Back in the States

Officially I have been back since Monday but I was so tired when I got home, I took a couple of days to sleep. Also to spend some time with Damian before he left for the next job. It is Friday and I'm still tired, the time change is killing me.

I last left you on Oct. 30, my last day on the ice and the day we flew out. It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny, almost made you want to stick around for awhile longer but NZ and home were calling. I answered and got on the plane.

We flew back on a C-17 again.
They are loading our luggage into the tail of the plane. We rode out to the airstrip in a Delta, very classy.
These things are huge. I'm barely taller than the tires...
We were flying out on the ice runway, it is closer to McMurdo and was built in the time we were here. They use it until the ice becomes too soft to land airplanes on it but for now it works great. Here is a Herk, it has skis instead of tires. They fly these planes to remote field camps and to the South Pole. I thought it was pretty cool.
So into the plane we go for our 5 hour flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. There were a lot less people leaving than when we arrived. The plane was almost empty and we had lots of room to walk around and look out the two tiny windows in the back.
I spent as much time as possible looking out the windows while we were still over the ice. It was really cool.
I saw glaciers and snow covered mountains...
and broken sea ice.
Two very happy girls heading to warmer places...
And here was my last view of the ice before we were out in the Pacific Ocean. There are some clouds along the shore but you can still see some mountains.
It was a pretty uneventful flight. We arrived in Christchurch about 10 pm I think. When I stepped out of the plane, the air smelled wonderful... there was water in the air, I could smell flowers and grass. And it was green everywhere and there were trees and it was dark and green... It was great.

We then loaded onto a bus to head to customs. We got our baggage, went through customs and walked over to the CDC to return our gear. It was sad to say goodbye to big red but I kept my name tag and left all my gear in the changing room. By this time it was 11 pm and we took a shuttle to our hotel, the Windsor. Mahesh, Leslie and I went to bed right away, it was a long flight but we were all happy to be off the ice.

The next morning we met for breakfast... there was fresh fruit and bunches of good things. It was great. It was a really nice way to start off vacation. I'll continue with that in the next entry.
Cheers!