DAY 43 Sun 25 to Mon 26 July

I woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to make sure I had everything ready, including a last minute rearrangement of the bags (moving some coin belts into the hand luggage to try and make the checked luggage a little lighter) and last minute weighing (it will be close) and scrubbing of the riding boots. When Mohamed turned up, he had all the photos I got printed out, so I sorted out the ones that I would leave with Maryanne for her to give to the people in the photos, and I handed out the photos I had of the grooms as well. They enjoyed looking at their pictures. That didn't leave me much time to say goodbye to people or animals however, as when I had finished that, Mohamed and Sherif were loading all my stuff into the Volks – so much for a last minute walk around the farm to say good bye to the horses. The grooms were also off doing work too, so just a wave good bye had to do. I did get to say a proper good bye to Maryanne however. I really enjoy my stays with Maryanne, but leaving is harder each time, so I guess I was lucky in a way that it was such a quick parting – they say to pull the plaster off fast – it doesn't hurt as much. I'm not sure I believe that myself!
As we were driving along one of the main roads, I looked out to my right, and saw all these kites tangled in the power lines – some must have recently become caught, others had obviously been there for a while – only the bones of the kite remained – it was an interesting sight. Those kites would have been flown from the top of the buildings in the area most likely, as there wasn't much open space to get the kites off the ground otherwise.
I am constantly impressed by Cairene's abilities to navigate. We had to detour off the road and head through the town instead at one stage. Not only is Cairo a rabbit warren to try to negotiate, quite often you have to head in exactly the opposite direction to the way you want to go, until you can get to an area where you can do a u-turn. I'm glad Mohamed knew where he was going, because I will admit to being completely and utterly lost! The other thing about navigating through Cairo and surrounding areas is that one minute you will be driving along a narrow lane beside a canal with opposing traffic using the same lane, and the next minute the traffic will only be going in one direction, without obvious signage notifying you. And even if you are on a one way street, you can't get complacent, as you are more than likely to see someone driving the wrong way – it may be a car or it may be a cart – the main thing about driving in Cairo is expect the unexpected!! My undying amazement to all those people who manage to drive and navigate their way through Cairo, I'm very impressed!
I got to the airport on time, and it was sad to see Mohamed driving away in the Volks, knowing that the only way to go now was on to the plane back to NZ. First stop was security screening before check in – I'm not sure if they are checking you to make sure you don't have any bombs or guns in your luggage or to make sure you aren't smuggling out any antiquities – maybe it is a mixture of both. Once at check in, I put my bags on the scales to see what the damage was with the belly dancing gear – 30.2kg. Ooops – a little overweight – but as Maryanne had said, just smile sweetly and maybe they will let it go. It was a nice young Egyptian man behind the counter, and I don't think I would even have needed to smile sweetly – he didn't say anything about the weight of the bags.
Once I was through immigration, I was rather disappointed with the choice of duty free shopping. In the old terminal, they had a lot of the touristy Egyptian souveniers. Here they just had normal Duty Free shops, with very few tacky souveniers (and all of them way over priced). In the end I had to resort to buying a couple of pharonic soft toy camels to get rid of the last of my Egyptian pounds. I then grabbed a bite of food for breakfast before heading through to departure gate.
Once on the plane, I had a bulk head row, so nice leg room – the woman beside me had two kids, and her sister was in the seat behind, so for the flight from Cairo to Dubai, I moved to one of the spare exit row seats so that her sister could help out. This section of the flight I watched a Clash of the Titans – I enjoyed that – especially the Pegasus – he did however look a little funny in flight. I'm also used to the Pegasi being white, but a Friesian certainly made a good Pegasus!
It was just a short flight over to Dubai, so I didn't have much time left to fill in after watching the movie – it was an older plane though, so I had to watch the movie right through – you didn't have the option of pausing the movie or starting a movie a time you wanted, which was a bit of a pain in the butt. Once in Dubai I moved back to my seat for the hour and a bit on the ground. The flight from Dubai to Singapore was even fuller than the last flight, and I couldn't keep the exit row seat. I did a good samaritan deed after take off, and let the sister sit in my seat for the flight to help with the kids. At least the kids didn't lean their seats back, so I had a little bit of leg room. I tried to spend most of this flight sleeping, and I managed to doze on and off between meal services. I was going to watch a movie here – I wanted to watch The Bounty Hunter but for some reason I couldn't get this one movie to work. Then tried for the Green Zone, but at the time that wasn't working either. Frustrating.
On the ground in Singapore I was reunited with my fragile hand luggage (they had put the glass in a cupboard for me, as there wasn't room for it in the overhead locker, and I headed on out to fill in 3 hours in Singapore Airport – did a little bit of shopping, but other than buying lovely Singapore orchids for Mum and Nana, I just limited my spending to some books to read on the last part of the flight.
I had a bulkhead seat for the flight to Auckland as well, and for a change, no kids in the seat beside me – woot! And there was enough room in the overhead locker for my laptop bag, the bag of fragile glass and the orchids – sweet. I spent this flight dozing a little, and watching the Bounty Hunter and the third in the Mummy trilogy (it was a newer plane, and I could pause, rewind and fast forward to my hearts content – small things but such fun). Started reading one of the books but couldn't get into it at all. Spent some time listening to music and just generally chilling out.
Once down on the ground in Auckland, I just made a quick stop to pick up my pre purchased duty free. There was a queue for the regular immigration, as there were also flights down from Australia and Tahiti, so I decided to check out the smart gate. It was rather quick and simple, though I found it rather amusing when I got to the bit where you have to look into the camera – it said look into the illuminated camera – they all had bright arrows pointing at them – lol. I just chose the one that was more at my eye level – it seemed to work – lol.
I was the first down at the carousel, but unfortunately my bags weren't first off – I had to wait for a while. That gave the dog handler time to head over my way, and the beagle to sniff out the orchids. Had a quick chat to workmates as I walked through, and then had to wait in line at the search bench to hand over the orchids for inspection and to get my riding boots dipped in virkon. Waiting in the queue for our search bench gives you a new perspective on what the passengers see and how it looks to them – I think MAF should pay for us to travel so we get to experience it more often. Other people actually have an advantage when coming home to NZ. They don't have to travel through their work to get home – lol. Technically I have another 6 days off before starting back at work, but I was already there – it certainly hits home that you have to head back to work very soon.
Once through the xray and outside, I saw Mum and Dad sitting and waiting, and we didn't have to wait long until the lab window opened and George and Loreen poked their heads out – they had already inspected the orchids.
It wasn't as cold outside as I was expecting, and finally at about midnight we pulled into the driveway. The dogs were very happy to see me, and I'm sure Mum is very happy that I'm home so that she doesn't have to put up with those two trouble makers as much. We then spent another hour together as I pulled all the goodies out to give people their gifts and to show them my other purchases. The miracle is that all the glass and ceramic goodies made it home in one piece – even the stuff that I had in my suitcase. One thing about working at the airport and having to look through peoples luggage is that you learn how NOT to pack breakable stuff!
It was good to head over and collapse into bed (they had turned the electric blanket on for me so my bed was nice and warm). The dogs didn't waste any time in joining me (in fact they have a tendency to beat me onto the bed. The one advantage with that in the middle of winter is that they do a good job of warming the bed for me! So now I'm home, and the blog is almost at an end.