Puerto Vallarta to Auckland

The big travel day has arrived - 10,500 km. of flights!

The past six weeks in Mexico have been everything that we thought that it would be. Three weeks in the traditional ‘magic’ village of Mascota in the mountains, three weeks on the beach with our friends in Chacala and a weekend in a bustling tourist city, Puerto Vallarta. As they say, ‘Variety is the spice of life’, and we have enjoyed many spices on this trip.

We always look for flight options/deals when we travel. I found that we could fly to Auckland from Puerto Vallarta using Air Alaska (P.V. To L.A.) and then connect to Fiji Airlines (L.A. to Nadi to Auckland). By looking up each leg of the trip separately, I found that I could save a significant amount of money and the new times for departure worked better for us. Once again, it was less expensive to book separate flights for the trip to Auckland and home to Toronto (not round trip).

We left P.V. by taxi at 11:30 a.m. after our last leisurely, inexpensive and tasty breakfast in Mexico. The ride from Old Vallarta to the airport cost a standard 200 pesos. We didn’t have bags to check-in and we had our boarding passes so we were in the departure lounge in no time.

The flight to L.A. took 3 hours, but it was pretty bumpy. The poor lady sitting next to us was not feeling well at all. She was so happy when we were down on firm land.

The L.A. Airport is big and we had to find Fiji Airways but we had lots of time as we had a 6 hour wait for our flight to Fiji. While we people-watched, we noticed face masks of all shapes and sizes.
People from Asia were being held in a secure room for screenings with a ‘no entry’ sign on the door. Everyone is afraid of the Coronovirus that is spreading quickly in China. We were concerned too, as we were going to be confined in a plane for 10 hours.

At 10:30 p.m., we took off and were impressed by the organization and care that the flight attendants offered on Fiji Airways. They even gave Chris and I masks when one of the passengers started to cough. We slept off and on as well as we could and were given two good meals.

We arrived in Nadi early in the morning and took advantage of the 2 hour break to walk around and stretch a bit before boarding once again for the short 3 hour flight to Auckland.

We arrived at midday on Friday, as there is an 18 hour time difference. We easily got a Vodaphone phone chip - 2 months, 10 gigs data, 200 minutes of phone call time, including Canada and other places in the world. $50 Cdn for the chip, which was installed right there. A great deal.

We called the Apex car rental company and a shuttle came to pick us up. The process was easy and we now have Toyota Yaris for 2 months. Due to insurance covered by our Visa card, we will have to give up the car at the Wellington office and then pick it up 24 hours later.

Now the test... driving on the other side of the road to get to our unfamiliar accommodations in a new city. Using the window wiper levers instead of the turn signals. Arghh.

Thank heavens for Google maps. We made it to our homestay in 20 minutes without incident.Read more