Details, details, details

For some reason, power outlets around the world are not compatible.  So, when you travel out of the US, you need to have the right converters.  We have two sets of plugs with us, plus one converter that has multiple functions.  In Fiji, and again here in New Zealand, the plugs looks like this:

They also have an off/on switch on each plug.  Off:

And then in the On position:

It makes one wonder why there is so many different power configurations.  Does it go back to the Bible, like with the Tower of Babel and the whole language thing, sort of a Tower of Power Thing?  Annie likes the idea of turning off the power outlets when they are not in use, and plans to make a fortune from that when we get back to the states, using her high-level connections in the energy industry.

Another possible business opportunity while we're on the road is importing NBA jerseys and hats to New Zealand.  I've been completely surprised by how many people we've seen sporting a Celtics hat or a Lakers jersey on the streets of Auckland.  

Yes, it's a guy holding a rugby ball wearing a Kobe Bryant Jersey.  We've also seen some Cowboys NFL jerseys, along with the Raiders and Dolphins.  Thankfully, no terrible towels so far. I did spot one guy wearing a Reds hat, and I stopped him and told him we were from Cincinnati, but that didn't seem to resonate.  In fact, so far, no one we've spoken to about our hometown has any idea where it is.  Using Chicago as a reference point has helped, but Cincinnati appears to be safe as a well-kept secret here in New Zealand.  

While the people of Auckland seem to at least appreciate the sartorial splendor of NBA, MLB and NFL clothing, they appear to have absolutely no interest in the outcome of contests involving teams of those leagues.  We discovered that first-hand as we headed for a restaurant that we had scouted out earlier in the week, that said they might be showing NFL football mid-morning on Monday, as we hoped to catch the Bengals/Ravens game.  When I got up Monday morning, I got on a website that carries sporting events from around the world, and I watched the Jets go down to defeat to the Dolphins, the first in a series of dominoes that needed to tumble for the Bengals to make they playoffs should they lose to the Ravens.  The Jets/Dolphins feed was smooth and clear, so we tried to watch the beginning of the Bengals game online, only to find that the feed for that game was choppy and intermittent.  It was frustrating to see the play called, the snap taken, a pass thrown into the air downfield and have the picture freeze, leaving the outcome of that play in suspended animation.  At the two minute-warning of the first half, we hit the streets again and made the fifteen-minute walk to the spot we had found earlier in our treks around town.  Once we got there and grabbed a booth where they could give us an individual TV feed, we were told that they would be showing the Packers/Bears game at 2:20pm local time.  I kindly informed the server that unless they had a time machine, they would actually be showing the Giants/Cowboys game later in the day since the Green Bay Chicago game was on the previous Monday or Sunday.  (I'm starting to lose track of what day of the week it is, which isn't so bad actually.) So for the time being, they only thing we could do was watch the ESPN feed of a college basketball game, since ESPN was the only US sports network they could get.  

I kind of suspected that would be the case, but they did have free wi-fi, so we could at least try to follow the action online, even if that meant just watching the Yahoo updates refresh.

While they Bengals came up just short, the other playoff dominoes fell, as the Broncos and Raiders lost sending Andy Dalton and the gang to Houston for a re-match with the Texans this coming weekend.

The outcome put a little spring into my step as we headed for the Sky Tower.  As committed "travelers, not tourists" we try to avoid such locations, but it's the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, so we had to check it out.  The view from the top observation deck was impressive, stretching out 82 kilometers in every direction.

One thing we didn't do was spend the $255 NZ  per person to take the bungy jump off one of the observation decks.  The price didn't stop others from taking the plunge, financially and literally.  When they take the step off the deck, the supporting cord momentarily stops them at eye level at an observation deck one level lower, before taking the rest of the jump.

The Sky Tower also features a cafe/bar, but with a glass of wine costing $13.50 a glass, we got back on the lift, and descended back to street level.  

One of the interesting features of the streets of Auckland is the crosswalk system at intersections downtown.  Instead of just crossing going to the left or right, in some cases, you can cross diagonally as seen here from the Sky Tower:

Okay, it's kind of hard to see from that, but it's an interesting scene, one of many we've enjoyed so far, and look forward to seeing as we continue our adventure.

So this is the New Year...and I don't feel any different

The words in the title of this post are from the Death Cab For Cutie song New Year, and it's one of my favorite tunes of theirs.  But this year, I do feel different.  2012 will be unlike any other year in my life and the lives of Annie and the kids.  We spent the final day of 2011 exploring the streets of Auckland, searching for a good vantage point to watch the fireworks that evening and looking for gifts the kids could get each other for Christmas since the shopping was sparse in the Fijian village we stayed in for the first two weeks of our trip, Savusavu.  Our hunger had us searching first for a place to eat, but with the holidays on, many places we wanted to go to were closed.  Along the way, Ben was thrilled to see an Audi R8 stopped at a stop light, which he excitedly pointed out to the rest of us.

The driver definitely knew that he had caught our attention, as when the light turned green, he hit the gas and the engine roared it's throaty growl and sped away, to the next stop light.  Before leaving our apartment, I had looked up an Italian place called La Porchetta that appeared promising and fortunately, shortly after spotting the Audi near the Sky Tower, we turned the corner and the restaurant was indeed open.  The thin crust pizza was very tasty, passing Marley's sometimes challenging standards. 

After a successful stop for lunch, it was back out on to the streets of Auckland, hitting some shops as we tried to find something that Ben and Marley could give each other.  Marley is fairly easy to shop for, and Ben found something pretty quickly for her, while Marley and I struggled to find the appropriate purchase for him.  The search continued, and during the course of the search, we came across a travel ad that caught the eyes of these world travelers.  We'll be looking for a surgeon to remove the extra set of legs emerging from Marley's skull.

As midnight approached in Auckland, we hit the streets about forty five minutes before the fireworks were scheduled to go off.  The preceding hours had seen some low clouds obscure the top of the Sky Tower, raising concern about how much of the fireworks display we would be able to see. Bad weather at the southern end of the North Island forced the cancellation of fireworks in Wellington, but the show went on in Auckland.  The flow of the crowds took us down Queen Street to the intersection with Victoria, where the streets were blocked off and filled with people as the anticipation grew.

The clock struck twelve and the fireworks show began, with the appropriate oohs and aahs from the crowd, which considering its' size and the late hour, was well-behaved.  

I was getting some natural sound (natso in broadcasting lingo) for my pieces for ABC and after obtaining enough of that, I headed back to the apartment with Ben in tow as he wanted to escape the throngs.  Annie and Marley remained behind for the rest of what turned out to be a short, and somewhat disappointing show, especially compared to what we see each Labor Day in our hometown of Cincinnati.

I got back to our apartment and edited down some of the sound I had gotten and filed some of it with ABC from the Auckland bureau.

ABC didn't use as much of my filings as I had hoped, but some of that had to do with the tight time restrictions and the fact that the story repeated itself around the world as the new year marched to the west.  But I have established a relationship with them, and hope to be able to file more stories as our journey continues.

Later in the Death Cab song New Year, Ben Gibbard sings: "I wish the world was flat like the old days, Then I could travel just by folding a map.  No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways.  There'd be no distance that could hold us back."  I guess that's my hope for 2012 for me and my family as we continue our trek, that no distance is so large that we are unable to reach our desired destinations, and that the distances we are from friends and family aren't too great from us feeling close to them and keeping in touch.

An update from ABC's Auckland bureau

After two weeks in Fiji of two channels of TV, we've enjoyed our first day or so in Auckland of checking out the local television offerings here, both at our apartment at at some of the restaurants and bars.  Our place is located about five blocks from the main street through downtown Auckland, Queen Street.

It was raining pretty steadily when we decided to leave our place, and fortunately Annie had us all outfitted with blue Coleman rain ponchos, which we donned and hit the streets looking like losers at an audition for the Blue Man Group.  Auckland is a very modern city and extremely clean for a city of its' size.  Many US-based fast food restaurants have a visible presence here, we've seen probably a half-dozen McDonalds and at least that many Subway restaurants, with the occasional Wendys and Burger King as well.  The city has a diverse population with a strong Asian element.  Hunger led us to a restaurant called O'Carroll's just off Queen Street.

It great food, as Annie and I split a duck sandwich, while Ben got some tasty chicken wings and Marley downed some bruschetta and we devoured some potato wedges with bacon and sour cream.  Luckily we're doing a good deal of walking, otherwise with the way we've been eating, we might qualify for the next family edition of Biggest Loser.  Cricket is on the TV almost constantly, which I still don't quite understand, but hopefully by the time we leave Australia at the end of February, I'll be able to host a cricket team's pre-game program.  We were also scouting out places that might have the Bengals/Ravens game available, which will be around lunchtime here on Monday.  I went into a couple of spots that looked promising and found one that has individual TVs in some of the booths, and happened to be showing a Notre Dame football game in one of them.  Another inquiry led us to chatting with a Cleveland native who's in the military and living in Korea.  He was traveling alone and looking to hit a casino.  He was wearing a Sigur Ros shirt, so we chatted about music some before we decided to head for the iconic Sky Tower, just to check it out.

It's the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere at 1,076 feet tall, and has a variety of shops and restaurants in Sky City at it's base.  It also has a casino where our acquaintance from Cleveland was probably going to wind up.  On our walk back to our place, we walked by an Occupy Auckland encampment, which I figured would give me a good chance to do a test interview as I will be filing some reports on this trip for ABC Radio News.

I talked with one of the three guys there, he was named Alex Hardiman, a 23-year old from Wellington who had come to Auckland to join the cause.  In radio, sound is everything and I always loved using interviews with people with accents, and Alex filled that requirement.  I edited down the sound I got, put it in a package on the laptop back at our apartment and filed it with ABC, and will be filing more tonight after the arrival of 2012.

Hopefully the weather will co-operate for the fireworks show here in a few hours, as the stormy weather in Wellington has canceled the celebration there.  We've got some low clouds that will hopefully clear out in time for us to see the acclaimed show from the Sky Tower.  We'll let you know how it turns out and hopefully have some nice photos to share.

And now for something completely different....

Our transition day from Fiji to New Zealand began at 5am on Thursday the 29th.  We were originally booked on an 11:30am flight out of Savusavu to Nadi then to Auckland.  Pacific Sun canceled that flight and informed us about a week ahead of time that we would be flying out of Labasa at 830am on a flight to Suva on the mainland and then to Nadi and then to Auckland.  Labasa is a little over an hour’s drive away, and Pacific Sun wanted us to be at the Copra Shed at 6am to be taken, we thought, by bus to Labasa.  Our taxi driver Sirah picked us up in the darkness at 5:40 and we got to the Copra Shed about ten minutes later.  Instead of a bus, Pacific Sun sent several taxis to handle the twenty or so passengers being taken to Labasa.  We lucked out and got a fairly new Ford SUV where Marley and Ben piled into the third-row seat and Annie and I squeezed into the middle row and two girls from Australia filled out the rest of the seats with one sitting next to me and the other in the passenger seat in the front.  The drive to Labasa was very scenic,  with the two-lane road winding through the mountains, giving us misty vistas as the sun slowly made it’s way into the sky.  The road went through a few villages where people were beginning their days and dogs and chickens scurried to the side of the road as our taxi passed by.  The scenery was reminiscent of Hawaii at times and the highway was in decent shape, with a few single lane bridges and the occasional guardrail along some of the higher stretches.  After about an hour and twenty minutes, we made it to the airport at Labasa, which had a “terminal” area slightly bigger than the one at Savusavu where we had arrived in Fiji two weeks before.  It had two openings, one marked “entry” the other marked “exit” and inside were about four rows of around 20 seats. 

When we checked in, we were met with the dreaded words, “indefinite delay.”  It was about 7:40am and our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:35 but nothing would happen until the plane we were due to fly out on arrived and there was no indication at all of when that would happen.  As time dragged on, I started to get a bit concerned about our chances of getting to Suva and then to Nadi in time for our flight to Auckland, which was scheduled to leave at 2:10pm.  I really, really wanted to get to Auckland that night, since we are only going to be in New Zealand’s largest city for one week. After a few announcements of delays, we were treated to the sight of the twin turbo-prop ATR-42 500 approaching Labasa around 10:20.  We boarded and took off about 25 minutes later for the quick 30-minute flight to Suva. 

The airline required us to get off the plane, go into the terminal and then re-board the same plane, which lifted off around 20 minutes later for the even shorter flight to Nadi, where we arrived 25 minutes later.  It appeared that we had plenty of time to catch our flight to Auckland, until we got to the counter and the agent said she needed to see our itinerary, which we didn’t have.  We were doing everything electronically, and she said New Zealand required proof that you were booked to leave the country, or she couldn’t book us on the flight.  After whipping out a laptop and buying an hour’s worth of Wi-fi, I got on gmail and tried to find the record of our ticket that would take us from Auckland to Melbourne on January 25, but couldn’t find it.  As I was on gmail, I noticed that our ticket consolidator, Ted Groat from Rivertravel was available for chat.   I quickly opened up a chat window for Ted, and summoning up all the writing talents I could muster, I typed “help!”  He asked what was up, and I explained the situation.  He promptly emailed our itinerary to us, and the Pacific Sun agent went out of her way to give us an email address of hers where we could send her the itinerary and she could print it out, which she felt we could need when we got off the plane in Auckland.  By now, we had about twenty minutes before our flight was due to board, and famished, we grabbed some sandwiches and chips at a food stand close to the gate and looked forward to getting in the air to our next destination.  But, as happens so often with air travel, we were informed that there would be a delay of an hour.  After a little more than sixty minutes, the passengers on the 737-300 filed onto the plane and we found ourselves in the second-to-last row.  The plane arrived in Auckland around 6:40, more than 90 minutes later that first scheduled.  The process of claiming our luggage was smooth and painless, no questions were asked about our departure date, and we quickly found a turban-wearing (onion-head hat for Cake fans) cab driver, who took us to our apartment-hotel in the university area of the central business district in Auckland, within view of the Sky Tower. 

It’s a small 2-bedroom with a veranda, but conveniently located within walking distance to the main attractions in this bustling, modern city, quite the contrast from the Fijian village where we had spent the last two weeks.

Que Sirah, Sirah! ;-)

In the early morning hours, we awoke to the blackberry alarm to pack our things and move onto our next location. As we rounded up our final belongings and said our good byes to our foster cat, Rafael, while we gave him the last of our cheese slices, Sirah’s taxi rattled into the drive way. Our silent companion and ambassador of Savusavu, it only seemed fitting for Sirah to give us one last ride to our departing leg of travel.

We had gone down this bumpy, largely muddy, unpaved road almost daily over the last two weeks. It was just at the crack of dawn with the sun barely starting its ascent into the day. It was hard not to be reflective on the first stop of our grand family adventure.

It was Fiji’s summer season so it was definitely at the peak summer temperatures. This meant lots of heat and humidity along with a steady application of Deet to keep the bug bites to an annoying but manageable level. As we discussed the town of Savusavu in general, we remarked on how, as a visitor, it was difficult to see some of the offerings in town.

Having been from a culture where the marketing efforts are painstakingly honed to drive specific consumer behavior, we found the hand lettering and shear mass of words an interesting part of the city landscape. More than once we remarked,…”Hey, I never saw that sign that says you can rent bikes and scooters.”…..or “Hey, I never noticed that Inn over there.”

One of our favorites was a fish store that specialized in “Anything to do with Paper”. While you are buying your Wahoo, you can get some letterhead made. How convenient!

There was also one of our favorite offerings of the DVD store. You walked into a store with video cases arranged by category. You would pick your video case and bring it to the counter to get your “bootleg” copy for $2 Fijian which is just about $1US. That certainly fit in our budget!

The entire family agreed that the most beautiful aspect of the Fijian islands was the Fijian people. Here is a country that is clearly living with minimal material comforts and generally low paying jobs. Their homes are largely plywood and corrugated steel, usually with no windows. Bill noted one house we passed with its door open on our way to depart. There was a TV and a smattering of possessions along the floor and a man reading a paper in the lone chair. Chickens and roosters intermingled in the yards amongst the clothes lines which were hung virtually everywhere. Stray dogs ran happily around town weaving amongst the taxis and the local market.

Despite what appeared to our worldview as a window into poverty, we did not encounter one person begging for food or money. Crime seemed generally non-existent. And there was always a warm smile and “Bula!” from every person we met. In addition, the island was made up of a mix of Fijian, Indian and other Asian cultures with a dash of Aussie or Kiwi thrown into the mix. Racial tension seemed non-existent.

As we move through this journey together, starting off with an example of true human kindness, tolerance, gratitude and cooperation was a great view on a life to aspire to.

We are forever grateful to the Fijian people and in tribute to our kind and gentle taxi driver…Que Sirah, Sirah!

Second thoughts on what may be a third-world country

In many ways, Fiji has not been what I expected.  We did a lot of research before coming here, and from what I had read, I anticipated much more of a tourism-based experience.  But as I sit here writing this while looking at the beach just down from one of the glitzier resorts in Fiji, the Jean-Michel Cousteau, (founded by you-know-who’s son), there are no paragliders or jet skis, or any of the de rigeur activities that you see tourists partaking of in most vacation locations. It’s more Costa Rica and less Hawaii than I thought we would see, and that’s even after spending a lot of time on websites such as Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor, reading reviews of people who have been here in some cases many times.  The resort runs vans back and forth past our house to the village a few times a day, but it’s nothing at all like the coastal areas you see in the States where people go to escape for a few days or weeks.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the 6km road from town to the rental house where we are about a quarter of a mile shy of the JMC resort, is unpaved for more than half of the way. We decided to take the bus into town for the first time Saturday, Christmas Eve here. That was done in part to save some money on the $10 Fijian ($5USD) cab fare each way, but also just to have the experience.  The bus, which from what we can tell makes about three trips out our way a day, passes by our house on the way out to the end of the road at the resort, which gives us a nice five to ten minute heads up on when it will be heading back to the village.  As you board the bus, you are informed by words painted on the wall that you pay as you enter.  I asked the driver how much it would be for my family and me to ride into Savusavu, and he replied that it was $4.60, which gave me a chance to unload some of the coinage I had accumulated in our week or so here.  I settled into a seat just behind Annie and the kids who took up the entire three person seat on the right side of the bus, which was separated by an aisle from the two seats on the left side of the bus.  The absence of windows let air flow freely, underneath the “windows” that were rolled up and fastened, able to be quickly let down in the event of one of the frequent showers here.  As we bounced along the rocky road toward the village, making stops every half-kilometer or so, I expected Forest Whitaker or Denzel Washington, or even (hopefully!) Angelina Jolie to get on carrying a backpack filled with medicine for an orphanage or makeshift hospital.  Considering it’s Viet Nam era vintage, the bus did just fine, getting us safely to the village in just a little more time than it took with our taxi driver. 

One of the more pleasant aspects of strolling through the dirty and muddy sidewalks of Savusavu is the lack of beggars.  In our week plus of being here, we’ve only been approached once by someone trying to sell us something, and that was a legless man in a wheel chair who was apparently trying to sell some trinkets, and he didn’t push the issue when we politely declined.  The streets and sidewalks bustle with people, going in and out of shops, carrying their parcels and packages, while others loiter outside, chatting and waiting for rides from a bus or taxi.  Stray dogs trot down the street, tongues hanging out as they look around for a puddle to drink out of, a scrap of food to eat, or a cool place where they can lay down their skinny frames. 

Once inside one of the stores or markets, personal space that those of us from the US are accustomed to vanishes.  No one is rude or forceful, but to move through an aisle, you need to just claim that space and move forward.  The supermarket isn’t a Kroger Fresh Fare, for example, it doesn’t sell bread, that is purchased at, of all places, The Bread Store, which sells some pastries, muffins and cupcakes besides a variety of bread.  After mistakenly buying a loaf of unsliced bread, I for the first time in my life truly appreciated the phrase, “the best thing since sliced bread.”  Slicing a nice hard loaf of Italian bread is one thing, trying to make smooth sandwich slices out of a soft loaf of white bread is a talent I haven’t mastered yet.  I managed to make the best of it, and use some rough cut slices to make some home made garlic bread with some of the fresh garlic we bought.

And so this is Christmas

Our Christmas Day in Fiji was the first day we didn’t go into the village of Savusavu.  We had been told that the town would pretty much be shut down for the day, and that most businesses would also be closed the following two days for an extended holiday.  With that in mind, on Saturday, we loaded up on what we thought we would need and spent Sunday in and around our house.  The kids had two Christmas cards that we brought with them from their aunt and their grandmother, and they opened those to get a taste of being home for the holidays.  Marley put together a creative holiday outfit that gave us a good smile and we also got a feel for Yule in the South Pacific with some festively dressed kayakers.

I spent a good deal of the morning hitting “refresh” on Annie’s Blackberry while following the Bengals progress against the Cardinals, which was a bit maddening as a nice, relaxed 23-point lead dwindled away.  With that victory finally safely secured, and visions of trying to follow the Bengals playoff march in New Zealand dancing in my head, I whipped up a grilled cheese lunch for the kids, while Annie coped with a bout of Vijay Singh’s revenge.  (The surname Singh appears to be the most common one in Fiji, occupying more than six pages in the Fiji phone book and there are about two dozen Singh’s with the first name of Vijay.)  While Annie recuperated thanks to some antibiotics we brought with us and a yuletide feast of grilled cheese and Pringles, Ben and Marley and I hit the water as some Fijian families took advantage of the low tide and enjoyed the holiday on the beach.  The snorkeling on our side of the island isn’t as good as it is on the south side where Koro Sun Dive is located.  The coral there is still alive and colorful compared to the brown coral where we are which is mostly dead thanks to some sort of killer starfish.  There still are enough fish on our side to make it worth the time and effort it takes to swim around in the warm calm waters.  An approaching afternoon storm, a daily occurrence so far, chased us back to the house, where the kids enjoyed some re-warmed spaghetti from a couple of nights ago and some of Dad’s homemade garlic bread.  I grilled out a lamb shank, the closest thing I could find to roast beast in my best attempt to re-create the Whoville holiday feast.  As we’ve done most evenings, we watched a movie.  This time, it was one we bought a couple of days ago in the village, a pirated copy of The Tourist, with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.  For the three dollars we spent at the video store, it was worth it and an enjoyable escape, even if it was the second time we watched it.  Marley liked it primarily because of the location of the action, taking place in one of her favorite cities in the world, Venice.  While we’ve been here, we have watched Caddyshack twice, The Rabbit Proof Fence (based on the true story of some Aborigine girls taken from their families in Australia in the 1920s),  and also The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock.  I was skeptical going into that one, fearing it was some sappy uplifting story (thirty years as a hardened radio newsman has made me a little skeptical about such tales) but it was actually pretty good.  Besides catching up on some movies, we’ve also been voracious readers, mostly on Kindles or the Ipad, which have great compatibility in that when you buy something on the Kindle, you can download it for free on the Ipad.  The kids are reading The Hunger Games Trilogy, while Annie has read The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Paris Wife, American on Purpose, Honeymoon with My Brother, Family Sabbatical, Golfing with God and Under the Overpass.  In my best Bill Murray in Stripes mode, I’ve been pacing myself on my reading, having really enjoyed Honeymoon with My Brother, which is about a guy whose bride-to-be bails on their wedding at the last minute, and he decides to go ahead with the honeymoon, taking his brother to Costa Rica.  That plants the seed that they should travel the world together, which they do for two years.  Considering what we are in the beginnings of, that book really resonated with Annie and me.  I’m also almost done with AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, about a computer programmer from Florida who, after 20 years of slaving away in a cubicle, decides to quit and hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail.  His quest is slightly different than ours, but has enough similarities to make it appealing and it’s been a good read.  We’re looking forward to that trend continuing over the next few weeks and months of our travels.