Saturday, March 18 - Sydney to Vancouver to Toronto!

Sydney to Toronto via Vancouver - 15 572 km flight

It's been an incredibly epic adventure, but now it's time to make the long trek home and get back to reality! We have a leisurely morning at the Pullman Sydney hotel, and enjoy the delicious and varied breakfast buffet - lots of standard Western options, but also Asian treats like congee, dim sum dumplings, and lychees. We have a nice visit with a friendly Australian family (with a son about Erik's age and an older sister) who are on their way to visit the mom's family in Vietnam. The dining room is also full of pharmaceutical company types who look like they're about to start a sales meeting or advisory board - a little preview of what's waiting for me at work once I get back to the other side of the planet.
We're close to the airport but somehow the cab ride takes longer than expected, thanks to construction and pretty heavy traffic (on a Saturday morning?). Guess we'll just need to get used to being in a big city again. We make it to the airport in plenty of time and do a bit more souvenir shopping while waiting for our flight - I find some tasty treats to take back to the office, including Whittaker's white chocolate bites with L&P flavoured pop rocks!
The flight back is comfy (thanks to the Fly LegsUp hammocks again!) and well stocked with good entertainment options. With the way the time zones line up it would make most sense to sleep on the first leg across the Pacific, but of course none of us are tired enough yet. Erik finally falls asleep just before we get to Vancouver. Unfortunately for him (and the rest of us), at this stop we need to vacate the plane (and take along all our bags) so it can be cleaned and re-stocked, and the even more inconvenient part is that we need to take this opportunity to go through Canadian customs and border control... which happens to be on approximately the other side of the whole airport. :P Dominic manages to carry a half-asleep Erik while I wrangle all the other important possessions, and soon we're through customs.... and hiking all the way back across the airport again to the plane. We all try to get some rest on the Vancouver-Toronto leg, and make sure to tag the CIBC penguin again on our way out of Pearson and on towards our happy home!

Home again!

Travel totals:

Plane: 35 426 km

RV: 2295 km

Ferry: 100 km

Total total: 37 821 km!