Exile-New Zealand Week One

driving the AC boat NZ41

It is possible to plan, pack and begin and international trip of no set duration within a four day window. But to pull it off you need friends. Really kind friends.

You need the kind of people who will take on your cat, look out for your home and offer you beds. And meals. And the stuff you forgot (didn't have time) to pack. And a travel itinerary to make up for the one you haven't got around to organizing.

You also need the ability to let stuff go. To realize that that long dreamed of trip to New Zealand is happening and you haven't got a clue where to go, what to do, or how long you're going to be doing it for.

So really, so far, our trip to New Zealand has been about showing up and letting it unfold.

It is E-NZ Day 6. We've toured Auckland (lovely), tasted wine (delish), seen sheep (fluffy), enjoyed the company of good friends, and tramped trails, we've sailed an America's Cup boat (exciting) and now we're headed to Bay of Islands to sail a Whitbread boat. Well, actually, right now, we're stranded on the side of the road with a broken down rental car sort of hoping the company will actually come through with a replacement car. It's nearly 8pm. The car broke down at 2pm—but it was almost 5pm before we had been towed to civilization, checked by a mechanic and the rental company agreed, that indeed, an exploding radiator was most likely not our fault. Then they needed convincing that it was actually their job to bring us a new car.--despite the inconvenience

The good news is we've discovered Kiwi's who don't work for car rental agencies are awfully nice, and rather helpful. The bad news is we are definitely not making our destination tonight. We're not quite sure what our plan 'b' is—we've decided to wait and see what comes from the rental company first.

E-NZ day 7

Plan 'b' shifted to 'c' then 'd' before our new car arrived. Actually it didn't arrive—we saw it blow past on a flatbed at high speed while we sat parked on a side road a few blocks away. So by the time we chased it down, transferred our belongings, filled out paperwork it was far too late to continue north and definitely too late to back track and stay with our friends Rob and Jo on Blue Moon—so we headed to a nearby holiday camp (sort of a cross between an RV park and a 50's style cottage park—but in suburbia) pitched our tent and fell asleep. Giddy, happy and content.

It's pouring with rain this morning. We missed our boat in Bay of Plenty. But we're in New Zealand, man...

Puzzling through Paperwork

 When Evan checked in with the Port Captain a week or so ago he thumbed through our passports and discovered that Maia’s US one (she’s a dual citizen) was due to expire somewhere around Fiji.

Keeping track of paperwork: credit cards, driver’s licenses, taxes and passport renewals is one of the more complex aspects of cruising. Most of us have a mailing address, somewhere. But the choreography of getting mail from that address to our boats means we don’t just wait for a new credit card or new passport to arrive. We have to plan, usually months in advance.

This summer, before we went home, we went through all our bank cards, licenses and passports and checked the expiry dates. We noted anything that was due to go before 2012 (when we’ll be in Australia and have a stable address for more than a few weeks) and began requesting new cards, scheduling appointments and filling out forms.

The problem with this, is many places are reluctant to provide new cards (or driver’s licences) when the expiry date is more than six months, and in some cases 12 months, out. So we need to explain our lifestyle to several levels of bureaucracy. And somehow these conversations always end up with us being asked if we’re worried about pirates…

Which brings us to Maia’s passport: We were told it would be possible to renew in Mexico if it was expiring within six months. But it expires in eight. And it also takes four-six weeks to process—which means we need to do it now. So I sent off a quick note to the US consulate in Puerto Vallarta explaining our travel plans and asking if they could make and exception. Two minutes later we got a note back, “yes”. Then I asked if we could schedule an appointment, expecting to wait several days as we had in Vancouver. We got back another immediate note telling us to come any day between 11:00am and 12:30.

So we gathered up the paperwork and headed for the consul office in Nuevo Vallarta, panicking a bit when we realized we wouldn’t arrive until noon, and that we still needed to get photocopies and passport photos. We did these across the hall from the office then ten minutes later headed in to the office expecting a long queue. There was none.

We were served immediately. Our travel plans and passport request seemed to make complete sense to the office staff (who have clearly encountered the issue before). We were out of the office in less than ten minutes, and no one even asked us about pirates.