Packing Panic

In a day or so we leave for New Zealand.  We will be visiting friends, and we will be doing a couple of "great walks".  One suitcase and backpack apiece is what we have allotted ourselves for 6 weeks, so finally we have begun to do a bit of strategic packing.

For me, it is all about weight-- the heaviness of individual items, not the overall heft of my smallish suitcase.  What I care about is the content of the backpack I will be carrying for 4 days and 53.5 kms when I am on the Milford Track. I know what a pack feels like when it is laden down with food, cooking utensils and other items over which I have no control, so when it comes my clothing and toiletries, less is definitely more.  I have been holding t-shirts and underwear at arm’s length, testing for weight.  How many pairs of socks do I really need for four days?  Anything too heavy stays home.  

Then there are our hiking books.  New Zealand is obsessed with clean hiking boots—it is an agricultural thing; no foreign contaminants are allowed into the country.  We have scrubbed ours down in anticipation of inspection upon arrival, although the boots will get sprayed regardless, as if we couldn’t possibly have cleaned them well enough. (I wonder what they do if you turn up with dirty boots?  I bet they put them in boot jail or send them straight to Boot Hill.)

In any case, we know the drill. My husband recalled it all too well in an email to a friend:  The trick is to get off the plane in Auckland, get our bags, admit that we have boots, turn them over, get the bags x-rayed to show there are no other boots ($200 fine if guilty of hiding boots), wait for the sprayed boots to return, re-pack the boots, get bags together, rush out of the International Terminal, follow the blue line on the road to the domestic terminal (15 minutes) and check our bags in for the flight to Wellington.

He’s right.  We have about an hour and a half to pass muster and catch that plane.  But, hey, we are old hands at this.  We’ll be fine! 

*crossing fingers*