Sunday February 20, 2005 - “The Day from Hell” – The Journey to Queenstown, New Zealand (“NZ”)

Well, it has been a few weeks since I updated you all on my comings and goings. So far things are going smashingly, as I write this in our villa near the beach, in Fiji. I am at the halfway point between when I left and when I arrive in Israel for Pesach, though not the halfway point of my travels, which won’t occur till early April.

Picking up where I last left off, we had a real saga getting to Queenstown. It was supposed to go easily. We were Sydney veterans after all. We had a lot of luggage (chiefly food since we wouldn’t be going to a Jewish area in NZ for the first two weeks of our sojourns) and we knew we would need to order a large taxi from a company called MaxiTaxi, which has enormous taxi mini vans which are called MaxiTaxis, and which must be specially ordered. So we ordered a MaxiTaxi the night before we were set to leave. We then checked the next morning to make sure that our MaxiTaxi was coming as ordered. So far no worries, as the aussies like to say. Well, imagine our surprise when the MaxiTaxi company, whose sole purpose in life is to supply people with hard to find MaxiTaxis, sends us an standard, no excess luggage taxi, smaller than what we would usually be able to hire right from the street in front of our hotel! As all this was occurring, I was about 5 minutes drive away at a nearby bakery, ‘Grandma Moses’ for those who have been to Sydney, buying our bread and pastries for the next week. Luckily, I called Lisa and Elliot and was aware of the situation. As I hung up the phone, I spotted a fairly large taxi (not a rare MaxiTaxi) pulling into the newsstand a few doors down from the bakery. I waited for a moment till the driver went and got his coffee and asked if he would like a fare to the airport. He was happy to oblige. In fact, it turns out that he was a retired Russian Jew who had lived for several years in the US and he loved Americans and especially new york (brighton beach and NJ if you could believe it!). Even more amazingly, unlike every other taxi driver in Sydney we had made use of till then, he did not have ‘back troubles’ though he was in his 60s and he helped us with loading our luggage very quickly into the taxi! We managed to get to the airport about 2 hours in advance, thinking our troubles for the day were over. Boy where we wrong! As we got to the check in area, we saw over 100 people waiting in the same line ahead of us. It turns out that we had a perfect storm – 3 flights at the same time leaving on the same airline (Air New Zealand) on a Sunday morning, which was bad enough. What made this the perfect storm was that the day before several flights to NZ had been cancelled because of a bad rain storm in Sydney the day before. SO every flight was full to bursting, to accommodate all of the passengers on the previous cancelled flights.

Here I will digress for a moment, to relate a weird connection we had to this very storm that caused all the backups at the airport. During our stay in Sydney, our hotel fronted onto Bondi Beach in Sydney, a very pretty surfing beach which is very well known in Australia and throughout the world, especially because its less than 5 miles from the downtown area, so you can surf or boogy board before and after work if you choose. We really enjoyed this hotel since our room had a spectacular ocean view, from the 5th floor of the hotel. Well, late on Shabbat afternoon, as I was fast asleep, the storm began. Apparently it was quite intense, but I have no clue because I sleep like a log. Literally. Perhaps an earthquake could wake me when I sleep, but not anything less intense. Anyways, Elliot was peering out the window at the beach, as we often did, and saw someone on the beach get struck by lighting! As Elliot relates the story, “immediately there were life guards on the scene, performing resuscitation efforts” and within minutes an ambulance arrived and took the poor fellow off to the hospital. We later learned that the lighting struck a 29 year old man who was in serious condition in the hospital. I sure hope everything has worked out for the best by now….


Getting back to the airport, I do have to give Air New Zealand credit for handling the enormous crowds. They were very efficient and managed to check in people as the time came close for a flight to board. But once we got checked in, our troubles really began. IT turns out that Australia, like the US and very few others countries in the world, makes you go through immigration as you leave the country, asking you similar questions as if you are just entering the country. There was a substantial line here as well. The problem was that our flight had already started boarding and we still hadn’t cleared security for our carry-on luggage, which can take awhile. Luckily, Air New Zealand came to the rescue again. They sent someone to ensure that we everyone on a pending flight ‘jumped’ to the head of the line. We managed to get to our flight with a few minutes to spare, but only just!

If you are still reading this, you would think, WHEH, finally we could RELAX. We are on FLIGHT NUMBER 9, from Sydney to Christchurch, we made the plane, no more worries.

Well, let me relate a few facts before I continue. New Zealand (NZ) is divided into two islands, North Island and South Island. North Island has most of the population, along with Auckland and the capital, Wellington. South Island has most of the natural beauty, as well as the sheep. Sheep, you ask? Yes, from what we were told, NZ has about 70 million sheep, and about 4 million people. That’s a hell of a lot of sheep as you can imagine, especially since most of them are on South Island. More on the sheep later though…

To continue with the travel day from hell, if you recall the title of this section, we were supposed to get to Queenstown that day, which is about a 1 hour flight, or a 6 hour drive from Christchurch – it’s the second largest city in the South Island. The airport in Queenstown is not large enough to handle most international flights, so if you want to go there you really have to fly via Christchurch. It’s a short flight of less than 1 hour, so no worries, right? Well, since Queenstown is a small airport, it closes at 5:30 PM. Our flight from Christchurch wasn’t scheduled to arrive till about 10 minutes before 3pm, and we were on the last flight to Queenstown, which was scheduled to leave at about 4pm. However, since we had such a full flight in Sydney, we arrived after 3pm. We had to wait awhile for our luggage, then we had to clear immigration. No problems so far, its 3:30 pm, we still have time to make our flight. But we still had to get through the most dreaded part, bio-security. What is bio-security you ask? Well, NZ like many countries tries to control the food and animal products entering the country, to keep themselves free from contaminants like hoof and mouth disease and whooping corn, or some such. We had gone through the same type of checks in Australia, which even sprayed our plane and all of our hand luggage after we landed. We were always worried about these folks because we were carrying food with us from Hawaii, not knowing what kosher food we would be able to find in places.

When we arrived in Sydney in fact, we filled out the forms, indicated we had some food, and when we went to the special food inspection line, I mentioned we were kosher and he saw my yarmulke and waived us through without any problems. I knew that NZ was much stricter than Australia though. People had told us horrors of having their kosher food confiscated. In fact, I checked out the NZ bio-security websites before my trip, and noticed that they deemed things such as SOY SAUCE AND HONEY as DANGEROUS ITEMS, SUBJECT TO INSPECTION and possible confiscation. So imagine what its like, that Sunday afternoon. You have less than 30 minutes to check in and get on your domestic flight, you are carrying a large quantity of kosher food and you have to get through dreaded bio-security, the toughest I have ever seen in the world in terms of things they are concerned about, and this is the last flight of the day that you can make, you have paid for your room at a hotel on the other side of the island because everywhere in town was sold out since this is peak season in Te Anou the place we were staying at that Sunday night (which is a 2 hour drive from Queenstown, by the way). Well, we had learned in Sydney, be honest and disclose that you have things on the list and let them ‘inspect them’. We indicated that we had some food, and that we had hiked in forest areas within the last 30 days. We started to show the inspector our perishable foods and he asked to see our boots, for the hiking. Well, this started to take awhile, its 3:45 now, and I was worried we wouldn’t have enough physical time to make our flight. I informed the inspector of the details of our flight and he allowed me to go ahead to hold the flight while my friends Lisa and Eliot continued to go through the inspection.

As I left the bio-security section, I was told to go to the ‘Air New Zealand Transfer Desk” which was right outside the bio-security area, and advise the personnel that we were late. As I get out of the bio-security quarantine area, I see the ‘Air New Zealand Transfer Desk`. However, its dark and no one is there. It’s now 3:50, less than 15 minutes from when our flight is SUPPOSED TO LEAVE! I then proceed to run through the airport like a madman, looking for domestic Air New Zealand check-in. After spending 2 minutes explaining my situation to someone from Air New Zealand, seemingly the right people, I am told that this is the International check-in area and I need domestic check-in. As I am about to blow a gasket, I finally find the proper folks, and as I have just run over there, I explain between huffing and puffing that that we are late because of biosecurity, and can they hold the flight for us. Luckily I managed to tell the supervisor, who said he would do what he could to hold the flight. I then look around and realize that Lisa and Elliot will never find the proper check-in area in time, so I run back for 2 minutes to the bio-security area to help them out. Imagine my amazement when I don’t even see them outside the area, and I am not allowed to enter that area because its only for arriving passengers. Luckily, as the door opens to that area each time a passenger leaves, I manage to spy lisa and elliot and shout to them to hurry up. I had to wait a few more minutes till they were allowed to exit ( it seems that the initial inspector left in the middle and someone else came over to finish up, delaying things of course, on a day when we had no extra time!)

Well, the nightmare continues. We are now racing over to the domestic area, after the time when the flight is supposed to leave, and one of the carts keeps falling over, so we have to, like laurel and hardy, race over with another cart and reload the luggage, as people in the airport are laughing at our antics. We finally get to the check-in area, and we are told that we need to check in most of our hand luggage, since the plane is a small 60 passenger propeller plane and our luggage won’t fit in the overheads! So here we are, almost without any luggage or food, but luckily the flight hadn’t left yet and we are told to relax, we can make the flight. We then go through security, go to the wrong gate up a flight of stairs because its not well labeled, and we hear our names called over the PA. We finally find the proper gate and the flight attendants seem to be aware of our saga, and again tell us to relax, we are fine, we will make the flight. We had to walk out onto the tarmac to board the plane, and I managed to snap off a shot of the plane, which you can see right below this blog posting.

So we finally get on the plane and begin laughing, since we have made our flight, we will get to the Queenstown airport before it closes, which means we can then pick up our car before the rental counter closes, and start driving to our hotel room in Te Anou. All is good, right? The day from hell must be over, we have survived all of the challenges. Well, little did we know what was in store for us, what we needed to pass through to allow us to complete the ‘travel day from hell’. We had a very nice flight, FLIGHT NUMBER 10. So far so good. Its still a sunny day, we get to see the beautiful southern alps, the chain of mountains that bisects South Island into two halves. We arrive at the terminal in Queenstown and spy the Remarkables, which are a spectacular mountain range right behind the airport. See the picture below for this view. We also had another experience with the Remarkables – more on that later also!

So we go to get our luggage and I go to pick up the car, as its now about 5:15 and the airport seems closed as of 5pm as all the staff seems to walk by us as we exit the aircraft. Anyways, I manage to get the car just in time before the fellow leaves, and I go to check on the baggage. As I go to that area, I notice a large crowd of people standing around, and very few bags in evidence. Whats going on? Well, it turns out that the propeller plane has a limit on how much weight it can carry and the much of the luggage was not loaded onto the flight because of the weight restrictions. Needless to say, as the last to check in, all of our luggage, including almost all of our usual carry-ons which had spare clothes and snack food for the plane, had not made it either, since we were the last to check in. Most folks had some of their luggage, but we had none. Also, we were not in the Queenstown area that night, but two hours away in Te Anou, where we needed to be so we could go on a cruise in an area known as the Milford Sound, which had also been pre-booked and paid for because it was during the busy season when things often sell out days in advance. Also, amongst our luggage was a good deal of perishable food that had made it through ‘bio-security’, but now it looked like we would lose it all because of the delays in getting our baggage.

Again, I have to commend the Air New Zealand staff. We impressed upon them our situation, and they claimed that our luggage was due to be flown to another regional airport within a few hours drive of Te Anou and they would try and have it driven to our hotel later than night. Since we didn’t know if this would really occur, we went shopping for some food and other items in case we needed to rough it for a day or two till our luggage arrived. Sure enough, to make a short story very long, we managed to drive to our hotel, check-in and within 2 hours of check-in the airline managed to get our luggage to us, thus saving the day in the end. If you have continued to read, you can imagine how we felt at that point, and then we went to bed, to arise early the next morning for our drive to Milford Sound. What a day! I guess we had to have at least one of these, no?