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!

48 hours and we start for home.

We have been catching up with some last minute sight seeing. Suzanne took us up into the Perth hills the other day to see a dam - reservoir to you and me - at Churchman Brook which is in desperate need of water as you can see. We went on from there to have a look at a garden at Araluen but as it is autumn here there were not too many flowers to see and then to a pretty town called Kalamunda. We have also made our last trip to the sea with Lynne and Aldo and family and got our feet wet - not really warm enough for swimming. We said goodbye to the friends we have made at church and had a farewell BBQ with some of them. On Saturday we went to wish Pete a happy birthday and say goodbye to the family - a sad occasion as you can imagine! Today we took a trip into Perth with two couples from church and spent time drinking coffee, more coffee, eating pies for lunch - then more coffee before we parted. Today is also ANZAC day - the equivalent to our Rememberance Day - lots of services and parades and people with medals everywhere - very moving. Tomorrow we are moving some furniture for Suzanne - so that she can, at long last, have her bed back - and then some final packing before we leave for the airport on Wednesday evening. Jean's cousin John is arriving from Sydney at lunch time and will meet up with us for the afternoon.
We do not expect to have any internet connection while we are travelling in South Africa - so we probably won't be putting anything more on this Blog until we are back home in two weeks time.

Winding Down!!

Since we came back from our trip up to Exmouth we have taken things a little slower! One day we went to Suz's college for lunch- cooked and served by the students, but we purposely chose a day when Suz wasn't serving! It was a good meal in a nice environment. On her day off Suz took us down to Rockingham which had a fantastic beach. We also investigated the coastal road. One day we spent one and a half hours each way on the bus to Ikea - sad aren't we - but we wanted to spend a bit more time looking round. It was smaller than the UK ones and had some different things as well. We couldn't buy anything (except a pudding bowl for Nic) as we are already overweight and have posted 2 parcels home. Jean has met up for coffee with a couple of the ladies from Church which was great. We spent another day in Perth visiting places on the free Red Cat bus route, and today have been to see a couple in Gosnells and then on to Armadale. Pete's brother and family from Liverpool arrived in the early hours of this morning so we had a farewell family visit to San Churros in Freemantle yesterday. They serve lovely hot chocolate and Spanish Donut fingers which are dipped in bowls of chocolate - yummy!(Unfortunately Pete is missing from the photo as he was taking a picture at the same time!). Suz has a day off tomorrow so we hope to go up to the Perth Hills. We then have only one more week to go before we leave for Cape Town!

Pinnacles, Dolphins, Blue Blue Sea & Coral

We have just got back from our trip up the west coast - 3400 km - 8 days travelling up to Exmouth with stops on the way up and back. Some of the roads are very long and straight and empty - you can see about 8 km at a time and the excitement comes when there is a car in sight, or even better a corner, but the ultimate excitement has to be the sighting of a Road Train - a three trailer 120 Tonne truck, or lorry to you and me - Wowie.

Anyway back to the scenery - Our first stop was the Nambung National Park which has the Pinnacles in it, these are natural limestone and give the impression of a moonscape.

Our next point of interest was Monkey Mia best known for the wild Dolphins that come in to interact with mere humans every morning - some of them are fed fish by visitors but not enough to survive on, so they have to go out hunting for the rest of the day. We stayed at Denham 25 km away but with a very clean warm sea which was very welcome at the end of the day.

Exmouth was a very long drive and the town was not the most exciting place in the world, but is on the edge of the Cape Range National Park which has an amazing coastline with pristine water and sand. We spent a lot of time in the water so came out looking a bit like prunes!!

On the way back we called into Coral Bay to go out in a glass bottomed boat onto the Ningaloo Reef - totally different to the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast - the coral is far more diverse in its appearance, a bit more like plant leaves and the fish were not as pretty but some people did see a shark and a turtle. All very exciting.

Fish, Cheese, Wine, Chocolate & Stalactites

We spent last weekend staying with Lynne and Aldo and family which was very enjoyable. We spent time relaxing with the children, seeing more Kangaroos, exercising their dog and visiting their church - which is big.

We then went away with Suzanne for a couple of days to give her a break from college, homework and work - she has not really had a break since she got here.

We decided to go down to Margaret River which is about 300 kilometres south of Perth. On the way down we stopped off at Busselton to have a look at the jetty - which is about 2 kilometres long - and visit the underwater observatory at the end. To get to the end we had to ride on a "Dotto Train" which was an interesting experience, once there we had about an hour to go down to the sea bed - inside the observatory - to see what fish were about. We were fortunate to see shoals of Herring, Yellow Tails and Taylor come by together with lots of smaller pretty fish - well worth the trip.

When we were driving by we also went into some cheese factories - to sample the goods - and some wineries to do likewise - need to be careful for those of us who were driving - and a chocolate factory - no need to worry here except it spoils the appetite for lunch.

On the return journey we stopped off at the Ngilgi caves just to see how different Australian caves are to those in the UK - they are pretty much the same except a lot dryer at the moment, no real rain for over a year. These caves are part of a huge complex but we chose only to do the short easy bit - what a surprise - three hundred and fifty nine steps later we got to the middle where we were given loads of information about stalactites, stalacmites, straws and upside down mushrooms - mind blowing.

Got home Tuesday evening very tired but we did enjoy ourselves.

We are getting ready now for our next trip which is up the west coast to Exmouth - not sure what internet access will be like so it may be a little while before you hear from us again.

PS Thanks for all Jean's birthday cards which have arrived early!