Well, we made it home, we settled back in to our house, we got jobs, we got a cat and we got married. While we were away, we missed our loved ones and our home country so much it hurt, but now our trip feels like the most amazing time of our lives, which is as it should be. We have been reliving it month by month this year and trying to remember all the details; the scary moments as well as the thrilling ones and all the times when we felt truly alive. We are really looking forward to our [View Full Entry]

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This update is long overdue, it goes without saying. We are now home safe and sound and settling back into some kind of routine. The last few weeks of our travels spent in Tanzania were possibly the most exciting, challenging and rewarding of the entire trip. Looking back now, from the comfort of familiar surroundings and after reunions with loved ones (and one disgruntled cat), we can barely believe we were there at all. Our main reason for visiting Tanzania was to climb Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa at 5895 metres. We wanted to join a scheduled trip, preferably with [View Full Entry]

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Apologies for the disruption to the blog. We have got lots of great photos and a big report to write on our time in Cape Town, but are a long way from a decent internet connection at the moment. We spent a very relaxing Christmas and New Year in Zanzibar and were thinking of all of you back home in the UK, while we lay about in hammocks, swam in the warm Indian Ocean and had a Christmas lunch of octopus and chips. We're now in Arusha, preparing to depart for our 7 day trek of Mt. Kilimanjaro. By the time [View Full Entry]

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It all happened a long time ago now, but the final few chapters of the blog need to be finished. The last weeks of the trip were amongst the most memorable of our time away so we must do them justice with a decent blog entry. Apologies if the details are a bit lacking. We moved on from Johannesburg to Cape Town on 20th November and picked up a hire car on arrival at the airport so that we could meet up with our friends from the Kruger trip, Roger and Pam, in Muizenberg. We were able to stay in Roger’s [View Full Entry]

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Within three days of arriving in Africa we had already seen more amazing animals than we thought we might see in three months here. Kruger really deserves its reputation as one of the best wildlife parks in the world. We arrived in Johannesburg in the middle of a fearsome rainstorm and were too exhausted after the long flight from Sydney to do anything other than flop at our hostel. We didn't have any plans beyond that. Over breakfast we got chatting to a guy from Cape Town, Roger, who had picked his sister Pam up from the same Sydney flight and [View Full Entry]

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One of the challenges we set ourselves for this trip was learning to SCUBA dive. It seemed like the best way to see the Great Barrier Reef too, so we signed up for the SSI certification course with Cairns Dive Centre. Two days of pool and theory, followed by two nights liveaboard on the Kangaroo Explorer at various dive sites on the reef, including a maximum of nine dives. Not bad. It was hard work at first. The most intellectually challenging thing we've had to do for a while is reading between the lines in the guide book. But here we [View Full Entry]

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Sydney was chilly and cloudy when we arrived in Australia from NZ. Enough to make anybody grumpy. We spent a few days in the city - the highlight of which was breakfast at bill's. Then on our third day we caught the ferry to Manly and by the afternoon and return trip, the sun was breaking through the clouds to give us a taste of things to come. We enjoyed a spectacular sunset over the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. More like it! We missed the freedom of our own wheels straight away. Unfortunately, our dollar didn't seem to stretch so [View Full Entry]

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Skydiving, jetboating, bungy… Queenstown has got it all. If you’re looking for adrenaline thrills, Queenstown is the place to be. We had been putting off signing up for anything until we got here and nervously browsed the information centres and booking offices lining the main street. In the end we confessed we didn’t really fancy any of it, had a nice fish supper and an early night. The next day we stood and watched lunatics throwing themselves off the bridge at the original AJ Hackett bungy site and decided we had done the right thing. Plus, it’s really expensive [View Full Entry]

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After the delights of Abel Tasman national park and all the lovely wine of Marlborough, we headed off to Christchurch to stay with Graham’s good friend Tim. It was a relief to be out of the campervan for a few nights. Charming and lovely as it is to be so independent, Tim’s spare divan was like five star luxury to us after three weeks of sleeping on a converted kitchen table. On their reunion, after many months of separation, Tim and Graham got totally rat-arsed and stayed up until four in the morning reminiscing about schooldays and laughing a lot. Perfect! [View Full Entry]

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A strange collection of pictures for this blog which covers many miles where not a great deal happened. We went from Lake Taupo down to Hawke's Bay area to start the wine tour (see separate blog). We hit a bad spell of rain and cold at Napier so didn't get to appreciate the Art Deco buildings properly. Compared to the rest of New Zealand, which seems to be full of brand new single storey wooden buildings, you can see why they make a fuss of Napier, but the architecture didn't really stand out a huge amount. We carried on to Hastings [View Full Entry]

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