The lovely Geoff greets me in the kitchen making me jump, “ready for coffee?”  He sure knows how to keep me happy, I am sure most hikers appreciate a good coffee when stopped.  Geoff is taking us to the train station, the commuter train goes in once a day, and comes back.  It starts in Palmerston North and it is not till Waikanae that you have several trains. 

The commuter train is really good, you get to see the countryside for a mere $12, it arrives in Wellington at 8.20am.  There are people busy working or a lot of them sleeping and relaxing before a long day at work. 

It is really nice being in a warm, safe, dry environment without having to endure the elements.  The train drops us off and we head to McDonald’s for breakfast.  Michaela, Rowan’s friend is busy till 10am.  We chill and catch a taxi to Newtown.  we catch up with Michaela, haven’t seen her since she was in Christchurch and we have never met her partner Gareth. Our package with our passports hasn’t arrived yet.  With an early flight the following morning I am feeling a bit anxious.  We decided to fly to Sydney for my recovery as Bette (Rowan’s grandma) is alone for Christmas for the first time. We can recover there where a pool is which will be great for exercising my ankle. By 1.30pm I am calling NZ Post asking where it our passports are.  They have to search two locations as they are currently changing their sorting depot and packages have a couple day delay.  Eeek, my dad sent it on overnight courier I reply.  I get put through to Pace who tell me I can get it tonight but it will cost me $240, no problem it will cost me closer to $1k to change the flights. Then they realise it needs to be located first before the Pace team can help me. A lovely lady Tracy at NZ Post digs high and low for the package.  Finally by 3.45pm she has found it, now it’s on her desk, come now the depot closes at 5pm.  We arrive at 4.30pm and pick it up, phew that was lucky. It also didn’t cost me more money to collect it earlier. My ankle is in agony and when we get back to Michaela & Gareth’s house I am popping a codeine. We need to be at the airport early so I book a cab for 4am, I have already checked us in so I don’t need to be there at 3am.

My alarm goes off and I have a message on my phone, your flight is delayed. I check okay it is now at 8.45am. I call the taxi to cancel it and tell Rowan to keep sleeping. I can’t fall back asleep so I just stay awake. I check the flight times again before waking Rowan, just in case. In the taxi by 6am heading to the airport. I have never gone internationally from Wellington before, it is a really quiet international airport and is quite good. Once through security our flight gets delayed a further hour, Rowan is grumpy about losing an hour sleep. As time goes it gets worse, we are told there are further delays, looks like in total we will be 5.5hrs late. The airline gives us two vouchers so we can at least get some food.

We were in a holding pattern for 30min because of severe winds and eventually land 6 hours later than we should have. I get out and hobble along, I have a few staff members suggest I use a wheelchair. I politely decline. Rowan gets frustrated by my slow walk and puts me in a chair. I am quite thankful as the distance and waiting for bags is quite a lot. Finally in a taxi on our way to Kensington. We spend the rest of the day chatting to Bette and Rowan sorts out food. I am grateful to not walk anywhere else. We will be out of touch mostly while we are in Australia as I won’t have much in the way to blog about.