30 May

The Metro Liner landed on schedule early next morning. We packed all remaining things before breakfast and left our sacs by the plane while we had breakfast. After breakfast an argument broke out with Benny. He said we were 50kg over weight. This we did not understand. We had flown out with two extra passengers and some first aid gear. We found out that two people would be hitching a lift on the flight as well as the 9 of us. We would have to leave our skis behind and they would come on a later flight at evening, around 10pm. That was not acceptable. We had flights back to Reykjavik in the early evening. Two people would have to stay in Akureyri to collect the skis and then fly to Reykjavik the next day. The plane had been chartered for us and so our gear should go, not the two other passengers. Benny would not listen to us so Scott got on the phone back to England and explained the problem. We all slowly made our way to the plane. Benny wanted us gone to end the arguments. We were all just settled when Bennys phone rang. He talked for a while and then asked one of the extra passengers to get off and our skis were loaded. There was some politics going on behind the scenes. I don't understand why the plane could not carry us all and our gear. There were at least 8 empty seats and I'm sure the excess weight of our baggage was less than 8 more people and their baggage.

Flying into Iceland was funny. Before we started to descend a clipboard was passed around. We had to give our full name and nationality. That was the extent of immigration checks. Our passports were never checked, no tickets, nothing, just a clipboard of names.

This time the baggage handlers didn't even bother taking the baggage off the trolley. We were all flying to Reykjavik so it just disappeared into the baggage hall to wait. Our flight was not until the evening so we changed our tickets to an earlier flight. There had been plenty of spare time in the plan just in case we got delayed somewhere because of weather etc. This was the point we re-entered the normal world and we needed tickets. Unfortunately Paul had left his in his baggage so had to go behind the scenes to find it. An hour later we left for Reykjavik on a scheduled flight.

We had a meal together that night and that marked the end of the expedition. Petter would leave early next morning before the rest of us were up. It had been a fun time. Most of the team got on well, just Petter causing a problem, but eight out of nine is not bad. We had climbed 12 new mountains and another twelve tops. We had attempted two other mountains and failed. We had explored the area we set out to visit and given the short amount of time there we had done a good job. It was a shame we had been delayed because of the problems other teams had had, and then by the weather, but that was out of our control as many things are on expeditions like this. You have to expect problems and either living with them or solving them is part of the fun.

Would I go back again? I don't know at the moment. It was the right thing at the time. It's a beautiful place and it allowed me to do something I wanted to do given the limits I had. Things have changed a little now, the ankle continues to improve and I would like to do something more technically challenging. Maybe Alaska next?

Who knows?