Aug 2006

As most of you will know by now, we are home. Like a small wrinkly baby.....slightly premature! but with some amazing memories and some tall tales of our 'bogus journey'. Money was the reason for our early homecoming or lack there of, but if we could rewind and start again we'd do it the same, we underestimated the cost of things in Oz and NZ slightly but we dont think getting back a fortnight early is a failure and its been great seeing everyone again. Reality has well and truely set in this week when we started work again, an essential neccessity to fund whatever the future brings, house, babies (not for a while) more travelling....... who knows, not us, but at least we can face it knowing that we've been lucky enough to have the chance to see and experience things most people dont get to do in a lifetime.

Fijian beach.

Anyway Fiji. Short and sweet (enough of the air stewardess on the flight over) especially that now I am bethrothed to Tania!. We only had 3 days there before heading home, we stayed on the main island in a place called Tubakula, a beachfront bungalow which was fully kitted out. The first day was beatiful about 30c glorious sunshine, as you may imagine we spent most of that day on the beach trying to get some sort of colour on us before getting home and being confronted with a nation of halfcasts (possibly not PC?!) after the summer Britains had. Our second day we were awoken at 5:30am buy what we hoped was a local variation on common whistling, unfortunately for us it was no such thing. It turned out to be one of the worst storms either of us had ever seen, just what we didnt want on one of our last few days away but heh, we've had our fair share of good weather (I almost mean that!). The storm pretty much lasted all day so not much to report there, day three we spent lazing about, last minute shopping and killing time before our flight (11:50pm Fiji time 10/08/06 ) the flight into L.A went smoothly, we crossed the 'international date line so actually arrived in L.A at 3:40pm on 10th August which is as close as we've got to time travel yet. Our time in America was short, hectic and annoying, the Yanks (trying my best not to pigeon hole here) we're as expected, fat, loud and irritating, maybe we got a slightly distorted view of the country in our short time there as they were on 'high alert' after the Heathrow shinannigans and we're running around like headless chickens with torrets or maybe there always like that, we'll have to return to find out. We arrived back in London 3 hours late but safely, roughly 6 months after starting our journey. We've come back with some things we didnt have before: brown skin, blonde hair, one engagement ring and an extra 2 stone of combined body mass, but mostly we've come back after having (as hoped) the best six months of our lives. Travelling is the best thing we could have done, we both hope we get chances to do more in the future, got to pay for this one forst though.

Same beach next day.

Us before we leave, Tan looking particularly unpleased.

To conclude we've decided to list some of our favorites and worsts (is that a word??) in a quick questionaire below, adios amigo's!

Favorite country: New Zealand.
Worst country: Singapore.
Favorite city: Tan-Sydney, Ant-Bangkok. (town-Queenstown)
Worst city: Bombay AKA 'Hell on earth'
Best beach: Tan-Whithaven beach Oz, Ant-Paloelem India.
Best excursion: Tan-Jet boat to Whitsundays, Ant-Treking in Chaing Mai Thailand.
Worst excursion: Sentosa island Singapore.
Best activity: Skydive (no competition)
Worst activity: Trampolining (never attempt to do whilst drunk and when its dark).
Best memory: Getting engaged (stopping putting your fingers down your throats you lot!!)
Worst memory: Getting to Bombay seeing the sights near our hotel (took about 15 seconds) and sitting in our room thinking what the bleeding hell are we doing!.

Thank you and good night, Ant and Tan xx xx

One month is no where near enough time to see NZ properly but we've done what we could and have crammed in as much as possible, thats the reason we've not updated for a while. We leave tommorrow having had the best month of our trip thus far, we have seen some amazing things, done some things we couldnt have imagined before getting here and in general have had a tip-top time. We've also really good weather considering its winter, its been cold but there has only been 3 or 4 days of rain, so our concerns were pretty much unwarranted.

Since we last updated we visited Wellington, only briefly, met up with someone we met on the Trek in Thailand and picked his brains about what to do and see on the South island and indulged in a local beverage or two (Mac's beer in fact, I hope we can get it at home!) we also made it to the Lord of the rings exhibition which had all the origional costumes and some parts of the set, we we're both pleasently impressed with it, far better than we thought it was going to be. We took the 1pm (3 hour) crossing to Picton which has to be the one of the most picturesque crossings around, beautiful coastline, rolling hills and some weird and wonderfull birdlife. We travelled down the West Coast first to the Abel Tasman national park.

Abel Tasman.

As you can see the place is stunning, we dodnt expect to see beaches nicer than most in Thailand/Bali here but NZ is full of suprises.

We travelled down toward the Glaciers making a few stops en route, Punakaiki (pancake rocks), Greymouth, Tuaranga Bay (seal colony) and Hokitika, picturtes to follow.

Seal colony, Tuaranga Bay.

Pancake rocks.

Both the Frans Josef and Fox glaciers (as in mints) were amazing, but what was more impressive was the speed in which they were retreating (a metre a day) it's a shame nothing can be done about it but thats global warming for ya!

Frans Josef Glacier.

Queenstown 'adventure capital of the world' was our next destination, we made pit stops at Haast and 'Wanaka' (try pronouncing that after a few) to see a few things including 'puzzling world'-fun for all the family. It was about then that we picked up Gordon. Gordon just happens to be a mouse, we dont know that for definate but there are a few things we do know for sure.Take a look at the evidence:

Half eaten oxo cubes.
Bags of rice and cereal with mouse size holes in them.
Small packages of round brown 'dropping' like items left at various points of the van.
Strange mousey rustling noises after dark.

So our powers of observation led us to believe we had a small rodent problem. We took all possible precations, swept up crumbs, hid foodstuffs, and as we had no mouse killing pills we sprayed the van with deodrant to try and make him leave. Thankfully and probably for none of the fore mentioned reasons after 3 nights of inscessant mouse activity he decided to leave us in peace, either that or we'll find him dead and decaying in our rucksacks when we pack!

Puzzling world Wanaka.

Swimmers beach.

Us smooching by random lake.

Mt Cook.

Anyway back to our trip, Queenstown was great, our favourite town so far, it really has everything, snow capped peaks, more activities than you could shake a stick at, great shops returants and bars, the only problem is that its so bloody far from home!

Queenstown, view from the top of the Gondala.

We are now in Christchurch spending our last day in NZ sightseeing before we head onto Fiji hopefully for some sun then we'll be making our way back. It's a very 'bitter-sweet' feeling coming home we obvisouly want to see everyone and there have been things we've missed from home....umm... cant actually think of any as yet (apart from people of course) but we really love this travelling lark, its a fantastic way of living, its just a shame that we dont have a bottomless pit of money which we would need to continue this trip. We have been playing NZ lotto scratch cards in the vain hope of winning some dollars, but unless our streak of bad luck on them ends abruptly then we will see you all very soon.

Oh my god we cant believe it we've never been this far away from home!

Love from Ant and Tan xx