Almost a guest star on "Border Security"

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Trip Start Sep 11, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jan 03, 2009

  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Saturday, January 3, 2009

Well, I have finally arrived back on Australian soil and I have to admit, it feels good to be home.  Strange to hear Aussie accents and everyone speaking English after so long trying to get by with Spanish, and for once at the airport I didn't have to go through the "foreigner's" lane in customs, which was also weird.  The 13hr flight from Santiago to Auckland wasn't as bad as I was expecting since I had a free seat next to me, and the aisle on the other side so plenty of room for sleeping which was nice. However, at Auckland, my free seat disappeared and was replaced by a woman with a very squirmy, squealy 2 year old - my  own personal airplane hell!  Thankfully, a friend of mine whom I met on the Antarctica cruise was also on the flight and had a free seat next to her so I swapped.  Said friend shall remain nameless however, since she landed both of us in the bag inspection area of quarantine after a sniffer dog got excited at the smell of her pack!  (That and the fact that we'd spent months in Sth America doing who-knows-what and bringing who-knows-what back probably had something to do with it too.)  The offending scent in nameless friend's bag turned out to be an almost empty tube of vegemite, which apparently is one of the first things the dogs are trained to recognise.  Luckily the woman didn't want to open my big backpack, since I had so much crammed in there, I don't think I would ever have got it all to fit nicely back in. Only my carry on bag was searched.

I almost lost one of my little souvenir penguins from Ushuaia though - he was made of wood (which I declared) but unbeknownst to me he was actually a gourd, and still had seeds inside! They had to crack open his bum to get the seeds out!
Thankfully, I was allowed to keep him after that, albeit with a hole in his bum!

We kept thinking we would end up being on the TV show "Border Security" but the staff cheerfully told us they weren't filming that day!

And a quick warning to anyone planning to spend any significant amount of time in Peru - I WAS asked to show my Yellow Fever vaccination certificate before passing through customs.

Now I am in the Virgin Lounge, waiting for my afternoon flight to Brisbane.  Have had a shower and a lovely breakfast so am feeling much more civilised, though my clothes still feel a bit ratty and I desperately need a haircut!

This trip definitely rates as one of the best I've ever done, and I don't think anything will ever come close to the experience in Antarctica. It's going to feel strange getting used to a normal life again after so many months on the road.  Instead of studying bus timetables and travel guides, I now have to turn my attention to studying for my Primary exams, and get back to work to pay off this amazing holiday!

It might be some time before I can do another big trip like this one but there are still so many places I want to explore, and you can rest assured, that as soon as I can, I'll be "off again".

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