Our 03:15 flight took off at 02:16 and our flight time was 2 hours 52 minutes arriving back in Auckland at 05:08 local time, 16:08 GMT. Having caught the first airbus from the airport in to the city we made straight for the cyber cafe to update the website as we were unable to check in to the youth hostel until after 10:00.
We had tasks to complete. We had spent a few hours in the cyber cafe already but there was a car to arrange for tomorrow, a notebook to buy, some more pens were needed, Ian required some more digital tapes for his camera, we had Christmas cards to buy and I needed to arrange the shipping of another dozen or so films to be processed! This may not sound like a lot but when you are suffering from sleep deprivation and poor quality airline food this tasklist is quite daunting!
A telephone call to Sky Tower unfortunately revealed that my Oakley sunglasses hadn't been surrendered as lost property last week. What a surprise.
We managed to do all of our laundry and arrange the car hire, which Ian collected, by 14:00. In his negotiations Ian had secured two days hire free of charge. So we decided that we could do the rest of the chores in the morning before we set off for the Far Northland. We ambled down Queen Street to the cinema complex in order to see a repeat viewing of Lord of the Rings which was showing last week. Sadly, it wasn't showing anymore and the prices to see the new Harry Potter film were fixed at the higher rate for the first two weeks of showing, which were over our budgeted NZD 9.50 each!
Disappointed we headed back downstairs and bought pizza and lasagne for lunch instead.
Surprisingly we accomplished everything in the afternoon that we wanted to tomorrow, except arranging the FedEx parcel although I did manage to locate a mailbox (Kiwi for FedEx despatching office) so when we are on the road tomorrow we can parcel up and despatch the goods at speed.
With everything wrapped up we headed back to the cyber cafe to completely update the website. Within a couple of hours I had finished so I spent some time e-mailing my family and friends.
I left Ian typing in the cyber cafe and put myself to bed.
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.