And the Journey Begins…

Day 1- 1.14.16
Today is the day we leave…our morning started with a delicious breakfast with our parents at the Original House of Pancakes. Doing what parents do best, they sent us on our way with full tummys and filled our hearts with comfort and love. 

 
“Leaving on a jet plane, I don’t know when ill be back again” was our anthem as we lifted up into the air. Once we landed in Los Angeles Airport we had a 4 hour and 20 minute layover, thank goodness because we hit our first road block or bump in the road. Our next connecting flight on Fiji Airlines denied us access to board our next flight to New Zealand because we did not have an exit ticket leaving the country. We always knew we could run into this problem with booking one-way flight tickets. So we hit the ground running looking at all our options to book a flight ASAP… before our plane left without us! We decided to divide and conquer so we both logged into our SkyScanner App and purchased our exiting flight on Jet Star Airways, phew! In the words of David’s dad, “Son, the best experience is bought experience”- he was right. From now on we will not be making that same mistake again, we will be booking our exit flight prior to entering that country. Not to toot our own horns but we passed our first speed bump with flying colors. We refused to let the pressure get to us, we kept calm and took care of business, rewarding each other with a big high-five as we boarded Fiji Airlines.  

  
“BULA”, we landed in Fiji and we were greeted with smiling faces, island music, sunshine, beautiful blue water and hot sticky air. We seriously contemplated if we wanted to postpone New Zealand and stay on this tropical island paradise instead… : )

   
 After 4 flights, 3 layovers and 29.75 hours of travel time we landed at 1:40pm. During our customs check we learned that declaring our 20 packs of cigarettes/fags would cost us a pretty penny. The officer politely informed us that NZ is aiming to be smoke-free by 2017 and that is why the tax has increased so much. Another lesson learned, we paid the money and carried on. Our first priority was to contact our parents and let them know that we made it safely, we are so thankful for FaceTime and Facebook Audio and video chat!  

 Next, was finding our accommodation for the night. We headed to the information desk and found a private room at the YMCA for $62NZ per night ($40US). We hopped on the purple bus line and walked only a couple blocks before we arrived at the YMCA.  

  We unloaded our bags and walked the town passing by many parks with streams and embraced the cleanliness of the city. We ate dinner and discussed how much easier this flight was on us, we were tired but not delirious. We headed back to our room to get some rest before we pick up our Lucky camper van in the morning.