Jeff is a major nob on Air New Zealand and offered to
have us piggyback on his free limo to the airport -
his flight was scheduled for 0605, but as he had an
international itinerary, the car was going to pick
him up at 0405, so Glenys, although the Ibis is just a
couple blocks from his place (yes, he did offer to put
her up, but she's a married woman and a fairly conservative
one at that) decided to get another half hour or so's sleep
and piggyback onto our taxi at 0450. Despite several
flights going out between 0600 and 0700 there was little
traffic to the airport, and we were there shortly after
5, the fare coming to just 10 bucks each.

As Star Gold I'm allowed two guests into the club in the
US, but abroad I get only one. We could have used the Koru
lounge and paid for Glenys, but that would have involved
going to the wrong part of the airport and through
security, and she said that was wasteful of time and
money, so she camped out in the public area while we went
upstairs and had hot drinks and pastries in a rather
spare room. I had the barista make me a hot chocolate,
which was quite good; when it was time for seconds, there
was a line for the barista, so I used the automatic
dispenser, whose product was not nearly so appetizing.
We went back down early to keep Glenys company; Lilli
smuggled out some goodies for her.

There's no security for domestic flights, and we just
scanned our boarding passes at the reader and went aboard.
You get on this kind of plane through the rear door.

NZ5331 WLG CHC 0635 0735 ATR 4D and 6CD was 3AB

Glenys had convinced us to switch to the mountainview
side, which was fine for Lilli for about 10 minutes;
it's a short flight, and I gave her the window to
take pictures from; I can't see that far anyway so
looked at her photos after landing.

It was a somewhat bumpy flight, just under an hour,
during which they served water and a small snack,
Cookie Bake by Cookie Time classic gingernut crunch,
a pleasantly gingery peppery hard teether. Oddly,
neither spice nor natural or artificial flavor was
listed in the ingredients.

We landed at the end of a bank of temporary-looking
gates connected by a fabric tunnel to the terminal,
which is pretty modern - much of this city was shaken
down less than a decade ago and has had to be rebuilt -
some places have, some haven't. The airport is a have.
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