EC-Rider Travels

We left Cala Luna after breakfast and headed to Liberia Airport – not very large but seemingly serving an amazing number of international cities. A slightly tearful farewell (on my part!) saying goodbye to Tim, Emma and Lottie as they headed to Miami and me to Houston.

A short three and three quarter hour flight on United Airlines to Houston to be greeted so warmly by the Americans (not! – it never ceases to amaze me how horrid they and how unwelcome they make you feel). I had to collect my luggage and go through immigration again and then board a second United flight to San Francisco. Fortunately it all went pretty smoothly, which was lucky as we had a slightly delayed arrival, leaving quite a tight window to make my connection. Flight to San Francisco was a further four and a half hours and then it was the big one to Auckland, again on United, for another twelve and a half hours. It was quite a bumpy flight so not a lot of sleep, but we made it and arrived in Auckland New Zealand – two days later. Very strange!

It was however, so lovely to be met by lovely smiley Kiwis who seemed very much more pleased to see us. Bit of a process getting through immigration as they are neurotic about soil transferable diseases and if you have been anywhere, off a pavement, they want to know about it. Luckily there were not too many questions about the Costa Rican jungle but they had a good look at my trainers – lucky things!

I then waited for Mum’s flight, which arrived a couple of hours later. There was some fire situation and alarms going off everywhere with constant announcements saying not to move unless instructed to do so. Everyone remained remarkably calm, though, unfortunately Mum’s plane was held up for a bit on the runway. She eventually came through. It was SO nice to see her – my new friends in the arrivals lounge were quite surprised to see a 61 year old racing to see her mother! Peter from Emirates was there to collect us.

When I mentioned the name of our hotel, Peter looked a little puzzled which was a surprise, as being called the GREAT Ponsonby Art Hotel – I was expecting a large, rather cool, down-town hotel, with perhaps a spa and swimming pool, so it was a bit of a surprise to be dropped in a little residential street and enter someone’s clapper-board house. We were greeted by two Asian boys and shown to our rooms which were described as …. decorated with colours of the Pacific with ethnic artwork….

There were chocolates by our bed in a little Xmas box which had definitely been there since last Xmas, rather white and I think unwrapped and generously returned by everyone who had stayed in the room!

We laughed a lot and headed up to Ponsonby Road which is described as Auckland’s ‘always-on urban village, mixing posh nosh, in-your-face art, high fashion and world-class shopping…. it was not quite Bond Street! …. but busy at 7pm and in fact not easy to find anywhere to eat. Eventually we found a nice Japanese restaurant and had some delicious Sushi, but last orders by 8.30 … and it was all over in Ponsonby! However, we were more than happy to return to the ethnic art and have an early night.