February 7, 2011

After well over 90 minutes of sleep it was time to cheerfully start a new day.

We had an 8:15 flight to catch to Auckland. The Pacific island part of our adventure was over and a new part of the voyage was lying ahead of us. I think this was the first time we started to get a grasp of the fact that the voyage was going to come to an end at some point. 5 weeks NZ, 4 weeks AUS, 2 weeks somewhere in Asia and then we would be back home.

It was too early for breakfast. We just finished the little rest of packing and headed across the street to the airport. Air New Zealand had some really large scales and weighed all our luggage in one fell swoop:

73.7 kg (162 pounds). The weight of our luggage has been slowly creeping upwards.

Adrian showed that he has picked up some of my standing and typing skills as he used up the last MB of wifi we had left while we cehcked in. Viktor was doing his morning prayer:

After security we passed by the gate used by Air Tahiti. Their little poster explaining their fascist carry-on restrictions brought back some scary memories. That skull and bones symbol symbolizes their pirate-like attitude to customers:

Note the friendly wording. If you do not check wether your carry-on is small enough “we will check it for you”

In the departure hall the same guy that played for us on arrival was playing again:

By now we had learned that his name was Jake Numanga and that he had played the ukulele and sung for the passengers of every international flight arriving or leaving Rarotonga for the last 27 years. He always shows up, even for the night flights, which there are plenty of. He is over 70 years old and has no plans of quitting. I found this blog entry where you can read more about him.

There is something fascinating about people who find their way of making a difference and then stick to it for decades. It takes a lot of stamina, dedication and plain old stubbornness to do what Jake has done. Kudos to him for making a difference and making people smile and feel welcome on Rarotonga.

I went over to the window and took the standard photo of our plane, a 767-300, for Marius. Little did I know that everything was not as it should be with this metallic bird:

As we were waiting in the departure hall I was very much looking forward to getting on board to get some sleep. Acoustics were terrible in the hall, as they are in most places where many people are gathered and it is important to give them messages. I have always wondered why no one ever thinks about acoustics when airports, train stations, bus stations etc are constructed, The knowledge and technology is certainly there. When concert halls and operas are constructed the experts get to take part, but for transport halls it seems contractors do all they can to make acoustics as bad as possible. So, when a woman shouted some unintelligible message that seemed to contain our flight number and the word “Auckland” we got up to stand in line. It was a bit suspicious that almost no one else did.

After a while a new message was acoustically smeared out over the room. This time we could hear the fragments “free breakfast provided” and  “5 hour delay.” There was a unison “Whaaaaaat?” in the room before total chaos broke out. No one had heard the entire message and the few Air New Zealand employees in the crowd were bombarded with questions.

After a while we managed to get some more information. A bird had decided to end its life by flying into the big round thing hanging under the wing of its metallic big brother when the plane had landed. Bird strike, ladies and gentlemen. They would have to get the barbecued remains of the fowl out of the engine and then overhaul it. If we were lucky we might go to Auckland tonight. Sigh.

We were bussed to a resort hotel not far from the airport and got a very nice buffet breakfast and access to the whole complex, including the swimming pool. We had of course checked in our luggage, but there was a small shop on the site. A small bathing suit investment later the kids were in heaven again:

I used the opportunity to advance a bit with the blogging. This is what I look like when I have had a good long night of sleep:

There was one other child in the pool and the kids seemed to communicate very well. I reflected on how great it was that our kids had picked up so much English before I realized they were speaking Norwegian together. We got to know a Norwegian couple from Skien who were traveling with their son. They were going to continue to Australia. It was great to share information about travelling with kids and also about places we were going to visit in Australia. Not the least, it was great to speak Norwegian with adults again. It had been a long time.

At 11am we were bussed back to the airport and at 1pm we were in the air. Then we crossed the dateline, lost 24 hours of our lives, and had the whole blog system with daily dated posts messed up.

Eirik

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