(written on 5th!)
Oh, what a night.
In some ways, it was easier than my other airport night, but in some ways it was a little harder.
No functional cell phone means no white noise through my headphones, just the muffling of the headphones themselves acting as earplu
Useful, but not near as effective.
Fortunately, I think sometime after 10:30, there are very few announcements made over the PA until about 4:00 the next morning, so not too many wake-up-inducing loud announcements. 🙏
I think I was finally up for good somewhere around 4:00? I headed over to the bathroom, but it was blocked off still from last night, supposedly being cleaned, but no one in the vicinity actually doing any cleaning, so I went ahead and went past the little blockades and used the bathroom because both the bathrooms were thusly blockaded.
Last night as I was walking from the grocery store to the Westfield homestay, I ended up walking through some muddy red clay, so my little waterproof sandals were covered in wet clay.
I had slept in some of the residue overnight, getting some red stains on my gray shirt, and dried dirt on the floor, but my sandals were also just covered and dried red dirt.
Knowing of New Zealand’s strict bio contaminant rules, I went outside and tried to get as much of the dirt off the sandals as I could before going inside and rinsing the rest of the dirt off in a bathroom sink.
Come 5:00, I headed over to the ticket counter to get my boarding pass printed out and met with a surprise that would turn it into a multi-hour, very stressful, very frustrating saga.
In order to print my boarding pass, I had to prove that I had an onward ticket out of New Zealand.
But there I was with no phone. I couldn’t prove anything. I’d slept in the airport because I didn’t even have a way to assure that I was going to be able to wake up on time to get to the airport before my flight left.
I could tell them the day that I was leaving New Zealand, and the airline, but United Airlines doesn’t go to Fiji at all, and they couldn’t look up the ticket in the united database, so I had to find some other way to prove it.
So they let me borrow a phone, so I could go into my email, but I used my junk email address, and for whatever reason, it wasn’t accepting my password!!!
What?!?!
What on earth?!?!
😥
My stress level started rising. I’m already out a phone, and now I might be stuck in Fiji and miss my plane?!?!
I’ve had this happen before, my account not accepting my password and then boom, it decides to, but… I wasn’t sure I had it right, and I was super flustered.
So I needed to recover my password, but to do that, I had to confirm who I was, which required either a code to my phone or using my recovery email address.
But when I went to use the email recovery account, it was the same thing, it wouldn’t accept my password and wanted to recover the account.
What the?!?!
I went through probably three or four different accounts, each one requiring the same thing, a code to my broken phone or via my recovery email address.
Finally, I thought I had it when one of the email accounts let me get in, which gave me the code for the other email account, which gave me the code for the other email account, etc.
But when I got to the next one, I think the one I needed most, it told me that it would send me what I needed after 48 hours.
‼️‼️‼️
🤬
I was scrambling. Anxious. Super flustered.
What could I do?
Seemingly every account nowadays requires secondary proof have identification–even freaking United Airlines!
So I couldn’t log in to the United Airlines website without getting the security code, which I couldn’t access because I didn’t have my phone.
After hours of struggling, we finally decided to just buy another ticket that was refundable, but when I gave them my card to buy the ticket, my credit card wanted a pin number which none of my U.S. cards have.
I couldn’t even buy another ticket!!!
🤬🤬🤬
Stressed. Frustrated. Anxious.
So we tried to buy a ticket with cash, but the ticket that he first said was going to be about $400 ended up being $800, and I only had $415 of Fijian cash left over.
😥🤬😥🤬😥
Finally, I asked to borrow the phone one more time, and I went through myself with Delta Airlines and managed to have them accept my credit card with a rather expensive refundable ticket with the same date of departure from New Zealand back to SLC as my existing ticket that I couldn’t prove I had.
So I thought I was good. I mean, I should be, right? I just barely bought a ticket. Proof right on their phone.
After hours of struggling, scrambling, stressing, trying to find some way to get on the plane so I could get to New Zealand, I thought I was good.
But my ticket confirmation from Delta didn’t come with a ticket number, and their system required a ticket number be entered into the system to prove my forward travel.
Good. Freaking. Crap.
⁉️⁉️⁉️
🤬🤬🤬
And all this happening ticket number crap happening at a different desk after I had already been told I was good to go.
From there, there was nothing I could do. I stood helpless, frustrated, anxious, just waiting for a ticket number to come through the system.
It was close to boarding time, and I had been working for hours to try and figure this out, and I hadn’t even been able to go through security yet.
Finally… finally a ticket number came through the system, and they printed my boarding pass and sent me on my way.
I thanked them and apologized for my visible frustrations (though none were directed specifically at them) and headed quickly off to security.
Gratefully, security was quick. 🙏
But I also had to go through immigration lines, something I hadn’t expected.
Stressed and concerned, I finally made it to my gate thinking that I might have missed my boarding call (there were no moves, only to find that they hadn’t even started boarding yet.
Such a relief. 😌
I actually had time to use the bathroom and relax a little bit before boarding began comma after which I boarded the plane, apologizing to the lady at the counter there who had previously been at the ticketing counter before security.
Once on the plane, I just disappeared immediately into the screen and the seat back in front of me, first watching Blade Runner and then Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
A little bit of stress cropped up when the announcement came, as we were approaching our landing in Christchurch, that New Zealand no longer used paper declaration forms.
How was I going to make my declaration and to be able to enter the country without my phone? 😅
I had the itinerary printed out for the ticket that I had most recently bought in order to be able to leave Fiji comma thanks to the gentleman behind the counter who printed head out for me to be able to show them once I arrived in New Zealand.
But what about the customs declaration?
After getting off the plane, I found a pen on the ground, use the bathroom, and then headed to the passport control and declaration area.
Gratefully, one of the older ladies who was standing in front of the passport control area let me know that there were still paper options available, so I headed over to the counter where they were, filled mine out, and uneventfully went through both passport control, customs declaration, and biosecurity.
To freedom!!!
It felt so good to be passed all the concerning areas and into freedom outside the airport. 😊
I went straight over to the bus stop where I had been dropped off by the long-term park and ride bus driver lady the day I left New Zealand and was grateful to get there just as the bus I hoped would take me back to my same lot arrived.
Gratefully, it did! 🎉
Oh what a wonderful feeling it was to get back to my van. 💙
My home. 🚐
And know how great it was that after reconnecting the battery, she fired right up. 🙏
And know how great it was that my payment at the automatic payment machine was accepted, the only automatic payment machine I’ve been to in all of New Zealand that accepted my credit card.
🙏
Nice to have a few things going right after the day it’s been.
Grateful to have a backup phone and to be connected to the internet again. 🙏
I went pretty well straight way to a nearby cell phone repair place that had pretty much nothing but five star reviews. He let me borrow his little SIM swapping tool, took my information, and said he would look into what it would take to get my phone fixed.
I crossed my fingers, bid him farewell, and headed off to the same freedom camping spot that I stayed at my last night before going to Fiji.
Unfortunately, before bed, I received notice that the guy wasn’t going to be able to get a screen for my phone, so… that’s crappy.
A messaged the guy who repaired my phone back in the North Island to see where I might be able to get a screen here in the South Island.
Fingers crossed.
Vegetable time…
Didn’t think to take any pictures today even though I had a new phone. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 