December 6th, 2013

We have lost a day, never to get it back.  The flight from LA was a bit bumpy (turbulence), but I still managed to get some sleep.  Ralf caught up on The Big Bang Series!  He managed to sleep for a couple of hours.  The service on Air New Zealand was awesome.  Very friendly flight attendants. Good blankets and pillows and the food was good.

We arrived in Auckland at 7:30 am and recovered our bicycles and assorted bags.  All have arrived in one piece and undamaged.  We had to take them through a special check as New Zealand is very careful in preventing unwanted bio-hazards to come into the country. We had declared camping and sporting equipment so everything went through the x-ray machine.

Chris was at the airport to pick us up and bought us back to his place.  We had a quick shower and went to bed for a couple of hours, joined by his cat, who slept quite happily on Ralf’s chest.

We took a walk this afternoon down to Milford and had a steep climb back up the hill.  We will start riding on Monday.