Couches & Customs

We have arrived into Christchurch . . . at last!  Our travel started yesterday afternoon on a flight to Oahu, on which River tried his first ever POG.  

Based on his reaction to the 45% of the juice that actually made it into his mouth and didn’t end up on his white aloha shirt, I’d say he’s a big POG fan.

We stayed the night in Honolulu then got onboard Air New Zealand the next morning.

Once again Air New Zealand was amazing, and we were thrilled to have scored two Skycouch rows.  Being able to make the row of seats into essentially a single flat surface goes a long way in adding comfort to an 8 hr flight.  I was able to sit cross legged, stretch my legs out lounge chair style, or just sit normally in the extra legroom space the Skycouch rows provide.

Both boys did great throughout the flight.  And before too long we were touching down in Auckland.

It has been about nine months since our last trip, and the vacant Auckland airport we had found in July 2022 when we disembarked that first Air NZ flight from Honolulu was no more.  The airport was BUSY!   

We made it to Customs at about 5:30 pm, and didn’t get out until nearly 7:15 pm!  It was packed.

Well it just so happened that our flight to Christchurch departed at 7 pm.  When it became obvious (at about 6 pm) that we weren’t going to get through Customs in time to catch our flight, Sharyl called Air New Zealand to try to switch to the 8:30 departure, the last flight to Christchurch of the day.  Apparently their call center was just as busy as customs because as we crawled inch by inch through the line Sharyl was on hold the entire time, never actually getting through to a person despite an hour and fifteen minutes of waiting.

Once we cleared customs we made our way to the domestic terminal and were thrilled to find out that the 8:30 flight had room, and the agents switched us over with no trouble.  

The flight ended up being a bit delayed but it was an easy hour and a half from Auckland to Christchurch and right around 10:30 pm we finally touched down in our destination.  So even with a couple of good flights, and the boys being awesome onboard (though River was a bit of a handful in the various airports), the day proved pretty exhausting.  So we are happy to have made it, and very excited about the days ahead - far, far from the customs line!