I’m back from my trip to memory lane, haha.

So, we recently took a trip to visit Larry’s younger daughter, her hubby, and our two grandsons in Tasmania (Australia). It turned out to be a crazy adventure because on the way, during our three night layover in Auckland, New Zealand, Larry lost his passport! This caused us to miss our Sunday flight to Tasmania and wait until Monday to go to the U.S. Consulate to apply for an emergency passport.

Auckland is a densely populated city and very busy. There’s lots of traffic but I felt like, in general, drivers there were calmer and more considerate than they are here, especially on the roundabouts. That was helpful since it was already a challenge for Larry, driving on the wrong side of the road and with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car! He did great though.

Getting downtown was quite a challenge to begin with. Then, finding the consulate building was difficult because they don’t have address numbers on anything!! Good grief. Anyway, we got the emergency passport and booked another flight for the next day. Upon checking in at the airport we learned that the emergency passport does not contain a chip like the regular passports do. Ergo, the scanners would not read it and the electronic visa that was attached to the original passport was no longer valid. Australia refused entry to Larry and he had to apply for a new visa. Another flight missed. The visa application involved a medical exam and the soonest appointment we could get was 4 days away. Long story short, we ended up spending 12 days in NZ.

Because the cost of gas down under (which is sold by the liter) was equivalent to roughly $10+ a gallon, we didn’t do much exploring. We did take a couple of day trips though. The first was to this gorgeous beach. Wow, look at that coastline!

Then we trekked through an awesome forest, accompanied by a symphony of cicadas!

Along the hike we stopped at this overlook. What an amazing place!

After our hike we were hungry. We found this cute indoor food court that had all different kinds of foods.

They had Thai food, which we adore, so we ordered lunch and it was ohhh so good!

It was a pretty large portion, so we ate half and saved the rest for dinner. Thai food twice in one day .. what a treat! Thrifty and yummy!

Stay tuned for our second day trip.