We started our journey in style by travelling to the airport in a smart car with a New Zealand flag. I expect that the New Zealand government had learnt of my visit and sent the ambasadors car to pick me up.
We then sat around in the airport until our flight to Heathrow where we played on the travelators and looked in the shops.
Finally it was time to get onto the plane to LA. This was very full and so I let Fiona share my seat.
At this point things began to go a bit wrong. There was a problem with loading some of the bags that delayed us for 30 minutes. This meant that we missed our take off slot and so we had to go to the back of the line. We finally took off about an hour behind schedule. I wasn't too worried though as we had more than two hours to spare at LA airport. Wrong!
As a VIB (Very Important Bear) I don't have to bother with things like imigration however unfortunately the people I was travelling with do. They took almost an hour to get through the imigration controls by which time we had missed our flight. Luckily I was able to pull a few strings to get us onto another one (although we almost missed that too because of all the queues - queue to get out of the airport terminal, queue to check into next flight, queue to hand in the bags, queue to go through security again!).
Happily though we finally boarded a nice Air New Zealand flight to Auckland and were able to relax and enjoy the ride. There was plenty of space and so Fiona got her own seat this time. A nice lady called Nicky looked after us all and insisted on having her photo taken with me at the end of the journey.
Finally, after about about 30 hours of travelling we touched down in Auckland and our holiday could begin.
You can see some more of my photographs from the journey here.
3 comments:
Glad you all arrived safely in NZ. We hope Fluffy and the other people have not suffered too much with jet lag.
Love Jayne
Hey Fluffy,
I heard that they were very strict on animal control in New Zealand and impose a minimum quarantine period of 6 months. How were the family able to get around this? Did you use your diplomatic immunity to pull a few strings.
Not Joel
It took me 2 hours to get through immigration at LA. The last official said a banal "Have a nice day" and I replied "What's left of it you mean" but the irony was lost on her.
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