Narrow escape

I've made it to New Zealand...just.

I headed out for a last walk around the hills outside McMurdo on Sunday afternoon before settling down to pack my bags. But by the time I had to take my bags up to cargo on Sunday evening there seemed to be a blizzard raging outside, how did that happen?!?

We were due to fly out at some horrible hour on Monday morning, and I sat pressing refresh on the computer for the next few hours to see whether the inbound flight would take off from Christchurch. Around 9pm it decided to chance it, so then it was off to bed for a few hours before heading to the Pegasus ice runway at 1:30am on Monday morning.

As we drew up to the runway it was a beautiful post-blizzard morning, and we were greeted with the beautiful sight of a C-17 cruising in to land. After a lot of forklift truck action we all trooped onto this massive cargo plane and soon after take-off there were dozing bodies draped all over the floor - much better than having all those wretched seats in the way!

I have one more day of fun before I fly home from Christchurch, so have hired a mountain bike for the day, with the intention of getting up a big hill and getting to the sea - I don't actually have a map, but it can't be hard...