Jason and Swiss's Round the World (RTW) Blog

Well, our flight landed safely this morning (Monday, August 17th) a little before 5am local time. I would be more well refreshed if I had slept more, but luckily we had the LOUDEST guy snoring a row or two back and I’m sure he kept a lot of the back half of the plane awake. The service was quite good, and Swiss used his charm with the gate agent to get us a section of three seats in the middle together for just the two of us, so we each had an aisle and an open seat between us!

As we were taxiing to the gate this morning it occurred to us that we lost a day that we’ll never get to experience, Sunday August 16th will never really happen for us. Now of course we’ll gain that time back as we travel more and more west, but over the course of a year, who notices? Anything good happen on Aug 16th since we didn’t get to live it?!

We’re at the Auckland Airport now waiting for our flight to Queenstown. Luckily only a 2 hr flight down there and should be nice. Queenstown Winter Games start Saturday, and although we leave Sunday we’ll get at least one day there during the Games. Any other recommendations for Queenstown?!?

Swiss has identified his next goal, which is to complete a quest to capture a movie of the “reverse swirl” flushing toilet. (Who knew the Southern Hemisphere would keep Swiss so busy and amused?!?!) (Un)fortunately (thus far), the toilets at the airport show no distinct swirl.  I’ll let Swiss post an update on the quest as it unfolds.

UPDATE: Upon further review of the evidence, it appears that Swiss has collected data showing a counterclockwise swirl on toilets down under, although I’m sure he’ll be collecting more data (data that no one wants to see anyways, hopefully I can shield you all from it!!)

UPDATE 2: It’s almost 9pm on Monday night and we’re both exhausted! We’ve been up since Saturday morning (PDT of course) and I know I’m totally exhausted!