New Zealand is 23 hours ahead of Hawaii. We boarded our plane on Friday morning and arrived Saturday evening!
Exiting onto the tarmac gave us a sense of how big our 787 really was
The airport terminal was impressive - and presented a dizzying array of duty free options before we even made it to passport control. We purchased our Vodafone SIM cards before we pulled out our passports! Passport control was really easy - we just inserted our passports into a kiosk, answered one single question about whether or not we have ever been in jail, and then the kiosk printed a ticket that we inserted into the exit stalls that also took our picture. Almost as easy as passing through a subway gate.
The more complicated part was the biosecurity control - being an island, New Zealand is very cautious about the pests that could be brought into the country. We had to declare our hiking shoes and camping gear, and we were diverted into a secondary control area so someone could inspect our tent. Curiously, the officer was more interested in the tent itself and didn't bother looking at the ground sheet - we suspect he was looking for bugs that might have been trapped inside. What he didn't know is that Neil hasn't used his tent since 2014!
Once we made it out of the airport, we hopped onto the SkyBus shuttle, which has a stop directly in front of our hotel downtown.
Fun facts about our hotel:
- the light switches are backwards from what we're used to: flipping the switch down turns the lights on
- the room description said a coffee/tea maker is included - instead of a coffee percolator, we have a kettle and a french press, along with packets of ground coffee, hot chocolate and many different types of tea!
Exiting onto the tarmac gave us a sense of how big our 787 really was
The airport terminal was impressive - and presented a dizzying array of duty free options before we even made it to passport control. We purchased our Vodafone SIM cards before we pulled out our passports! Passport control was really easy - we just inserted our passports into a kiosk, answered one single question about whether or not we have ever been in jail, and then the kiosk printed a ticket that we inserted into the exit stalls that also took our picture. Almost as easy as passing through a subway gate.
The more complicated part was the biosecurity control - being an island, New Zealand is very cautious about the pests that could be brought into the country. We had to declare our hiking shoes and camping gear, and we were diverted into a secondary control area so someone could inspect our tent. Curiously, the officer was more interested in the tent itself and didn't bother looking at the ground sheet - we suspect he was looking for bugs that might have been trapped inside. What he didn't know is that Neil hasn't used his tent since 2014!
Once we made it out of the airport, we hopped onto the SkyBus shuttle, which has a stop directly in front of our hotel downtown.
Fun facts about our hotel:
- the light switches are backwards from what we're used to: flipping the switch down turns the lights on
- the room description said a coffee/tea maker is included - instead of a coffee percolator, we have a kettle and a french press, along with packets of ground coffee, hot chocolate and many different types of tea!
How about a pic or 2 of your hotel?
ReplyDeleteBTW the time of my comment is in Hawaiian time.
ReplyDeleteWe'll take some pics of the hotel =) I think all of the blog times are now local NZ time. You are posting 18 hours into the future!!!
ReplyDeleteIf you need any photos of the on-call rooms at AMGH just let me know ;-)
ReplyDeleteEnjoy!