To hell on Pacific Blue

We've seen the devil's ink pots, his cave, his bath. We've seen bubbling mud pits, fuming fumaroles, steam rising from the ground. We've smelt the sulphur. We've peered down into volcanic craters and crossed raging torrents. Sha got attacked by wild beasts. We've seen the ghouls get on the train, seen a life-size heart that you could crawl into and stared at monsters of the deep.

What better way to go to hell than on Pacific Blue. Sha and I met at the airport two and a half hours before our departure with the aim to check-in, have some dinner and then amble around the airport for a while. The check-in queue already had about 20 people in it, but that didn't seem too long. We discounted the Pacific Blue check-in efficiency. Two hours later we got served. There was no time for food, we ran across the airport, got stuck in another stupidly long line at customs, found that the gate was at the other end of the airport and kept running. Announcements were being made warning that all of us late customers would be offloaded from the flight. We rushed onto the plane where they made us wait for about 30 minutes whilst blasting us with the most annoying pop music. Then we had to buy our food (a beer + nuts for 20 dollars!). Then they played more annoying music whilst we circled around Auckland (which would have been a spectacular view if they'd turned the awful music off) with Sha commenting on the personal hygiene of the person sitting next to her (not me, I hasten to add). Then we landed and it got worse. Oh, my credit card had been cancelled for 24 hours as I'd forgotten my PIN and as we rushed across the Australian airport we had had no time to change any money.

I'll try and be nice about Auckland airport. Perhaps, everyone was off sick apart from the two people who were manning the desks. Also, it's possible that every flight for the last week had been delayed and they all arrived at the same time as us. It took from midnight to 2am to get out the airport!

Then we rented a car and luckily didn't use our GPS to find the hotel. We discovered the next day that our GPS didn't really know the roads in New Zealand. It thought it did. We paid extra for the New Zealand maps, but it only seemed to know roads built in around 1940 or earlier (roads with names like "Old Taupo Road").

Anyway, we found our hotel and fell fast asleep. The next day saw the start of a really amazing and wonderful holiday! ....