We left Whanganui this morning 20 minutes ahead of schedule which meant that we had time to call in for a quick Bon Voyage to Gary and Emily in Otaki. We didn't have time for a coffee but we did get to oh and ah at their healthy litter of three day old kune kune piglets.
We got to the airport right on time, farewelled Nelson and Dani and rushed to the check in to unload our luggage so we could wander around the book store and get some lunch. The good news is that our luggage came in under weight. The bad news is that the nice lady behind the check in counter just had to check something and disappeared out the back with my passport. I wasn't worried, we were here, everything had fallen into place nicely to get us to this point - what could possibly go wrong? Five minutes past and we had read all of the signs and flyers on the counter, people in the line behind us were started to eye us up suspiciously. Hmmm, had I indeed paid that speeding ticket I got last summer? Still we waited. I started to wonder at the wisdom of using borrowed luggage, where had those bags been and what had they contained? The minutes continued to tick past. Had my part in organising the Whanganui rally against the anti-terror legislation bumped me too far up the terror suspect list? Did I have too many friends in Tuhoe country? I was decidedly uncomfortable by this stage. many people had checked in through the line beside us and all of the people that had backed up behind us had easily been processed and issued boarding passes. I had that same naughty girl feeling I get whenever a police car is behind me. Then another lady came marching towards us, passport in hand. "Are you Lisa?" "Yes" (read with lump in throat)"You can't travel on this passport it has been cancelled" "What? You have got to be kidding me!" "No, it has been cancelled, I have just been on the phone to Canberra, they will not let you into Australia with this passport" What the #@%! are we supposed to do now I thought. I looked at Sky, she didn't seem that impressed. I had lost a passport several years ago and cancelled it so I could get a new one. Somehow the passports has got mixed up which is odd as this was the one that was filed in the right place and there were no others lying about. The lady from Air NZ informed me that I could get an emergency passport for $650 but we would not be getting on the plane today. Having had little to no sleep last night, I now found it hard to concentrate, what should I do?
Not able to think of anything better, I balled my eyes out! This had a cathartic (and embarrassing for Sky) effect and cleared my head enough to call home to see if the valid document could be found. Many thanks to Trish and Ron and Farrell and whoever else helped to rifle through my drawers and filing cabinets looking for it. After it failed to turn up I decided to bite the bullet and get a replacement. In comes super sister Penny who came and rescued us from the Airport and then drove us around everywhere we needed to get the documents together for a replacement passport. I got to the Dept of Internal affairs about 2 minutes after it closed so we had to wait until the next morning. We stayed with Penny that night and I had a really good sleep after not getting very much for the last few crazy weeks. Sky was calm throughout the whole ordeal and even cooked us a delicious pasta and vegetable dinner.
We arrived safely in Brisbane this evening after a manic morning racing around Wellington getting a new passport and getting my Vietnamese Visa transferred into the valid passport Thanks Penny for making that possible, you are a star! Also thanks to Air NZ who flew us up to Auckland to catch the afternoon flight to Brisbane at no extra cost to us, you are all stars too!
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