Jason in New Zealand: The First Day!

Well I have arrived in NZ, it was a long flight and a early morning but as I was able to catch a few hours of sleep on the plane I’m not doing too bad. The Flight was initially scheduled to be 14.5 hours long but right off the bat they knocked and hour and a half off that to 13 hours total flight duration, which was nice, and they held pretty close to that as well. So I arrived in Auckland at around 5:15 am on the 22nd of January, Which is 8:15 of the 21st for most of you. By the time I got outside the sky was already starting to brighten and I laid eyes for the first time on Auckland NZ which at the time could have passed for Victoria if it wasn’t for the heat and humidity. I think the striking similarity came more from the high overcast and slight drizzly rain rather than the landscape and foliage, I soon found out from my taxi driver that I had managed to arrive at the tail end of a little tropic storm that was just brushing the island. Oh well, at least it was warm.

One lost taxi driver and a $70 NZ cab fare later I finally arrived to my temporary residence at the Aarangi Beach Drive Motel, which coincidentally is not on beach drive at all. It was now about 6:45am and there was no sign of any life at the motel reception so I lugged my bags up the front steps and tried to make myself as comfortable as I could on the concrete preparing to wait for an hour or so, at least it was warm. Fortunately, my arrival did not go unnoticed, I guess I had made enough noise to wake up the motel manager and he came out to see what was going on his front steps at quarter to seven in the morning. Martin (the manager) was very welcoming considering he had just been woken and greeted me by name showing me quickly to my room before running back to his residence to fully wake up. The motel is nice though I’m on the ground floor with full height glass doors opening right onto the end of the driveway . . . so needless to say I keep the curtains drawn most of the time.

By this time it’s about 7:30 and I am wired so I decide to go for a little walk to get a little more familiar with my surroundings even though it was blowing a gale and raining. I headed straight to the beach, it took about 25 steps (Yes!). After walking the beach for a bit and taking a few pics I went back to the motel to get settled. At about 10:00am I got in touch with the company I would be working with down here (it is the southern hemisphere, so I think down suffices) McMullen and Wing. David Porter (One of the two brothers who own and run the shipyard) picked me up and gave me quick tour of North West Auckland before taking me to the shipyard to get settled into my new office. The rest of the day is pretty much a blur not so much because a lot happened but because I was so tired. Later that evening I attended a little party hosted by the owner of the yacht we designed and is being built here in Auckland, it was pretty fun but it was all I could do to stay awake. After the party and some Burger King I finally arrived back at my home away from home and said good night at about 10:30 lights and clothes still on!