Ongoing Samoa...

I apologize for the order here but with things being backlogged due to the incrediably shitty internet available in the islands.

Anyway we have a story to tell...

Dear Air New Zealand you suck for the following reason:

1. THE FIFTY (50) HOUR DELAY LEAVING SAMOA!!!!!!

Yeah that is correct, we were handing a delightful handful of sit around and wait for two entire days before we got the chance to board the plane and head onto Tonga. With hindsight we should have stayed in Samoa for longer with Tonga being a less desirable place but here were are.

Lets go back to the begining...

Wednesday 4:30 AM: Wake up and head to airport for flight at 6:30 AM.

5:00 AM: Arrive to a completely closed port, no plane it forgot to come from Los Angeles. We know now that it was a faulty fuel pump and the plane was not allowed to fly from LA.

6:30 AM leave airport and head back to Apia (the capital of Samoa) which is a 30 minute bus ride.

7:00 - 9:00 AM - Drop bags back at hotel, get breakfast head to Air NZ to find out just WTF is going on. Get informed that flight is delayed until 11:30pm Wednesday night. We get comp our hotel room and money to take taxi back to airport. We then made friends with a couple of other backpackers in order to save money on taxi fair and spent the balance on beer.

8:00 PM: Head back to airport, check in and clear customs.

11:00 PM: Board plane, do saftey check, and wait.

11:30 PM: Get announcement from captain stating that they were conducting more tests on the same fuel pump to see if it was fit to fly onto Tonga...guess what nope. Everybody deplanes into the terminal.

12:30 AM Thursday: Blankets and pillows from plane are handed out to passengers freezing in the air conditioned airport.

1:30 AM: Snacks handed out from plane to starving passengers in airport terminal.

2:00 AM: Flight is cancelled! We are then told we will be put up for the night at a hotel. This takes and hour to sort out who is going where.

3:00 AM: Leave airport after a serious amount of bullshit waiting around.

4:00 AM: Arrive at 4 star hotel with pool and head to room.

4:30 AM: Go to sleep with assurance that we will be informed when to come back to the reception to get back on the shuttle to the port for our flight which is supposed to be leaving at 1:00 PM.

12:30 PM: Wake up and find out that the flight will not be leaving at the 3:00 PM time, which change while we all were alseep.

1:45 PM: Get informed from other passengers who went to Air NZ office that we will now be leaving at 5:40 AM Friday. Also told we have a 35 dollar per meal allowance at the resturant and we need to be at reception for 3:00 AM to get shuttle.

Spend afternoon at pool.

8:00 PM: Told shuttle is now leaving at 1:00 AM.

10:00 PM: Try to go to bed, no sleep.

1:00 AM Friday: Get up and head to shutte.

1:30 AM: Leave hotel.

2:30 AM: Arrive at airport and line up.

3:15 AM: Check in system goes down.

6:00 AM: Finally clear check in, security and board plane.

7:00 AM: Lift off.

In the end it worked out to be a serious screw up and we were along for the ride. The worst part of it all was the lack of custormer service from Air New Zealand. Not once from the begining of the ordeal to the end was there a posted notice at the hotel or personale available from Air New Zealand to infom us of what was going on. It was all ruomour and hearsay. You had to go their office to get the details. Me = unstoked!