Wrapping it all up

Here we arriving back at Heathrow - our friends Geoff and Jean came to meet us. We have now been home for 2 weeks and have unpacked the house, finished Roger's work accounts, done some gardening, met up with some friends and are desperately trying to sort out the 6,000 plus photos! People keep asking us the one highlight of the holiday - but there isn't one specific! Each section has got its own highlights. In US it was Ground Zero and Jean's aunt Connie, in Peru it was the people and Machu Picchu, New Zealand was the fantastic scenery, Australia seeing Jean's other aunt (Pat), of course our wonderful family and the fantastic beaches and diverse scenery, South Africa was the animals.
We are now starting to settle back into normal life again - but only for a short while. Since we came back we have heard that, for various reasons, Pete and Nicky and family are returning to the UK and we will be meeting them at Heathrow early am on Wed 1 June. Suzanne will stay on to finish her course at the end of the year, and then re-assess her situation and decide what she wants to do. One of her friends is going out to visit her in October which will give her something to look forward to.
Roger has come back to potentially quite a lot of work which he hopes to do on a part-time basis. Jean has retired but who knows what the future holds!
This will be the end of our blog - thank you for following our fantastic adventure!

Well it's all come to an end - at last!

That's it then - it's all over. Our last two days were spent on a game reserve just north of Port Elizabeth on the east coast of the Cape. Although the weather was rubbish we had a really good time and saw a lot of animals - too many to list here. We stayed in a Safari Lodge on the reserve where we were fed and watered very well - three courses for breakfast, lunch and dinner, high tea and refreshments on the afternoon game drive, how I have managed not to increse my weight I don't know. The scenery in South Africa was far more mountainous than we were expecting and very pretty.

We had a good flight home and were met by Geoff and Jean at Heathrow early Monday morning. We then went home, had a shower and went to the Inspire (over 60's) lunch at Kings Church. They didn't know we were going so we had an amazing greeting from our friends - it was a wonderful experience. Monica looked after our house beautifully and we are now busy unpacking everything we put up in the loft - including ironing all our clothes before putting them away (they were all packed in cases!) and sorting out the post. We were also pleased that the car started first time round so we have now been able to go shopping and stock up with food etc!

Thankyou to all of you who have been following our trip and also thanks too for all the emails we have received from you.

There will probably be one more posting on this blog when we have settled down, sorted ourselves out, got back into normal routines - whatever that means now we are both retired (although Roger still has some work coming in) - got the garden straight etc etc.

... and where did you watch the wedding?

Well as you can see we have been able to get free internet access in our hotel - so here is the next instalment.

We found ourselves on the V & A Waterfront on Friday - after a sightseeing tour around Cape Town - in front of a very large screen together with a small croud of other interested people. We arrived just in time to see Kate enter the Abbey - so we did not miss too much - and we sat and watched it for the next 2 hours. The following day we went on a tour down to the Cape of Good Hope where we saw baboons, osteriches, eland and penguins. On Sunday we picked up our hire car and went to Jubilee Church - unfortunately Steve V R and Lex weren't there but we met another English couple and someone who knew Pete - well who doesn't! We then spent the next 2 days driving through a beautiful mountaineous area on Route 62 and are now in Knysna, where it is cold and wet and we have had the heating on in our bedroom! Only thing is, like Perth, they haven't had rain for months, so the people here are more than happy. Perhaps it is just preparing us for the English weather again!