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We woke up and went downstairs for 9 a.m. Linda, Debbie, and Kahn made us scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, sausage, oj, and tea for breakfast. We had a nice chat with the whole family. Around 10:30, we donned Bill's gumboots and headed out into the paddock to say goodbye to the animals. The weather was warm and sunny (quite a nice change from our last visit to Christchurch) and four alpacas ran over to greet us. I think they were disappointed when they found out we didn't have food, but they kept following us around anyway, just in case. As we continued our rounds, more and more alpacas noticed us and came over to us. One was bleating. The sheep got all riled up as we approached, and were quite noisy. We took a walk through the garden and pond and went inside at 11:11 to finish packing.
At 11:50 we brought our luggage downstairs and sent Steve a quick email reminder to please pick us up at the airport. Craig settled up money with Linda (including paying for a nice sheepskin she picked up for us from one of her friends). Linda gave us a small plush kiwi as a goodbye present. Bill drove us to the airport. We arrived at around 12:30. Bill parked the car, got us a baggage trolley, and escorted us in. We checked in and said goodbye to him. Our flight for Auckland left at 1:35. We bought some CD's in the Aukland airport. Craig bought some Speight's Dark beer to bring home, and we bought some mini meat pies (Craig got steak and I got mince). We ate them in the terminal. We boarded the plane, and although we don't usually prefer to be at the back of the plane, we were lucky in that we had two seats rather than three, which gave us a lot more room and meant (most importantly) that I wouldn't need to climb over someone to go to the lavatory. The downside was that we were surrounded by really ignorant American teenage surfers who were on their way back to the States after the "US/NZ Junior Surfing Cultural Exchange". Their "chaperone", leathery-skinned fake blonde beach trash, was sitting behind us and at one point threw her salt and pepper packet at the back of Craig's head. When confronted her only defense was that she was trying to hit the kid in front of us. Real mature. One of the kids got up and took his bag out of the overhead bin, hitting me in the face with it. He then denied it when Craig told him to pay more attention to what he was doing. We watched the movie "Whale Rider", a wonderful new NZ movie about a Maori girl trying to prove her worth to her grandfather. We recognized a lot of the Maori customs in the movie from our discussions with the Manawatus. Of course, the "cultural exchange" surfer dudes just laughed the entire way through the movie, and made comments about knowing it was a Maori boy who stole their CD player. These kids did not deserve to go on a cultural exchange in New Zealand. They obviously gained nothing in terms of knowledge about NZ culture! We had lamb and parsnip casserole, Egmont cheese, and crackers for dinner. Craig had beer. The second movie was "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." We watched it and then fell asleep. We woke up hours later during "Star Trek Nemesis". They gave us French toast, yoghurt, muesli, buns, juice, and coffee for breakfast. We landed in LA at 8:45 a.m. PDT. We had to go through customs which was a bit of an ordeal because so many people were confined to such a small space. Add to that the surfers hitting people with their boards as they lugged them around, and the ignorant surfer dad who complained about "that stupid whale watch movie", and we weren't thrilled to be back in the States. We took the shuttle to a domestic terminal. We ate pizza at Wolfgang Puck's and were immediately confronted with CNN on 7 TV's. We got fries at McDonald's and headed to the gate. Craig noticed that our seats weren't together and he tried to get it fixed. After several rude run-ins with nasty United Airlines staff, he finally found someone willing to help. Our flight departed at 12:45 PDT. It was very overbooked, and everyone's seats were screwed up. We ended up having to switch seats with the kids in the row behind us, as kids are not allowed in the exit row. We had lots of legroom but had to sit across the aisle from one another. I was a bit shocked that they let a man who was partially paralyzed on half of his body and could barely walk sit in the seat closest to the emergency exit, especially in this day and age. The flight attendants were rude and provided a minimum of service. Welcome home! We arrived in Boston at around 9:30, and Steve picked us up at the airport. |
 Alpacas following Craig  The alpacas greet us  Alpaca House  Pool and spa at Alpaca House 
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