After many overnight, windy busses and one long train journey high up in the mountains, we arrived at Aguas Calientes. This is the small town at the foot of Machu Picchu (itself about 2000m above sea level). In order to get up the mountain before hordes of tourists arrive, you have to get up early and take the bus up the hairpin road that snakes back upon itself again and again before reaching the entrance to the site. As we walked towards the ruins, the early morning mist and cloud lay thick over the mountains that surrounded us in all directions and hid the base of the valley and river thousands of metres below us. When we reached the first lookout at about 5.30am, the lost city lay below us as smoky cloud hung at ... read more

After struggling with the Cuban Spanish of our taxi driver, we arrived in Habana Vieja and found a “casa particular”. These are homes where local families rent rooms to tourists and are where most people stay unless they are in one of the island's huge hotels which are dotted along the coast. Our first casa particular was run by a lovely woman called Gloria and her mother, who explained to us vital information such as where to find the best mojitos. The city itself is incredible. The beautiful colonial style houses are everywhere you turn, often with a part collapsed interior or missing a section of roof and always with an old or young Cuban sat in the doorway or leaning out of a top floor window having a conversation with someone in the street ... read more

We arrived in Mexico city with great excitement; we had been looking forward to the Latin American stage of our trip since we had first started making rough plans about a year ago. With Esme's aunt, we worked our way through the traffic towards our new home for the next month in the south of the city in an area called Tlalpan. In the next few days we wandered around the bright, coloured sreets and loved it. The plaza in the centre of Tlalpan is the focal point for this area of Mexico city that was until recently its own town, but with the massive sprawling growth the city has gone experienced in recent decades, has now become another district of the monolithic city itself. We arrived just after the celebrations of the anniversary of independence ... read more

After our road trip with road trip, Debbie and Sean dropped us of in Lismore where we were due to meet her aunt and uncle and spend a week with them in the mountains that form the border between NSW and Queensland. Not long after we left the town in the back of Esme's aunt's car, the road began to climb and twist until we were surrounded by towering green trees and we finally arrived home. The house sits high on the ridge of a hill and looks over miles of lush, green canopy until the towering mountains rise out of it in the distance. We spent a great, relaxing week here going to national parks in the mountains, seeing waterfalls, reading and playing the family card game before setting off again in our third camper ... read more

Perth Our first days in Australia were spent with Esme's friend, Kami, in Perth. We had just under a week here but despite the short amount of time we were able to see the beginnings of the great things that australia has to offer. Within a few days we had seen a dolphin, spent a day on the white, sandy beach and had a delicious barbecue with some lovely friends of Kami's. Melbourne After that we flew to Melbourne to stay with my sister and her husband and my niece and nephew. As well as my family, we were really looking forward to seeing the city, which has replaced Vancouver as the most desirable place to live in the world. Seeing my family was brilliant: enjoying the sun, going to the beach, having a BBQ and ... read more