Day 348: The Longest Day

I was sitting out in this little park/plaza on my tablet with my backpack and bags piled around me in the middle of the night. It's sort of in the middle of the bar area, and it was a Friday night (or very early Saturday morning) so there were lots of really drunk people stumbling around shouting a lot. A few came over to talk with me, but it's New Zealand, so nobody really gave me much of a hassle. Finally around 3am I walked to the corner and caught my shuttle bus to the airport. There were only 2 other people on board, and the ride was a lot faster than it had been when I flew into Auckland due to there being nobody getting on or off and no traffic. I checked in and lounged around the airport and read some more. My flight path was a bit strange. It was cheaper to go to LA through Melbourne than direct, even though going through Melbourne meant flying for hours in the wrong direction first. I'm more concerned with money than time, and spending long hours sitting in a vehicle is routine by now.

The issue in Melbourne was that I was transferring between two airlines (JetStar and Qantas), and they weren't going to transfer my backpack to the second flight automatically. This meant that I had to get my bag, queue up to go through border control, go through another queue at customs (which is very thorough in Australia), go to the Qantas desk to get my boarding pass and check my bag for the new flight, then go through more queues back through security and border control again. There was only about 1:15 between when the first flight landed and I was supposed to board the second flight, and with all the long lines that time disappeared quickly and I was feeling a little nervous (and rather tired since I still hadn't slept). Ultimately I did get there in just under the time I needed, but it turned out to be moot since there was some sort of equipment trouble and boarding was delayed 40 minutes anyway. Finally we got on the plane and it was time to head back the way I'd just come, flying east over the Pacific.

The person sitting next to me on the flight was a blind Australian who was eventually heading to Venezuela to visit hospitals and orphanages as a clown with Patch Adams. That, combined with me having been travelling the world for a year made for lots to talk about. I also watched a few movies, and got a couple hours of much needed sleep. American border control is known for being pretty thorough, so the lines were slow. When it was finally my turn, I got grilled. My passport is by now rather colourful, which seemed to make him suspcious (in Australia, people going to backpack around the world is almost part of growing up, in America, not so much). This led to him asking for additional identification, which hasn't happened anywhere else in the world. I gave him additional identification, but of course since it's me the names didn't match exactly since all my IDs are slightly different. This led to more questioning about all my aliases (no, I've never gone by the name Rico Martinez Miller) before eventually letting me continue on. I finally got into the main terminal about 7:30am on March 7, the same time and date as I'd left Auckland like 20+ hours ago (gotta love the date-line time travel flights). I took my time getting a shuttle to Union Station, and since I was still really early decided to walk to Mariachi Plaza instead of taking the subway. My hostel was across the Los Angeles River, and in a rather poor and run down Mexican/Latino area. The hostel itself was a small independent one, but the staff was friendly and it was right next to the subway. I was pretty exhausted still from all the travel and not getting much sleep on the plane, so I napped a little and just spent the day in the local area, talking with other guests in the hostel and finding some nice little restaurants in the local area. After months of craving Mexican food, bein in the Mexican part of LA certainly gave me a lot of options. I managed to put off going to bed until late, partially since it was Saturday night and there were a lot of people coming and going. Finally I got some well deserved sleep.