The Outside World

I finally, finally left Antarctica two weeks after originally planned. At the airfield, the Basler was standing by to start taking people into South Pole for the beginning of summer there...

...but me, I was northbound on a nearly empty C-17, with just a couple of the other winter-over stragglers and some people who had just come down for the first couple weeks of the summer.

Out the window, the iced-over seas surrounding Antarctica...

...gave way to the warmer waters closer to New Zealand...

...until finally we landed back at Christchurch airport, 8.5 months after I last left it, and said goodbye-for-now to the Antarctic program.

It was nearly dark when we arrived that night, but the air felt thick with humidity (read: normal, to normal people) and I woke the next morning on the 8th floor of a hotel to an amazing sight:

In case you don't know, I should be sure to tell you: The outside world is an amazing place. There are things like Matcha Lattes...

...and entire plates full of fresh food.

With some McMurdo winter-over friends who had left the Ice a couple weeks prior but were still in the area, I took an afternoon trip to the Christchurch-area port town of Lyttelton:

And the next day I took an hour-long walk on the beach near Kaiapoi.

Total heaven. And more to come...