I had decided to upgrade to works deluxe as it was only $115 extra. Premium check in is so much better than economy. There was something amiss with my booking and the machine wouldn’t print out a boarding pass for me. So a friendly Air New Zealand fixed whatever the problem was and I got my luggage put on a conveyer belt that had no queue on it. I went to the koru lounge , I have only ever been in an airport lounge once .The chairmans lounge in Sydney where the pretension from the girl on the reception was extreme and laughable.. This morning though it was only 8am so breakfast was being served . I scanned the room to see if anyone else was partaking in a drink with alcohol content but no one was. There were no bottles of sparkling open so I went and sat down and pondered whether I should refrain or not. Then I thought it would be very un Leslie of me to be shy about my food and alcohol so I went and opened a bottle. Luckily it didn’t pop too loudly.

Percy has managed to come along again, I could nearly hear him squeal with delight as he was shoved into an already full carry-on bag. I opted for row 2 as row 1 you have to put your carry-on in the overhead locker and nobody puts Percy in an overhead locker. The meal was scrambled eggs with beans , potato and an impressively small sausage . Who knew they could make them that small. It was more edible than most airplane food. I watched a New Zealand made movie called “housebound” it was quite amusing. In my opinion Kiwi’s can do funny well, but I think a New Zealand accent saying f@&$ing dick is hilarious.

It was the smoothest landing I have ever experienced and all seemed to be going very well. I went and stood at the wrong baggage terminal , realised my mistake and went to the potential right one. The big pink and black suitcase went around the carousel 3 times before I realised that something was wrong. A man came and asked me if my luggage was missing too. Hmmmm yes, it would appear so. The works deluxe gets you various things including “priority baggage”. I went to the lost luggage counter and the lovely lady said ” well technically, yours isn’t lost , we know where it is ” to which I said “great! Where is it?” Her: ” it’s in Melbourne it didn’t get loaded” . I don’t know what “priority baggage” means but at a base level it would be nice if it meant they would make loading it a priority.
I always try to see the positive in bad situations. A) they didn’t lose the plane b) I got a show bag c) the show bag had deodorant in it , I had forgotten to pack some so that was handy. 4) I didn’t have to join the very very long line to go through customs.
Note to self. Beware of the baggage drop off conveyor belt with no queue

So I am in NZ with Percy, a lovely scarf, a laptop and iPad (no cords) and a duty free bottle of gin.

I made my way to the thrifty car rental counter a very personable lady served me and tried to cheer me up . When she heard my Garmin GPS was in my “lost” luggage she said ” you don’t need gps to get to Lake Tekapo , it’s New Zealand love , there is only one road.” She filled my water bottle up and joked that she had left enough room for some gin. My car is just a Yaris but it had only done 484 kilometres. It drives very nicely. It was a nice drive to Lake Tekapo I used google maps to go a shorter way that involved more than one road. I have checked in at Lake Tekapo cottages. The owner was very nice about my whole delayed luggage and made me feel very welcome to go and ask for help if I needed anything. He lent me a cord to charge my phone. I drove into town to get some tonic water, lemon and some breakfast. I also bought a very ordinary pizza and had a nice “3 boys pils” while I waited. I will post photos in another post. I don’t have Dropbox on the iPad and my laptop battery is on it’s last legs. Hopefully I will get my luggage soon.

Sorry about any grammatical or spelling errors in this post. I am tired and not used to using an iPad.