Chatham Islands: Flying to Chatham Islands
Chatham Islands are in the middle of nowhere in Pacific, east of New Zealand. They are in a weird time zone of their own, which is 45 minutes ahead of New Zealand time (yes 45 minutes ahead – which totally screws up any ability to use a hand watch that only moves in hour increments). Flying to Chatham Islands in an adventure in its own – only locally owned Air Chathams flies there and you fly on Convair 580 airplane which was manufactured in….. drumroll….. 1950s! My first intention was to turn around. The plane looks like it belongs in a museum or a WWII movie. But AirChathams’ fleet has three of these and they are all retrofitted and patched with new steel. The planes are loud and have massive windows that are actually useless since the propellers take out all the view. The 2 hour flight is relatively smooth (although delayed with haphazard to none communication). When you finally land on Chathams – there’s more of these plane on the ground, painted with images of the Chatham albatrosses in them.
