Princes, paupers, and poor immigrants: househunting from Pakuranga to Papatoetoe

We’d been in Auckland for two days, and were feeling as if we’d been hit by a plane, not just travelled on one. But we only have two weeks’ paid-for accommodation in our little motel, so we decided to sally forth and hunt a house. We felt emboldened by Streicher’s generous early-Christmas present of a very cool new Tomtom GPS, and with our handy “Where to live in Auckland” guide (thanks, Amazon!), nothing could be simpler, right? Er. Not quite.

The problem, see, is that Penny has forgotten that she is now a new, unemployed immigrant and not a swanky, top-earning professional. She was also quite naïve about the fact that it is pretty much only in South Africa where you can get a substantial house for a smallish rental. She further reasoned that a small, pretty house costs the same as an small, ugly house, but failed to appreciate that those other people who also think so and don’t have jetlag, two small children and no babysitter will get there first. It’s worse than the race for Oregon. The paper comes out, the Internet listing is posted and bang! They’re off! If there was any dust left in Auckland after the rain, you’d be choking on it. And by the time Willem and Penny got there, that pretty weatherboard house with the blue trim and broekie lace round the porch was rented yesterday. And the spacious, sunny one with the deck? Sorry, rented yesterday. What about that tiny but well-situated cottage with the flowering creeper all around the door? That one went just this morning. But we have a lovely place that was converted from the pokey garage of that big house that overlooks the bay – for three times what you can afford, naturally. Four bedrooms? Don’t make me laugh. Two bathrooms? You can flush your dollars down that extra toilet, luvey. A garage? Wotcha want a garage for, you can’t afford a car. A garden? No, but there are lots of lovely parks all over Auckland, sweetheart. And then of course you want a house in a good school zone – and the schools are rather fierce about their zoning, to the very last house. So you can choose – a spacious house into which (most of) your furniture can fit, and a school where most of the children have only recently learned English; or a tiny hovel within walking distance of one of the better Auckland schools, and your furniture can stand outside in the rain ’cos it’s OSP (On Street Parking – NZ realty lingo).

So Willem had to placate Penny with lots of soothing words and glasses of wine. He eventually dropped her and the kids this morning (Sunday) at the Auckland Museum. Here they enjoyed a Maori dance performance (Max trembled but took notes during the haka display) and ambled at their leisure through the delightful displays of New Zealand cultural and natural history, while Willem, unencumbered by a fussy, snobbish, vociferous wife and two travel-weary and bored children, sped off with the Tomtom and found a house. He hopes. He has yet to show it to Penny. He has, however, taken great pains to prepare her for the shock that it is not a cute, whitewashed-weatherboard cottage, although it does have a small garden, garage, and a big basement (for the furniture), and is in walking distance of all things important (good area, good school, beach, parks, quaint shopping, lots of coffee shops). She was mollified by the prospect of the coffee shops (the slut), but is reserving judgement till she sees it on Monday morning (estate agents in NZ don’t seem to work much on weekends or after hours – and house show times last just half-an-hour!).

Today, the house. Tomorrow, the car. On Sundays there’s a car fair in a suburb called Ellerslie, which is easy to find when you have a Tomtom (yay, Streicher!). Hopefully buying a cheap second-hand Japanese car will be easier, since Penny doesn’t feel quite as strongly about fancy cars. As long as it has more than two doors. And power steering, of course. And let’s not forget the central locking. Oh yes, and aircon. And airbags would be nice, since you’re asking. And if it’s any colour but white that would be most excellent, indeed.

Jet Hag

The friendly Kiwi night guy at the little motel in Manukau (the Quality Inn) was waiting to give us the keys to our tiny but adequate one-bedroomed apartment and rental car, and help carry the luggage to our first-floor room. We finally got to bed at around 3am local time, after which Maya woke us up several times complaining that she wasn’t sleepy. After I banished her with dire threats, which I will not repeat here for fear of the fearsome Kiwi social services, we fell into a blissful sleep – only to be woken up two hours (two hours!!!) later by my bouncing children, who had decided that their afternoon nap was now over and that they were HUNGRY. After all, as Maya reminded me, the change in time zones meant that we had gone straight from breakfast on one plane to supper on the next a mere five hours later, so – horrors – we had missed lunch! I tried hard to ignore them, but Willem finally forced me to get out of bed by bringing me horrible instant coffee. Muttering darkly, I descended with as much dignity as is possible under the circumstances to the breakfast room. (Q: What do you call a woman with jet lag? A: A jet hag.) Luckily the Kiwis seem rather serious about their coffee, and I revived myself sufficiently with a nice and hot ‘flat white’ (Kiwi-speak for coffee with milk) to plan our first day with Willem.

And all in all, it was a good day. We discovered the most beautiful park right next to the motel, where I took Max running after breakfast. In addition to a vast expanse of Ireland-green lawn fringed by quaint houses with sidewalks, the park has a wide range of ubercool convoluted jungle gyms, slides and swings, and even a scooped-out skateboard ring (Max didn’t need a skateboard to ride it). And get this: it all works! Nothing is broken! And the jungle gyms are bedded in soft bark chips. It created a very good first impression of the city. Later, we went shopping. We had inadvertently sent our Auckland street map with the shipping container, but have spent so much time poring over it that we could navigate our way around very nicely. The children – evil spawn – fell asleep in the car as soon as we drove off, but that didn’t stop us stocking up on groceries (the most essential of which were the rooibos tea and a coffee plunger), getting SIM cards for our phones, meeting Lize for coffee, cruising Howick, and applying for broadband wireless Internet.

Based on my initial recon, New Zealanders do indeed love their coffee. (Another reason to stay here, yay!) Everywhere there are cute or trendy or just fast coffee shops claiming that theirs is the best in town, and, for the more plebian connoisseurs (ahem), Starbucks and Wild Bean Cafes litter the joint. (One coffee place is called ‘QuickFix’, mwahahaha). Then it was back to the park for the children (who are reacting to the change and the jet lag with slightly hysterical hyperactivity alternating with periods of dead sleep), while I turned our flat into a place we can live in for the next few weeks and concocted a rather good supper in its tiny, underequipped kitchen. Max passed out at the dinner table at 6pm, with his spaghetti fork poised halfway to his mouth, while Maya (who refused to wake up from her morning sleep and was in a foul mood when she did) is still going strong and shows no signs of adapting her circadian rhythm to anything but SA time.

Our contact numbers are: Penny +64 211 419 276 and Willem +64 211 387 602. We’re still waiting for the broadband, and when it comes I’ll download some pics. Till then, I’m gonna try get some shut-eye before I’m summoned to prepare lunch at 2am or something equally appalling. Good mor- Good night!

Stiff upper lip, wobbly lower lip

We made it! We crossed over about a million kilometres of ocean (NZ is inderdaad moer-vêr), and have finally landed on Kiwi soil. It has not been without its perils, of course, starting with the obstreperous officials at the airport refusing to let us take Maya's bike on the plane without lots more bubble wrap than it had (it had to be donated to a deserving porter, poor Maya). Then there was the delay caused by crashing computers at OR Tambo, which meant waiting in a very long queue at check-in and a three-hour departure delay. Add two weary and overexcited children to the mix (who did not get their lunch until 6pm nor their supper until nearly 11pm), and it starts getting, shall we say, interesting. There was some fun in the queue though; notably seasoned ex-pats back for a visit teasing us about our amount of luggage, comparing notes and dispensing advice, Maya suggesting we play hide-and-seek at International Departures to pass the time (gaaa!!!), and Max doing his two-year old thing and darting off, cackling hysterically, into the ominous, child-snatching crowd (luckily his mother was a sprinter at school, and no stranger to making a spectacle of herself in public). Perhaps it was just as well – whenever there seemed to be time to reflect on the enormity of what we were busy doing, and I could not prevent my inner gaze turning to the people I was leaving so very far behind, and when the PWOL (Present Without Leave) tears would spring out, something would happen to distract me. (Tea! Where’s my TEA? Max’s plaintive wail reverberates piercingly through the packed, dimmed cabin. Rooibos? Sorry, we don’t have anything like that on Qantas, replies the helpful steward.)

The delay meant we missed our transfer from Sydney to Auckland and we had to wait for a later flight, so our booked transport to the motel departed early and our fragile baggage (guitar and car seats) arrived late (in fact, a day later, I’m still waiting for it). Finally, exactly 24 hours after entering the Joburg airport, the hyperactive offspring and their haggard parents limped through the gates of Auckland International after midnight local time, wondering how we would get to our motel - only to be met by the smiling, friendly, only familiar faces in all of Auckland of Lize and Cindy, who had waited three hours to surprise us, and had no way of knowing when (or if) we would arrive. What could a girl do but burst into tears (again)? They had brought gifts for the kids and coffee for the grown-ups, and we caught up on a bench, waiting for another taxi.

And so, with a smorgasbord of emotions to feed on, we were welcomed into New Zealand and trundled off to our motel on the next leg of our grand adventure.