Month: December 2020

January 18, 2019

On the flight to New Zealand we experienced a 20-hour time change, essentially skipping a day. We departed San Francisco on the evening of January 16 and arrived in Auckland on the morning of January 18. The flight from San Francisco to Auckland went remarkably well. I was able to sleep for at least a few hours, so when we arrived in Auckland I did not feel jet lagged. There were a lot of periods of turbulence, nothing terrible but one episode came while we were served dinner which made eating and drinking difficult. The two seats we picked at the back of the plane worked out well. There was no third seat so I had a little more room to stretch my feet.

The plane was able to make up the time lost for the delayed departure, and we actually landed a few minutes early. There was no jetway. We used stairs to exit the plane and got on a shuttle bus that drove us to the terminal. We walked through the duty free area and found a good deal with Vodaphone for a New Zealand SIM card for the cell phone and enough data to last the entire trip. Heinrich and I both got coverage.

We were relieved to find that our luggage had arrived. Going through customs was fairly easy, although we had to wait in the “Something to declare” line since we had brought hiking boots that needed to be inspected. Kauri dieback disease is a real problem, so the Kiwis want to make sure the soles of the boots are clean.

We arrived early at the Ace Rental Car terminal, and our car was not ready yet. By the time I filled out all of the paperwork it was ready. The woman at the counter waived the $2 per day extra driver fee, which was nice savings for us. We ended up with a Nissan Tiida. It is a good size for us, with a small trunk that easily fits our luggage. I did all of the driving that day since Heinrich had never driven on the left before. It was a little nerve racking getting out of Auckland but nothing too bad. I still don’t like roundabouts! I find them confusing when I am not familiar with the roads.

Since it was still early in the day and I was not feeling tired, we took the longer scenic route to Thames. It added about a hour to the drive, but I am so glad we did it (total expected drive time was 2 hours). It got us off the busy highway fairly quickly, and we got to see the countryside. We drove along the coast of the Firth of Thames, passing a few small towns, regional parks, and wildlife refuges.

We stopped briefly at Waitawa Regional Park and Orere Point. Both had nice views of the shoreline. The weather was cloudy but fairly warm, and we encountered sprinkles shortly after leaving Orere Point. The Pacific Coast Highway passed through some beautiful forest (“bush” in New Zealand) with lush tree ferns that reminded me a bit of the Big Island of Hawaii.

We drove onward to the town of Thames. We stopped at The Warehouse to buy our cooler (“chilly bin” in New Zealand), some blue ice blocks, paper plates and plastic silverware, and other picnic supplies. In the same shopping center was a Pak N Save supermarket where we stocked up on our initial supply of food. We also bought a reusable jute shopping bag for the groceries since the markets do not distribute single use plastic bags. That started happening in all of New Zealand on 1 January 2019. I had brought an initial supply of plastic bags with me, but it was so much nicer to have the reusable bags to store our picnic supplies in the car.

We found our lodging at the Sunset Motel and checked in. We had a room with kitchenette and private bath. After seeing what was available, we drove back to The Warehouse and Pac N Save a second time to buy another blue ice block and a bacon and egg pie for dinner. We found out that nobody sells block ice in New Zealand, and we did not want to rely on buying ice cubes all of the time.

Back at the room, we sat outside on the front porch and had our pie for dinner. Afterwards I walked out to the beach. There was a bird nesting site that was roped off. There were huge numbers of gulls and other birds everywhere! Later in the day we both walked out to the beach to watch the sunset.

Overall the day went very well and I was happy to get the initial traveling over and done with.

January 16, 2019

Today is the day! Heinrich and I are ready to start our 5-week trip to New Zealand. Our itinerary is to drive north to south, arriving in Auckland on the North Island and leaving from Christchurch on the South Island. The maps below show our intended route. Click on any map or photo in this blog to enlarge it.

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Key to map symbols used in this blog

• Purple Pins : Places We Stayed
• Gray Pins : Thermal Areas
• Blue Pins : Waterfalls and Thermal Features
• Orange Pins : Arches
• Yellow Pins : Landmarks and Other Places of Interest
• Black Pins : Special Locations
• Gray Line : Driving Route
• Green Line : Shuttle Buses and Boat Trips
• Red Line : Hikes

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My son Kevin drove us from our home in Westminster, Colorado, to the Denver International Airport at 3:15 PM. We checked in our luggage without incident, went through security, and rode the train to Terminal B where our gate was located. Since we both had global entry cards, we had the TSA Precheck through security which made it quick and easy.

Since we still had 1.5 hours before the scheduled flight, we rode the train to Terminal C and found the Timberline Steak and Grill restaurant where Heinrich had a credit card benefit: $28 per person for free food and drink. We were seated at a table fairly quickly. I ordered quesadillas, and we each had a beer. We could have ordered more but Heinrich was not hungry. Traveling tends to make him lose his appetite.

We left the restaurant about a half hour before we were scheduled to board the plane. We arrived back at the gate and found seats. Shortly afterwards a sign popped up on the screen that the flight was delayed by 45 minutes. We were not too concerned since we had a 3-hour layover in San Francisco.

We sat for another half hour. Suddenly the sign changed to say that the flight was delayed even longer. The plane was going to arrive in San Francisco at about the same time that our connecting flight to New Zealand was due to depart. This obviously was very bad news for us.

We walked over to the United Airlines customer service counter to find out what our options were. The nearest counter was closed, so we had to walk even further to get to an open counter. Fortunately there were only a couple of people in line ahead of us, so we were able to speak with someone fairly quickly.

The woman at the counter arranged for us to board an earlier flight. This one was also delayed because the problem was the weather in San Francisco. There were 50 mph winds and very few flights were being allowed to land. The woman told us that this flight would most certainly leave earlier than our original flight since it had an earlier scheduled departure time. Also, this flight was scheduled to land at the gate next door to the gate for the departing New Zealand flight, so if everything went well we should be able to get to that gate quickly. She also put us at the bulk head in the front of the plane so we would be able to get out quickly. We asked her what would happen if we missed the New Zealand flight. She said that we would be stuck in San Francisco for another day since United Airlines had only one flight per day to New Zealand, and there were no agreements with any other airlines to take passengers.

We walked to the new gate, which turned out to be directly across from the original gate. Then we had a long, nervous wait while we hoped to get the message that we could leave. Finally we were able to board. Once on the plane, we sat and waited again for another 20 minutes before we left the gate. It seemed interminably long. At last the plane took off and we were on our way.

It was a bumpy ride into San Francisco. The rain was pelting down. After landing we had to wait because there was no gate open for the plane. We sat for another 15 minutes. The guy sitting next to us checked his phone and said not to worry, they were holding scheduled flights from takeoff to wait for connecting passengers. Still it was very nerve racking. Finally we arrived at the gate, and we did get out quickly since we had the seats in the front. We ran to find our connecting flight. According to my watch we had about 2 minutes before the flight was scheduled to take off. We thought that the gate would be right next to where we had landed since it was the next gate number, but that was not the case. We had to go up a flight of stairs and over to a different section of the terminal.

We found the gate, and the woman at the counter smiled and said, “You made it!” We boarded the plane and found our seats. We were on the plane for about another half hour while we waited for more connecting passengers to arrive. I think we would have been okay on the original flight, but we certainly would have been even more panicked.

We just have to hope that our luggage made it onto the connecting flight. This was not a great way to begin the trip. But the good news is that now we are finally on our way to New Zealand!