Day 26 - P-p-p-pick up a p-p-penguin.

Twizel - Hong Kong (via Christchurch and Auckland)

(Ha! I bet you were thinking I would call this bit "Hong Kong Flew-y" or something. Tcha. I do have standards you know.)

Early start for the drive to Christchurch, via Mount Cook. Yet more gorgeous scenery, mirror lakes and so on. All I can say is that you should dig out the recent Lord of the Rings trilogy and look at the filming of it. Peter Jackson didn't need CGI trickery to convey how amazing New Zealand is - all he had to do was set a camera down somewhere and point it at a mountain, river, or plain.

We dropped the car off before the allocated time of 2pm, leaving us with several hours to kill before our connecting flight to Auckland and then onwards. On recommendation this was spent at the International Antarctic Centre.

Christchurch is the home for 70% of the flights and support bases for the various countries in the Antarctic and the IAC is the group of buildings next to the airport for all this sort of thing. They have opened a visitor centre to allow you to get a flavour of living in the Antarctic.

Oh, did I mention it has penguins? Little blue cuddly penguins? You can see why Caroline was desperate to go.

Into the IAC (so well thought out that they provide lockers for hand luggage if people are catching flights) just in time for penguin feeding. The blue penguin is the smallest penguin and the IAC is a sanctuary for injured examples. Now, a penguin is one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Imagine a small penguin - cute times ten. Now imagine an injured one getting fed. On a scale of things, I reckon feeding an injured blue penguin scores about a hundred Andrex puppies.

Also in the IAC is the Chill Room - you put on a thick overcoat and shoes and walk into a room that is kept at -8oC to simulate general conditions for the personnel at the bases. Every so often, they simulate a storm, switch on wind machines and drop the temperature so that it feels like -30oC or so. I thought it would be interesting to try this and you know what? Standing in an icy windy, -30-ish blast isn't as much fun as it sounds.

You can see equipment used at the bases and read some of the documentation they produce - trench humour is apparent, as at Scott Base they even have a golf club with its own rules. Monitors show pictures of the activities at the base, not only the science but also the way that people unwind.

Like the observatories at the summit of Mauna Kea, it takes a special kind of individual to survive the Antarctic. I'd love to see if I was one of them.

Alas, not this time. Time to catch our flights. The 747 from Auckland was full so an overwing seat and a companion on the row - boo! But a pleasant enough flight and I managed to grab four hours sleep before it was time for Hong Kong. Now here will be a culture shock.