Our stopover in Auckland was brief as we were moving on to Rarotonga. I'd planned this partly in case any of the long flights were delayed, but also because I just could not get my head around the fiddly business of crossing the international date line, which lies between New Zealand and Rarotonga, and arriving the day before we set off.
Now I've had days at work like that where you think it's Thursday and you realise with sickening clarity when you get there that it's really just Wednesday again, and I've had the opposite, when I was on the famous Whiskey Diet, and lost four days in one week (sorry, old joke there) BUT it's a different matter entirely when you're also trying to book hotels around it.
I found myself wondering… What would happen when I arrived on Wednesday and I was back in Tuesday. Would I be able to call myself in Auckland from Rarotonga, and speak to myself the day before I travelled? In the short term, that could be very handy, for instance, if you forgot to pack your sunscreen, or if you were aware that an entire wedding party would be on your plane and would clean out Duty Free on arrival.
But in the longer term, the possibilities are endless. If I just crossed the International Date Line loads of times, could I eventually get back to my 30s? Maybe make some long term investments. Do It All Differently the second time.
Sadly this was not to be. I can’t help thinking though that we should have been able to come up with a date and time system for the planet which didn’t include an enormous temporal zip stretching from the North to the South Pole.
But that’s for another day.
The flight was uneventful, but arriving in Rarotonga was exciting. I know a bit about flying, having actually passed my Private Pilot’s Licence years ago. On Flight Simulator. I remember proudly telling a friend that I’d done everything I would need to do to pass my Private Pilot’s Licence, and he commented “Except fly a plane”
So I often watch the flight progress monitor on the in-flight entertainment. Was that wise? I hear you ask.
Well, on Cathay Pacific, I noticed they switch it off just as you’re landing – I think this is because there was an American flight where the passengers actually got to watch themselves crash and that was considered to be demotivating. But on Air NZ, no such thing happens.
And unfortunately, unfortunately, they don’t calibrate in-flight entertainment systems to be entirely accurate because you’re not expected to actually fly a plane using the information you can get from the back of the seat. So I didn’t know that, on my screen, the plane was showing about an inch lower i.e. to the South, on the map than it really was.
Rarotonga is a very pointy island. It has a lot of volcanic peaks in the centre.
I was expecting us to come in from the West, but we overflew the island and turned to approach the airport from the East. Because of my minor screen glitch, I noticed that we weren't lined up with the runway as we came in and we appeared to be flying into the mountains South of the airport...
At exactly the same point that I noticed that, the captain decided to do a Go Around. This is where they abandon the landing and have another go. So the engines powered up suddenly and I braced for the sight of palm trees in the window and the inevitable impact, carnage, screaming (think Sale at TK Max and you’ve pretty much got it).
Thankfully I didn’t go the whole hog and do that thing where you put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye but I did grab my partner, and far from being grateful at being alerted to our possible demise, he slapped me. And of course it's good to know for the future that should I have some other urgent instruction like "JUMP! It's gonna BLOW!" or "RUN!! RUNAWAY ELEPHANT!!!" his go-to position is probably going to be to tell me not to be so ridiculous.
So we hurtled skywards with a lot of noise and then came the cabin crew announcement, that this was all perfectly normal, and the captain had done a ‘go around’ and it was all perfectly normal. It was so perfectly normal that the steward felt the need to repeat this about seven times, by which time everybody in the cabin was pretty clear that it wasn’t perfectly normal, and were individually clocking up all the times they’d flown before and this perfectly normal thing hadn’t happened.
Then we spent a while circling around over the ocean on the west side of the airport, while I imagine a humongous argument went on in the cockpit about who’s fault it was that they’d wasted all that avgas.
We had a second announcement that we were waiting for another landing slot because of other traffic, thinly concealing the fact that way out here, there wasn’t any other traffic. I suspect this delay was due to one pilot trying to get across to the other pilot that he really had to learn to land at this airport from BOTH ends and he was going to have to do it from the East sometime. Perhaps even pointing out that if he couldn’t we may just have to go back to New Zealand, as there was nowhere else out here they could land a plane this big. There may have been voices dripping with sarcasm. Who knows.
So the second time round, we came back in from the East, and this time landed uneventfully.
Kia Orana Rarotonga!
Unchanged from the last time we were here, still the same horrendous queues through customs, still the same incredibly friendly and welcoming people, and you still get a lei necklace of fragrant flowers when you come out of the airport. I don't remember that happening at Leeds Bradford Airport...
More later, but for now, some pictures from that first evening in Raro.
