Charles Town Chatter: Auckland Adventure

The approach to the Auckland airport was simply beautiful. There were long stretches of white sand beaches, and twisting rivers that ended at tall cliffs with waterfalls that fell to the beach. The weather was superb and the visibility endless, quite a lovely way to enter a country. Our landing was flawless and we were soon walking out of the plane, with the crew lined up to say goodbye to Hunter, our little stuffed bear, and thanking him for flying on Air New Zealand.

Our joy on arriving quickly turned to dismay when we realized that we had landed behind two full Airbus 380s from the Middle East and one 767 from Tonga. If you figure an average of 550 passengers per 380 and about 100 for the 767 (normally it could carry 200, but Tongans are very large) there were 1200 people ahead of us in the long line at passport control that twisted and turned for what seemed like a mile. There was a VIP line with no one in it so we went up and presented Hunter and his passport. I had thought that the Kiwis had a good sense of humor so we must have had someone who was originally from Australia since he unsmilingly sent us to the back of the long line. I must say the staff handled the line well and we were through in just a bit over fifteen minutes. I thought we were home free, but boy was I wrong.

Upon collecting our luggage we were faced with yet another long line where customs agents interrogated everyone about what they were carrying, how long they were staying, what was their profession, etc. It seems that New Zealand is rather fussy about keeping their country free from mud and bugs and bacteria from other countries, as well as making sure that they control immigration. Now we were really stalled in the line and I had a lot of time to look at the crowd. If I had been an immigration agent I would have sent at least half of these people back to the plane.

We finally cleared everything and were in a taxi to our hotel. One hour later and 100 dollars lighter we arrived and the first thing we did was take long hot showers to shake off the jet lag. We had a lovely dinner and slept like babies until eight the next morning when we got up and ran in a lovely park for about thirty minutes. Totally refreshed, we decided to take Hunter on a tour of the lovely island of New Zealand. Here are some pictures of him having a grand time doing lots of cool things.

Until tomorrow, goodbye from Cindy, William and Hunter.