Jordan, Israel and Greece

The homeward journey started at 8pm on Sunday night when the remaining ten of us headed to Athens Airport for our 11pm flight to Dubai, where we then had over 5 hours to wait before heading on to Sydney. Having not slept on the Athens to Dubai leg , and being keen not to maintain that trend on the 14 hours to Sydney, I spent my last remaining American $$ on one of those travel pillows that go round your neck. Our numbers reduced even more, as Bryan and Rosemary and Kaylene took a separate flight direct to Auckland, and the new remnant (7 of us) carried on to Sydney, and then Christchurch. (Even then, I was only one for whom Christchurch was the final destination, the others carried on to Wellington, Nelson, Mosgiel and Invercargill.)

I think I mentioned that on the way over I had binge watched "Call the Midwife'. On the return journey, the drama of choice was another excellent British series called The Durrells, based on the book, "My family and other animals' by Gerald Durrell, telling of his family's life on Corfu during his childhood. I highly recommend this production, which seemed even more appropriate viewing, since we had just come from Greece. Also managed to fit in a couple of movies (Finding your Feet and Goodbye Christopher Robin). I did also try to get some sleep, using the travel pillow and various soundtracks from the 'relaxation and health' section of the entertainment menu. On this latter front, it was the Gregorian chants that proved the most effective. It took a long time getting off but I must have had some sleep eventually because the steward had to wake me for breakfast.

One hour at Sydney before we got back on the same plane for the flight to Christchurch, which was uneventful except for a somewhat embarrassing incident at Customs, which I need to give you some background for. At Athens, one of our group, Janet, had been iincreasingly anxious about whether her luggage would be within the required weight limits., and the charges there for excess baggage were themselves excessive. Since I was travelling quite light, we arranged that I would check through one of her bags as my own (and yes I saw exactly what was in it, so I could truthfully say I packed my own bags! ) I put one of my own bags inside her suitcase, transferred my tags to it and carried it as my own. On arrival at Christchurch customs, I declared that suitcase, since it contained wooden items that both Janet and I had bought at Bethlehem. Not unreasonably, they wanted to open the case and at that point I realised that Janet had not told me the combination for the lock on the case. Rather feebly, I said that my friend had locked iit for me, and they let me go back to look for her, but she had stopped off in the duty free shopping and was nowhere to be found. Happily, by the time I got back to the counter they had looked at some wooden items in one of my fellow pilgrims bags and were happy to waive the need to look at mine. I am quite sure they were wise to the real situation, but must have thought we didn't fit the drug smuggler profile, so I escaped appearing on the next episode of Border Patrol this time.

Final goodbyes to the others in the arrivals area and then I was fully home at about 2pm. House sitters had left the place in better shape than I had left it for them, which was lovely to come back to. Pilgrimage now officially over (is this ok, Rowena?) Returned penguin very grateful for alll of it, and very tired.Læs mere