Once again. . .Back in Christchurch

Well, this post will probably be pretty short, but there are still a few stories to tell. First, I'd like to say, if you have been reading pretty consistently, you should scroll down and check my last two blogs, for they've been updated with pictures. However, I still need to add pictures to my safari post. I only brought a CD of pics that I burned to this Internet Cafe, and left my camera with the rest of the pics on it at the house I'm staying at. Oops! So continue to check those posts as time goes on!

So, I've arrived back in Christchurch after a grueling 3 days of travel! Well, three days local time that is. It's strange flying the other direction, west to east, for a change. The days go by incredibly fast! I got to see 3 sunrises/sunsets during my trip! So all in all, the flight back to Christchurch was for the most part run of the mill. Just long! The itinerary went something like this. . .Nairobi - Dubai - Melbourne - Auckland - Christchurch. Well, it all went fabulously from up until Auckland. Once I arrived in Auckland though, my plane came in a little late. It only gave me an hour to get to my plane to Christchurch. Well, normally, in any regular airport, an hour would be plenty of time! But in Auckland, this isn't so. As soon as you arrive, you have to go through Customs, then I had to pick up my bag, which came out of th e baggage claim nearly last! Then I had to go through Biosecurity. Since I had just been to africa, they made me unpack my bag to look at my hiking boots. Then they took my tent into some back room to look at it to make sure that no seeds or grasses were caught in it. Well, after I picked up my tent, they were kind enough to have unpacked it for me, and never repack it! Aren't biosecurity people nice? Anyway, after that, I had to make it to the domestic terminal which is about a 15 minute walk from the International terminal. Or you can catch a shuttle that makes the round every 20 minutes. So of course, its a gamble on what to do. Start walking or wait for the shuttle. If the shuttle just left, I'd walk, but if the shuttle was right there it only takes five minutes for the drive. So I waited for the shuttle, and sure enough, it took about 15 minutes to show up. So then, I showed up to check into my domestic flight literally 5 minutes before it was supposed to fly. Sure enough, they had closed check in for that flight. Oh well, I say, I'll just have them put me on the next one. . .WRONG! Turns out, my ticket was some non-transferrable, non-refundable, non-changable ticket in any sort of way. They said that I had to just buy another ticket altogether! And I asked if that money that was spent for the first one was thrown in the trash. The guy said "yep!" Argh! So, I'm publicly saying it now! Don't fly Air New Zealand! They don't like working with their customers! So, I ended up buying the cheapest flight out of Auckland to Christchurch for about twice of what it should've cost me. Plus I had a 7 hour layover waiting for it to fly. By this time, I'm exhausted from travelling so long, so I go over to a couch to lay down and rest. After closing my eyes for about 5 minutes a lady comes over and says I can't sleep there! "Too many people miss their planes when the sleep here!" I say "My plane doesn't leave for 7 hours! I won't miss it!" She says "That's a long time! Too bad though, you can't sleep here!"

So by that time, I was down in the dumps. I hated life, and couldn't believe I was back in New Zealand instead of Flying home or something. So yeah, there you have it. I finally made it to Christchurch at about 10:30 at night last night, and thankfully Dominic was there to pick me up in Larry! It was the first good thing that happened to me all day! So I got a good night's rest, and now, I'm going to try to figure out what is on the schedule for the next few months! The only thing I know I'm gonna do is go visit Kris and Bruce!

Well, that's all for now. Just a story of traveling so I'm not going to post any pics on this post. Miss you all!