Maz NZ and Oz

Most of you will already have heard what happened in Heathrow (My flight from Dublin was delayed, so I was left with 45 minutes to find my way around Heathrow, change terminals, and get on my flight to LA - involved lots of running and finally arriving on the plane red-faced and seeing dots before my eyes... great fun...). But if you think that was the end of my airport drama, you got another thing coming.... read on...

I landed in Auckland at 5:30am on Tuesday. My flight to Christchurch was to depart at 7:10. All very normal and straighforward you might think. Not for meI'm afraid. At about 7:15 it was announced thatChristchurch airport was closed because of fog and my flight was delayed until at least 7:30 and indeed, the plane might go on to Queenstown instead of landing in Christchurch if the fog hasn't cleared by the time we get there and then we'll fly back to Christchurch later in the morning. So at this stage, I think I should ring Ange (my friend that I'm staying with here and was meeting me at the airport) and let her know the story. So I leave the departures area and head for a payphone, only the Idon't have much change, just a two dollar coin and I figure if I use my credit card I won't be spending the whole two dollars on a local call. So I pop my credit card into the slot and it disappears and nothing happens... "hmmmm..." I think to myself, "how very curious. I'll just put in the two dollar coin, 'cos I really need to let Ange know what the story with the flight is" I make the call and talk to her boyfriend Donald who says he'll pass the message on. Now to get my credit card back please and thank you very much payphone.... no joy... the problem is that one of the corners of my funky credit card is tapered off and in a normal credit card, that would be the corner sticking out so that you can retrieve it from the payphone. I can only see the teeniest, tiniest little bit of my credit card and I can't get at it with my fingers. At this stage, my flight starts to board and I'm still stuck outside of the departures area, trying to get my credit card back. I ring the helpline on the phone and explain my story and they tell me that they'll send someone out, but it'll take a few hours and if I'm not there with identification, they'll destroy the card for security reasons. Not very reassuring. Then I go to the airport helpdesk and the very very very nice lady comes over and trys to help me out. What I need is a tweezers, but that's in my checked in luggage, 'cos you can't bring a deadly weapon like that on a planein your carry-on luggage anymore. I run into one of the shops to see if the girl working there has one,but the only thing she can give me that might help is a paper clip. In McGyver mode I attack the payphone with the paperclip for about 10 minutes and manage tomove the card a wee bit in the right direction, but not very much. At this point they've announced my flight and are asking for passenger "Mary-ann Gree-a-luss" (whoever she is) to make her way to gate 30 as the flight to Christchurch was about to depart. Now, I ain't going NOWHERE without my credit card so I head to a cafe to ask if I can borrow a knife and several nice airport employees are doing their best to help, getting scissors and things to try. I also ask everyone in the cafe if they have a tweezers and one girl has!! I head back to the pay phone ("This is the last call for passenger Mary-ann Gree-a-luss on flight NZ503 to Christchurch, please report to gate 30") and use the knife to slide the card out enough that I can grip it with the tweezers and remove it completely. The nice lady at the information desk comes running over with another tweezers and I tell her I've got it sorted. I race back to the cafe and return the knife and the tweezers, breathlessly thanking everyone and then scoot through security and on to gate 30 where I'm just about let on the plane....PHEW..... The plane takes off and by the time we get to Christchurch, the fog has cleared enough to land, so I arrive only half an hour later than scheduled.

Drama... there always has to be drama... life would be very boring otherwise ;)

Anyway, that was my first Kiwi experience and with all the lovely people in Auckland airport helping me out so much, I've decided I'm really going to like it here and nothing has happened so far to change my mind on that one!