And We’re OFF!

New Zealand Awaits

We’re all packed and ready to go. It’s just the start of summer in New Zealand (as the country is located in the southern hemisphere)  We’ve got a variety of warm and cool outfits, so I  hope we’ll be covered. After 18 months of living on the island of Oahu, Hawaii we are definitely spoiled with our lovely warm climate. 

Took a Lyft to the airport in Honolulu as we didn’t want to have our car in airport parking for 10 days. As we went to security  for Hawaiian Airlines, the attendant there looked at our tickets and said, “You’re First Class. David looks at me in surprise! Well, I was surprised as well. I said that’s AWESOME! We had about 20 minutes of happy before the flight attendant at the gate told us NO, we were group 3. Darn!  Oh well maybe someday.

Since our flight left at 1pm we decided to get a burger and a beer for lunch. Turned out having a Burger (King) cheeseburger and a from a cute restaurant/bar. It was almost $40 for the food and another $40 for our 2 beers + tip. YES, Hawaii is very expensive but it’s even more so at the airport!

Our flight left almost on time and we had a really nice flight attendant. We had a great meal on the plane  (I had the chicken and rice and David got the pork with potatoes). Snacks  and a turkey sandwich later in the flight kept us happy. Smooth flight with just over 9 hours in the air.  Watched a few movies, read, and played a few games to help the time pass.

We’re here!

Now the fun starts… Or not?

It only took us a few minutes of waiting before our luggage arrived. Grabbed our two bags and headed to customs…. On the way, we saw a duty-free shop and stopped to buy a bottle of New Zealand red wine. We chose wisely then onto customs. Weren’t too long so we jumped in. I had brought some packaged snacks For the trip so I had to declare them. Well, the slim Jim, beef sticks actually had pork in them, and I could NOT bring them in. So I’m digging out my snacks, and David is digging for his when, BAM! The wine hits the floor and explodes everywhere!  

So while that’s getting cleaned up, we give them our meat sticks. Our luggage goes through the machine and we’re free! Or not… Another officer calls us for a “random” check. A nice lady went through EVERY bit of our belongings… And found MORE Slim Jims! I had missed one of the bags I had packed. The fine for not declaring everything is $400!! Thank heaven, the lady liked us and we incurred no fine. 

Rental Car Challenges

Now off to get the rental car.  Easy peasy in and out of the office. Or not… we leave the rental car place quickly and walk and walk and finally find where our rental car is parked. Of course, David goes to get in the driver side… Oops, not there! So we each get in the right side and David tries to start the car but can’t find how. I go into one of the rental car places that was close and asked for help the guy that was nice enough to come help was not even from the company we rented from but thankfully got us on the road. It was after 11 PM (midnight the day BEFORE in Hawaii, as it’s a 23 hour ahead difference). We were getting tired and still had to drive to our Airbnb on the WRONG side of the road from what we used to (and no wine once we got there)! Thank the Lord it wasn’t a far distance away. We made it safe and sound.