It was raining by the time we put everything in the car and drove up to refuel it. Arriving at the airport, we found the New Zealand checkin counter. We got our bags checked all the way into San Francisco and then bought some more chocolate and ate breakfast before going through the very understated and uncrowded security line for the flight to Auckaland.
In Auckland, however, things were super confusing—the
international terminal necessitated that we walk out of the domestic terminal
we were in and then redo our checkin. Fortunately, Xiaoqin found someone who
whisked us right to the front of the Fiji Airways domestic counter who
re-issued our boarding passes after the passport check, and then told us that
since we were frequent flyers we could board immediately after the first class
passengers.
The flight to Nadi was easy, but then there was awful long
wait at the Nadi airport. It was 10:00pm and late before we were boarded. I
must have slept a bit during the flight home because it didn’t seem that long.
We picked up our baggage from the carousel with no problems, zipped through
customs and border patrol because of the MPC app (even faster than the folks
who were waiting in line for their global entry interview) and were soon at
home. Our trip was over.
Conclusions
A lot of Americans like New Zealand. My conclusion is that
much like Australia and the USA, it’s a country where there’s no public transit and you
have to drive everywhere, so that makes Americans feel comfortable. The scenery
is gorgeous, as expected, and I wish we’d had more time to visit places like
Abel Tasman National Park, and obviously the system for getting Great Walks
definitely makes planning a New Zealand trip a factor in how good you are at
getting through their DOC system.
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