There was this drive, we had to make it back from the Mt. to get on a plane back to Auckland to get home. At about 6am, we left the silliness that is the little town at the bottom of Mt. Cook.

Did I tell you NZ has 4 million people? 40 million sheep? 80 million possums? The entire ride back to Christchurch was the earliest we’d been in the car, and we were dodging road kill left and right. We had never been out that late driving, so we never hit anything – but man, they are everywhere. Don’t worry, there aren’t any pictures of that…

We spent the afternoon in the airport. No one ever checked ID, which was very strange. But we managed to convince them that we were really leaving NZ the next day so that we could avoid the US$200 that they were trying to make us pay for having so much luggage on a city to city flight. The rain and bad weather delayed most of the flights around NZ that day, and even canceled a few. Ours was just a little late.

We made it back to Auckland and holed ourselves up in our hotel for a little bit. We had some pizza and went through all our things preparing it for our long journey home, charging the video game player, finding the mp3 headphones, etc. Our flight out was late the next day, so we had breakfast, walked around the city again a little, and hung out in the hotel bar reading and playing on the internet to kill time. The shuttle got us there at about 4, and from there we were headed home!

The flight back wasn’t that bad this time around, I was in pjs and tired enough to get some rest. The food unfortunately wasn’t as good, nor were they as quick to pour the wine. But we made it in one piece. We got to San Fran again and stayed the night at a hotel by the airport.