Auckland, New Zealand

A view from our seat (using a body position only a chiropractor could love)!!





It was a "better" flight for the second leg, in that the flight attendants were nicer and the service was better. The IFE (Inflight Entertainment) was on the fritz, so after 90+ minutes of monkeying around, we just watched everything in Espanol.



This is the coast of NZ as we arrived. Auckland is at a very thin isthmus, with apparently a large bay in the middle of it. It was a gorgeous landscape (these scaresly do it justice). We were there about 90 minutes, during which time I did the last post, and changed the header picture.

Right now, we are in Santiago, Chile (SCL). We have about 10 hours to wait for our flight to DFW (after about 10 hours from AUK, and before 10 hours to DFW). It is still the 16th of December, and has been for 29 hours now (and it's only afternoon here!).

Our flight took a polar route, and passed close by Antarctica. It wasn't close enough (or light enough) to see, but still, it was within the Antarctic Circle. The sun never quite set on the South horizon, so we had several hours of a sunrise/sunset scene out our window (as we were on the right side). As we approached the coast of Chile from the south, the entire coast seemed to be trimmed with a uniform sandy beach. The hills and mountains came down to the sea, and a thin (from 30,000 feet) beach ran the whole length. As we got closer to SCL, the Andes were visible. Close to the city, we could see the foot hills in the foreground, the snow capped peaks in the back ground, and a line of clouds hovering just over the peaks like a raised cap. It was amazing! (But it didn't photograph very well. I can't find the cable to down load right now, so maybe we'll post those later.)

I am writing here in the LAN Club Lounge. The Admiral's Club didn't have much food selection, so we defected. We'll go back later, and see if they've improved. All for this posting. I hope to get the A380 pix up in a few minutes (for those who care).