The day started early with a 6 am alarm. But the taxi was on time and it was an easy ride to the Wellington airport.
The Pacific Blue flight to Auckland was great, they didn’t even say a word about our overweight luggage. We had a good idea already that our bags were overweight, but Pacific Blues easy going attitude to it was very encouraging to us that we might just be able to get away with it.
Those hopes, however, were quickly destroyed when checking into Qantas once we had made it to Auckland. At $17 a kilo (bastards) it was going be around $350 for our extra weight. A quick repack later; luckily we had a 5 hour layover; and we had pulled out enough clothes to get it down to our limit.
Following Vicky @ Xero’s advice we posted it to London ahead of us, costing $150NZ, but saving us with fees at each stop thats a big saving.
There was no way of avoiding fees for my paragliding stuff however, but by choosing a nice Qantas checkin staff member we managed to get her to put it through lighter than it really was, so that cost $70 for that one leg, so I can expect to pay that another 3 times yet. All in all it was a bit annoying, as some airlines give allowances for sporting equipment. The only sort Qantas gives is allowing your gold clubs on board for free. So perhaps taking along a gold bag filled with as much extra stuff as possible is a good strategy?
We had about 20 kg of carry on luggage which we tried to sneak through customs. We were pulled aside pretty quickly for a weigh in. There was some sort of efficiency audit going on that day so staff ere being quite strict with management looking over their shoulders. Once our customs officer was away from their supervisor however she made a few “suggestions” on how we could work the system a bit better to get all our stuff through for free. I think I’ll do a post about our learnings shortly on in another post as that is quite useful for other travellers.
The Brisbane flight was delayed, of course, for a couple hours due to an engineering fault. A bit concerning. Boarding the plane was a bit unusual for Auckland as we walked on off of the Tarmac, rather than an air bridge, after being bussed to the plane.
The Qantas meal pretty much made up for the delays. A really good dinner of Red Wine Chicken and a vinegarette salad, bread roll, Barossa valley wine, a vodka orange and ice cream for desert. Recommended pick me up for a weary traveller.
We took the train from Brisbane airport to the sunshine coast. Sunshine Coast is a complete misnomer, its rained since we got here.
Anyhow, we’re off to the theme restaurant Dracula’s tonight for dinner. Sounds like an interesting place. There’s a caberet show, horror themed with your dinner and drinks. Its had good reviews all around, including Steffano from the local italian restaurant ($5 AU for pizza and a coke) in stereotypical Italian fashion praised the show (“the food, not so much”).
Oh well, back to travelling tomorrow. Next stop, Melbourne.
