Last Travel Notes Down Under

The trip back was not interrupted by magnetic anomalies or mysterious characters named Jacob.  Or even less mysterious colleagues named Jacob.

Leaving is, though, the hardest part:

• Suddenly, my credit cards didn't seem to work in Wellington--luckily after I checked out of the hotel.  They worked fine in Sydney on the way back today.
• NZ has a departure tax, so one must line up or queue up again after getting past the airline's front desk.  Luckily, my debit card still worked, and cash seemed to be ok.  The irony here is that NZ was very cautious about admitting me--making me show a return ticket, but the tax would seem to constrain departures.  They need to make up their mind.
• The challenge in Sydney was finding working wifi.  And none free.  Plenty of time there to try to figure out--do I eat breakfast or lunch?  Since it was dinner time back home but breakfast time in NZ and Aus, I, of course, chose both.   But this does raise the question--is breakfast a very good or very bad meal to have in an airport.  The choices are usually pretty bad (unless there is a TGI Fridays) as the various outlets are not designed to serve breakfast. But I managed to put together a veritable cornucopia of pastries.
• Air Canada has really lousy entertainment options.  Sure, the trans-Pacific flights had screens in the headrests (not all intra-Canada flights have those yet), but the choices did not change from the beginning to end of the month, and the choices were both slim and weak.  I ended up watching Ninja Assassin, which shows how desperate I was.
• I try to avoid making connections in Canada as part of flying internationally (mostly to the US), but I didn't have much of a choice this time.  The problem is the game of having to get through customs, collect bags, and then get through the second customs step and then put the bags back on a conveyor belt and then getting to the plane.  
• Since my Sydney to Vancouver flight was delayed (the "engineering problem" was blocked toilets--too much info, thanks), I barely made my connection after the obstacle course that included: my bags coming off late, a line for the second set of customs including a guy who had to fill out extra forms since he lost a bag, folks in front of me in security having set off the detectors (I did get patted down in Sydney), and then a long run back to the gate (which was close to my previous gate but both far from customs/baggage).  
• I made it just in time, but one of my bags did not, even though I dropped off both at exactly the same time.  The second bag was just delivered to my house moments ago.

Despite the hassles of flying more than 20 hours each way, the trip was very much worth it.  I learned a great deal for my research, in addition to learning alot about a part of the world I had never visited before.  I bought a hunk of Aussie books, so I plan to learn more and hope to return some day soon.