Arriving in New Zealand

Thought we should let you know that we are safely in New Zealand. That meant a spectacular 16 hour time change, so our body clocks are confused to say the least. We left at 11pm on Friday and landed at the highly unsociable hour of 3.30am Sunday. The flight itself was fine despite a passenger panic as we took off because there were particularly strong chemical/burning smells in the cabin. The cabin crew assured everyone it was normal, but then of course there had to be someone who said he flew this route every other week and this had never happened before - which started everyone off again! It wasn't the most comfortable flight but true to form I managed to sleep for about half of it and the pretty rubbish film selection helped Andrew to doze off too.

Getting through Auckland airport was not as tricky as we thought it might be; we thought it may take a while as New Zealand is one of the tightest when it comes to protecting its borders from foreign bugs etc. Our boots and shoes had to be disinfected as we had been on farmland recently, but it wasn't a huge delay so perhaps there was some advantage in landing at such a silly time. We caught the very efficient shuttle bus straight to our hostel, where we had requested a very early check in. Unfortunately this was dependent on availabilty, unless we wanted to pay for Saturday night too. Fair enough really but we were still more than a little upset to be told at 6am that all double rooms were full until 10.30 check out. Fortunately we were able to get a twin instead and got some much needed sleep before heading out to explore Auckland.

More about that soon, and Rotorua where we now (Monday early evening) are.