We have arrived.... Finally!!!

By Luis:

We are finally here!!! The plane was loaded with us and our fellow travelers. I noticed lots of smiles as everyone filed into the Boeing 747-400 that would be transporting. I briefly wondered if the smiles would still be there 11 hours and 43 minutes later when we deplaned...

The plane was clean and roomy. Amazingly, the coach seats we were assigned had pretty good legroom and reclined a good amount. I saw a family with small children and a baby in our section and wondered which of my fellow passengers would be the first to crack and try to snuff one of them out. I planned on watching a couple of movies, eating a meal, and sleeping a few hours. The meal service was pretty good, and they gave me all the wine I asked for :) The "four across" seats we had were very roomy. I can personally attest to the fact that they will accommodate a seated adult male and an adult female lying down :) Karen had no problem falling asleep. I, however, wound up watching four movies on the digital entertainment system the plane had - every seat has its own screen with a remote control and stereo headphones. I didn't sleep a wink. Halfway through the flight I took a homeless bath in the back lavatory (washed up the face, neck, arms and armpits in the sink and dried myself with the paper towels thoughtfully provided. The soap smelled pretty good and the flight arrived with me smelling fresh and clean, like kiwi fruit and herbal essence....

All that being said, the reality is that 12 hours is a long-ass flight. The smiles were gone, the clothes were bedraggled, the hair was a mess, and the eyes were sagging. Yeah, the passengers who deplaned were definitely weary.

We landed at Auckland approximately 17 hours after our originally planned arrival time. The lines at immigration were long and it took us the over an hour to get through the immigration and customs process. Our wait for the rental car agent was almost as long, but we finally got that over with. Thus, armed with a cappuccino and a diet coke, with the driver going on 23 hours without sleep, with the navigator needing a magnifying glass to see the small detail on the maps (small stuff like street names), in the middle of the night, in a country where you drive on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car, and 2 and 1/2 hours from our Hotel in Rotorua, we departed the airport headed (hopefully) in the right direction.

It didn't take us long to get lost, but with a bit of backtracking and several u-turns we were finally on Motorway 1 headed south. I kept drifting into the left lane and consciously had to keep from driving like my instincts were telling me to.

I got scared a few times and Karen screamed a couple of times, but we finally arrived at our hotel. The office was long closed, but the manager at the Emerald Spa Resort had left the door unlocked , the lights on, and the keys inside for us. I was asleep within 15 minutes, and I think Karen was soon after.