Milly and Graham

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 some fellow hikers, run by a good company rather than pick up a guide and porters once we were there, so booked with Into Africa for their trek on 6th January. With three weeks to ... read more

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 son’s self catering studio. It worked out to be very reasonable and was a really nice little place. It was good to spend some time outside the main city too and get to know one ... read more

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 were, up at 7 a.m. text books at the ready and an exam to pass after a day and a half of study. There's a lot to take on board, but we got the hang ... read more

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 to do any of this stuff. Cheaper than the UK and all set in beautiful countryside, but we felt the countryside was really what we had come to see, at a nice sedate pace thank you very ... read more

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 and Havelock North then didn't stop until Martinborough, driving through endless miles of pastureland and seeing a lot more sheep than people. Still, it has been lovely to see all the spring lambs and daffodils ... read more