At O’Hare, I breezed my way through security to my terminal. I have always felt that allowing two or more hours for international travel is a bit overzealous on anything but peak travel days, and the airport seemed to be proving my theory. Actually, I had a pleasant time talking to TSA employees and waiting at my gate for my United flight to LAX to arrive. Boarding was easy, and I got into LAX right on time, about 8pm. This was the end of my easy stroll through airline travel.
The screens indicated TBIT, so I set out to find a map leading me to the unknown location. I walked around three barely occupied terminals without seeing any maps or indication of my destination before I was able to grab the attention of an airline employee walking by to ask for directions. It turned out I needed to head to the Tom Bradley International Terminal which was down some stairs leading to baggage claim.
Except that wasn’t exactly correct. The international terminal was in an entirely separate building, another employee sitting on the steps told me. Actually, it was about a fifteen minute bus ride to the international terminal, said another. I had to ask a taxi driver where the shuttle buses for the international terminal waited. In the end, by the time I arrived for check in, I had thirty minutes left to get to my flight and more than a fair helping of panic, similar to the women at the New Zealand counter when I and two other United passengers arrived asking for the same flight.
Of course, with only thirty minutes left, we were told that we could not make our flight and would have to wait for the next one at 9pm the next day. So, given a coupon for the last remaining hotel in Inglewood, California and an agreement with one of the other misfortunates to share a cab, I headed to my accommodations just past a few strip clubs inside one of LA’s more infamous neighborhoods. Thankfully, I was able to contact Kara and we moved our plans ahead a day without too much trouble, but more than enough disappointment. (As an addendum, hotels in LA cost far too much.)
I ended up spending most of the next morning talking with my fellow misfortunate, a businessman who missed his scheduled meeting in Wellington. He was a wealth of knowledge on New Zealand since he owned a few ventures there and traveled for business regularly. He was a great example of Texas culture (all the best parts) and he left me with a list of things to try on the South Island (mostly food) and several refused offers to buy coffee, breakfast, cab rides, etc. Although we split up at the check in counter because of his higher passenger status, we met again at the gate and shared a bit of small talk before catching the flight. I spent much of my time between talking to family on the phone and reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of my traveling aggravations, but at least it was the worst. I spent the longest leg of my flight over the Pacific next to an Aussie Hippie with incomprehensibly flexible legs and expansive elbows and nearby a desperate mother with a colicky newborn. The mother and her baby were easier to forgive, but they did attract a lot of stewardess attention. I soon became intimately acquainted with most of the stewardess’s butts as they assailed my face while bending over to help with the baby. We arrived on time in Auckland, but with far less time for me to catch my connecting flight to Queenstown than I had originally planned. After waiting for delayed baggage and wading through massive lines of Chinese tourists at customs, I had to run with roughly 40kg of luggage from the international building and through the outdoor parking lots in summer heat and a winter sweater to get to the domestic flights building and through yet another screening of my luggage. I arrived at my gate red in the face and sweating freely with two minutes before last boarding call. A Kiwi man looked me up and down and asked if I ran from Auckland to make the flight. I could only grin for all my huffing.
Matty and Pheng were generous and lively hosts, and they made it easy to feel at ease soon after meeting them. They gave us a tour of their backyard garden, including the hen house, which they use to avoid grocery shopping more than I would have expected. Their tomato plants grew all the way to the ceiling of their greenhouse, so I suppose they are deft hands at growing. We all went out to complete a bit of shopping Kara and I needed to finish before leaving Invercargill, then we headed out to a mostly secret privately-owned garden that Matty and Pheng like to show visitors.
The gardens are about half an hour outside Invercargill and they were spectacular, even with grey skies threatening us with rain. Despite the lateness of the season here, there were blooms everywhere, and the gardens sat on several acres of winding grass pathways with manmade ponds and lakes full of ducks and geese. The most amazing part of the entire experience for me was learning that the gardens were really only a hobby of the landowner, who constantly added to the design and scale of the gardens and only asked for a small coin donation for the public to walk the grounds. Perhaps more amazing still, Matty and Pheng continued to be superiorly generous hosts and practically forced us to take half of a loaf of bakery bread they had purchased on the sly so that we could get on the road and make our next destination without too much rush. It was delicious, and I am thankful to them for showing us a great time.
We made one last stop at Purakaunui falls on our return to Wanaka to pick up Lizzy. Kara was able to take some excellent pictures of light splitting through the branches of the forest. Our return trip was mostly uneventful, but driving in New Zealand is hardly monotonous, and we got a bit lost in the sheep fields before finding our way back to our route only a bit later than we expected.