Kia ora from New Zealand!

I said I'd let you in on the fiasco in my next blog. I suppose I should do that now. I have so much to report on, this trip certainly has had its' ups and downs!

So, I'll bring us back to Sydney on December 1st. Mom and I were checking in with Pacific Blue at the airport. We figured we had 4 hours between flights, we had lots of time. (ha! you know what assume means) anyways.. mom got through ok this time.. it was ME... First off, my passport. It is set to expire on March 15th 2010. We are in New Zealand from December 1st to December 19th 2009. The problem is that New Zealand wants visitors to have a passport that is valid 3 months beyond their departure date. If you look at the date on my passport, it is 4 days less than the 3 month requirement. The check in lady at the airport did not want to let me on the plane. I had to change my return ticket to be December 14th in order to fly into New Zealand. Of course, with the type of ticket I have, she could not do that at the desk, I had to get out of the queue and use the phone to call the airline to change my ticket... at a cost of $50. argh! So I finally got that done, and mom had thankfully stood in the line again to get me back to check-in, when I got there, they didn't want to ok my leaving because my travel change was not on an official ticket, but a number scribbled on a paper while I was on the phone. AHHH! They DID finally accept it, then we weighed my large backpack which was 22kg (they only allow20 I think) then... they weighed my CARRY ON luggage! can you believe it!? It had to weigh only 7kg... mine weighed 15kg. So I had to empty out my carry on into my already bursting backpack and pay the difference! (which meant to do the switching I had to get out of line again!) INCREDIBLE! So, finally after paying $30 for overweight luggage and $50 to change my return flight they gave me my boarding pass!

The flight was uneventful, bit bumpy, but overall, it was fine. Got to Auckland at about 11:30pm where we stood in line at customs for about 1 hour. The customs' line I picked was 3 times as long as mom's. Again he looked at me funny with my scribbles for my return flight but wished me a warm welcome.

Finally got to mom and she'd collected our luggage.

Oh! I forgot to mention! Mom got bomb searched at the airport .. too funny. At 11:30pm they searched my mom for bombs.. lol.. they were good sports as was mom and they wished us a good trip :)

So finally in Auckland to settle in to sleep at the airport. We saw the check in counter and figured we could find a place to rest our heads for 4 hours before checking in. We each got a 4 seat bench to stretch out on. There were several people doing the same thing. We didn't get too much sleep though, there were people working on a machine they kept on backing up with the "beep beep" sound, and a floor polisher that sounded like a jet engine beside us. At least we weren't stuck in a wee seat on a plane! :)

We got up every once in a while to go for a walk around the airport. Some things were open all night, like the little corner store and a food place. I was starting to get my cold at this point, which wasn't good.

At about 4am, mom decided to get herself some breakfast (a cafe just opened) so she got herself a coffee (late) and a savoury muffin. Thinking it a good idea, she brought it to our seat on a tray. Not noticing how unstable her drink without a lid was on such a contraption. Well in trying to sit down, she managed to topple the entire late all over my backpack and splashed her luggage our seats, pillows, and floor in the process. WHAT A MESS!!. I quickly tried to remove as much of the coffee from my backpack as possible, I had some extra napkins in my purse and quickly got to work... my backpack wasn't quite waterproof so somethings got damp inside it from the coffee, but nothing serious.. though I have to say it's probably the backpack's last trip... and I'm quite happy it's black!

We decided that we'd been there long enough and it was time to check in for our flight to Christchurch. We were both exhausted and trying not to be miserable. I think we did a good job. Neither one of us bit each other's head off, though I'm sure there were many times we both wanted to... especially mom wanting to take my head off for putting her through sleeping in an airport. We survived though, thank god!

So we went to check in, only to realize we were at the wrong airport!!! we were at the international airport and we needed to check in at the domestic airport! sigh. Luckily, it is only a 10 minute walk away from the international airport. Mom and I felt we needed the walk and fresh air after a night at the airport.

So at 4:40am we walked over to the other airport. It only opened at 5am (glad we didn't go there right away.. we would have been sleeping outside!!) I have to admit, it was pretty neat. We checked ourselves in, weighed our own luggage, put it on the conveyor ourselves! very neat. Then we had to wait for security to open at 5:30am to catch our 6:15am flight. The flight was excellent and it was raining when we got to Christchurch, but we had a driver waiting to bring us to the hostel.

That's enough for another episode... I'll write more in a bit!