New Zealand

Our 747 inaugural fight Buenos Aires, Argentina to Auckland, New Zealand touched down at Taunga Rererangi o Tāmaki-Makaurau Airport on Monday, 7 September 1981. We had skipped Sunday altogether. 

Silvio with two bottles of milk we got at the local grocery shop. I found them quaint for they reminded of São Paulo in the early 1960s, when milk bottles were still in use in Brazil. Since then they had been substituted by plastic bags or cartons. 

Richard and Silvio straighten up some bedding in the early morning before breakfast.

Silvio plays the toreador to Richard's counter-attack. Richard's secretive dream was to have become a professional ballet dancer. Richard had some friend or connection in Denmark, just like Silvio, who had spent a year in Hamlet's home-country. 

This is the view we had from the beach house we stayed. 

Beautifully green the hills near the beach on the Tasman Sea. 

Myself & Richard climbing down from a family mixed business shop at this resort beach we spend 2 days. Black Goofy, Richard's beloved dog is on the right... 

Luiz, Richard Bruce  & Goofy strolling down the hill in green New Zealand. 

Valo, Richard's Chilean friend took this picture which reminds a bit of the Beatles' Abbey Road sleeve.

a silhouette of Valo (Osvaldo) who had been living in New Zealand for a few years. 

Note left by Silvio written in Portuguese using the cyrillic alphabet: Luiz, fomos a uma exposição e jantar na 38 Albert Street, paralela a Queen Street.  Seria bom se você pudesse vir. Otherwise, você pode entrar pela porta do banheiro do fundo. As luzes acesas te guiarão. Se vc ligar o Richard vai te buscar de carro. Silvio, 07 August 1981. (Silvio made a mistake here; he thought it was August but it was actually September). 

This was a dinner given by Warren, Richard's friend on the first day we stayed in Auckland. I had gone out by myself and missed the dinner altogether. The date is completely wrong. Silvio didn't realise we were in September...not August as he wrote. We had departed from Buenos Aires in the morning of Saturday, 5 September 1981; due to different time zones, we actually arrived in Auckland on the Monday, 7 September 1981, having 'lost' a whole day in the process. 

Our trip from Buenos Aires to Auckland skirting the South Pole was really out of the ordinary. Silvio managed to get into conversation with a New Zealander man who worked as a travel guide to a large group of New Zealand senior citizens visiting Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. This group had some youngish men too. As the trip was long many fellows left their seats there was a little crowd of mostly young men assembled in an area of the plane one could look outside through the windows and see if it was dark or light. I remember the plane took off around 8:00 am and as we were flying against the sun soon it became night... 

As it was the official inaugural crossing of the south Pacific up to the Tasman Sea, Aerolineas Argentinas offered smaller bottles of Argentine wine to the travellers. Soon everyone was high on Argentine wine. That's when Silvio approached me with this slim Kiwi fellow called Richard Bruce Hewet, who had lived in Denmark and apparently danced ballet while in Kopenhägen. 

so he was happy in talking about Denmark to Silvio who had been an exchange student in Kopenhagen only 2 years before. Richard knowing we were heading to Sydney to start a new life, invited us to stay at his house in Auckland for some time...and maybe we'd change our minds and settle in New Zealand instead of Australia. 

When we got off at the Auckland Airport; the hall was packed with a crowd who had gathered to welcome the NZ travellers who had taken part in the first official visit to South America. TV cameras were everywhere. New Zealand was living in thrilling times for the controversial Springbok Tour had been on for almost a month now having split the whole country in two: those for and against the Apartheid regime of South Africa.