On our way to the airport we run into the traffic that Murray had warned us about. It’s brutal, the lights take forever and there are way too many cars for the road to handle. It takes us a frustrating 45 minutes to go what should only take about 25. But we eventually make it to the gas station off the airport road where we can get our 6 cent per gallon discount that we qualified for at New World.
Then onto the airport property in search of the rental car return. That was tough – all of a sudden the signage just ends. It directs you right up to the front of the terminal, then goes away. As we drive past the departing flights drop off area, we can see the rental car signage on the huge parking deck, but there is no way to get there. Argh. Ed makes a quick left after the garage, and we circle it, actually finding the entrance for the returns by happenstance. That could have been ugly.
Then we drop off the car and find we have a 5 or 10 minute walk to the International terminal. Really? There’s got to be a shuttle – what if it is raining? But, its a beautiful day, and the Hertz girl gives us a buggy to put our suitcases on, so we wheel our way over to the terminal and check in.
From there – it’s a breeze. We have to check ourselves in at the kiosk, tag our bags ourselves and put them on the conveyer belt. There are Air New Zealand (ANZ) folks there to help, but only minor assistance, they’re not doing it for you – just helping. But we get it all handled easily then head to security. On the way we stop at the bathroom and see all the customs forms posted all over. We grab a couple and sit down in the food court to fill them out. Good move, since we need them to even get to security.
As we enter security, there is another ANZ representative there weighing the carry on bags. They say you are only allowed 7KG but nobody usually weighs them. Not so here! The girls in front of us get turned back and told to go back to the check in kiosks to check their bag – it’s too heavy. Uh oh. Our bag weights in at 7.6KG, and I’m just about ready to reach in and grab our sneakers out of the thing, but they let us through – we got lucky! Security is simple, we’re through and gone in no time – now we just have 3 hours before our flight. Ugh.
We hit the bar, spend most of our remaining New Zealand dollars, head to the gate, and spend our remaining 2 NZ dollars for a bag of chips – it was the only thing under 2 NZ anywhere. We were left with 10 NZ cents. Good work.
We’re finally called to board and luck out with no one in the middle seat between us. The flight goes well, food decent, same old movies, but we need to sleep anyway, so it didn’t matter. We ended up sleeping a fair amount, then watched a couple of Boston Legal episodes, ate a surprisingly good scrambled egg breakfast and landed in Honolulu about 45 minutes early.
On the same day we left! It is so weird flying across the dateline. We left Auckland, New Zealand at 9PM on 2/21 and we arrived in Honolulu at 5:45AM on 2/21. Bizarre.
After taking the bus from the arrival terminal to the main terminal, we go through the Global Traveler passport line, which worked beautifully as we zipped right through, went down to baggage claim, and lo and behold, the bags were there. Normally you get through passport control and you have to wait forever for the bags. Not so today, and we’re out the door and onto the Dollar rental car shuttle in record time.
There is no one at the rental car agency either, so we are on the road way before 7:00am. Shocking. Navigating our way to Kailua we are ever so thankful that we are heading in the opposite direction of traffic. Oh my. The back up on the highway goes on for miles and it’s virtually dead stop. Our side is speeding along fine and we make it to the cottage by about 7:30. We are incredibly lucky that there was no one there the night before and Toni has let us check in whenever we arrive. It is a wonderful little bonus.
So, we settle in, start our laundry, hit the grocery stores and then come back and sort of just laze the day away in our cute little Kailua retreat.
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