Day 52. Today is our travel day to Auckland, New Zealand where we will drive to Hamilton for the week.  We are getting the routine down and working well together as a team to pack and clean for check-out.  We zip to the airport and find out check-in area.  

At this point, we are rooting for the traditional wait in line and have the agent check you, print the luggage tags and take the luggage.  Instead, we get the more modern, self-scan passport, self-check-in, self-print boarding passes (they would let me get them electronically this time), self-print luggage tags, self-apply the luggage tags, self-guide bags to bag drop, self-scan tickets, and self-check luggage into the baggage drop.  With 7 people and about 10 different “self” steps in the process, it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out our probability of all of us successfully making it through all the steps without needing assistance is slim to none. 

Well, we don’t even make it past the first self-step.  I scan my passport and the screen starts flashing and blinking saying something like “Stop.  Not valid. Need Assistance. Warning, Danger Will Rogers.” Right out of the 70s TV show Lost in Space.  It turns out 3 of the kids made it past this step and Leanne, 2 kids and I didn’t.  Leanne and I are probably on the watch list after the solar powered bomb fiasco in the Seoul Airport.  The 3 kids that made it through, fail step 2 trying to check in, so we all end up with an agent behind the counter having to take over the process. 

The agent asks us to ensure that we don’t have any batteries or power charges in our checked bags.  Oh crap, I packed the extra AA batteries in the checked bag.  I have to get down on the floor, open the bag, root through everything to try to fish out the batteries.  Ug. Won’t make that mistake again next time. I repack the suite case, close it up and battle to get it zipped up. Phew.  Now I’m ready to go when Leanne says to me “You don’t have that solar powered thing in there do you.”  *&#&$@!(&*X(!!!!!!! I can’t believe it.  

Ok, I’m an idiot.  At this moment, I concede that I may well be the one that Darwin picks to eliminate in order to increase the odds of the human race surviving and prospering.  The bag goes back on the floor and the same process repeated.  The kids have nicely distanced themselves from me so that they aren’t guilty by association and won’t suffer the same Darwinian fate that befalls me.  I swear that I better use this solar powered charger at some point in the trip so that all this will have been worth it.  If we get too far into the trip without needing it, I’m going to have to contemplate orchestrating taking out a city power grid James Bond style so I can justify the solar charger’s existence.

We board the plane and land in Auckland, New Zealand.  I seem to have survived an immediate Darwin fate for now.  We rent a car and it’s back to the left-hand side of the road driving for me.  I’m hoping my week in Australia will be parlayed into success in New Zealand.  With the size of the group, I’ve been custom to asking at the car rental place, “now are you sure this is the biggest vehicle you have available for a rental?” 

We are actually staying in Hamilton not Auckland.  Auckland seemed to be more a straight forward city experience.  My friend Seth stayed in Hamilton and recommended it over Auckland (and thanks Seth for the activities recommendations).  Hamilton has more nature based activities but results in a two hour drive from the airport in the dark, with rain, highway construction and lots of round abouts.  The drive is tough but we make it to our Air BnB which is in a totally remote, woods location right on a river.  Definitely harkens some GOT – we’ll call ourselves Castle Global Teens on the Riverrun.