New Zealand - Final Entry

The Antarctic Center really is a nice way to kill a few hours if you’re waiting for your flight out of Christchurch. It wasn’t nearly as hokey as I expected it to be. They have a lot of interactive displays and remnants from past Antarctic journeys. The only flaw being the colony of Blue Penguins it houses. All of the penguins are not able to be released back into the wild, so it’s refreshing to see that they are being taken care of. However, being the Antarctic Center, I found it ironic that of all the species of penguin it has, it has one of the few non-Antarctic penguins. However, they are a New Zealand native bird, and I’m sure that sharing such close quarters to humans, there are many birds that need additional care.

As it turns out, my flight out of Christchurch was delayed. I originally had an hour and a half lay-over in Auckland, but that was made all the tighter with the delay. Not to mention the flight out of Auckland was the last flight of the day, and if I missed that flight I wouldn’t be back in the states until Monday, and oh wait, I work Monday! As we disembarked the plane we had to run out of the building and to the International Terminal. This should be a 20 minute walk, but considering I had 30 minutes to catch my flight, there was a lot of running involved. As we ran into the terminal we anxiously stood in the customs line looking nervously at our watches as precious minutes ticked away.

Fortunately, we did make it onto the plane as everyone started filtering onboard. My muscles were sore and I was out of breath, but we made it. Plus, due to a generous tail-wind, we managed to shave an hour off our flying time.