Our trip from Christchurch to Hawaii started pretty well. Kerri, her
Nanna and me, all boarded the trusty 737 for the short flight up to
Auckland. We even arrived on time (more or less).
After a fairly brisk maneuver from Auckland domestic airport to the international terminal, we just cleared customs in time to get on the flight. We even taxied and powered up to take off. We got about 100m before the pilot shut the engines down and headed back to the terminal. Four hours later the plane was fixed and we were off again.
This is about the only highlight of our horrible travel day. The photo below was taken as we were flying past Fiji.
We finally arrived in Honolulu at about 1.30am instead of the 9.30pm as originally planned. To make things worse, the customs officials in trying to speed things up, shafted us big time! We were about mid pack in the line and ended up being the last through the customs gate. Our suit cases were already off the carousel and being looked at as abandoned baggage. It was 3.30am before we turned the light out at the hotel.
We didn't surface until 9.30am and this is the view from our hotel room. It overlooks the entire Waikiki strip.
Unfortunately we had to let it go. The wall next to our heads backed onto the lift well. It meant that we thought there were road works in progress down on the street. We figured that we weren't going to be in the hotel much and a good night sleep was more important than the view.
