When she returned to her Twizel home late last week, Ms Wakelin (36) discovered jars of Marmite stuffed in boots and a courier box filled with Marmite and bread.
Next time she went on an adventure, she was definitely going to say she was missing "Champagne and chocolate" she joked yesterday.
Ms Wakelin was part of the Kaspersky Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition, which drew together seven women from various Commonwealth countries to ski about 900km across the Antarctic to the South Pole.
She became the first New Zealand woman to do so.
Marking the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth, the expedition aimed to demonstrate the potential of greater intercultural understanding and exchange while, at the same time, highlighting the achievements of women across the world.
When Ms Wakelin received a call in October asking if she was interested in joining the team, she immediately said yes and, two weeks later, she was packing her bags.
She had been an outdoors enthusiast all her life, enjoying mountaineering, kayaking and rock climbing.
"I don't know if there's anything that can train you to walk 900km except for doing it.
"I was fit and strong from a mountaineering point of view."
The team did have its critics, with some people sceptical as to whether they would make it.
"Initially, Ms Wakelin said she was "one of those people".
She looked at the "little girls from hot countries" with no outdoors experience and wondered what she was getting herself in for.
But she had great faith in expedition leader Felicity Aston, with whom she had worked while doing a five-month stint in the Antarctic in 2002, and knew she would have "done her homework".
While Ms Wakelin had an idea of how it could be, some of the women had never been cold until they started training for the trip and they had to be told to stop themselves from getting colder.
The team survived on lightweight dehydrated rations and melted snow, slept in tents on the ice at night and pulled sledges containing their food and equipment.
They stopped for only seven minutes at a time while skiing and, in that time, they had to force down food and drink and go to the toilet.
They carried their toilet waste on their sleds but, fortunately, it froze quickly, she said.
The women were rationed to one baby wipe a day for hygiene purposes.
"You kind of get over it after a few weeks.
"The first two weeks, subconsciously, you do care.
"After three weeks, you stop caring.
"You don't care how you look.
"You're just in survival mode."
"She was also the only woman to take two snow baths and "felt a million bucks afterwards".
Meals consisted of melted snow and freeze-dried meals and breakfast was "really tedious" power porridge.
"If I never have porridge again in my life, that will be fine," she said.
Although she had been a little sceptical about doing a trip with a team that was so big and contained so many inexperienced people, it was a tight team and they looked after each other.
"Those girls have given me so much out of the whole experience," she said.
It was "absolutely awesome" getting there.
Asked what she had been looking forward to during the trek, Ms Wakelin said a shower was high on the list for all the women.
And that first shower? "God, it was good," she said.
After catching up with family in Christchurch and enjoying a meal at her aunt's - "all cakes and nibbles and drinks, Nana's pikelets, all those sorts of things", she headed home to Twizel last Friday.
In between greeting visitors, there was now time to reflect on what the team did.
Ms Wakelin, who is now looking for a job, said there would probably be another adventure in the future and, maybe something polar.
