New Zealand Trip-Day 14

Day 14 = One of the BEST & WORST days of my life. You shall see why....

The night before when we were out to dinner with Georgie and Mark, Georgie asked us what time our flight left the following day. Katie had remembered looking at her ticket a few days earlier and she told Georgie that we flew out at 7:30pm. When she said that, I immediately remembered that time when I looked at the ticket several weeks earlier. I remember thinking that I was glad that we would have the whole last day to do things before we had to go to the airport. Georgie said we should get to the Auckland airport around 5pm just to be safe. The airport was about an hour away so our plan was to leave at 4pm. We had exciting things to do on our last day....

For the week that Shane was there we had the lovely privilege of staying out in the country at the guest house of some wonderful friends of Dave & Renata's. They were precious and so very gracious & hospitable. On our last day in NZ, Mr. Allen asked us if he could take us on a flight around Auckland and the east and west coasts of the north island...WHAT?!?!!? ummmmm, YES!! We were beyond super pumped....I mean, what a way to spend our last day there. Here is Shane and Mr. Allen at the small air strip we would be taking off from....

Our plane :)

Since we would be flying over water we had to put on our life vests....just in case :)

Will & Rachel ready to go....

We were just a bit excited....

Katie got to be co-pilot...jealous!

Right after we took off....

The pics just speak for themselves....

Flying over downtown Auckland...

Tuty Tuty....

Katie actually flying the plane ALL BY HERSELF....she was a tad bit nervous, but she did really well :)

What an amazing experience!

Here is the cute guest house we got to stay in....

Mr. Allen and his wonderful wife...Thank you guys SO much!

After we got back from flying, Georgie picked Shane, Katie and I and we headed down to Owara (sp?) beach to grab some lunch and take one last stroll together on a beautiful NZ beach. The weather was GORGEOUS. This day just couldn't get any better!

Kindred spirits....

awwwww....Shane loves his girls....

Just taking in as much beauty as we could before we head to the airport....

Interesting tree....I like it.

Well, it was finally time to head to the airport. Oh, and this is Mark's other awesome car....Georgie LOVES this car....totally joking :)

We arrived in plenty of time. We decided to weigh our luggage just to double check before we headed to the check-in counter.....

And about 3 seconds after this pic was taking, Georgie looks up at the departure screen on one of those little tv things and this is the conversation that followed:

Georgie: "What time did you say your plane leaves?"

Katie: "7:30"

Georgie: "I don't see it on the screen."

Katie: "well, maybe it's not on there yet since we are kind of early."

Georgie: "ummmm, no, that's not it because there is only one flight from Auckland to Fiji everyday and it leaves in 5 minutes."

Katie, Shane and Me all at the same time: "WHAT?????"

Georgie: "Let me see your ticket."

(Katie gets it out of her purse and hands it to Georgie)

Georgie: "Oh no.....you read it wrong! It's not 7:30pm, its 17:30pm!! It's in

military time."

All of us (as complete and utter shock, despair, fear, feeling of total

stupidity, horror, disbelief, panic....etc. etc. etc feel our entire

beings): "WHAT!?!?!?" You're lying. You're kidding. WHAT? oh

my gosh....this is not happening. What are we going to do?!?!?!?

etc. etc. etc."

Mark immediately sprints to the Air Pacific counter to plead mercy for us. Unfortunately our plane was LITERALLY taking off at that moment. It was done. It was over. Not only did we miss our flight from Auckland to Fiji, we also missed our flight from Fiji to L.A. and then L.A. to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Mobile (for Katie). OH MY GOODNESS.

I start crying. Shane is rubbing his bald head till it was nearly bleeding. Katie was frozen...in shock with her mouth wide open. Complete stupidity. There just isn't another word to describe it. NONE of us LOOKED at our ticket. NOT one of us. Katie and I "remembered" our flight was at 7:30 and we were SO confident that Shane just went along for the ride. Who doesn't check and recheck and recheck their flight time on an INTERNATIONAL flight?!?!?!!? Obviously, we don't. I have never felt so sick to my stomach. EVER. It's not like we could rent a car and drive home....I turn to Georgie and tell her to give me the worst case scenerio here. She then proceeds to tell me that worst case (and probable case) is that we will have to PURCHASE FULL PRICE NEW TICKETS, wait for probably several days until there are seats available on the plane (please remember it is just after Christmas and right before New Years during the most beautiful season of the year in NZ...thus very booked flights). I forgot to mention that on the way to the airport Shane had spoken to his brother who had informed him that both his mom and stepdad (who were keeping the girls) as well as the girls themselves were sick and that everyone was exhausted and it was definitely time for us to come home. He assured him that we were getting on the plane in a couple of hours and would be there as soon as possible. SIKE. That was before we MISSED OUR FLIGHT. Great. Now we didn't know when on earth we would be getting back. This was a complete nightmare.

Ok, so it "just so happened" that Mark's dad owns a travel agency. What? Well, that is just a little convenient considering the circumstances. Mark called his dad and he said that there was nothing that could be done today b/c the Air Pacific headquarter office had closed for the day and wouldn't re-0pen until 8am the next morning and that we might as well drive back to Mark's family's house and accept the fact that we were not going anywhere today. He would do what he could the next morning. SO, we repacked our luggage into the car and made the longest hour trip I've ever been on back to Mark's house. The ride was completely silent. I think we were all just re-living the past day and beating ourselves up inside our heads until we were almost unconscious :)

Katie....in shock...

Heading OUT of the airport to get back into the car....not fun.

This picture of Shane says it all.....utter despair....

So, we get back to Mark's and decide we need to take a walk to "cool off" and we weren't quite ready to face any of the human beings right then that thought we were leaving today...we knew their first question would be..."how did you miss your flight??"....we just weren't quite ready to start the repeating of the story. This is our "we are so stupid and we are so pissed-off at ourselves pic"....ha

We keep walking and this is what we come to....

SO, we realize that there is NOTHING we can do about our situation for the rest of the day so we might as well enjoy one more day in beautiful NZ and with Mark, Georgie, and all his wonderful family. Here is our "accepting our situation" pic... :)

As we headed from the beach back to Mark's house, something caught our eye.....as we walked closer we saw it was the FLYING FOX!! Yes, in the middle of this park area was this amazing zip line called the flying fox. It all made sense now. If we had not missed our flight we would have never found the fox. It was destiny....

This is my favorite picture of Katie....EVER :)

The Fox made us all feel SO much better!! :)

Pretty flowers on our walk back....

When we got back to Mark's we did have to face the questions, the jokes, etc. etc. but we survived :) The worst part was calling and telling Shane's fam and Katie's hubby what was going on....def. not my favorite moments of my life :) Shane had to go ahead and call Delta and see if there were anyway we could switch our seats since we were going to miss our 3 Delta flights. Just so happened there were 3 seats on the same flight the day after from L.A. to Atlanta so Shane, by faith, went ahead and paid for those flights to be moved even though we had NO IDEA if we were going to be able to get a flight out of New Zealand the next day. GEEEEEZ! So, we all prayed that somehow we could get on a flight the next day and that we wouldn't have to pay "full price" b/c that was going to be ALOT of money....but the bottom line was....we gots to pay to get back home...that was just the brutal truth :(

Mark and his Nana playing an intense game of scrabble before we all went to bed and faced the next day....needless to say, us three Americans didn't get much sleep that night....

TO BE CONTINUED......