Auckland....

Although our flight to Auckland was booked through Air Canada, the actual flight was operated by Air New Zealand. I have to say that it was a rather pleasant flying experience, as much as 14 hours of sitting can be pleasant.

Flight crew were pleasant and helpful, and informative. Not something we always experience. We were served a supper and a breakfast. Both meals were very good and we were even given a glass or two of wine for supper, a nice touch, I thought. Small pillows, blankets and headsets were provided, as was an exensive number of movies. I mamaged to watch "The Time-Travellers Wife", "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and some of "The Last King of Scotland".

I did manage to get a bit of sleep, but trying to sleep sitting up doesn't work well for me and airplace seats are pretty uncomfortable no matter what you do. I spent several hours sanding at the back of the plane and pacing up and down the aisles, as well as peering out the windows. We were getting a nearly full moon shikning out over the Pacific Ocean and I also saw a few small islands along the way. We crossed the Equator at about 4 am (PST) and the International Date Line an hour or two later.

The plane must have had a great tail wind, because we were maintaining a ground speed of over 900 km/hr and got frm Vancouver to Auckland in just over 13 hours.

Arrival day, though, finds us rather tired, having been awake for how long - I haven't even bothered to add it up. Too long. We walked around some of the city's harbour and had a short nap. Several more hours of walking took us through a beautiful park, flower gardens, the Museum and back to our temporary cubicle in the hotel. A good night's sleep will help us be a bit friskier tomorrow.

Monday - Nov 2/09 - had a good night's sleep which made us feel pretty good. So far today, we've taken the ferry over to Devonport where we've spent the last several hours hiking around. It's a beautiful community, great gardens, interesting shops and, a nice surprise, used book stores, where we found a NZ birds and a NZ trees book. Weather has been mixed, but generally quite nice. Easy for us to say, coming from Canada!

Pictures have been uploaded from yesterday's hikes and are at: http://picasaweb.google.ca/dave.mcc51/NewZealand2009#

We're finding free Internet kind of hard to find, but the libraries seem to have it. We are getting oriented and a bit better organized, but I'm still having some trouble realizing that I'm actually in the South Pacific.