Now that we’ve had a few days to settle, we thought we’d tell you about the trip here!
Our first flight was from Boise to LAX. A fairly uneventful and quick trip. When we booked this ticket we used a website called skiplagged. It shows you flights going to your destination, even if they’re a layover on another flight.
For example, the price of a ticket to LA from Boise was in the $300 range. But a ticket to San Jose from Boise was $160 and it had a layover in LA. So we bought that ticket, and never got on the second flight from LA to San Jose. (Don’t worry, this is perfectly legal.)
After we landed, we did a bit of wandering to figure out which terminal we needed to be in. For any of you who have flown internationally through LAX, you probably know about Terminal B. The only letter terminal. It took a bit of googling to figure that out, and a bit of asking around to figure out how to get there. Lastly, it took about 10 minutes of walking to get to the terminal itself.
Note to future self: When toting 20 and 30lb backpacks in an airport- always take the shuttle.
Once there, we tried to figure out which gate was ours. More walking back and forth. Finally we put it together that the gates changed between airlines, and that our gate wouldn’t be determined until closer to take off. Can you tell that neither of us has flown internationally before?
Our layover was 11 hours…. so our flight definitely wasn’t listed when we got there.
We got some food, found somewhere comfy to crash, and settled in for the numerous hours we had to kill. We were lucky enough to land a couch in the “Taste of the Centurion” lounge teaser. We took turns taking short naps, and wandering around the airport. We couldn’t both leave without taking our things and losing our spot…. so one of us always stayed behind.
Let me tell you what. Most boring layover ever. Next time we will definitely aim for flight times closer together.
When we could finally see which gate we would be boarding from, we headed over. Had a fun little encounter with man who got kicked out of his first class seat for being too intoxicated… found a nice lady to watch our bags so we could run and get a snack… and finally we were boarding the flight.
We had planned it out so that we would be tired on the flight because we really wanted to kill some of the 13 hours we would be in the air, which worked out quite nicely. It was tricky to get comfortable, as it usually is on a plane, but once we were asleep it wasn’t too bad. We managed to sleep about 7 or so hours off and on.
We landed in Auckland at 9am. We had to go through immigration, pick up our bags, go through customs, catch a bus to the domestic terminal, go through security and make it to our last flight by 10am. We made it! The people at immigration and security were especially easygoing and friendly which helped out a lot.
Alec and I managed to stay awake the rest of the day and go to bed at a normal time that night. Which has definitely helped our internal clocks to adjust a lot faster. We’re feeling the effects of jet lag slightly in other areas…. its a bit of a foggy, not quite normal feeling. But we’re pretty lucky that its really faint.
Overall the trip was pretty good! We definitely learned some things for the next time we travel and had a few good stories come out of it. Most importantly though, we are here.
Here’s a few pictures from the plane as we were coming into the South Island!
In Transit 