Arrival in Aotearoa

Before we even reached the airport, this trip started with something that felt surprisingly radical for me.

For the first time, I turned on what has since become my standard out-of-office reply. The subject line was blunt: “Email Temporarily Disabled.” The message explained that incoming emails would be automatically marked as read, shared key contacts for anything urgent, and included my calendar link for when I returned.

The most important part was also the most freeing: I would not see the email when I got back.

That small boundary changed the feeling of the trip before it began. It protected the team, gave clients clear direction, and gave me permission to actually leave.

The trip itself happened because several pieces lined up almost too perfectly. We found round-trip main cabin tickets from Salt Lake City to Auckland for just 45,800 Delta SkyMiles each, and our adult nephew was currently living at our house and able help with the kids.

At that point, the question shifted from “Should we go?” to “How could we not?”

We flew from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, waited for our connection, and then boarded the long flight to Auckland. While we waited in LAX, I noticed the plane looked surprisingly empty. So I made a gamble: I put my wife on one side of the plane and myself in the middle section.

It worked. Somehow, we each ended up with an entire row to sleep across on the overnight flight.

After crossing the Pacific and losing a day to the calendar, we landed in Auckland, cleared customs quickly, and took an Uber to the Bradfields’ home — friends of my parents who generously hosted us for our first night.

Their son took us out almost immediately, which was exactly what we needed. First came lunch at a fantastic bakery — the kind of bakery that quickly became one of our favorite everyday parts of New Zealand — then a quick city tour through One Tree Hill and a visit to see the Auckland LDS Temple under construction.

Everything still had that strange first-day feeling: tired eyes, new roads, unfamiliar signs, and the quiet realization that we were actually here.

Auckland didn’t feel like a hard landing into a massive city. It felt layered — city, harbor, hills, green space, and sky all folding together.

From One Tree Hill, we could look out over the city and water while still standing in a place that felt open and alive. That mix became one of the first hints that New Zealand was going to blur categories for us again and again.

After the city tour, we returned to the Bradfields’ home and took a short walk through Smiths Bush. It was not a major destination on the itinerary. It was just a nearby patch of native forest.

But that is part of what made it memorable. Before we had reached any of the famous birding locations, New Zealand had already started revealing itself in the ordinary spaces between plans.

Tūī moved through the trees. Fantails flicked and flashed through the understory. Pūkeko, Pied Stilts, Welcome Swallows, rosellas, blackbirds, and chaffinches helped shift my brain into a new birding rhythm. Even a hedgehog wandered across the path — a small, unexpected reminder that this ecosystem had layers I was only beginning to understand.

That evening, the Bradfields cooked us a homemade dinner and served golden kiwi for dessert. We shared stories, learned more about the family hosting us, and laughed about some of my brother’s old New Zealand antics — including the time he apparently camped in their yard and hoisted an American flag above his tent while my family was living there.

More than anything, we were grateful. The food, the conversation, the walk, and the city tour all helped keep us awake until at least 7 or 8 p.m. — exactly what we needed to start syncing our bodies to New Zealand time.

By the time we finally went to bed, the expedition had barely begun, but the first layer had already opened: generosity, new birds, new rhythms, and the feeling that Aotearoa was going to be far more than a checklist.

We went to sleep tired, grateful, and finally beginning to settle into New Zealand time.

The long crossing was behind us. Auckland had given us a soft landing. The real expedition still waited somewhere ahead — beyond another airport, another rental car, and a road that would eventually lead us deep into Fiordland.

For the moment, though, we simply slept.