It was a relatively peaceful
last night in the campervan. No weird dreams or wind keeping us awake. So we
were fresh and ready to attack the day, which was our last in New Zealand. We
had to make sure that everything had been refilled (petrol, water, gas, etc)
and that it was reasonably clean on the inside too, so that was our first job,
after breakfast of course. In the midst of cleaning out the campervan we were
joined by the big fluffy ginger cat that had been roaming around the night before,
and this time he plucked up the courage to jump into the campervan and “help”
us out. He did this by curling up in the sunshine and pretty much just getting
in the way of everything. Once we were clean, and the cat had left us for the
next caravan, we were ready to get back to the Happy Campers depot, which was
conveniently just down the road.
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| Cat......not helping |
It took a while to get the
campervan inspected and checked out as there were two groups in front of us as
we arrived. Our flight was at half one and we wanted to be there in plenty of
time, but the French girls who got there just before us were picking it up for
the first time, so the guy had to go through absolutely everything, and
mentioned “keep left” about twenty times. Thankfully we got away with no additional
charges so we jumped straight into the courtesy car and got driven to the
airport.
Once inside we checked in and
waited patiently our next plane, number 5 on our itinerary. We were to be back
on a Qantas plane, after our brief and not wholly enjoyable foray into Air
Pacific from the LA to Auckland leg, and even though it was only a 3 hour
flight we got a meal pretty much as soon as we had got on. Great, you might
think. However, to use up the extra New Zealand dollars we had left over
(refilling the gas tank with lpg cost us $4 instead of $25.95 as it was only a
tiny one) I had bought lunch in the airport. As cost was essentially no option
and I needed to spend them or keep them forever, I ordered the Double Whopper
Meal, hoping that it would fill me up for the eventual trip up to Cairns. When
the cabin crew came through offering the meal I couldn’t say no (even though I
still had the Meat Sweats from lunch an hour before) so I accepted the chicken
chasseur with a small bottle of wine. I managed to force most of it in, save
for half the dry bread bun that was tossed casually on the side of my plate.
Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the overload of food a la Christmas Dinner, but I was all set for a nice sleepy
afterwards.
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| Gotta love that leg room! |
We were in Australia. It felt
good to fly into a new country when it wasn’t raining (as it had been for
America and New Zealand) but as we weren’t leaving the airport yet we couldn’t
really enjoy it yet. We had to
navigate through to the domestic airport to transfer up to Cairns, and we had
about 6 hours to do so. After a short train ride (and James having issues with
Barclays/West Pac ATMs) we got to the domestic airport and plugged in to
recharge our gadgets. Thankfully there was a certain amount of free Wi-Fi too,
so we updated, emailed, browsed and typed out a strongly-worded letter to
Barclays. That last one was James, not me – for some reason I had had no
problem with setting up my details for being abroad. Before we went through
security again we decided to kill some time playing cards. It felt a little odd
to be playing cards in a waiting area again and not cooped up in the campervan
with our tunes playing, fan-heater whirring and a box of wine on the go.
This time the plane would be
from the Jet Star organisation, and after checking with the check-in girl we
would not be having an evening meal. Probably for the best though, as I may
well have burst. We climbed into our seats on the plane and were astonished at
the lack of people on board. There must have been about forty people on a plane
for about 200. After take-off James took the row of three seats in front of us
and we both stretched out to get some shut-eye. Which we did… intermittently.
Unfortunately it sounded like the baby a couple of seats in front of us was
being tortured, so it woke us up every now and again to scream at the absolute
top of its voice. When we had landed and the baby had quietened down the mother
said that she (the baby, or toddler as it turns out) had had a long day and
that’s why she was crying. We all have long days, but we don’t scream the house
down about it! At least, not on an aeroplane.
Unfortunately, before we had
even boarded the plane James had given me some bad news. He had lost his iPod.
Unsure of whether he had left it on the previous plane or whether it may have
fallen out, it was nowhere to be seen. But there was nothing we could do about
it until we landed in Cairns, so that was job #1 when we landed. When James
enquired at the information desk they advised that there was pretty much
nothing that they could do until 7am the next morning. Due to arriving in
Cairns at 10:45pm we had decided that we probably wouldn’t be able to check in
somewhere that late and that it would cost us a nights accommodation and that
we wouldn’t get value for money in doing so anyway. So we drew on the
experiences of our US leg and camped down in the baggage claim area for the
night. Thankfully there were a few rows of seats, rather than individual ones,
so we would be able to stretch out, but all the good ones had been taken long
before and we were left at the busy end where all the luggage was coming
through on the carousel. The last arrival came in around midnight and the next
arrival was at 7am so we knew we had a fair few hours of relative peace. That
is, if the motorised sweeper wouldn’t come round every 10 minutes to wake us
up…
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