Before we left to begin our trip, we spent lots of time packing and
repacking to make sure we had what we needed and were still able to
carry it all through the airports and in and out of the hotels we would
be staying at. Finally, we headed to meet up with my parents in
Marshall, WI.
Packed for New Zealand
We were very excited to finally be on our way to New Zealand as we all
stuffed ourselves and our luggage into the car. It was an
uneventful trip to O'Hare with only a stop at a tollway oasis for
lunch. We dropped off the car at an off site parking lot and were
quickly shuttled to the terminal. Our first flight took us from
Chicago to San Francisco. This was the first time that Tyler had
been on a plane in a couple of years and he was very nervous for about
the first hour and a half. At that point Erin and I were
wondering what we were going to do because it didn't seem like a good
idea to force him to get on a 13 hour plane ride if he was going to be
scared out of his mind the whole time. Luckily, Erin was able to
talk to him and get him calmed down. From that point on the only
thing he didn't like about flying was the take-offs, but we could live
with that. He ended up really enjoying the flights, probably
more-so than anyone else on the trip.
After we arrived in San Francisco, we switched terminals to catch our
flight to Auckland. By the time we got to the gate, it was almost
time to start boarding the flight.
Our Air New Zealand 777 waiting at the gate
By this time it was getting
pretty late and Tyler was very tired. As soon as we got on the
plane, Tyler fell asleep, even before we had a chance to take
off. He slept straight through for 10 hours and was in good
spirits for the last 3 hours of the flight.
Tyler asleep on the plane
The rest of us
struggled to get much sleep; the flight had just enough turbulence
to keep us mostly awake through the night. I must say, I hate
flying and was really dreading the flight, but it ended up going much
faster than I thought it would. The Air New Zealand planes had
lots of good video on demand shows and movies to watch which helped
pass the time. I spent a lot of the time watching the moving map
display which showed that we were pretty far from everywhere during the
whole flight. The two highlights are flying past the equator and
the international date line. Eventually, we began our descent
into Auckland. It was still dark out as it was now early Monday
morning. It was pretty strange to start our trip on a Saturday,
but have our first hotel reservation on a Monday.
After we landed, we headed off to customs and biosecurity.
Immigration and customs was very smooth and easy, but we were somewhat
nervous about biosecurity. In case you didn't know, New Zealand
is extremely protective of their native species and has a very strict
biosecurity entry procedure. If you're ever planning to go to New
Zealand, make sure you spend time familiarizing yourself with what is
legal and how to declare what you are bringing into New Zealand.
If in doubt, declare it and you will most likely avoid a fine, even if
they make you throw it out. When it was our turn to go through
biosecurity, I was nervous about our hiking boots. You must have
clean boots or you get a pretty big fine. The agent asked us if
our hiking boots were clean, we thought they were, but they weren't
spotless, so he said if you aren't certain you can go to a different
line to have them checked. We waited in that new line and were
declared clean enough so we then quickly finished up biosecurity and
went to call our car rental place to have them pick us up. We
quickly got some cash from an expensive airport ATM and met up with the
person from Apex rentals. He drove us about 5 minutes to their
off site location and we were ready to get our van to begin our journey
in New Zealand.
Continue to Day 1
Back to trip home