We arrived yesterday in Auckland, after a long day of travel. It started with a short flight from Kauai to Honolulu, where we transferred to Air New Zealand for our flight to Auckland. We arrived around 5:30pm local time, and by the time we got through customs it was a little after 6pm, but still plenty of sunlight since it is summer here and the days are long. I called the car rental company for their shuttle to pick us up and got a voicemail that they closed at 6pm. WTF? We ended up taking an Uber to our Airbnb.
Yanmei said it was my fault for not calling to confirm our arrival time. However, that’s not the lesson I’m taking from this, my lesson is not to book with the cheapest no-name company online. I should have paid a bit more for one of the big name companies like Enterprise or Avis. What kind of airport rental car company closes at 6pm? Anyway the bright side is we didn’t drive while tired from a long flight, and possibly make a mistake since they drive on the opposite side here.
We ended up going to get our car this morning, then doing a bit of shopping for supplies. Driving on the left isn’t too bad so far. The biggest problem is I keep looking up and right for the rear view mirror, when it is to my left. I’ve also turned on the wipers a few times when trying to signal a turn 😀.
The Airbnb is nice and we’ve been taking a rest day and planning out the next several days of our trip. The weather is sunny and warm.
David