Sheep Luv Tour Day One Continued...

We got off the late flight into Sydney and ran/pushed over every man/woman/grannie in order to get to the immigration queue first... which we did.

Despite Qantas' best attempts to delay us from getting to the LAN Chile flight to NZ - we managed to have 20 mins or so spare before the flight in the International departure gates. Ant knew that we weren't entitled to the Qantas Club - even though we were both members. If you are flying on a LAN flight with Qantas Club - you technically can't use the lounges... So Ant was feeling a bit nervous about attempting to get into the lounge. Despite him being a nervous wreck - I thought it was still worth a shot - just as long as we play the "dumb ignorant" routine.

The Qantas Club looked like it had been renovated since my last trip to Italy (via South Africa and England). There were a couple of door b$$ches positioned at right at the front door. We both nervously handed over our boarding passes and Qantas Club cards. Thankfully - the dittzy woman served us not the astute guy - and she seemed to press a few keys on her keyboard and said "Everything is fine... Come on thru..!". It pays not to know the rules Ant!

We logged onto the computers for 10 or 15 mins where I blogged the first part of this blog. Ant was busy trying to check for accommodation at Taupo but was cut short because we had to board our flight.

The LAN queue was a bit of a rockshow. It had felt like they had called everyone too early from the lounge as we had to wait for about 10mins to board. The hostesses/hosties all seemed to have thick South American accents and a poor grasp of the English language. Although we were only on this flight till Auckland - we both got the sense that we were on our way to South America and we both experienced a lot of flashbacks. Flicking thru the magazine on board - we saw a lot of places that we had been to in both Chile and Argentina (including the "Galleria" mall in Buenos Aires where we both had ice creams on the first day (can't forget something like that..!).

The flight was a little strange - with the attendants not understanding what a "Diet Coke" was (they had Coke Light - shipped all the way from Chile...), my TV screen didn't work for the whole flight (it froze on the "Who Wants to Be A Millionare?" game screen - embarssment). We were served (wait for this...) toasted cheese sandwiches (defintely a flash back to the bad cuisine that you can have at Chile). The lack of a functional TV screen probably forced me to get some much needed sleep on the flight.

Upon arrival at Auckland - everyone had to get off the plane. Most were just transiting through to Santiago - but there were a handful of people getting off at Auckland including us. Probably the only country in the world where Aussies can feel special - Australians and NZ's had their own queue thru immigration. Apparently - we can go over to NZ and work and live for how ever the fudge we want to and not get kicked out of the country... yeh! Immigration and customs were fairly painless - I sort of hoped to get on the NZ version of "Border Security" and create a big scene (..."Someone must of lodged those condoms of coke in me whilst I was sleeping!"...) but alas it wasn't going to happen.