It had only been a few days since arriving back in Kemi, to Maria's mums, but there was a need to get flights booked back to New Zealand. One of the conditions of David’s Long Term Leave was that he must be available for work at ASB on the 26th of January – a little over 2 weeks away.

It wasn’t that the task of booking flights was being deliberately put off; it was more to do with having no internet access over the last couple of weeks while we were up in the 'frozen north’, deep inside the Arctic Circle.

When it comes to the internet, Finland is actually pretty good in comparison to world standards even in the remotest of places but only if you subscribe. And we hadn’t bothered.

We had internet access now though and we started ploughing through the various airlines to see who might have deals and who could get us half way round the world in the quickest time. To complicate the selection and booking of a flight, we had to take into consideration all the luggage we had. Whilst we travelled through Central and South America with less than 40kg between us (that’s hold luggage and hand luggage combined) we had a lot more stuff to take home.

Thinking back to January of last year, we had an Emirates flight allowing 30kg in hold plus 7kg hand luggage each and we took almost full advantage of it. David even managed to fit his snowboard and boots into that allowance.

So with all the original luggage and a heap of Christmas gifts, the luggage requirement was looking like 4 bags in the hold plus the hand luggage. The question was now, who will take that much luggage while balancing cost and the duration of the flight?

We made a decision early that we wouldn’t include the journey to Helsinki in our booking plans because it would make it far too complicated. If push came to shove due to the amount of luggage we had, we could always take the train.

It didn’t take long either to discover that there are no bargains when you want to book a flight just a week out. We did discover however that a return flight in September didn’t add too much to the cost and we need to come back for Niina’s wedding.

After about 8 hours of searching and making phone calls about luggage we finally gave up. It’s definitely not going to be cheap and we’re still not sure about the luggage. It’s not so much the weight that causes the issue, it’s the snowboard. You would think that if you have to pay extra for a snowboard bag you would put more stuff, like boots and jackets etc., in the bag rather than just the board itself. If you are British Airways though, the bag must contain only the board and boots must be packed separately. Argghhh!!! Time for a beer….