14th Dec 2011
So South America had one last sting in the tail for us, we arrived at the airport in Santiago a little early for our 11.30 flight at 7 pm.
By the time we had gone through immigration and checked out the duty free we settled in a bar called "The last pisco sour". Sarah made friends with the bar staff and ended up dancing around with them until 10.30pm when we heard the call for our flight, we finished off our drinks and headed for the gate.
Then came the first 20 minute delay for "refuelling", then 20 minutes later came the second delay another 30 minutes. By the time our flight should have left we were advised there would be no updates until 2.30 am!!! But we were being given a sandwich, great!
By 1 am we were advised that the flight was delayed until 11.30 am and we would be taken to hotels for the night, a night in a free hotel sounded good to us!
Unfortunately by 3.30 am there was still no sign of a hotel or any movement so we headed to the check in hall to try to sleep on the floor, outside the LAN checkin desk.
By 5 am the airport started filling up again and our sleep was over...We knew by now we had missed our connecting flight in Auckland so booked another at 3 times the cost of our last one!
By 12.00 we finally took off another 30 minutes late.
We were now on a day flight so unless we wanted to wake up in Auckland having slept all day we needed to stay awake again.
By the time we finally landed in Auckland it was almost 48 hours on the go and 3 hours of sleep....
We were met by our friend Nick and have spent the last week relaxing in Christchurch. What we were not prepared for the scale 5.8, 5.3 and 6.0 earthquakes followed by many tremors that was about to rock Christchurch on the 23rd December.
At the time we were packing our bags to head to Akaroa and the earth started to rumble, next the building started to shake....then things started to fall over...Having never been in an earthquake before I suppose survival instincts kicked in and we both ran to the door way then the front door and got out. Whilst outside the ground continued to rumble and all the telegraph poles swayed, then silence, and then we heard all the alarms and the dogs howling.
Over the next few hours the minor tremors continued until we were all sitting with a bottle of New Zealand pinot noir watching a movie it started shaking again, when it starts your not sure how bad this one's going to be. But this one got more and more powerful. The TV started wobbling, a full wine glasses fell over and Sarah and I bolted again for the door.
A surreal experience but it would seem a normal occurrence in Nz...James always said he wanted to experience an earthquake so that's ticked off the list!
We head to Akaroa on today for xmas and new year some fresh fish and diving is on the cards.
Not a lot more to report at the moment, job hunting and getting heads back in the work space.
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