Starting the New Zealand experience
We finally landed to Auckland and got out of the plane, and then it hit. The first thing was the massive humidity which is not-existent in Finland, so that brought the smile on my face first. And by that, we came to realise that now we actually are abroad and now the trip actually starts. Eventough the traveling to the destination itself is a really important and good part of the travels, but boy it feels good to get to where you are going to start the actual journey.
We cleared the customs and everything went well. With clearing customs when carrying some baby food from Finland (which they were a bit sensitive with) helped that the customs official, who we were dealing with, happened to be a big fan of Finland and the Moomins (www.moomin.com if you want to see what that is), so that smoothened our way through. We had some Moomin-branded snacks with us for Edvin and that got the official, who was checking our hand luggage, pretty emotional. All our luggage arrived to the destination so we were all set to leave the airport. We had the first accommodation booked not too long drive away, so now it was only to get the car. Well, as I mentioned in the first post (https://www.jasutravels.com/single-post/2018/04/26/Preparing-for-the-dreams-Chapter-1), renting the car was my responsibility. I had decided somewhere along the way (when following my intuition) that it is better to book the car when reaching the destination. See, I have booked a car many times before traveling and when reaching the destination and going to get the car, the actual price tag might have been something completely different (much higher with additional insurances etc) than what was sold online, so I thought that I will rely on my feeling (and luck) that we will get the car after we arrive.
Anu was somewhat surprised to hear that there is no booking for a car when we arrived, no wonder. I told her that I got this and was relying that we would find a car. So, we found a spot in a cafe where Anu could sit with Edvin and daddy would go and fix us a car. I went around at the airport to all the car rental companies and quickly found out that there are no cars available. Damn. Well, I didn’t let that get in the way. So, I went to an info desk and a couple of shops, and collected all the brochures of car rental companies I could find. Then I was looking for a phone to call. Actually, I had to get a local sim card first which I found fast and got it going. But along the process I found out that I could use the public phones to call local numbers for free so I found an old school phone somewhere in the wall and started calling. After a round of phone calls I found a car rental company that had cars available and can provide a child’s safety seat (not all companies do that) and could pick me up from the airport to get the car. The rental place was somewhere 2-3 kilometres away from the airport. Perfect.
It took me probably around 1,5-2 hours altogether from starting the process to coming back to the airport to get Anu and Edvin. And I managed to get a really good deal for the car, which would definitely not have been possible when renting a car online, ever. I would not even have heard about this company before traveling, but found the info at the airport. So, again, going with intuition, getting the car on the spot turned out to be the perfect solution.
When I was doing the car-thing, Anu had her own episode at the airport. She had to go and change the diapers of Edvin after “the big one” and went to the toilet to do it, or course. Well, two things happened. First, there was a cleaning lady complaining big time for washing Edi’s butt at the sink (she thought that Anu should have used only wet wipes to clean the mess, which was a huge one by the way). Then an air dryer went off in the toilet and you know how loud those can be. Edvin had gone hysterical. He had gotten scared of the machine really bad and screamed big time, so all that made the waiting a bit unpleasant. I had a big task to make all the waiting up for them during the upcoming days.
We then got to pack the car and head towards our first accommodation which we had booked for a few first nights. The accommodation was close to Wellsford, along the Port Albert Rd, which was around 2 hours drive towards the north from the Auckland airport. The drive was really nice, getting the first glimpses of the terrain in New Zealand, and getting accustomed to driving the car from the right side, meaning that the driver sits on the right side of the car. I got used to the new perspective pretty fast so didn’t have issues with that. The driver sits on the left side of the car in Finland.
When we got to the accommodation, we got ouselves settled with unpacking our stuff and getting to know the hosts. The accommodation was an extremely good one. We booked it using airbnb and the hosts name was Terry. She lives there with her husband. They have a ranch there where they have chicken and some other animals. The chicken were actually really interesting because they climbed on trees :D Some special breed of chicken. If you want to know more about the hosts, contact me via instagram and I will let you know more details. I will also try to see if I can find a proper link for Terry’s accommodation from airbnb-site to add to the next post.
We had some delightful discussions with Terry and her husband and they filled us in on New Zealand pretty well, so we got really good basic information, especially about the northern part of the northern island, but also around New Zealand. Really nice people. The first night was pretty interesting as we really felt the nature with crickets making their own noise, which was pretty loud, for someone who is not used to that. But we didn’t mind. Edvin was sweating a lot so we made sure he drank a lot of water and ate well. Just outside the accommodation there were palm trees and a really nice countryside mood, so we knew we had reached a paradise.
On next post we will start exploring the northern area of the North island. Stay tuned and click to follow instagram @jasutravels where I will post photos related to this post with additional info, so the story continues there ;)
Thank you for your time and see you soon.
