Canada - Day One

Sunday May 1, 2022

I woke up feeling a bit disoriented. I felt like I was at home. Looking out the window and seeing a squirrel was a bit of a giveaway (there are no squirrels in New Zealand).

After 24 hours either in planes or standing in long queues at airports, my brains were fuzzy.

Stepping back a bit: After our long trip south where we walked the Milford Track and saw the sights of Mt Cook, we arrived home with three weeks to go before we started the journey across the world which would culminate in our arrival in front of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. But that final stage is still a way off.

The three weeks took an incredible amount of time to get through. We'd packed and repacked our bags many times. We'd checked how our phones would work, notified the bank that any use of our credit card in Spain was not fraud taking place, made sure our teeth were good, checked out socks (again), figured out how to negotiate the Paris Metro when we flew into Paris, had a final Covid test and so on, and so on. In short, we'd been obsessed with our Camino journey (to stress the point, the Camino is said to begin the moment you decide that you're going to do it. The actual Camino journey starts when you leave home, but maybe it starts even earlier than that - when you start walking more and more so that you'll be physically equipped for the walk).

And so on Saturday April 30 (NZ time), we awoke at 6am, knowing that this was the day we left our warm house in Nelson. Our first flight wasn't until 5pm. The day was interminable. We drank tea, checked our packing, tidied the house (Cathie did most of this), did endless Sudoku and other puzzles (that was me) and eventually arrived at the airport at abut 2pm. 

That was extremely early, but these days Air NZ does all the preparation for international travel at the airport you start from. From our home in Nelson, it's a flight of just over an hour to Auckland. Next we were to pick up the 12-hour flight to San Francisco. After a three-hour stopover we were to fly for five hours to Toronto, the town where Cathie grew up.

In Nelson, there were very flew flights that afternoon and so we had the undivided attention of three Air NZ staff members, anxious to practice their skills and check us in. That was fun, but after that we were just sitting in an empty airport for the next couple of hours waiting for something to happen.

We didn't have a lot time to spare in Auckland - about an hour and a half - enough time to change terminals and get to the departure gate, but not a surplus of time. It didn't start well, as our flight got underway 15 minutes late. The sun was going down as we flew up the North Island, so I didn't manage to get the obligatory photo of Mt Taranaki. 

I did get this interesting photo of the Sun going down over the Tasman Sea though.

As we were preparing to land, we were informed by the flight attendant that the walkway from the Domestic to the International terminal was closed, but that there was a bus every 15 minutes.  As luck would have it, we were right up the front of the plane and the exit was at the back, so that slowed us down. We walked briskly to the bus stop and there was a bus waiting. We were about two steps from the bus door when it swished shut and the bus roared off.

Our hearts sank at the thought we had 15 minutes to wait, but looking on the bright side I went back inside to have a pee. That was when the next bus arrived. Cathie asked the driver to wait, but he was having none of that. Fortunately, I arrived back just as he was about to shut the door on Cathie's foot and so we managed to get over to the other terminal.

Things went well from there. We had no check-in or bags to worry about and the security check didn't hold us up, although I did get frisked as I'd left something in my pocket. In a bit of an anti-climax, although we arrived at the gate right on time for boarding, they held us up for 20 minutes while they loaded on what seemed to be thousands of children and people in wheelchairs.

We were finally settled in our seats and after a couple of hours a meal was served. My only complaint was that the bar service came along after the meal was served (I'd been hanging out for a beer for hours). Air NZ does a great job of food and the roast lamb was great. So was the chardonnay and the pinot noir, although the beer was another tasteless lager, which is always disappointing.

The night didn't go well. Out in the middle of the Pacific we struck a lot of turbulence, changing direction during the worst phase. We couldn't get to sleep and Cathie had a bad patch during which she had to go back and get some assistance (the cabin crew found a place for her to lie down and she got a good couple of hours sleep).

A couple of hours out from San Francisco a nice breakfast of eggs, beans and sausages arrived and we felt pretty good, despite the lack of sleep and the overwhelming urge to stretch our legs.

We landed sometime in the early afternoon, but another plane was parked where we need to be and yet another was blocking the way we needed to go, so it took 40 minutes to get off the plane. The three-hour stopover was shrinking.

The US is diabolical to get in to. Although we were in transit, we had to enter the country, pick up our bags and check them in again with Air Canada for the flight to Toronto. We found ourselves in a queue of about a thousand people (really), as three flights landed at about the same time. It took an hour or more to get past Customs. Then we had to find our bags - a nervous moment when mine seemed to be missing - then off through the airport to find Gate G.

Once we were in the right area, a priority was to get some food. Cathie had more than US$20 in loose change or notes - surely enough for a snack? Wrong, we had to use a card to pay for two muffins and one coffee. You might wonder why we didn't wait until we got on the plane.

Eventually, we made it on board. We knew in advance that on Air Canada there's no free food or drink and what there is, is very expensive (although we did get one free glass of water). In fact, after the relative luxury of Air NZ, Air Canada was a bit of a third-world experience. The on-screen entertainment didn't work. They took it down after a while for a thirty-minute reboot, but that didn't help either. You even had to pay for a headset, without which the entertainment was useless (we had our own, as well as the complimentary pairs that Air NZ had encouraged us to take with us, but that didn't help). It made for a long and boring five hours. No food or drink, no movies, too tired to hold up a book and too uncomfortable to go to sleep.

Sometime before midnight we landed in Toronto. We got out of the airport quite quickly and Cathie's brother Joe picked us up. Joe's wife Deb waited up to welcome us and we unwound over a glass of wine before a shower and, at about 2.30am, instant sleep.

This morning we slept in a bit, had a lovely breakfast, a lot of tea and some strong coffee. Feeling almost human we went out for a walk with Joe and Deb on the shores of Lake Ontario. It was freezing and raining - what a contrast with Nelson.

Here's the walk, with a few photos https://www.relive.cc/view/vdvmK4o48N6

We have two weeks in Canada. Cathie is one of six children, so we have a bit of catching up to do.

We don't start walking form St Jean Pied de Port until May 21, so plenty of things to look forward to.