We had an early flight back to Sydney. Thankfully there was no traffic at 6 am.
Dawn at the Auckland airport. Serene. And cold!
As we checked in for our "Aerolineas Argentinas" flight, we learned it had been delayed for three hours. They gave us food vouchers. That was nice. We were optimistic. "So we lose three hours in Sydney...there'll still be plenty of time to enjoy the day." We hung out and shopped a bit. The plane arrived at the gate (shown here), but the boards didn't update with a new status. The time to board arrived...and then passed. Still no word.As we sat at the gate waiting for the announcement, I noticed some activity in the vestibule which adjoined the jetway. Two police officers were roughly handling a man in handcuffs. They forced him to the floor and made him sit there while they talked into their radios. They hauled him to his feet and escorted him away. There was no explanation, but the rumor was that he somehow made it past security, onto the jetway, possibly onto the plane, and was drunkenly demanding that the crew begin the boarding process.
Eventually they updated the status to "delayed for another two hours", and commenced another round of food vouchers for lunch. They informed us that the plane had suffered a lightening strike on the way over from Buenos Aires and they had to fix one of the engines. It was beginning to look like the day in Sydney was going to turn into a short afternoon in Sydney. Finally they began boarding. We proceeded to sit on the plane for another ninety minutes while they supposedly fueled 'er up. The entire plane cheered at the moment we finally left the ground. The flight attendants weren't very "attentive" either. The British woman across the aisle from us had her call button on for twenty minutes with no service until she gave up. And it was unbelievably hot.
Our arrival in Sydney didn't go smoothly either. When we cleared customs and quarantine (they checked the bottoms of my shoes), we headed for the information desk to wait for our shuttle. (Our hotel was in Darling Harbour, and thus not serviced by the subway.) "The shuttle comes every 20 minutes." Yeah right!! By now we were wishing we hadn't pre-booked. Our wait was just under 60 minutes. We shared the shuttle with a woman and her son (from Hamilton) and an older couple (from Christchurch). We established quite a rapport. At first we commiserated on the awful flight. Then talk turned to politics. The following day was going to be the Australian parliamentary elections. Julia Gillard was facing off against Tony Abbott. Ma and I had seen the dirty political campaign ads when we were there last week, so we could speak intelligently about the issues. It was amazing how much the New Zealanders knew about Australian politics. And American politics! Americans barely take note when other countries change leadership. A disgrace.
Well, by the time our shuttle got us to the Holiday Inn, our wonderful day in Sydney was shot. We didn't get to see any of the cool stuff in Darling Harbour, like Wildlife World and the Aquarium.
We did get a few minutes to shop at Hay Market (photo taken at dawn the next day). It's like a giant mall. But apparently malls close early, even on a Friday.See the monorail track? It literally went right by our hotel window. And unless you had the drapes open, you had no idea.
