Flight Arrivals

The first we saw of land came within an hour of the rising sun turning the Eastern sky pink, as if the air had become tenderised between the two steady lines of cloud cover. We began our descent as the sun pushed out the darkness we'd been covered by for the past ten long hours and as we reached the last three thousand feet or so land began to breach the morning mist, slowing spreading back into the Bay of Islands (where this is being typed!) and the Northern Territories.

We'd arrived, and not before time.

Two ten/eleven hour flights are now behind us, the first bearable between Heathrow and LAX as the novelty of watching countless films across the countless screens of the other passengers hadn't yet worn off. Though by the time we landed at 4pm local time (our extended Saturday since back home the clock had just ticked past midnight and it being Sunday meant we were quickly catching up on having been aware for 24 hours).

Three hours later we were boarding again, having adopted a crazy 18 year old flying out to NZ for 5 months on her own and not entirely sure what to do or how to do it. We took her under our wing if only to make sure we weren't the only ones who were lost.

And so it was at 9.30pm (LA time) that we were boarding again, leaving our brief but well catalogued stay in LA behind. We'd had just enough time for everything bar a cavity search. Strangest of all was standing just inside the airport doors with the late-night hustle and bustle of America zooming past outside and the pre-recorded Hollywoodised sounding voice over man instructing us on keeping our baggage with us at all times and the strange passenger readouts by staff over the tanoy that started out so we well with determined sayings of 'Will the following passengers report to check-in...Stanley Studebaker, Ingrid Charles...' to the suddenly unsure 'Sarah...Dorris? Peter...Peter Wingham...Wingman?' as if asking in this fashion, the required passenger might leap up and shout the real pronunciation.

The red eye flight lasted forever by this time we'd long realised we couldn't settle to concentrate on anything, not the in-flight entertainment, nor our own books or college work. Sleep seemed only to last for five minutes at a time and again more fun could be had standing at the back searching the screens of the few still awake to see what they were watching!

We touched down in NZ, the furthest we have ever and could get from home. It was 7.20am local time, Monday morning. We'd missed Sunday altogether though it was still passing by elsewhere in the world. It was 6.20pm Sunday evening at home and coming up to midday in LA as we got ready for out last set of queuing, shoe checking, luggage scanning and multiple question answering...just about ready for bed if only to avoid jet lag we had to survive at least another 12 hours awake in Auckland!