With about 4 hours left on our flight, there was an announcement no one ever wants to hear “we have a problem”. Flooding in Auckland had shut down Auckland Airport and they were diverting our flight back to Rarotonga. We had no real information other than just that, so a lot of people were frustrated.
We landed in Rarotonga within the hour, they handed out the Raro immigration forms for us to fill out and then said they would serve us a quick breakfast before we got off the plane. We completed immigration and then an Air NZ person told us we would be staying at the Edgewater Resort. Once through customs, we were directed to ground transportation and then they charged us $120 to take us the 10 minute journey to the hotel. We questioned why we were paying for it and they said Air NZ told them they should charge everyone directly. Mark then found an Air NZ person and they said it was a weather event so not their cost.
Once at the hotel, we then found out we were also to be paying for that. Had we known, we would have chosen our own hotel so the frustration levels were running high. The girls were upset they might miss the first day of school. We were shown to our “villa” which was very basic and tired. We had a beach view which was nice as we had asked to upgrade to the beachfront villa. That said, there was no direct beach access from it. The hotel rates definitely did not match the rooms.
We went and got some beach towels and sat on the beach for a few hours. The kids complained the water was too cold and went back up to the room. Later Greer came back and her and Mark had a swim. In the meantime Air NZ advised we were now scheduled to leave Rarotonga at 3:40am, arriving into Auckland at 7am.
We went and had some lunch at the resort restaurant which to be fair was better than we were expecting. The waitress was quite funny and joking about the slow service etc.
Mark, Greer and I spent the afternoon on the beach and TJ and Sophia stayed in the room on their devices. We got a note from the hotel saying Air New Zealand were going to cover the accommodation costs, transfer costs and meal costs so that made us feel a bit better. About 4:30pm we headed to the restaurant to get our free cocktail/mocktail the hotel had offered us. The kids also had some dinner. The service was exceptionally slow.
Back at the room, I had the pleasure of repacking all the bags and the kids had a sleep for a few hours. We had to be down at reception at 12:30am to catch our shuttle back to the airport. About 11:30pm we got a message from Air NZ to say we were booked on a flight to Christchurch leaving at 10am. Mark dragged one of our bags over to reception but they gave him some luggage tags and said someone would come and collect them, which they did. We headed to reception about 12am. There were a lot of people staying at the hotel on our flight and it took a good 6 or 7 buses to get everyone back to the airport.
We checked in and cleared immigration before finding a spot on the floor to rest. We were all allocated our original seats and once on the plane everyone tried to get a little rest.
We arrived into Auckland about 7:30am and Mark and TJ had us racing through the airport. Now that Greer is 12 we could use the machines at immigration and it was very quick. Once we had collected our bags we had to go through the something to declare lane as we had some beef jerky with us. They had a look at it with no issues and then x-rayed our bags before sending us on our way.
Auckland International Airport was busy as a result of the closures due to flooding so we decided to just walk our bags over to the domestic terminal. There was a slight drizzle but the fresh air and opportunity to stretch our legs was good.
We dropped our bags, cleared security and found the Koru Lounge for a coffee and breakfast before catching our flight to Christchurch. Jess, who had been house-sitting for us, dropped our car to us at the airport and we made it home.
