Home

---

Hello all - well I'm back home in the UK safe and sound but no doubt you will be aware that mother nature had one last trick up her sleeve before I left New Zealand! I was packing my bag and my sister texted me telling me about the earthquake in Japan - she said I should hurry home. I told her not to worry, that Japan was quite a way from New Zealand. Then I turned on the New Zealand news and found out that it was the tsunami she was worried about not the earthquake. By the time I went to bed the news was saying that a tsunami alert had been issued for NZ, together with all the other pacific countries, and that the far north was likely to experience any effects at about 5am in the morning. It would hit Cape Reinga right at the north of the island first and then travel down to where I was staying and my hotel was right next to the beach. They advised us to keep watching the TV and listening to local radio for more detail. I woke up just after 5am, must have been worried about something, and turned on the TV but it was too early for the news. I have to admit to being a bit anxious - the last thing I wanted was to get stuck somewhere due to tsunami flooding, so I got up and packed up the last of my things. By the time I left the hotel at 7am there was still nothing on the news but all looked calm as I took one last look at the sunrise in New Zealand. The news on the radio had started to kick in and it appeared that the tsunami effect would be no more than dangerous conditions out at sea and people were being advised to keep away from beaches and rivers. At this point I stopped looking in the rear view mirror for the sea of water chasing me.

It was a reflief to arrive in Auckland and I managed to find the route from the highway to the aiport that the hire car man had tried to explain to me and I couldn't believe how easy it was!!!! I was sitting in the departure gate and a young german guy was sitting next to me. As I had a couple of coughing fits while we were waiting to board I bet he thought "I hope I'm not sat next to her for the next 11 hours", guess what? I was sat next to him - poor bloke! The first leg of the journey was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Kuala Lumpur on time. I had 4 hours to kill but had paid to go into a lounge and so managed to have a shower which made me fell 10 times better. I wandered over to the departure gate and before long we were all sat on the plane waiting for take off. But we didn't take off - the captain announced that the cargo doors were still open but he was hopeful we would make our take off slot. Then he made another announcement saying we had missed it and he was waiting to hear what the next available slot was. We were sat on the plane on the tarmac for 2 HOURS!!!!!!!!! He didn't tell us why it was so long until we landed at Heathrow but apparently it was down to the fact that Afghanistan is very strict about it's airspace and because we missed our first slot we had to wait 2 hours before we could fly over Afghanistan! It was probably the longest 14 hours of my life but I managed to get some sleep and was so relieved when we landed at Heathrow.

So I'm back home now and have just put the first load of washing on! I'll post more photos later on this week and post a final blog as well. Bye for now......

---