the land of the long white cloud

On a cold, wintery afternoon in January we left a snowy Leeds Bradford airport to embark on the trip of a lifetime.  In 24 hours time, crossing the International Date line, we would arrive in the land of 'the long white cloud', Aotearoa, New Zealand.

The trip had been planned & booked in October just before the 2012 Motorhome & Caravan Show at Birmingham.  We had initially picked the brains of a specialist holiday company then decided that it would be much easier to book each element of the trip ourselves.  So it was that the flights were booked with with Air New Zealand, taking advantage of the Round World deal with connecting flights with British Airways from Yorkshire down to London Heathrow. 

So there we were then, airborne & heading down to Heathrow airport looking forward, with some trepidation l might say, to the lengthy time spent travelling.  This would be our longest flights ever by about 10 hours or so. Prior to departure from Heathrow we had booked, on advice from a well travelled Canadian friend, a couple of places in one of the executive lounges, which incidentally was money well spent, giving us a chance to 'switch off' & chill before the long flights ahead.

At 9pm the Flight number NZ38 thundered down the runway heading once airborne, north east & onward to our first stop, Hong Kong.

We had upgraded our seats so had slightly more elbow room & a definitely better cabin service, so the first 11 hours went fairly easily.  We had supper over Russia & breakfast over the Himalayas.  Touch down at Hong Kong was about 5pm local time, so we had gone from breakfast to tea time in the space of an hour!

Hong Kong, as we came into land was barely visible, hidden behind a 'pink' veil of what l could only assume was smog.  On landing & disembarking, we were all 'stuck' with an Air New Zealand sticker - in case we got lost?  So 2 hours to kill here, all pretty uneventful really.  The Lavatories were supervised by ladies in white coats & face masks looking more like surgeons that loo cleaners, whilst everyone else looked the same, cliche l'm sorry.  Also, high end goods on offer for sale in the duty free shops plus loads of sweets & food stuffs, none of which you can take with you into New Zealand.

Two hours doesn't sound long in real terms, but after half an hour we were bored, it was almost dark outside so we went over to find 'comfy' seats near to our exit gate & switched on the gadgetry.  Incidentally most of the other passengers were doing the same, a lot of Skyping & Facetiming going on!

It was quite dark by the time we were airborne once again.  Supper served, kiwi wines finished off, chatting to a lone traveller in the next seat.  This time, it was more difficult to settle.  Onward we flew through the night, crossing the dateline passing forward in time.  Breakfast, which included a noodle option, was served as we flew over the Great Barrier Reef & down the east coast of Australia, the red glow from the raging bush fires clearly visible from 32,000 feet.

Gosh it was a long way, nearly 11 hours after leaving Hong Kong we touched down at Auckland International Airport.  On entering the arrivals hall & being sniffed at by friendly looking Labradors looking for that illegal contraband in the form of 'any foodstuffs' it was pretty clear that there was a severe overdosing of all things Tolkien.  Dwarves, Hobbits & shaggy bearded wizards were in abundance welcoming the traveller to Middle Earth, oh, & the sun was shining & it was warm!  

Lets go travelling - Kia Ora.