April Fools Day - Part 1

Tuesday April 1st

You may have noticed that I have skipped over a number of entries. This is because there are people reading this who will be in Santiago soon (my sister Clare and her boyfriend Paul), and this information may be of help to them. I'll eventually get around to writing the NZ stuff from my notes. But my days in Chile actually start in New Zealand due to the International Date Line.

We got up and out of our motel. Clare and Paul were going to stay with friends so we were all out, but they were able to leave their bags in the motel, so I was the only one who had to lump around his backpack in the city centre. There wasn't much we could do with such encumberments, so we had a late breakfast, the a quick look around some shops, and then we went to Father Ted's pub for a final NZ beer (wasn't last nights one a final beer). The beer was called a Father Ted's lager, but it tasted suspiciously like the Export Gold lager that was on the other tap, and which I'd had in other pubs. After that it was a goodbye to the kids and I was off to the airport.

We had had some confusion about my flight time. My electronic invoice had a different time on it to my paper one, and my paper one was actually more recent. But it differed from Clare's time for her flight, which was the same flight number. They only differed by an hour so I decided to get out to the airport in time for the earlier of the two. The hour bit should have been the clue though, it was all a Daylight Savings Time mess, and in fact the last times sent to me were correct , and so were all the others. The time when the electronic information was sent out was correct, because the DST changes were moved by a week in NZ afterwards. Apparently all the computers in NZ have been confused by it (and in fact I remembered noting this on a Visa receipt I got the previous day). And Clare's flight times are correct because it is all fixed after next weekend.

Auckland is not that big an airport, nor is the international lounge that busy, but it still took me a while to get through it, trying to spend my last NZ dollars, including the ridiculous departure tax that has to be paid by everyone, $25, and which can't be paid for in advance. Very annoying. It all meant that I only had time and money for one last, last NZ beer, my third in 24 hours. I say enough money, but in fact I was 10 cents short for the bottle of Steinglager, but the nice girl behind the counter let me away with it.

Anyway we boarded the plane at 6pm...