10-17-22

What a day!! The adventure began at 4:30 am with a little yoga. The plan today is to fly to The Ice courtesy of a New Zealand military B-757. Baggage check, passenger screening, aircraft preflight checks all went good, smooth as silk, no issues. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the plane took off on time. Everyone on board had boomeranged at least once. We were all optimistic that this would be the day and so far, it was. That is until we had just passed the point of safe return (PSR). Today it was the fickle weather at McMurdo that was to send us on another boomerang. Shortly after passing PSR the pilot came on the intercom and announced the airfield had just become shrouded in a heavy fog and we were turning back for Christchurch. As the old saying goes “you could have heard a pin drop”. At first, we thought the pilot was having a little fun at our expense. We all chuckled and waited for the jolly joker to rescind his misspoken words and assure us we were, in fact, continuing to McMurdo. Sadly, this was not to be the case. As we headed back for Christchurch the pilot told us we had 3-1/2 hours of flight time back to where we started. We all hunkered down for the long ride home. What a resilient group of folks these world travelers are. For a short time, there was quiet on the plane but that was soon overcome by cheerful banter, meeting new friends, laughter and thoughtful acceptance of the reality we faced. About two hours into the return flight the pilot came on the intercom again to advise us, because of unexpected head winds, we didn’t have enough fuel to make it back to Christchurch! An hour and a half later we landed at Invercargill, NZ, the southernmost airport on the South Island of New Zealand.  After landing we were greeted by residents snapping pictures of what was probably the biggest airplane this small airport had seen in some time. After a quick stop for fuel we were back in the air headed for Christchurch…..again. The flight was routine, we reclaimed our bags, got our marching orders for tomorrow and headed back to our hotels for another night. We are now on a first name basis with the hotel staff! Stay tuned, tomorrow is another day and I’m ready for whatever occurs next.

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