New Zealand

First a quick apology for not getting a post up yesterday. They will be more regular now that we are starting to get settled in.

Vancouver to Auckland - It was not nearly as tough a flight as we thought it might be. We flew on a 777(fully booked), 3 sets of 3 seats across the cabin. We were split into 2 & 2, one behind the other, at the window. So that meant that Samantha & I had middle seats. We were fortunate that each of us were beside very nice people, neither of whom were very big. The guy beside me was very little, meaning that I didn't have to worry about space. The kids both enjoyed the flight, watched movies and slept. The food, supper & breakfast, was very good. It seems that they timed the serving of breakfast so that our bodies were already starting to adjust to our new time zone. As a side note, I'm pretty sure that our Saturday was only 3 hours long. Our pilot was also very helpful in making the flight easier, he shaved 1.5 hours off of the schedule, meaning that it was a 13 hour flight instead of 14.5. We landed at 5 a.m. NZ time - it was 16 degrees Celsius. We had no trouble clearing immigration and enjoyed a nice leisurely walk to the domestic terminal for our next flight.

Auckland to Christchurch - We realized that we were going to have some luggage trouble as we waited for our Auckland to Christchurch flight. The domestic carry-on policies were more restrictive. To that point, we each had a carry-on & a personal bag. New Zealand Air would classify our personal bags as carry-ons, meaning that we had 4 bags too many. Thankfully we were taken care of by a very helpful Air NZ employee, Cindy, who checked our extra bags as "late baggage" at the gate and didn't charge us any excess baggage. She simply wished us well on our Kiwi Adventure. The flight was very quick, just 1:20. Arrived in Christchurch on schedule.

Christchurch to Invercargill - We enjoyed some lunch at the airport. Nothing exotic, just some pizza. At Christchurch they have an outdoor observation deck on the roof of the terminal, so we enjoyed some sunshine and warmth watching planes arrive and depart. It was nice to get outside but also to get out of a very crowded terminal. There were a lot of travelers and Girl Guides. Sunday morning was the end of their annual jamboree and there were a whole bunch of them flying out on Sunday afternoon. We encountered our only delay of the trip here as well. The plane we were to fly in arrived 30 minutes late so we departed 30 minutes late. No complaints though. To have 4 flights on only 30 minutes total of delay, something we could definitely live with. This flight was also on 1:20 in duration so it was quick as well. We flew down the coast of the south island for the most part. Saw many mountains out Sam's window. When we arrived at Invercargill we were greeted by Jo & John Gardyne. Jo is the treasurer of the camp board and was my main contact prior to arrival. We retrieved our bags, all 13 arrived with us, loaded them onto the Gardyne's trailer and into their SUV and then headed to our new home.

I'll continue the story in the morning.

The slideshow to the right is now some pictures of the journey. To view them at full size, just click on the picture.