All Good Things.....

The decision to end our world trip "early" was not taken lightly! We were on the North Island of New Zealand just over 4 months into our trip when we first thought about heading back to the UK earlier than planned. We had numerous walks along various beaches mulling the idea over.

"Why did we want to come back sooner?" "Were we not enjoying the experience?" "Were we running out of cash?" "How were our cats?" were all questions that we asked ourselves. There was no doubt that we were loving the experience of travelling, that we had become closer as a couple as a result of the trip and were looking forward to travelling around French Polynesia and then the USA but there was just a gut feeling that we were about done. I am sure many people that go travelling have the same feeling at some point on their travels. I had the same feeling around the millennium and came home from mexico.

We both agreed that we would hold off on deciding anything until after tahiti.

Tahiti came and went and we couldn't shake the feeling that it was time to wrap the trip up and rejoin "normal life. We decided to cut the US leg of the trip short and head back on our 6 month anniversary of being away.

A lot of people have written about ending long trips and how it can be psychologically difficult rejoin society, it did feel strange coming back to the uk, but we had good friends and family to welcome us back so the change has not been to jarring (at the moment!).

Its time to reflect on our adventure, go through the 3000 photo's that we have taken, remember to thank all the people that put us up on our travels and think about how we have changed.

We both feel much more relaxed (not working does that) and have both come back healthier than when we left. we are not 100% sure about what we are going to do next and thats an adventure in itself!

The easiest way to sum the trip up is with stats so here goes:


Total distance flown: 42497km (26406 miles)
Total distance driven: 11342km (7048 miles)
Total distance on buses: 1700km (1052 miles)

Total nights stayed in hostels/hotels/motels: 106
Total nights camped: 32
Total nights stayed in friends houses: 44

Arguments : 3
Arguments Dave won: 0
Complete cock ups: 2 (1 Daves fault, 1 Gemmas fault)
Total amount of money spent: ?
Photos taken 2847
Mosquito Bites: Gemma: 254, Dave 10 (they couldn't get through the hair!)
Number of amazing memories: unknown but quite a lot!

Great Barrier reef!

Windy in NZ

SYDNEY!!!!!

SYDNEY!!!!

Norris the Seal

Pretty Waterfall in NZ

Bora Bora by Boat

BUNGY!!!

Petrified!!!

Tahiti!

Hope you enjoyed the Blogs, let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading

Dave and Gem

see you next time in the Canyon!!!!!!!

Team America!

The USA was always going to be the final leg of the trip. We had originally planned to spend a few months travelling around both the USA and Canada before finally heading over to the Grand Canyon in December for our rafting adventure. The realities of living out of rucksacks day to day, changing accommodation every couple of days and the nagging feeling that we both had achieved much of what we set out to do, caused us to radically alter our plans and we decided to return home after 6 months had elapsed. 

This left us with 20 days to see the USA! We decided upon the following itinerary: LA and Disneyland followed by 4th July in San Francisco then onto Washington DC and finally to New York where our flight home is waiting.

LA and Disney

We stayed not far from Disneyland, and bought a 2 day pass to the parks (Magic Kingdom and California Adventure). As you can imagine the place was packed but a good time was had. In the end we both decided that although the California adventure park had bigger more exciting rides, the Magic Kingdom was actually a better place to be. The thing that Disney theme parks do better than anywhere else is create cool interesting environments, highlights being the Cars ride at California adventure (they created a huge looking desert canyon), The Pirates of the Caribbean ride (a huge underground ride set in caves), River Rafting (the best re-creation of Yosemite outside of actually being there)and the Indiana Jones experience (a massive roller-coaster type ride set in a huge temple). The details matter, the rafting ride had awesome cedar canoes (easily a grands worth of canoe) just decorating the waiting areas!

After a couple of days in LA and a visit to our favourite restaurant chain in the world: Red Lobster we were ready to leave and took a 6 hour bus ride up to San Francisco.

San Francisco

We arrived fresh off the bus and right into the San Fran Gay Pride weekend! A bit of a culture shock to be sure with thousands of scantily clad lads and ladies taking to the streets and partying. Our hotel was near Union Square and literally next to a really dodgy area of the city with loads of drug dealers and homeless people loitering around.

We had both visited San Fran before but were looking forward to spending a week in the Bay Area. Highlights were the Gay Pride Parade, drinking at a bona fide prohibition era SpeakEasy bar (a secret bar that you get in with a password and only serves cocktails and hard liquor), walking along the waterfront and visiting Chinatown.

Maybe it was the area we were staying in, but we both felt uneasy whilst staying here. We have both witnessed poverty and ramshackle living conditions as we have travelled round the world but it was really evident here. This is the result of the US approach to social care and it was quite depressing, there were literally hundreds of people living rough on the streets, most seemed to have medical issues that obviously weren't being treated as there is no NHS equivalent and therefore no safety net. We understand that this problem is rife in all major cities but it just stood out here.

Washington DC

Washington is a really nice city. All the landmarks are easy to visit, all the Smithsonian museums and galleries are free to visit. A good couple of days spent here, saw the White House, and the Washington Monument and also the Air and Space museum. We actually stayed near the Pentagon in Arlington but its a bit like saying we stayed near GCHQ, not much to see!!!

Final leg will be to NY then back home by the end of the week!!!