It's currently October the 28th, and it was almost a year ago that we began our round the world trip. More importantly, it's about 3 months since we arrived in Boston. "3 Months" I hear you cry?! "Surely you should have written this blog ages ago!". You'd be right, however one the blog writers has been putting off doing this for so long now that I've given up and decided to do it myself. Not wanting to embarrass that person, we'll give her a different name (Gelen Hiles), but it's her fault that you're getting a blog from me rather than her - which I know many of you will be disappointed about - "I enjoyed your blogs Dave, but Gelen's were really good!" (Read: 'much better') Anyway.. now I have to try and remember what ... read more

... As they went under a tunnel, the American was smacked in the face. The ugly woman thought to herself, 'That American must have touched that beautiful woman, and she smacked him...' The beautiful woman thought to herself, 'Obviously the American touched the ugly woman thinking it was me, and she hit him...' The Canadian thought, 'I can't wait to go through another tunnel, so I can smack this stupid American again...' Anyhow, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Canada, but if pushed for an answer I would have probably said a clean environment populated by smarter but less friendly Americans and polar bears. Something I didn’t expect was to be stranded upon arrival in Vancouver because we couldn’t use our visa card to take money out. It seems Canada has yet to jump on ... read more

Arriving in San Fransisco we went to the luggage claim area to get our bags. When we spotted Helen’s on the carousel, it didn’t look much like when we’d left it. The lock had been ripped off the top, exposing lots of sharp bits of metal. Inside the case was a note left by US customs saying that they had checked the bag. Now, I can understand that sometimes customs have to get into a bag to check what’s inside, but our bag wasn’t even locked! In fact, it was no where near locked, the zips (that you were suppose to put in the lock to keep it secure) were on the opposite side of the bag… Not that it mattered too much, this suitcase in question - which we had bought for £20 in Sydney ... read more

Having left the Blue Mountains (which, judging by her last blog, Helen was very pleased to do), we started the trip down south towards the state of Victoria. First though, we had a quick stop in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Oh, wait! Before I tell you about Canberra, I haven’t updated you on my ‘list of animals I want to see before I leave Australia’ have I? Sorry about that, this is where we currently stand… 1) Koala - Seen in a tree at a caravan park 2) Cassowary - Seen at Cape Tribulation 3) Platypus - Seen in the Tablelands 4) Sea Turtle - Seen at the Great Barrier Reef 5) Kangaroo - Seen at a caravan park 6) Kookaburra - Seen all over the place 7) Possum - Seen whist eating dinner one ... read more

It’s a bit of a pain Helen finished the last blog on Fraser island. We did very little in the next place we went to, Noosa - one of the big surfing towns along the sunshine coast - and therefore it makes for a rather boring start to the blog. In an attempt to make it seem slightly more interesting I may have embellished the following facts, but I can assure you that almost everything here is 100% true. After arriving in Noosa we parked up the van and went to the local beach to get some lunch and watch surfers splash about in the freezing cold water. We didn’t see anyone properly riding the waves, but we did get to watch plenty of beginners do little more than fall face-first into the water continuously, which ... read more