Our adventure began with lucky timing. We flew Comox – Vancouver – Auckland – Christchurch. Departing Comox 10:45 AM January 29th we arrived Christchurch around 4 PM January 31st, or 7 PM on the 30th Vancouver time.
We arrived Auckland Airport following clean-up of unprecedented flooding from the first of two tropical storms that preceded Cyclone Gabrielle, and only hours before the second. The three successive legs involved a flight cancellation, a delay and a missed connection. Our YVR departure required a change of aircraft; which was magically accomplished in just over 2 hours, but that meant we landed Auckland just as our Christchurch flight was departing.
We walked the 15 minutes from the International Terminal to the Domestic Terminal in search of anyone who could help us with rescheduling. While many Auckland arrivals had been delayed, Air New Zealand had only one agent handling rescheduling. We joined a very long line and after only a couple of minutes there were another 50 people behind us.
The line moved quickly, and we were soon greeted by the young agent. We explained that we’d missed our connection. He took our boarding passes, looked at them and with a big smile said: “I can fix that!” In less than 2 minutes he handed us new boarding passes and said: “Security is right over there, Gate 29 is at the right end of the terminal upstairs, and you’re on the 3 o’clock flight. It boards in about 30 minutes. Shout out a thanks to Deb at Packables in Courtenay for convincing us to go carry-on only!
What a beautiful sight to see Sheridan and Nello’s smiling faces walking up to us at Christchurch Airport. We loaded our bags in their van and headed to their place in Lyttelton, Christchurch’s adjoining port town. We put our bags away and took in the beautiful view from their deck.
In a jiffy we were seated to a dinner of Vij’s lamb popsicles, a beautiful Otto Lenghi eggplant dish, and dahl! Hooray Sheridan! And so, our first day ended. We slept well that night!
Grampafacts 