Ellen Isaacs: Travel journal: Fly home from Christchurch

Today we were heading home after a month in Australia & New Zealand. We had a long day of travelling ahead of us, flying first from Christchurch to Aukland, then Aukland to Los Angeles, and finally LA to San Francisco. And we'd picked up an extra bag of stuff along the way, so we had four suitcases plus a bunch of carry-ons, yikes. Our flight didn't leave out of Christchurch until 5pm, so we had a little more time to spend in Christchurch. We saw that there was an Antarctic museum near the airport, so we decided to go there. We had a leisurely morning packing and getting our stuff together. We packed up the car and went to the car rental place, which was close to the airport.

When we got there, we had a classic New Zealand experience. It was mid-day and there weren't any other people there returnig cars. The woman took our keys and called to the guy who drove the van to the airport. He came out, and when we opened our trunk stuffed full of bags, he decided not to bother transferring them to the van but just told us to hop in and he'd drive us in our car. How practical! We love how people don't worry about liability and the standard operating procedure, they just do what makes sense given the situation. He was a friendly man. He told us that he was preparing for his first trip ever out of New Zealand, and he was probably in his 50s. He and his wife were going to visit Australia. We wished him well in his travels.

When we checked in at the Qantas terminal, the guy told us that they could actually check our bags all the way through to San Francisco, even though we were changing to United Airlines in Aukland. We'd have to grab our bags for customs in LA, but they would transfer them automatically to our United flight in Aukland. Wow, what a treat! We had been expecting a lot of hassle at each stage, so it was nice to be relieved of that on one leg. After checking our bags, we found a storage area where we checked our carry-ons, and then walked over to the Antarctic Museum, which was about a 10 minute walk.

Exhibit at Christchurch
Antarctic Center
Christchurch is a major launching point for exhibitions to Antarctica, which explains the museum being here. They had some good exhibits but it wasn't as informative as I'd expected. They had one room that was very cold and you could put on some heavy jackets before going in to get a sense of what it's like there. No thanks. There was another room full of information about penguins and such, but the most interesting thing was a short video that explained more about the continent. They said about 5? miles of ice had accumulated on it, making it by far the highest continent. I was also interested to learn that they've learned how to reduce the hole in the ozone layer and expect it to be gone in about 10 years, I believe — I've never heard that, people continue to harp on it as a problem. They also had an interesting map of the world showing which countries had settlements in Antarctica and which had claim to one but didn't currently run one.
Exhibit at Christchurch
Antarctic Center
At the end was a large widescreen theater that showed a nice slideshow of scenes of Antarctica: the land/ice, the animals, and the people who stay there. At the end, I wanted to buy my dad an Antarctica t-shirt, figuring he was unlikely to have one, but they were all so ugly I couldn't bring myself to buy any, especially since they were overpriced. He'll just have to make do with the New Zealand football t-shirt I got him.

Walendo with his
squishy hat
We had a bite in the museum cafe (I had a chocolate-covered sugar cookie in the shape of a penguin) and then we wandered back to the airport. We were very early, so we did a lot of waiting. While sitting there, Walendo decided that he needed to do one last bit of shopping — he wanted a hat. About a half hour later, he came back pleased as can be about his new squishy hat. It looks like a cowboy hat made of suede but it scruches up into a small bag so you can travel with it. I must admit, he looked pretty good in it.

Ellen waiting in
airport. (How else can
you pack a hat?)
After that, everything went pretty smoothly. Our flight on Qantas to Aukland was quick, then in Aukland we made it to our United flight to LA with no problem (though they made us pay a AU$20 airport tax before going to the gate, which seems like a big hassle in addition to an unexpected fee. If you're late and don't have time to stand in line to pay the tax, you're screwed.) The flight to LA was completely full again, but by some incredible miracle, the seat between me and Walendo didn't get filled. I think it was the only empty seat on the plane. That made the flight back much more bearable, as I was able to lay down and sleep for part of the 12 hour flight. I think we've used up all of our flying karma for the rest of our lives. In LA, we picked up our bags and went through customs without any hassles, and once you get through, you can just put your bags back on the conveyer belt, where they are sent to your next flight, how nice. That short 1.5 hour flight from LA to SF turned out to be the most difficult of the 10 flights we took on the trip. They said there was bad weather in SF, so we waited on the tarmac for nearly an hour, having a few false starts. But the captain was extremely good about telling us what was going on all along the way, which I really appreciated. I think they're trying harder after 9/11 to keep passengers happy, especially when the delays aren't their fault. United earned points with me for that. Finally we did land, grabbed a taxi and made it home. What a relief. The final stage of the trip was to drive down to pick up Libby at Russ & Judy's. Libby was so happy to see us, as we were her. We didn't stay long to visit since we were both tired. We drove back home and were happy to all be together again at home.

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