The Kiwi Journey to Down Under, Middle Earth, Aotearoa - Land of the Long White Cloud, New Zealand

Well the trip has had some fun moments so here they are. One of my talented beautiful neices Kotahi flew to NZ with us and it was fun having her. She was a fun little addition to our travel party. I kept giving my little history speech about NZ to her and Paul that just kept us alive and full of fun. I had so much luggage and between us we had 5 carry on pieces. Plus we had to take off our shoes and coats at check in and I was hammered before we even got on our first flight. We flew southwest to LAX and got our drinks and snacks and Paul managed to get us extra snacks so we were living the good life. The flight seemed quick and we were awake the whole time and landed in no time. This picture is of us on our leg from SLC to LAX (2hrs). We are still happy and having fun.



When we arrived in LAX there was tonnes of people. So we made our way to baggage claim to get our bags and make our way to Air New Zealand (ANZ). I love that at the baggage carousel your heaving and struggling trying to get your bags off and the people around you are just watching you saying "hey". We got 2 baggage carts and packed up our bags (3 on each with 2 carry bags) and made out way to Air New Zealand. ANZ is the terminal next to Southwest. Paul and I were racing our carts while my neice was laughing at us saying "Aunty you guys are so funny". We managed however to stop take a picture under the ANZ terminal sign. This is Paul and Kotahi and yes we are still having fun.



When we got to ANZ there were only 2 people in line which was awesome and we got this very nice lady that informed us as we put one bag on the scales that it was overweight (suprise). But she was awesome she checked all 3 of us in and figured how much we could have for 3 of us and then totalled the bag weight and only charged $30. All our bags had a heavy tag (our bags not us). We then made our way to our terminal and the security lines were insane. We stodd in line waiting to get through to security for about 45 mins (fun, not). I spoke with a few kiwis (people from NZ named after the bird not the fruit)while waiting in line and try to make the process a little more fun. When we boarded our flight (and we were right at the back) it was about 4 hours till we had left SLC and we are still having fun. Our flight to NZ was only 12.5 hours (usually 13). So what did we do for 13 hours you ask? Between the 3 of us we watched 6 movies, 2 tv show episodes (we each had our own TV screens) slept (well wriggled around trying to sleep), ate 2 meals (dinner and breakfast) and slept some more. I slept well as I'm used to this flight but Paul and Tahi struggled a wee bit. When we arrived (25 mins early) we were the last off the flight and took the long walk to baggage claim. It was so beautiful to see all the maori carvings on the doorway as we entered into the passport and immigration check.and here is a picture of us. We have made it to NZ!!!!