On Our Last Legs

The flight we booked from Auckland to San Francisco involved a two hour transfer in LA. From the beginning this looked a bit challenging, with immigration and customs to take into account. When we arrived at Auckland to discover a two hour delay on the Qantas first leg things looked to be coming unstuck. However, after initially checking us onto it regardless we were taken off it again. Bad news out of the way we were given the good, we had been booked instead onto an Air New Zealand flight direct to San Francisco. I'm not sure why, not the same airline or even the same alliance but I wasn't complaining. We arrived in San Francisco earlier than we would have done without the delay.


In San Francisco the marvellous hospitality continued, this time in the form of Auntie Jane and Uncle Mac. My camera seems to have put its feet up and had a rest at this point, I've got no pictures with them on and nothing of the short drives we were taken for in a Tesla Roadster. The camera resurfaced for the sightseeing day round the city.


The last leg was Chicago, just in time for the Lollapalooza festival at Grant Park. Three days of sun, beer and music was followed by another two days to see more of the city.


We were treated to an incredible thunderstorm on the Monday night, with more lightning bolts hitting the ground across the city in a four hour stretch than usually occurs over six months. It was enough to knock out the power at Annie and Anthony's building, so we watched the second half of the spectacle from a friends 42nd floor apartment.


There ends the travels. In nine months we visited nine countries. Hospital treatment was required twice, a dentist once. Right at the start our rucksacks took a long break in Moscow, then later in Hanoi they were dumped in the gutter for younger models. There were two sleeping drivers, one in a taxi and the other a coach. Tom dealt with the first, I stirred the second. Neither was the cause of the only crash we were involved with, a karting style auto-rickshaw shunt in Varanasi.


Over the course of a few quiet days in the campervan I did some reminiscing and noted down everywhere we stayed and every journey we took. So here are some stats.


Including only the journeys where our rucksacks were present the totals look like this:

27 Coaches
24 Trains
21 Minibuses
18 Ferries
17 Sawngthaew (pick up trucks)
17 Taxis
14 Aeroplanes
12 Buses
11 Cars
10 Boats (excluding ferries)
7 Auto-Rickshaws
7 Tuktuks
3 Jeeps
2 Motorbikes
1 Campervan


The full list of transport we used gets quite unwieldy. Things like monorails and elephants make an appearance. Bamboo strikes twice, first as a raft, later a train.


Along the way we've stayed in various spare rooms and on floors and I'm grateful to everyone who has generously helped us with that. Now it's reality time, back to work and getting used to not having Tom around every day. I'll miss him, it's been quite an adventure.

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