Traveling to NZ

Traveling to NZ: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Once again we left too much to do in too little time and were up half the night packing, which meant only a few hours sleep before a 24 hour trip.

We left Provo at 12 noon on Tuesday, 31 Jan and arrived in NZ at 8:30 a.m. on 2 Feb. A lot happened along the way.

We piled 10 suitcases and two bike bags into the back of the Davis’ van and went to the airport. We met a great Sky Cap at the curb at the airport who helped us get everything checked in so we didn’t have to carry 12 pieces of luggage into the airport. We also had a couple of carry-ons each, but they were easy to carry.

Checking into Delta and going through security was a breeze! We were off to a great start. As we were walking to the gate I got a call from Delta informing us that the plane was leaving 1:20 late, so we had a long wait. That did mean many of us got a little nap as we waited. The flight to San Francisco was uneventful and short. Unfortunately, because of the delay in SLC, we didn’t get to meet my brother Ron for dinner. Instead, we spent a long time in a long line at the Air NZ counter. We then hurried to the gate where we arrived just in time to board the plane.

The girls were amazed at how big and fancy the 747 was. After checking out all the entertainment options, we settled in for the long flight to Auckland, NZ. Everything went great until about 2 hours outside of Auckland when Julia started to throw up. She is prone to motion sickness and the medicine she took back in Provo had worn off. A long two hours later we arrived in Auckland and went to the customs counter.

The officer was stern and made his way through our passports and visas. Unfortunately, when he got to Julia’s visa it hadn’t been recorded in the computer correctly by the NZ Embassy and so we had to go sit down on the side and wait for the immigration officials to sort things out. We only had two hours between flights so we were watching the clock tick away. After about 20-30 minutes waiting, a friendly official came and told us it was no problem and we were on our way.

We had to pick up all our luggage on five carts and go through biosecurity to make sure we weren’t smuggling any unauthorized plant items. It went fine and then we had to get on a bus (with 12 large items of luggage) to travel to the domestic terminal. The clock was still ticking and we were getting nervous. We got to the domestic terminal and were able to check in the regular luggage but the bikes had to go to a special oversized luggage counter. We went there and were told that the bikes had to go back to the help counter to have new tags created. We ran back and did that and then back to drop off the bikes. When we got back we saw that in all the confusion we had forgotten to bring the cart with our carry-ons with us and a airport security officials was with our bags and not too happy that we had left them unattended. After examining all our passports and other documents and giving us a lecture, we had five minutes to run to the gate and board our plane. We made it with seconds to spare. We settled in for a one hour trip to Wellington. Julia only threw up once during the trip. We arrived to a cool Wellington morning about 8:30. Three of Claudine’s colleagues met us and we managed to get all of us to our house in two cars and a taxi.

Whew, that was probably almost as tiring to read as it was to make the trip.

Mark