The North Island in Almost 2 Weeks
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Auckland:
It was very strange leaving LAX on the evening of the 13th, flying all night, and waking up at dawn in Fiji on the 15th. That Wednesday never happened. I hope we get it back when we fly back to the states. We stepped off the plane in Fiji at around 5:30 in the morning and it was already warm and very humid. They turned on the AC in the airport around 7, so it wasn’t too unbearable to wait for our flight to NZ.
We landed in New Zealand around noon that day and proceeded directly to customs. The customs terminal was empty, it was a little strange, there were groups of officials milling around talking to each other and waiting for a very big airplane to land I guess. We went up to the window a little afraid. You see, in LA, the lady at the ticket counter had a problem with Nina’s visa application having a different passport number than her new passport. She couldn’t believe that someone would get a new passport after applying for a visa in a foreign country. She was very upset that she had to go back and make some phone calls; I think it ruined her day. She told us that we could get on the plane, but she didn’t make any promises that we could stay in New Zealand once we got there. Amazingly, when we got here there was no problem at all. The agent we spoke to called her boss, who was very gracious, and he took it to the office in the back. We waited 10 minutes and another man came out and explained that it was no problem at all and welcomed us to the country.
[read on]
frosaker