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Published: November 28th 2011
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Well 'That's It'!!!!
Our 2 month journey has ended and we are back home in sunny Waipukurau raring to get back into working life again!!!!
Anyway, we last left you just before we boarded NZ38 for our flight from Hong Kong to Auckland.
I've had a complaint that tere were a lot of spelling mistakes in that blog and I apologise for that. I was crashing it out on my IPad sitting at a table in the dining hall at the airport while drinking a diet coke and we had a very short time before we had to travel the considerable distance to our gate for boarding. So it was a bit rushed. For those who haven't been to HK airport, it is so huge that after walking for what seems like miles through the terminal, you actually catch a very fast metro style train to the boarding gate area. That hopefully gives some idea of thye distances involved at this airport.
The flight was an Air NZ one and we had plenty of leg room, at last, and verytghing went fairly smoothly. However while I managed a short period of very light dozing, Joy watched 3
movies and got no sleep. So on arrival at Auckland around 11.15am Saturday we were both fairly 'stuffed' to put it mildly.
The first speed bump happened at immigration. I think someone must have had it in for Joy. She had 'trouble' getting out of the country 2 months ago and was swabbed twice for explosives, as per one of our earlier blogs. This time, because we had the newer type electonic passports we walked up to the automatic immigration system which is supposed to be quicker. You put your passport into a small document reader thingy and look at a camera that takes a photo and identifies you against your passport. Me, no problems. Joy had to take her glasses off, told to by the officer assisting people, and of course the system wouldn't identify her as she had a pair of blank glasses (frame only) on her passport photo. Once that got sorted it was off to Customs and Agriculture.
Being honest Kiwis, of course, we declared everything that had to be declared. we had the Egyptian carpet that was valued more than the $700NZ allowed at customs and there was also some food items like
tea bags from HK and loose Arabian tea and herbal tea that we had been given at Wadi Rum. Agriculture weren't worried about the tea etc. but the carpet raised interest due to the value. We got taken across to customs where I managed to convince the lady officer of the value of the carpet even though I couldn't find the receipt. She did all the calculations and decided that because we owed GST of 59.17c and they don't bother collecting anything under $60 we didn't have to pay anything. Whew, that was good.
Then it was over to the big xray machine where all bags and cases etc. have to go through. Everything went through OK apart from a small backpack where they noticed something of interest. "Where have you been travelling?" I was asked. I replied that we had been to a lot of places and did he want me to list them all. "yes please", so off I went, listed them all. Got to near the end and mentioned Egypt and Jordan and their eyes lit up. They then showed me the xray picture and said that there appeared to be something like a 'hooka pipe'
in the bag. Ahaaa!!! The Kittos importing drug paraphenalia!!! We both knew exactly what it was. In Cairo Joy had bought 4 bottles of concentrated Egyptian oils/ essences/perfumes and was given a free aromatherapy burner which was about 8 inches tall and did look a bit like a hooka pipe, I suppose. Also in the same package were a number of very fine glass perfume type bottles with large stoppers. We had to take them all out of the layers of special protective packaging they had been in halway around the world to convince tghem we weren't a couple of hippie druggies!!!! They did admit that they didn't think we looked the type but had to check.
After that it was out the door to be met by sister Denise who was our transport over to the domestic terminal. We checked our bags into the onwards luggage area first to save lugging the 3 bags over to domestic and then off to domestic to meet Mum and Dad, Annette and Tony and Craig and Steph for lunch. It was great to see everyone again after such a long time away even though we were very tired.
After lunch
and a good catch up with everyone we headed to our gate and the final flight of our trip to Napier, flight number 25 of the trip. Yep, that is correct. We took 25 flights from Napier to Napier and NO I'm not going to list them all here but those who have followed us around can go back and count them if you want!!!
We got onto the small plane to Napier and both promply 'crashed'. Neither of us remember the plane taking off and were woken by the thump of the landing in Napier. Now that's the way to fly. Pity we hadn't managed to do that on any of the other flights around the world, but managed it on probably the shortest one of the whole trip.
Robyn and Trevor were waiting to pick us up at Napier and drove us home to Waipukurau as we caught up on some of their Canadian and Hawaiian trip and they on ours . Have to admit the drive to Waipukurau was a bit of a blur and we arrived 'home' to find everything pretty much as we'd left it. Robyn had baked some lovely scones for us
they were most welcome for 'tea' a bit later.
We were both fairly zonked and Robyn and Trevor dropped us off and agreed to come over for a cuppa Sunday afternoon. Time, around 5pm.
We had one more very important thing to do and that was to go out and vote, something we were not able to do 3 years ago due to the timing of that election while we were overseas.
Did some unpacking, watched some election results on TV before hitting our OWN BED for the first time in 8 and a half weeks. I woke around 9am and showered etc., put 2 loads of washing on and hung it out and finally took Joy breakfast in bed and woke her at 11.30am. Things had finally caught up with us, I think.
Most of Sunday is still a bit of a blur but I know we spent a very pleasant couple of hours late afternoon exchanging 'war stories' with Robyn and Trevor over a cuppa. Still a lot more catching up to do yet!!!
We were both really looking forward to heading back to work today, of course!! And that's what happened. Both
of agree that Monday at work has been a bit of a blur but I dare say it will pick up as we get back into the swing of things.
So that's it from us. Sorry to have bored you all with our exploits over the last 2 months but we hope you have enjoyed following us around all the various parts of the world and hopefully we have been able to describe things in such a way that they seem real to you as well.
We certainly have had a great time and as we unpack things many, many memories are flooding back. We have both agreed that it has been a long time to be away from home travelling but we have packed a lot into that time, too much many have told us, but we have survived with no major health issues apart from a few minor scrapes and bruises etc..
That's it. (I won't say 'til next time as that might tempt fate!!!)
There are literally thousands and thousands and thousands of photos and about 12 hours of video. If you want tio see any of them or it, come and visit
sometime. You are most welcome!!!
Bye from us.
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