Our arrival to New Zealand was not a smooth one. When we were checking-in at the airport in Tahiti it turned out that in order to board the plane flying to this country you need to show a ticket that you will fly out of it as well. We didn’t know that and… we had just a one-way ticket.
Good that we arrived at Papeete airport three hours before the flight departure. Thanks to that we had enough time to: 1) think how many weeks we will need to go around New Zealand on motorcycles, 2) search the net, buy and print the cheap tickets from Auckland to Sydney, 3) board the plane! We’ve made it! So, in case you plan to visit New Zealand and you have neither a local passport nor a work-and-travel visa – remember to have a fly-out ticket or your credit card ready!
Once we were over with the “check-in crisis” and we were in our seats we felt relieved. From this moment our encounter with New Zealand was only positive. The first thing that gets you an idea about how the Kiwis (this is how New Zealanders call themselves – see vocabulary on the bottom of this post) approach life is the safety video. I usually don’t listen to those too carefully and just take a short notice where the closest exits are, but the video in Air New Zealand got my attention. It is a kind of an action movie where the passenger actually jumps into the river after putting on his life jacket, where the air masks fall out and scouts put it on and where the exits are marked with glowworms. At that time I didn’t know what glowworms were but I already got a liking of New Zealand. If you got intrigued by this description take a look at the whole movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=xJheoLUtX_Q&feature=fvwp . It’s really fun to watch.
After landing in Auckland we had another surprise. It was one day later! We left Tahiti on Sunday afternoon and five hours later we arrived in New Zealand on Monday evening! It was a funny thing. When we talked with our family on Skype while on Tahiti we were 11 hours behind Warsaw time and now in New Zealand we are 12 hours ahead. Well, we are one day older than we should be, but we will get it back someday!
In Auckland we needed to take a bus to the city so we looked around and then came the third surprise – the bus was on the wrong side of the road! OK, OK. We knew it before coming here, but still it was kind of funny to see all the cars and busses driving on the left side. We entered the bus, asked for the way and after thanking the driver we heard our first “No worries!”
At last the mini travelers vocabulary: Kiwi or Kiwi birds – the endemic, flightless bird, which is an icon of the country; Kiwifruit – the fruit green on the inside, brown on the outside you cut in half and eat with a spoon; Kiwis – New Zealanders. Yes this is how they call themselves even on the official news!
Welcome to New Zealand!