Stayed at a Holiday Inn in Christchurch – not the airport one, but in town – to make it easy for our ride out to the airport early tomorrow. The hotel was packed with Rugby fans earlier, but has emptied now. We’ve decided just to have a bar snack as the town will be packed with Rugby-goers as it’s an international with South Africa and they are Rugby mad here.
At Auckland airport now, having flown in this morning from Christchurch. Have spent a lot of my online time trying to find a hotel we fancy in Mexico and will continue the quest in a moment.
But first, reflections on New Zealand.
Everyone we know who’s been here says it’s like England was 50 years ago. We took that to mean old fashioned and quaint. It does feel like the clock has been turned back, it is like England 50 years ago in that people have time for you; Sid keeps saying it is the most courteous place/people that we’ve ever been to/met and he’s right; it’s also like the UK in that it has the most stunning scenery, but here it’s not been spoilt by overdevelopment or motorways soaring through every nice bit of countryside (easy, I know when you only have 4 million people and half of those live in two main cities). It is a very progressive society in its legislation and equal/human rights record. As an aside, our taxi driver last night (and we booked him again for this morning) was Ali from Afghanistan. He came here as an asylum seeker after leaving Afghanistan in a hurry, going to Pakistan, and Iran where apparently, the Taliban were still after him, then took a small boat to one of the Australian islands where he was shipped to Christmas Island refugee holding area for 10 months until New Zealand agreed to take him and others. This was six years ago. Now his wife and seven children live here saying they feel ‘accepted.’ But it’s not just that – it’s everything we’re told and see about Maori integration and hear on the news on other issues. A very interesting place, an easy place to feel comfortable, with really lovely people. Yes, we really enjoyed New Zealand and although everyone says ‘the South island is best’, I think for us the highlights were the Bay of Islands, the Maori village at Rotorua and swimming with the dolphins at Akorao. Undoubtedly the scenery on South Island is more dramatic but we loved both.
And there are other ways to turn back time. Last night clocks went back here – it’s the end of daylight saving time, so our 6 am check in was really 7 am for us – no loss of sleep there then. And this evening we will arrive in Tahiti at 6pm Auckland time, Sunday, (a five-hour flight) but it will be 8pm on Saturday 17th March in Tahiti. I reckon this is because for all those years that I turned the clocks back in the Autumn in England and yet still woke up at the same time, I ‘banked’ those hours. Now it seems I will get them back. So that’s fair. . .
A little drama at Auckland airport. We had just over three hours to kill. Of course, I was blogging (great way to pass airport time)and cut it fine. Sid had gone outside, then I went out for a last cigarette before flight and we lost each other. 'He who does not like flying' was in a little bit of a panic to say the least. That would have been ok if it hadn't been for the digereedoo. Now you remember, that's created a few problems when travelling in the past. Well at Auckland airport JUST ONE security person thought it was a risk. Not an ecological risk as it still had all the bio-security tape on it from when we'd arrived in Auckland two weeks earlier.
This guy thought it could be classed a 'blunt weapon' and so despite his colleagues pleas (they were laughing at him, in fact) he quoted Section 35 (but didn't enlighten us on that further) and confiscated it! More delay, form filling etc. When we got to the gate (and of course I had to run all the way not to incur further wroth of 'he who doesn't like flying')a kind gate check-in lady said she would ask the pilot to take it. He agreed and someone brought it over from Section 35 man (a walk (or run in my case) of about 10 minutes. But again, all's well. . .
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