the past few weeks in New Zealand

Sunday, April 1 - Thursday, April 5 (335.9 km)

The last few days after Christchurch are taking a bit longer.

Because we don't want to ride on the main road, we're going through the mountains in the interior of the country and there's a lot of wind there... unfortunately mostly against us.

Friday, April 5 - Tuesday, April 10

CHRISTCHURCH

In Christchurch, we spent the first 2 days with Warmshowers and then we moved to Frank, a friend of Alex, a friend of Patrick.

His daughter Ivi is also there until the weekend and we take a trip to the 'mountains' on the outskirts of CHch.

Also, Frank is so kind and helps us organize the bike boxes we need for the flight to Auckland.

It's a week of reunions, as we meet Claudia and Mario again (we stayed together in an Airbnb in Vietnam), and Patrick, whom we met in Chiang Mai, surprises us with a picnic in Lidelton.

On the evening before our departure, we receive the information that the airport in Auckland is closed due to bad weather (it's been raining and hailing for 2 days), so the night and the early morning hours are filled with uncertainty whether we can even fly.

In the end, everything is fine and we arrive in Auckland as planned.

Wednesday, April 11 - Saturday, April 14

We get to stay with our friend Hamish again and spend our time walking and playing.

On Friday, we have a little party with Hamish's family and it gets wet and wild....

What we didn't know then is that we will take the flight in the morning and only have 2.5 hours to pack our things and the bikes - hungover!

(since we have standby tickets and the chances of getting our original flight were very low, we tried it a day earlier, after my cousin told us that the chances are much higher on this day)

In the end, everything worked out and we were at the airport on time.

Now it was time to wait and see if there are still seats available for us.

They keep postponing, saying that there are still missing people, they can't tell us anything yet.

We observed the people and noticed that this time they also weigh the carry-on luggage.

Shit! Until now, we always packed in a way that the regular luggage fits, but the carry-on luggage always had 1-2 KG more.

Now we were even more nervous.

They called us to the check-in counter about 45 minutes before departure and started weighing our luggage.

So when the lady saw the 2 KG overweight with Patrick, she hesitated for a moment, but thankfully still let us through.

It seemed too close to do anything about it. Phew!

So we rushed to boarding, we were even called because we were late, and reached our seats, completely sweaty but happy.

Now the 17.5-hour flight to Doha and the subsequent 6-hour flight to Barcelona can finally begin.