristin was wearing jeans and a long sleeve black shirt having dressed for the freezing temperatures she left in New York and not the tropical weather and hot sun of the south Pacific or that I was wearing flip-flops and my legs were threatening to seize up with every step due to the previous day's little walk. We eventually made it to the top, Kristin sweating profusely and me limping, and decided to rest and enjoy both the breeze and the 360 degree views the summit afforded us. We also thought a bit of a tan would be a nice addition to the days activities so Kristin rolled up her sleeves and pants and I stretched out beside her in my shorts and tank top. As we rested I perused my travel guide and discovered that not far from where we were was another climbing gym...I was stoked and convinced Kristin to walk by the gym to check it out with me. For the second time in just over 24 hours I found myself on a very long, very hot walk in search of the elusive New Zealand climbing gym. After walking for just about an hour we found it...I was super excited and rushed inside only to discover that I wouldn't be climbing there after all. Instead of the bouldering and top roping routes I expected I was greeted by walls that lit up, walls that consisted of pipes you could climb, a giant slide, a "death defying jump", blindfolded challenges up poles, and a host of other "adventures" for people who don't actually want to climb...Kristin was far more excited than me and seriously thought about paying $10.00 to try out the slide. Having been thwarted yet again in my quest to climb in this country we set out to walk home. After two hours of walking in the blazing sun (and knowing that we were both sporting painful sun burns on all exposed parts of our bodies) Kristin swore she'd never venture to a climbing gym with me again unless vehicular transport was the method of travel! We eventually hobbled into the hostel, stinking, sunburned, hungry and exhausted. We rested up for a little while and took showers to the relief of our three other roommates. Fittingly we topped the day off with a two mile walk to dinner at Wagamamas and back!

The Journey to New Zealand

Let me preface this entry by saying that on my journey here, if it could go wrong it did. I will try to briefly hit the highlights of my more miserable moments...I stress briefly because I could probably go on for pages about them (yes it was that bad…and yes I’ll probably go on for pages). I'll begin with my arrival in Los Angeles at about 8:45 pm, Friday January 25.

I collected my luggage without undue aggravation and proceeded outside to locate the hotel shuttle pick-up area. Upon arrival at said area I was encouraged to see about three different shuttles, albeit for hotels other than mine. My fifty pound backpack strapped on I figured it wouldn't be that long until my shuttle arrived and I could get some much needed food and rest (the sum total of things I'd eaten thus far included a bagel, a handful of trail mix, and a couple bites of crumb cake). When twenty minutes had drug by and no shuttle had appeared I decided to call the hotel and politely inquire as to when it might be showing up. The man at the desk informed me that this particular hotel's shuttle ran only on the hour every hour. I looked at the time on my cell phone - 9:45 - fine, I could wait 15 more minutes (as if I really had a choice). However, I wasn't prepared to wait the 35 minutes it actually took for the shuttle to finally arrive and was more than a little annoyed at having waited out in the cold for over an hour with 50 pounds strapped to my back. Nor was I prepared to deal with the twenty people who filed off the shuttle into the small hotel lobby with all their oversize luggage, kids, and animals. It was a melee of human bodies all tripping over each other, the bags, the kids, cursing and talking loudly in at least three different languages. When it was finally my turn to check in (by now being primed to kill someone) I was given my key and told something like the following, "You room, to get there you go down corridor number one, just through door here, then turn left at next corridor, walk around pool, turn down next corridor to right, then once more left, you see stair, go past first stair to second stair, go up stair then another left, turn down next corridor left again and you find room." I stared blankly back at the man, picked up my room key, and started down corridor number one. Off course I got lost and ended up dragging all 80 pounds of luggage up two different flights of stairs. By the time I actually found my room I was swearing with every step. I opened the door and unceremoniously threw all the bags into a heap on the floor, thought briefly about kicking them a few times for some stress therapy, and decided instead to go try and locate something to eat. I proceeded back out through the labyrinth hotel to Denny's, the only option for dinner at that time of the night and attached to the hotel...somewhere. I ate my French toast dinner all the while being talked to by an older man who wished to regale me with tales of all his life's adventures. I finished dinner and fled back to my room (down nine corridors) and crashed into bed. Little did I realize that this was just the beginning...I awoke the next morning with almost twelve hours to kill before my flight left for Fiji. I had some things I needed to mail so figured I'd take care of that and get a late check-out while I was at it. I was told at the front desk that the late check-out was fine but they had no mailing capabilities...but there was a post office - two and a half miles away! Having nothing better to do I decided to make the trek to the post office and back. I returned from my jaunt with enough time to take a shower and check my e-mail (at $5.00 per 15 minutes) before having to catch the shuttle back to LAX. There the torture began anew...it took three hours to get my bags checked, another 30 minutes to clear security only to discover the terminal had no restaurants (who's ever heard of a terminal without restaurants), so back out to the main airport to eat (having not eaten all day I was a little bit hungry at this point), to discover my first choice of restaurant had nothing I could eat after I'd already ordered a beer, then guzzling the beer and paying for it, to the second restaurant where I finally got to eat and then back through security. At the gate I met a nice girl from Denmark who informed me the flight was actually eleven hours as opposed to the seven I thought it was going to be. Despite its length the flight proved to be uneventful and I even managed to sleep for part of it. We landed in Fiji and the next round of suffering began...

Back at LAX they had not ticketed me through to Auckland (which I thought odd at the time but was too frustrated to question) so when we disembarked in Fiji I was a little confused about what to do. I waited in the line for transit and transfers (because that seemed reasonable to me being what I was supposed to do, transfer to a plane to take me to New Zealand) only to be told my flight didn't leave for seven hours - that I'd have to collect my luggage and that I wouldn’t be able to check it or get ticketed to New Zealand until 11:00 which was four hours away. Shit. What was I going to do for seven hours at the Fiji airport, half of which I'd be tied down by 80 pounds of gear?! As if that wasn’t bad enough I was now going to have to clear Fiji customs and immigration…just so I could go sit in a different part of the airport! This almost proved catastrophic for amongst my carry-on luggage was an innocuous apple I'd purchased for $1.50 at LAX in case I got hungry on the flight. The quarantine officer found the apple when my purse went through the x-ray machine and I got pulled aside and asked to open my purse. Out came the offending apple and the officer said "what's this" I answered "an apple" to which I was told "...this not allowed, you can go jail for this". Go to jail over a $1.50 apple I'd forgotten was in my purse when I was never even going to leave the airport in the first place? You've got to be joking! The officer then whipped out a pen and began writing me a citation for being the owner of an unallowed apple...better than jail I suppose! After the apple incident I spent seven very uncomfortable, hot (for all intents and purposes there was no air conditioning in the airport) hours just sitting and waiting to get the hell out for Fiji. When we finally lifted off and were headed to New Zealand I heaved a huge sigh of relief...which was a bit premature as it turns out.

Upon arrival in New Zealand my luggage was one of the first batches to come out on the belt so I picked it up and headed to customs and immigration. The customs officer called me forward and began scanning my documents - all seemed to be going well until she asked for a copy of my visa. They never sent me one I told her at which time and she informed me that I was supposed to print it off the internet (no where in all my correspondence with New Zealand immigration did I ever read that...in fact being told that all my pertinent information would be in the computer system upon arrival). This answer did not in any way impress the stone faced customs lady who proceeded to lecture me on my duties as a traveler and ask why she should let me in on a visa I could not produce. For the second time that day I began to have visions of going to jail or being deported from the country within 20 minutes of arrival. I thought briefly of asking to be let in on the standard passport stay of three months - until she asked for my return ticket (which of course I didn't have it being an e-ticket) which gave my return date as September 20, 2008...well past the three months allowed for a visit solely on a passport. I handed her my handwritten record of my return ticket information and got a second lecture on why handwritten records were also unacceptable. Luckily for me after the double tongue lashing she told me to print out both documents when I got to the city, stamped my passport and ushered me through! Fairly worked up at this point I proceeded to inspections where I had to go through the “Items to Declare” line as I had both foods (trail mix and chocolate but I wasn’t going to tempt fate a second time after the whole apple incident) and tramping gear i.e. hiking boots and my tent. The food was apparently fine this time but the tent and boots needed to be inspected by hand. This meant I had to unpack my entire backpack, the tent being at the bottom of course. I obligingly handed over the items in question and received my third lecture of the hour – this one about the dangers of hiking in the backcountry. After the lecture I was told they would need to take my tent to a separate room to inspect it for “foreign insects” and that I should proceed through X-ray screening after which I my tent would be returned to me. I repacked my backpack sans tent and walked over to the X-ray screening area only to be told that the poles that were still in my backpack would also need to be inspected. I once more unpacked the backpack, handed over the offending poles, repacked the backpack and walked, completely deflated, through the security doors and officially into New Zealand. I waited despondently until my tent was returned to me…stuffed haphazardly into the tent bag at approximately three times the volume I had handed it to them in. To frustrated to give a damn I pulled the tent out right there in the airport lobby and folded it up into a nice, neat little package and repacked my backpack – for the third time in thirty minutes. By now terrified to venture any further and feeling abjectly miserable I just stood there for about 10 minutes trying to regroup. I figured my next move should be to get some actual New Zealand cash from the ATM so I could pay for the bus ride into Auckland…a simple process I thought I could handle even in my current state of mind. I dragged my luggage over to the ATM, inserted my card, entered my PIN, and waited for the machine to spit out my money. Instead, the machine ate my card, told me it would not give me any money, and suggested I contact my financial institution! Conveniently, the phone number to my financial institution was on the back of the card the machine had just confiscated and it being sometime in the wee hours of the morning where my “financial institution” was located there was little likelihood of me “contacting” them. Now the sole source of money I was depending on was gone with no way of knowing how long it would take for me to actually have access to it again. By some stroke of fortune I had kept a $100 bill on me which I proceeded to change into New Zealand dollars which would allow me actually leave the airport. I somehow found my way to the bus terminal, paid my fare, and stared listlessly out the window having no idea where I was going, when I was supposed to get off, and not being able to summon the energy to actually care. At the next pickup point at the airport a friendly British guy, Simon, sat down next to me and must have picked up on my misery. He cheerfully told me that once in the city I could get off at his stop and he’d walk me to the inner city bus that for $1.60 would drop me off very near the hostel I’d be staying at in Parnell. Simon proved true to his word and walked me directly to the bus stop, carrying half my luggage, and departed with many wishes for a great trip in New Zealand. Despite all his help I still managed to miss my bus stop in Parnell as I didn’t realize you had to “ring” when you wanted the bus to actually stop and let you off.

Upon arrival at the hostel no one was at the office so I picked up the outside phone according to the note on the door and dialed the manager. He eventually picked up he asked if I could wait on the porch as he was just ten minutes up the road. He arrived with his wife and three young daughters in tow about fifteen minutes later and explained apologetically that he’d overbooked the hostel for the evening and there was no room for me. However, I was to be put up at his wife’s bed and breakfast in a room all to myself at no additional fee and would be transported back to the Lantana Hostel the next day. I quickly agreed and he ushered me into the backseat of his car, next to his two daughters and all their toys, and we all proceeded across town to the Freeman’s Bed and Breakfast. Both wife and husband were extremely cordial and I was more than happy to have a room all to myself…even if only for one night. I was shown my room, given a map showing where some local restaurants were, and the wife’s personal phone number in case I got lost, so she could come pick me up! I headed out to acquire some dinner and found a lovely little Thai restaurant where I had a truly delicious curry and a wonderful local New Zealand beer. I also decided I wouldn’t be dining out a great deal as prices were rather on the expensive side, dinner setting me back close to $30.00 (on my credit card as I had very little cash due to reasons explained earlier)! I walked back to the hostel in the dark and collapsed into bed - my hellish journey to New Zealand finally at an end!