I was most worried about the bag of almonds that I had in my backpack as nuts are clearly listed as an item that must be declared. I'd made it through security in China though with pretty much the same thing so I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. The nuts made it right through but my cleats and my tent on the other hand did not. The woman who was responsible for checking our bags asked if I had any 'spikes' in my bag, and I told her no as I couldn't recall packing any sharp wooden or metal objects. She asked again and I again said no. She rolled her eyes and said "cleats." "Oh yeah," I said, "I have my cleats." She showed me the immigration form, which lists sporting items under the must declare category. I told her that I had made a mistake and she said that we had a big problem. At this point I was getting a little bit worried. I didn't know of any law that didn't allow you to bring cleats into NZ but I suppose that its possible. She pulled my cleats out of the bag and said, frowning, "they're filthy." Her defenition of filthy must be different than mine because there wansn't more than a few blades of stuck to the bottom. "We'll have to clean them." This was fine with me, if she wanted to clean my smelly cleats than she was welcome too. She took them into a back room and returned with an offiial notice that I had failed to comply with the immigration laws. "Normally, this would be a $5000 fine, but we'll let you go this time, you can pick up your things at the window." They cleaned the tent too, but there wasn't much fuss about that.
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