The Land of the Long White Cloud

Well we have arrived in the land of Di’s birth. Didn’t think we were going to make it because of the weather on the day of departure. It was raining pretty heavily and visibility was down to a few metre’s so they diverted our incoming plane to Brisbane where it had to offload passengers, fuel up and return to the Gold Coast. We were delayed about 2 and a half hours. Didn’t really matter I guess because we originally had a 6 and a half hour wait in Auckland. That’s right our plane was originally supposed to arrive at 11:35pm and our flight to Nelson on the south island didn’t leave until 6:05am the following day. As it was we didn’t get in to Auckland until 2:30am.

We decided that we may as well walk from the international terminal to the domestic terminal a distance of about 800 metres and half way through the journey a security guard stopped us and said “Where you goin’ bro?” we sid “We goin’ to the domestic terminal to catch a plane to Nilson to visit the cuz.” She said, “It’s closed cuz! Doesn’t open til the mornin’.” What to do, we ended up sleeping on a park bench like a couple of homeless people. 40 years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but I’m getting too old.

It was a beautiful day in Richmond around 27 degrees, perfect, even though we were exhausted from no sleep managed to walk into downtown Richmond for a refreshing ale at the Stables.

I really like Richmond, it’s a small town about 15 km from Nelson on the shores of Tasman Bay on the South Island. Di’s mum lives in a very nice part of town, it’s where all the oldies go to retire so I fit right in. Not planning on doing too much other than working, but you know what they say a change is as good as a holiday and we are going to be hear for 6 weeks..