5/7/18 flight to Queenstown

It’s 2:40 am. The airport opens at 4. I’m rolling back over. I assume    employees are starting to arrive. The door that I have foolishly camped near seems to be opening and slamming closed more frequently now. 3am rolls around and I am up. I get dressed in my tent and greet the employees that walk past me with quizzical looks. Since I look homeless, I may as well try to come off as a friendly homeless person. 

4am. The airport is open now. I make my way to the men’s room to get what I can only in loose terminology describe as a wash. Brush teeth. Fill water bottles. I get to the check in point and I have a problem. My bag is too heavy. Scratch that. Both my bags are too heavy. I have never encountered a company that has a weight limit on carry on bags. I get a trash can and start throwing out stuff. All my candy and some food, gone. A couple guide books, gone. And now for the fun part. Being I have a lot of hiker clothes in my bag the easiest way to cut more weight is to start layering up and then filling my pockets. So 5 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, 2 jackets, and a vest later. I am dressed. Now comes the camera gear. In my hiker pants I have a book, headlamp, all my camera batteries, wall plug, and a flashlight. In my vest I have my camera, telephoto lens, all the charging gear i need, and a notebook. Stuffed  down the back of my pants, my iPad.. don’t worry.. it was between 2 of the pants layers and not on my bare ass. When I approached the ticket lady for the second time. She seemed amused and let me roll right on through with my freshly printed ticket. Now remember, that was just to get a ticket and have my bag checked. I approached security with the confidence of a man sitting on his high horse. The lady at the front could not stop me, this security checkpoint sure wasn’t going to. It took me 3 times as long to empty my pockets and longer just to figure out how to put all the crap back into the pockets they came out of. I’m through security. The weird part about Gold Coast airport is to get into the terminal you pass through security. But, if you have an international flight, you go through security again to get to another terminal. So I had to do the whole dance all over again. The problem with the second time around was they were allowing no liquids, no matter the size. 

So we have to take a little side story real quick. A couple days before I flew around to the other side of the planet, my brother threw me a going away party. Justin and my mom cooked, lots of people showed up, and we had a grand ole time. A married couple who I love dearly and previously worked with came, Brock and Emily. They decided that a way to spice up my going away party was to bring a piñata for me. A unicorn piñata, filled with mini bottles. It was the perfect party gift. Needless to say I brought some of the leftovers with me and had been stashing them for a rainy day. 

Now returning to the security. I think that lady thought that at 6am she was gonna deter me from drinking those mini bottles. Nope. I went ahead and just walked myself behind the customers trying to get through security and calmly drank my mini bottles. There is no need to say how many, but I can tell you it was more than one. I calmly threw the empty plastic bottles into the recycling and then got back in line. In my mind I feel like there was a horn section playing my second approach into line while all the staff and other travelers clapped. But honestly the woman just looked at me like I was an idiot and let me pass. As soon as I was through security I put all my stuff in my bag. I felt bad for whoever had to sit next to me on the plane ride, wearing all those layers for such a short time made me a whole pile of sweat. By the time I got to my seat I was exhausted and feeling good from the minis as well. I crashed before we took off. 

I was violently shaken awake. Fasten seatbelt sign flashes on. The duration of the flight was just over 3 hours. I slept the entirety of the flight best I can tell. Looking out the window I knew we were there. The landscape had drastically changed. I saw snow capped peaks and beautiful rolling landscape right as I opened my eyes. I assume that the winds coming off all of the mountains surrounding Queenstown cause for turbulent areas right before you dip below the peaks. The plane dips violently and drops. The inertia and g forces feel like it is running sideways for a split second. Our flight path settles back into the calm floating we had experienced before those aggressive moments. Looking out the window I am absolutely infatuated by what I am seeing. The landscape is beyond anything I have ever seen, and in turn my face stays glued to the window.  The airport in Queenstown is small. There are no sky gates to lower and meet with the plane. Just sets of stairs to greet you as you exit the plane. The first glimpse of surrounding landscape after stepping off the plane is even more breathe taking than from the approach. The mountains tower about the runway in glorious fashion, the vibrant colors of fall apparent on trees and the peaks just beyond the airports property are freshly painted with snow. 

I am here. I have made it. I am visually astonished and haven’t even left the airport. This is the perfect start to another adventure