Ok- so it wasn't quite 80 hours, but it was long. After over 20 hours of travel, Mrs. Paddler and I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand. It is great here- more on Auckland in later posts. It is still amazing to me that we were in New York less than a day ago. An Airbus 230 sure can make the world feel small. We were greeted by the Penney's at the airport- and it is so good to see them again. We went back to their place, only blocks from the Auckland waterfront. After, we went for a long walk and stopped for coffee to stay awake. It is our goal to stay up today as long as possible to get ourselves on kiwi time. So far so good. It feels great to be in New Zealand.
On a side note, yesterday, just before we were leaving, we saw on the news that a commuter plane and tourist helicopter collided and fell into Hoboken's waterfront. Tragically, nine people died. Debris fell along Frank Sinatra Drive. On most Saturdays I would have been paddling where the aircrafts crashed. Even more strange, the news of the accident arrived in NZ before we did, the pilot of the helicopter was a Kiwi. Small world indeed.
