The Road to Rainbow

Back home at last! It’s been a long journey, and I managed to come back with a 2GB chip full of photos! It seems prudent to spread the telling of our journey to the World Rainbow Gathering in New Zealand over a few posts, so I’ll start with the way there.

After all the packing we got underway, and were dropped at the airport by a friend… only to find that our flight to Sydney was delayed. Great. Before too long the PA announced that anyone on our flight to Sydney with a connection to Auckland or Christchurch (which meant us) should go back from the departure lounge to collect our baggage in the check-in terminal and report to customer service. Flashbacks of our recent adventures with delayed flights running through my head, we collected the bags and schlepped back through security to find out what was happening.

 We were told to wait and a shuttle bus would drive us to Brisbane, 90 mins away, where we would be put on a direct flight to Christchurch, which would land only 25 minutes after our original flight. As it turned out, the exact same flight that one of my best friends was taking!

Littletree complained the whole shuttlebus ride that she hates it when our plans are messed up, and she’s not happy taking a 90 minute bus ride rather than a 90 minute plane ride. At least she had gum (which she managed to get in her hair)

We finally arrived to Christchurch, and managed to clear customs (who insisted on taking all our bags apart and washing our tent pegs) by 1am. I picked up our rental car and we navigated to a house where many rainbow people were crashing. Amazingly, the owner of the house had managed to keep a double bed free for us, and it was like sleeping atop a massive hippy temple – about 15 scraggly bodies in tatty sleeping bags were sprawled on various cushions around the room, and we tiptoed in to fall asleep in the mattress in the middle of it all.

The rainbow house was fun – connecting with rainbow family, loads of fun people for Littletree to play with, and a boy her age who had pet mice. We stayed a day there, recovering from the journey, and hanging out.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of our travels!