So, here I am, 81 days later, where has all the time gone. Seems like just yesterday I was complaining about the volcanic ash disruption back in April, and being scared out of my mind as I flew into Costa Rica. I’m happy and sad about going back to work – happy that I have a job to go back to, sad that my holiday can’t continue. I thought that by this time I would be super excited about going back to work. If I claimed that were true, I’d be lying.

Hannah and I drove our rental car to the airport to check-in early, because I wanted to get a window seat (read yesterday’s entry if you haven’t already). My flight was at 7:30pm and we got to the airport at about lunchtime.

Sadly, the check-in lady couldn’t get me a window seat, but she was able to get me an aisle seat in the very first row of Economy class, which meant that I had extra legroom but without the disturbance of being by the toilets or galley. I was pretty happy with that. The check-in lady was very sympathetic to my situation and tried to find out why my flight had been cancelled from before, but she wasn’t able to find out anything. She said something about “one of your original flights was changed and you went two days later”, but that wasn’t true.

Then we went and checked Hannah in for her 9:30pm flight with a different airline (the volcanic ash disruption from April meant we couldn’t fly together without paying LOTS of money). Wow, Continental Airlines have a MUCH easier and friendlier check-in process than American Airlines.

So now we had quite a few hours to kill until our flight and we still had our rental car. We went for a drive around some of LA’s beaches. We saw Manhattan Beach which looked like a very beautiful place, it had a main road that ran parallel and near to the beach, but it was up a hill from the beach, and each side street went directly downhill to the water with lots of nice houses on either side.

Then we saw a big hill in the distance, and we drove up there to see what the view was like. It was beautiful. And the houses were massive and looked VERY expensive.

All this driving used up a lot of time, and so we drove back to the airport, returned the rental car and sat in LAX airport for a few hours. When it came time for our flight, I said goodbye to Hannah (we departed from different terminals) and we went our separate ways. It was a bit sad, because even though we’d see each other again in a few days, we both had such a great time in America and it was very sad to leave it.

My flight back to London was nice, it was direct (unlike Hannah’s which stopped in Newark). The lady sitting next to me in the window seat looked like a Swedish supermodel, and she acted like it too, she had no idea how to work any of the video equipment or in-flight entertainment and I had to show her how to do everything. She said “I’m used to flying British Airways, this is such a step down for me”. It was funny.

So that’s the end of my 3 month (well, 81 day) trip to South America, the USA and New Zealand. I hope I get the chance to do something like this again one day. But it cost a lot of money. Seeing my bank balance when I got back to London was depressing. But then I thought again how lucky I was to be going straight back into a job.

I think a lot about the people I met on my trip, and wonder where they are now. It was actually quite hard because I made some really good friends, but then you have to leave them again almost as quick as you made them as you move on to other destinations. But I still feel like my life is a lot richer for the experience.