We set off from Devon on Friday night, bags packed, or overpacked in Josie’s case, and had everything sorted - we were ready for our adventure! Despite a flat tyre on the M4 and an incident involving a faulty hotel-room television that Nathan would rather no go into, we made it to Gatwick airport for 9am Saturday morning. But that’s where the real fun started.
We arrive at the check-in desk to be greeted with “Do you have your immigration information?” To which we dutifully handed over our New Zealand visa information to a confused look. It transpired that it was Canadian immigration they wanted to check even though we weren’t leaving the airport in Canada but planning on getting a connecting flight to New Zealand. Alas, despite all of our meticulous planning we hadn’t considered that we would need a visa to transit through Canada, ooopps. We quickly applied for Canadian visas online and sat and waited for that oh-so-important email. Thankfully, the Canadians came through with two visas in under 5 minutes and we made it past check-in. Emotional goodbyes ensued and we were on our way!
We could hardly contain our excitement as we boarded our BA flight to Vancouver and the constant supply of G&Ts and ice cream throughout the flight ensured those excitement levels only grew and grew. After almost 10 hours we arrived in Canada, picked up our bags and spent a few hours outside the airport in the Vancouver sun before checking in with Air New Zealand - which thankfully proved much less stressful than at Gatwick. We were able to grab a few hours of sleep at the start of the long journey south before waking up in time to watch the Rugby World Cup live on the plane, which the Kiwis especially enjoyed as Fiji beat the Aussies just as we landed in Auckland. We had a smooth transition through NZ immigration and biosecurity and met Jaquie at the airport, who took us back to her place for a well-deserved nap after almost 2 days of travel.
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