23 October 2010: A Rocky Start

NZ adventure off to a rocky start…

We should have known when we checked in at Newark Airport.

Our journey to New Zealand just wasn’t to be an easy relaxing one. In fact, it was anything but…

First, Continental airlines tried to charge us Air New Zealand prices because the second flight was shared with Air New Zealand. This is even though Kevin’s airfare was bought completely through Continental. Why is this a problem? Air New Zealand charges $50 for a second bag, $150 for a third, and $250 for everyone one thereafter. How many bags were we carrying? SEVEN! (Before you say to yourself, “What could they possibly that many bags for, you should know that more than half of this was research equipment!) Ouch! That bill would hurt the wallet a bit!! But, we argued for a while. Eventually we were charged the Continental rate which was substantially cheaper! Woo Hoo! That only took (literally) 2 hours. Thank God we arrived to the airport 2.5 hours ahead of time!

Then came security. Kevin put the battery for the C6 in his carry on luggage because a while back he was told you can’t put lithium batteries in checked luggage. What’s the problem with a battery? Seriously?! What’s the problem?! Well, TSA at both Newark and Los Angeles had a problem with this little number. Turns out the C6 battery looks like the B word. You know – the four letter word you can’t say in airports – it starts with a B and ends with an O – M – B. When we had to go back through security in Los Angeles they went so far as to call in explosives experts who questioned Kevin, gave him a full pat down, and went through every last piece of his carry on bag; all the while Kevin could be heard cursing Turner Designs (who makes the notoriously fickle C6). Sorry, no pictures of this whole ordeal. We were too afraid we’d be tackled if we brought out a camera or phone! We’d include a picture here of the C6 and battery but, as you’ll see…we don’t have it right now…

Are our problems over yet? Not even close! The plane ride over the Pacific was quiet enough, but then we arrived in Customs in New Zealand.

New Zealand Customs is very particular with what you bring in the country. You have to declare any equipment that is used in the outdoors and in water such as tents, hiking boots, and trekking poles. Oh – and every piece of research gear since it will be used in lakes. When you go through customs they open your gear and a kind and lovely officer of the MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) goes through your gear looking for dirt and seeds. Fortunately, we cleaned our personal and research gear before arriving so this wasn’t a problem. The real problem started when a MAF officer asked Kevin how much the research equipment was worth. Kevin said “Oh…somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000). That got his attention!

He replied, “You know, you need to have a customs declaration and import certificate if you bring anything into the country worth over $1,000.”

“Oh” was the reply. “What do we do?”

“Well” said the now quite irritating officer, “We’ll have to bond this and you’ll have to get the necessary import certificates, along with invoices for all of the equipment you’ve brought and pay a fee to get the equipment back.”

“Shit!” We now thought. Timidly, we asked, “How much is the fee?”

“The fee is 15% of the total value of the imported goods.” OUCH!!! That works out to about $7,000USD!!!

It turns out the fee is only a deposit, to be returned as long as the equipment leaves the country within 12 months. OK, that’s all well and good. But coming up with the invoices to verify the value of the equipment as well as the initial funds may be a problem. We’re still working on that! Hopefully we’ll have it sorted shortly.

So, after a harrowing journey through airport bureaucracy and down to Hamilton (sans research equipment), we finally collapsed in our beds at 9PM and slept – quite solidly – for 12 straight hours. That felt nice! We’d really like that “She’ll be right” attitude to start kicking in!