Anne Leaves Me :(

We drove north to Hokitika after all of this lake-walking and glacier-worshiping. I told you a bit about Hokitika earlier. It’s the town of 4,000 residents that houses the regional airport. As you can imagine, the size of the airport was in keeping with the size of the town and surrounding population, which didn’t boost it up much!

Anne was on one of the 2 daily flights to Christchurch. Her flight was scheduled to leave at 5:30, so I asked her when she thought we should arrive at the airport to get her all checked in. She said “oh, probably around 5 or so.” “Really? 5? Don’t you think we should get there at 4:30 or so?” “No, 5 should be plenty of time.” “Okay…” I figured I’d trust her, since she was the one on the flight. Good thing I did because she definitely knew what she was talking about.

After our fish and chips dinner at a picnic table in Hokitika, where we wrote postcards to send to my sister and Anne’s host parents, we headed over to the airport, arriving a few minutes after five. This was no kidding, the tiniest airport I have ever seen. The parking lot consisted of about 20 spaces in total and there were no gates, just a door out onto the tarmac behind the building. We had to wait in line for all of 5 minutes for the couple before us to check in, two of only 5 of 6 others on the flight with Anne. It took about 3 minutes for the woman at the desk to check Anne through. We sat in the waiting room, looking at all the advertising panels up for lease on the walls, of which exactly NONE had been hired out. Apparently the airport isn’t the most hoppin’ place to advertise. Go figure. I think the employees (all, what, 10 of them? Including the pilots.) were the most people who would be in there all day. No. I’m exaggerating that a bit. If there were two flights a day, I guess the passengers would probably outnumber the employees, but not by much. Anyway, about 10 minutes before takeoff, they boarded the passengers onto the plane. That is, they walked out onto the tarmac and up the steps into the little prop plane with maybe 20 seats inside. After they’d gone out, those of us who’d come to see them off were allowed to follow out onto the tarmac and stand out there to wave them off. How crazy is that?! I was allowed onto the tarmac? Jeez! At home you aren’t even allowed into the terminal without a ticket. And here I was allowed out onto the tarmac!

I hung out with the woman behind the counter and another woman who’d come to see a friend off. We were peering in the windows on our side, trying to pick out our friends amongst the indistinct heads in the windows. Eventually, we ended up just waving in general and hoping that our friends could see us. We kept looking in the windows though, hoping that with more study, we’d eventually be able to tell the people apart. I think it worked, too, because I was pretty sure I’d spotted Anne toward the middle-back. Just as I’d decided that, the woman I was standing with turned to me laughing, saying that she’d been waving at one of the windows toward the back, but she was pretty sure now that it was my friend that she’d been waving at. I told her that Anne would pass on the love to her friend for her. The plane went for a loop around the runway to turn around and then came back by on its way. We were still standing out there, waving as it took off. The woman who worked there at the airport told us to keep waving, even when they were up in the air because they could still see us. It was such a fun experience, especially compared to the usual hectic rush and crowds that you run into at airports. I could get used to that!