New Zealand Adventure, Day 18

Saturday, Feb 13, 4:35 PM Seattle Local Time

We're home! (Almost, we're at the airport killing time waiting for the shuttle.)

Due to the magic of the International Date Line, we left on Saturday afternoon and arrived on Saturday afternoon. As Dave W. pointed out to me on Facebook, this does help make up for having completely giving the miss to Wednesday, Jan 27. It just never happened for us :-)

We spent about 16 hours on three planes today. One from Wellington to Auckland, then Auckland to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Seattle. The short flights are brutal on my ears; but the long flights are no problem. My hypothesis is that the short flights climb and descend faster than the larger planes; and thus the pressure changes are less rapid.

The Wellington airport has no security checkpoint. We went straight from baggage claim to the airplane. What a less complicated world they have there; I think it just adds to the Paradise-like mystique. It also added to our sense of the entire trip being surreal. I have to admit – one of the reasons I wrote this blog (besides to entertain you, dear friends and family) is to prove to myself it really happened!

In contrast to the EnZed-only flights (Queenstown was just as jackbooted about their security as Wellington), the International terminal in Auckland had a security checkpoint (not required to remove shoes), then we filled out the inbound-from-another-country paperwork on the plane, landed in San Francisco, went through a passport check, picked up our bags and dragged them to a different bag check (no, really, the total distance was maybe 100 to 120 feet), went through another checkpoint to turn over the i-f-a-c paperwork, then another security check (where we did have to take off our shoes), then on the plane to Seattle.

So, in a nutshell, the American border check has many more layers and points of review than, well New Zealand. To be fair to New Zealand, they do have a *really* intensive inbound examination, but that is mostly to make sure you're not trying to smuggle in any kind of foreign agriculture or nasty bugs or fungi (they will even clean your dirty hiking boots for you!) But, unlike the US, once you're IN New Zealand, they trust you and you're pretty much allowed to go anywhere you want.

I keep telling Kristi that when we go back next year to shoot one of the other full-length scripts she has written, I'll show her all the touristy sights I found :-)

I'm going to spend the weekend, and maybe some time going forward, looking back over these blog posts and tidying them up a bit.