Our transport vehicle to Phoenix Airfield (Nicole for scale).

Cindy, Nicole, Marc and I made it back to Christchurch! Yesterday, we had breakfast at 6 am and by 6:30 we were transported to the airfield (look at how huge our red transport vehicle is!). It took about 45 minutes to travel a few miles to the Phoenix landing/take-off field. After about 20 minutes in the “terminal” (a room with a few chairs), we lined up to get on the plane.

Loading onto the LC-130 (Nicole is right in front of me with the penguin hat).

In our seats on the LC-130 with the rest of the people traveling from Antarctica (Nicole is putting in her ear plugs, Marc is taking a picture, and Cindy is fixing her shoes).

Once loaded, we were off by 9 am. We landed about 7 hours later, wearing all our Antarctica clothes (long underwear layer, fleece layer, down layer, snow pants, bunny boots, and big red), in about 65 degree F New Zealand weather. After going through customs, we walked all our stuff to the Clothing Distribution Center (where we got our Antarctica clothes about 6 weeks ago). I really wish I would have taken the time to put some normal shoes on and take off my snowpants…After returning our clothes, we walked to the hotel. It is so incredible seeing green again, this trip has definitely made me appreciate plants and trees even more than I did before. And then Cindy and I had fresh vegetables for dinner and fresh fruit for dessert – fresh is most certainly better than frozen.