Thursday, February 27 would be our last full day in New Zealand. On the top of our list was turning in the campervan. We packed up all our belongings in our suitcases and I dropped Louise at the Sudima Hotel which is right at the Christchurch airport. The Britz office was just around the corner, walking distance from the hotel. The process of turning in the campervan was much easier than I had anticipated. Being there early helped. The agent dig through several dozen contract packages before pulling ours from the stack. One customer ahead of me had just finished his paperwork. I waited about three minutes for my turn to begin the process. While waiting, I placed a number of food and cleaning items on a shelf that Britz has for people to leave any leftovers. As I pulled items from the bag Louise had put them in, several were picked up by people browsing the shelves of items left by others. One lady had a nice stake of items set aside and eagerly took the bag I used to bring in our goods. It is a nice way to share left-over goods with others who are going to be stocking their campervan.

Once the agent was free, I turned in my keys and my original contract. He looked up the Britz paperwork and set about noting the date, time, mileage, etc. Then he went out to the campervan and I expected a return with a list of things that needed to be remedied. Upon his return he said the campervan looked good and our deposit would be returned. This was a pleasant surprise. In all, I probably spent 15 minutes getting paperwork taken care of and then was out the door on the way back to the hotel. Our bags were stored and we settled into a couch in the TV lounge to wait for check-in time to arrive.

We have been a month without TV and the TV was on CNN News. The volume was muted so we could only read the trailer to see what was in the news. Louise asked a hotel employee if the volume could be turned up and after three people tried we got sound. We learned of the issues with Russia and Ukraine as the issues were reaching a crisis level. We also caught up on much other news from a US source. Louise had packed a lunch with some of our last supplies from the campervan and we consumed that while using the hotel wi-fi to catch up with e-mail and other internet business.

When the 2:00 p.m. check-in time arrived we were allowed to go to our room. We spent much of the afternoon working our luggage into air travel condition. Checked baggage weight limits and restrictions on what could be in our carry-on baggage dominated our efforts to get everything packed properly. With no scale to weigh luggage, we simply had to work from feel. Once that was done we had a relaxing dinner in the restaurant and then turned in for the night. Our flight was scheduled for 6:00 a.m. the next morning so we set the wake-up call for 4:00 a.m.

The wake-up came plenty early. We dressed, gathered the bags and headed for the lobby. As promised the shuttle driver was waiting for us and we were off to the terminal. I had missed the weight on the checked bags by 2 kilograms. I pulled several heavy objects from one bag and put them in the other and we were good to go. Our flight took about 4 hours and we were in Melbourne at 8:00 a.m., two time zones west accounts for the difference in time. Processing through customs and collecting our baggage took about an hour and then we contacted the shuttle which had been arranged by our tour service. We waited about 40 minutes for the shuttle to show up. The ride to our hotel, The Ibis Hotel in downtown, took about 30 minutes. We were there before noon and check-in time was 2:00 p.m. so we put the bags in storage and went to find lunch.