10:30 pm Saturday NZ Time

2.5 hour flight from Sydney to Christchurch over. And regardless of the name, it is not the holiest town in NZ. The flight was a lot of fun. It seemed that both south island NZ volunteer groups were seated together at the back of the plane, you know, the cool section. This made the final portion of travel to NZ that much more enjoyable.

After clearing immigration and customs, and not getting fined $100,000 or thrown in jail for having mud on our sneakers [like we all thought we would], we had 45 minutes to get our act together before leaving Christchurch's tiny port of air. It was just enough time to exchange money [and the American dollar is so strong! $1 American = $1.7 NZ], grab some grub, and call parents, who we all know were freaking out at this point. With that, it was time to say farewell to our fellow southern NZ volunteers stationed at another location, and catch the West Coast Shuttle for yet another long trip.

This 5 hour busride was our final notch on our travel chain to Punakaiki. The pass through the west coast is a windey one and the wind is intense. We even saw an overturned vehicle because of it! But the sites of the Southern Alps were amazing and we made it to our destination safe and sound.

It is now 10:26 pm on Saturday and after over 35 hours of travel, we are settled in and hitting the hay. Tomorrow will be great. A free day to spend exploring this unknown landscape and perhaps a few extra hours of shut-eye will be a sure way to start off these next four weeks. So with that, it's off to bed!

Cheers!