Flights home
With the car returned we check in at Auckland International, get boarded on to the flight in good time and waited to take off. And waited. And waited. There's a problem with a wing flap sensor so we are driven to another part of the airport for the technicians to have a look. "It won't take long" we are told! However, we are stuck on the plane for 4 hours with only an ice lolly for refreshment, until we eventually take off.
Of course, now we are late for our connecting flight from Sydney to Dubai, and miss that plane. It is chaos at Sydney when we arrive as people are transferring to all sorts of places. Some people are told they have to wait 24 hours but we are told that there are spaces on the Qatar Airways flight via Doha leaving in 2 hours. Unfortunately, there are no seats left with extra leg room (which we had paid for) so we are given a row of 3 for the 2 of us. We had a 15 hour flight to Doha (Jim's first visit there for 39 years) and then 11 hours to Heathrow, so our bodies were totally confused.
We arrive at Heathrow in freezing temperatures, but our luggage was still on holiday in Sydney. More paperwork! 14 of us had come from Auckland, and none of us had luggage. "What to do?" said the nice Indian man at the lost luggage counter. From our point of view it didn't really matter as it was all summer clothes in the cases and we were greeted by the "Beast from the East" (winds from Siberia). Our luggage was delivered to our home 30 hours later.
Not such a great end to a brilliant holiday, but it didn't spoil anything. We had a super time in New Zealand and, no doubt, will be making the long journey back there sometime. The End