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Wow, after 5 months, loads of adventures and lots of fun, it’s back home. Ant to work and Gill to be a pensioner, but how nice to see the Dyl and Ant’s new car! Am looking forward to catching up with Mum and all the Harvey’s as soon as I can. But at least we brought the good weather with us – warm garden weather, so having missed the British winter, at least it wasn’t too much of a shock. The trip has gone so quickly, those days in Jorge Newberry Airport in Argentina in early December seem ages ago but also like yesterday. A total of 15 countries visited. Together Ant and I saw Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Vietnam and Hong Kong. On his own, Ant also visited Uruguay, Chile and Antarctica (8 in total). On her own Gill also visited Chile, New Caledonia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Cambodia (13 in total). Between us we’ve travelled on every kind of transport imaginable – planes (large and tiny), fast boats, slow boats, sampans, rowing boats, bamboo coracles, ferries, fishing boats, Antarctic Russian icebreakers, zodiacs, toy trains, cyclos, bikes, motorbikes, self drive cars, taxis, coaches, trains, buses, mini buses, horses, horse and cart buggies, golf carts, tubes, crampons, our feet. We’ve stayed in every type of accommodation from tents (this was Ant, not Gill!), private pool villas, guest houses, estancia’s, Welsh b & b’s, on board boats, on board trains, hostels, normal hotels, bamboo stilt huts and of course sun loungers! We’ve eaten all styles of food and drink and worn out lots of Lonely Planets. Ant took 18 flights, Gill 25, so we both collected a few airline miles. We’ve stayed in our cheapest accommodation ever, the Bich Duyen in Saigon and also our most expensive ever, the Nam Hai in Vietnam, (except for Ant staying at the Burj Al Arab with Kev). We’ve been away a total of 244 nights, Ant 89 and Gill 155. A total of 62 different beds were slept in – Gill 36, Ant 26. We’ve met up with friends - Derek from London, Fiona from Perth and Carole and Dave from Geneva. And we would have met up with Mum (a surprise planned for Hong Kong) if Oasis Airlines hadn’t gone bust a few weeks before she was due to fly out! We’ve missed friends and family and the Dyl, but most of all we’ve missed Kev, although he was there in spirit every step of the way. We have about 12 hours of video to edit and haven’t yet managed to count quite how many thousands of photos we have taken (and here are our favourites of the 2 of us). So what now – sorry, no time to go into that now, too busy planning the next one! See you then. Gill and Ant xxx
