Sunday 10 June 2012

When good flights go bad



















I've been pretty lucky with my flights lately, but my luck ran out on Wednesday this week when a 1 hour flight turned into a 30 hour saga! Bad weather in the South Island meant planes were grounded, leaving everyone high and dry in the north.

I was lucky as I could drive back home and wait it out, but plenty of people didn't have that option. The next day I tried again and got bumped from 1.30pm to 3.30pm to 5.30pm, eventually taking off at 6.30pm - 30 hours after my original flight time. Needless to say there were many many phone calls to rearrange schedules. Bad weather can't be avoided of course, but keeping your passengers better informed would have been nice Jetstar!

I couldn't get round as many locations as I'd hoped, but thankfully my client is fantastic and VERY understanding! So it was a bit of a flying visit (excuse the pun) to Wellington, racing straight from the airport to the first location with not a minute to spare - no time to work out where 'reverse' was on the rental, so I had to park accordingly! Got the shots and finally made it to my hotel around 10.30pm...just in time to fall asleep in my dinner!

Up at 6.00am to beat the morning rush hour en-route to my next location on Willis street in Wellington. By 9.00am I had done my dash and had a little time to breathe and take in some sights. It was an awesome day to view the city from Mt Victoria, so that's just what I did and got some panoramic shots with great cloud formations.

From there I headed out to Titahi Bay with its colourful boatsheds and the wind whipping up some pretty decent waves. Followed a sign to Whitireia Park on the Te Onepoto Peninsular and what a gem that turned out to be. A single lane road out onto a headland with fantastic vistas out across the Porirua Harbour to Mana Island as well as the South Island.

The wind was absolutely howling here and actually blew me over at one point as I clung on to my tripod. It was just so wild, windy and wonderful, made even more so with spectacular views down on the windsurfers and kite surfers at the end of the headland.

I had just enough time to flatten my 'hoover head' hair down for my last shoot at Porirua before racing back to the airport and flying home, with no delays this time - Yesssss!

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