Day 12 - Homeward Bound

I woke to see a message from Joe saying that there was a worldwide issue with some Windows update that may potentially affect flights. 

Ali suggested we move breakfast forward to 8.30am to give me more time in case there were any issues, which was thoughtful of her.

During breakfast, Rhona threatened to come to the airport with me to see if she could upgrade her flight to Business Class, she could only get Premium Economy when she booked.  Thankfully she has changed her mind.  Ali told her to ask for priority tags on her luggage so she gets it quicker.  The entitlement is strong with this bunch.

Ali was complaining about being in row 1, which is a wasted opportunity as she doesn't plan on having the meal, and row 1 gives you first choice of the meal. Some of the time they get to the back of Business Class, they don't have your choice of meal left.  The hardship makes my heart bleed.  

LATAM who I am flying with said on their website that they are unaffected by the clustermuck, so fingers crossed all my connections work.   I am due to leave at 1.25pm local time and it looks to be on time so far.

The Business Class English contingent are all leaving on the same flight at 6pm.  Their inbound plane was delayed in Madrid by two hours, so looks like they will have something else to complain about 😊

Kenny is posting photos in our group chat of his trip to Galapagos asking Frank/Paulo for bird identification.  Ali is asking him to stop as she gets too many WhatsApp messages as it is 🙄.  Cat says she wants to see them and to keep them coming Kenny.  You couldn't make this stuff up 🤣

LATAM were true to their word and and all of my connections were seamless, and my luggage made it all the way home.  It was a long trip, 27 hours from first takeoff, to landing in Wellington. But except for the last 5 hours on Santiago to Auckland,  it passed quite quickly. 

The only over the top madness, outside of the x-raying everything after you have just got off an international flight while in transit, was that as we boarded the long haul 13 hrs from Santiago to Auckland, they searched everyone,  after the ticket scan at the gate while we were on the airbridge to the plane, and were confiscating water bottles that were over 100ml.  So I had my bottle of water taken off me, even though I drank some in front of him and reduced the contents to less than 100ml, it was not allowed on.  The lack of commonsense in these rules does my head in.  But you have to comply or you don't get on the plane. Thankfully they didn't see my camera bag water bottle, slim and square purchased specifically to fit the pocket, which was empty but would surely fall outside their madcap rules. 

I managed about 4 hours sleep on the flight home and it was quiet and uneventful.

I skipped thru immigration, no longer being a foreigner in a foreign land and having to queue with the "others".

I declared my boots as I had been  trekking around in the rainforests of Ecuador, but had scrubbed them clean before leaving. All good, no problems. Julie met me at the airport, with a bottle of sparkling water.  Bliss in a bottle.

We had Maccas for breakfast. Sometimes you need grease and salt, and it hit the spot. Scrummo. We spent an hour or so catching up on the gossip of the last two weeks while I've been gone.  Has it only been two weeks???  Feels like much longer than that.

I headed through security for one last mad pointless scan before boarding my last 4/4 home.  

Wellington put on a pristine day for me. 

Mouse is not sure who this stranger is.

The group that were flying Business Class to LHR, some of their luggage was delayed by 60- 90 minutes. Then they were told that if luggage wasn't on the carousel to leave the airport and luggage would catch up.  

Sometimes slum-class is not all bad 🤣 

Now to process the 6k plus photos I took.  Gah.