New Zealand trip Day 16 - the long way home

Christchurch airport by 5am, dropped off the hire car, found ourselves in the departure lounge with nearly 2 hours to wait until boarding. Why do they need you there so early?

Plenty of time to study the specially designed carpets in the departure lounge. They represent the Canterbury Plains.

And here are some of the actual Canterbury Plains, from the air.

Southern Alps, with cloud in the valleys.

Snow still clinging to the highest peaks.

Flight was great, watched Tim Winton's The Turning on my headrest TV.

This shows you how busy Mascot Airport is - we were stacked next to this QANTAS flight, which landed about 15 seconds before we did on a parallel runway.

It seems Air NZ does not get the prime landing spots, I wondered if we would disappear off the end of this landing strip and end up in the sea. A long trundle back, then it was disembark at the freight terminal, onto a stand-up bus and arrive in the passenger terminal after a scenic tour of the back ends of a lot of other aircraft. But I no complain.

We got there in time to get to Central station to catch our XPT train to Taree later in the morning.

Having just spent two weeks in pretty, well-cared for New Zealand, I found myself quite intolerant of the unnecessary ugliness that prevails beside the railway line. We really should be able to do better than this.

There had been so much rain while we were away that the track was actually submerged at Maitland, just past Newcastle. The train slowed right down and crawled on its belly through the water. The day before, the tide had been higher and the trains were stopped. Our wonderful friend and neighbour Vic picked us up from Taree station and we got home near nightfall, pretty tired.

Pulled up the blinds next morning and what did we see? The pool has been filled!

Beautiful colour, beautiful temperature.

Here it is, the inaugural swim! David went first. It's a large chunk of his superannuation money sitting there, after all.

This is my first swim. Heaven. It's a good pool. As good as we hoped. Better. That was two weeks ago and we have swum every day since. Well, actually I've missed the last couple of days because I've been sick as a dog with a sore throat and cough.

Anyway, that was the last post for our trip to New Zealand. Hope you enjoyed travelling with us.