Home - Safe and Sound

Well we've made it home safe and sound, our family came to the airport to meet us. BA managed to break to the bottles of wine we brought home for them in the duty Free in Buenos Airies, (we had to check them into the hold for the Heathrow Manchester flight) so the first thing my dad said to me was "you stink of booze".

It really does feel great to be home. Here's a pic of Gav leaving for work on Monday morning, I've hardly seen him since.

I hope you've all enjoyed reading about our trip as much as we've enjoyed actually doing it.

That's all folks!

The "Owens"

So after 296 days, 61 hotels, 15 campsites in New Zealand, 18 places camping in South America, 2 overnight planes, 2 overnight trains, 2 overnight buses, a cloud forest, staying with a couple in Quito (language school), Tony`s and Pat`s house in Perth, the apartment in Cusco and the night we stayed up on the way to Koh Samui to watch the World Cup final, we are heading home tomorrow.

We`ve visited 16 countries and had an unforgettable experience, so here are the highlights:

Top 5 places
Gav
1) Galapagos islands - easy choice, no doubt about it.
2) Cloud forest - pristine cloud forests, toucans living in the tree 10m from our room, birds and butterflies with more colours than rainbows, 2 amazing people running the reserve and monkey programme and invisible monkeys!
3) New Zealand - look at the pics
4) Laos - stunning scenery and a unique attitude to life
5) Angkor Wat - puts Macchu Picchu in the shade

Bec
1) Galaps
2) Cloud Forest
3) New Zealand
4) Bali - I`ll be back
5) Luang Prabang (Laos)

Best Journeys

Slow boat to Luang Prabang (pigs and all)
Inca trail1st class sleeper train to Bangkok (Gav)
Suite Class coach to Mendoza (Bec)

Best Journey (scenery)

Drive to Akaroa from Christchurch in New Zealand(Gav)
Tupiza in southern Bolivia (Bec)

Favourite Wildlife Experience

Dolphins in NZ (Gav)
Toucans in cloud forest (Bec)

Best Looking Nation

Argentina - (Gav and Bec)

Best Activity

Surfing in Bali (Gav)
Pot-holing in NZ (Bec)

Scariest Moment

Monkeys in Cambodia (Gav)
Driving up to Mt. Hutt ski resort in New Zealand (Bec)

1st country to which we`ll return

NZ

Best night out

Rio Carnaval at the Sambadrome - music, costumes, dancing and a party, party, party atmoshphere for 9 hours

Best new drinks

Beerlao - Carlsberg bought a 25% stake a few years ago and sent some officials over to improve the taste. They couldn`t. Crisp, fresh, ice cold and 50p for a litre. "Beerlao, beerlao!"
Capirinhas - sugar cane based alcoholic drink served with crushed lime, ice and sugar. Just the ticket for Carnaval.
Malbec (red wine)Torrontes (white wine)
Mate cocoa drink - Inca rocket fuel, couldn`t have done the trail without it, laughs in the face of altitude so that your head doesn`t feel like a bowling ball

Best Natural wonders

Galaps
Iguazu falls (President Nixon`s wife is supposed to have said "Poor Niagara!" when she first saw them.
Salt flats of Uyuni - white as far as the eye can see

Favourite City

Cusco - we loved staying there over Christmas and New Year. I heard an American in Lima say that he wasn`t going to Cusco as it was too touristy. What a fool. History coming out of its ears, beautiful buildings, green velvet mountains surrounding the valley and endless plazas to while away an afternoon.

Thank you to all of you for your comments, emails and especially photos. We were excited by the smallest email and comment so to have pics was always a very welcome bonus. I especially would like to thank Ste for being our most prolific "commenter" after his initial "Who or what is a blog?" he soon got the hang of it.

I´ll probably do one more entry with a pic of us arriving back and then me leaving for work on Monday morning(!) We`ll apologise now for boring you all again when we see you. Now, we`ve got a new nephew to go and meet!
Cheers
Gav and Bec

Our Last Day!

We'll we've been doing the tourist thing right up to the end. Today we blitzed the bits of Buenos Airies that we hadn't seen, and tonight Gav is leaving me to go and watch Boca play in the Copa Libatadores.

The bottom picture is one of the graves in the Recoletta cemetry. It's like a small city. When Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world in the late nineteenth and early tewntieth centuries, when rich people died they liked to make a statement about themselves by building these flamboyant graves. Some of them were bigger than our house in Enfield. This one is built in the style of a small church, but there were all sorts of designs. Gav fancies a pyramid topped with a dome. It was quite creepy because they don't actually bury the people they just place the coffins in these houses for everyone to see, forever - very strange. Eva Peron (Evita) is burried here too, but her grave was fairly low key.

The middle pic is of Avenida 9 de Julio, it's 18 lanes wide and claims to be the widest road in the world. It's no fun to cross.

And the top pic is of a rose sculpture. It's really good it opens in the morning then moves around to face the sun all day then closes at night like a real flower.

We'll both be sorry to leave Argentina tomorrow, not just because it's then end of our amazing trip, but it's been a fabulous country in it's own right. The people are friendly (not very efficient, but friendly) the scenery is some of the best and most varied we've seen and the food and wine are outstanding - we'll be boring everyone about the size and taste of Argie steak for a long time. It's also the most similar country in South America to home, so it already feels like we're on our way back.

Anyway I'll say goodbye, Gav is going to do a couple more entries, but that's it from me. I'll see you all soon.

"I've, err, locked the keys in the boot"

So, after almost 10 months of impeccable, not at home to Mr Cock-up, behaviour I finally revert to type and lock the bloomin' car keys in the boot. I had to ring the car hire company to send the spare key, which was remarkably efficient as they put it on the next bus, and we had it for 3 o'clock the same afternoon. In the mean time as luck would have it we watched the UTD game, had lunch in the park and had time for a quick beer. Unfortunately this also meant we missed the planned 6 hour hike for that day; some people might even hint that I planned it(!)

We have had a great time touring round the various lakes and towns in this region of Patagonia and driving here is a real pleasure despite some dirt tracks that last for 50kms and the automatic speedometer that screeches as soon as I reach anywhere approaching a decent speed. We spent the weekend in San Martin de los Andes where we were able to rent an apartment for 6 (OK, a house) overlooking the lake.

Just a short one as some of the pics won't upload. Tomorrow we head back to BA, overnight, for our last 3 nights. Wow.

In Wales with Ivor the Engine

Patagonia is lovely, but it's just so big, there's so much to see but getting there takes ages.

So far we've made it down to an area near the town of El Bolson (the rasberry and blackberry capital of Argentina, dad - and they're in season). We were planning on doing quite a lot of hiking but that hasn't really happened for one reason or another (me being stung by a bee, rain, wrong gear....). The bottom pic is of me fording an ice cold stream on one of the walks we did do. I just liked the trunk on the fire engine.

Being Owens, we felt obliged to visit the Welsh village of Trevelin. It wasn't really Welsh at all, everyone spoke spanish. But all the roads were Evans this and Williams that. Sadly there was no Avenida Owen. It turns out that 3 Owens were among the original settlers, but they were a mum and dad and daughter, so the name died out. Obviously not our branch of the family.

Continuing the Welsh theme we went for a trip on Ivor the engine today. It was the old patagonian express train. Its a steam train that they've managed to keep running. It was brilliant. In true South American style there were no health hand safety restrictictions. You could climb into the drivers cab, and stand right by the furnace and pretend to drive it. You could hang off the side steps while it was moving, even stand on the track to take a picture as it was coming towards you (slowly admittedly). It was like a giant toy.

Change of scenery and T-Shirt

We did a couple of wine tasting tours in Mendoza and after Bec refused to let me buy into a vinyard we made our way, only business class, to Bariloche in the Argentinian Lake District. Bariloche is the base for the ski resort of Catedral during the southern hemisphere winter and although Bariloche is a year round resort it still feels strange being in a ski resort out of season. The bottom pic shows the ski runs and lifts of Catedral. It made me feel very envious of Nige, Matt and Sean who have just been skiing and Um who is snowbaording this week.

As you can imagine here in the Lake District the scenery is wonderful, the air fresh and thoughts of home are never far away. Here in Patagonia during the 19th Century immigrants came from all over Europe so there are Welsh (lots of gnomes everywhere), Italian, German and Swiss influences, especially the food and architecture. As Bec described it to me - it`s all tea rooms, chocolate shops and Heidi houses.

At the River Plate match I went to a couple of weeks ago I saw a very fitting T-shirt for me as I was waiting to leave the ground (home fans rather than away fans are kept behind here). It`s red and white and has the name of a engineering company on the back. So here am I, number 9 FateO (Fatty 0) !

I´ve taken some stick about my Bolivian T-shirt. After Ste`s accusations of me constantly wearing it I defended myself and said it was just a coincidence that there were so many pics as I´d only wore it 3 times. My dad replied "What? January, February and March!"

Traveling in style

We'd read that the buses in Argentina were really luxurious so we were quite excited about our first long trip here. We booked ourselves the best: suite class for the overnight journey from Buenos Airies to Mendoza. We weren't disapointed, it was fantastic, like traveling first class on a plane (I imagine as I've never had the oportunity to turn left when getting on to a 747 - Gav keeps telling me "one day..").

The seats went right back, so that you lay completely flat, and they were really wide. But the best bit was dinner: first they brought round sherry and nibbles, then dinner with wine, followed by coffee and petit fours, and then whiskey or Tia Maria as a night cap! You don't get that on National Express. Here's a pic of Gav demonstrating the flat bed (you wont be suprised to hear that he'd already managed to break one of the clips in in his excitement to try it out).

Here are some pics of BA, me next to their version of Big Ben and Gav in one of the parks in the Palermo district.

We've spent the last 2 days in Mendoza tasting wine and exploring the town. We're off to Baraloche in the Lake District tonight. Unfortunately we couldn't get seats in Suite class, so we'll be slumming it in Business class.

Another Robbery in Liverpool!

We are still in Uruguay, Montevideo, after our time in the picturesque village of Colonia, Uruguay´s oldest town, and then Punta del Diablo. Uruguay has a reputation of being the Switzerland of South America : the buses run on time, all items on the menu are available and it doesn´t take an hour to be served 2 drinks in an empty bar, I almost feel rushed here! We´d read that P del D was a real gem and it didn´t disappoint, we hired an apartment right on the beach for a pittance and watched the waves crash against the rocks in the sunshine.

We spent last night in Montevideo and this afternoon had lunch at the brilliant Mercardo del Puerto where every restaurant has a huge BBQ and you sit around the BBQ as you would at a bar and see the food being cooked. I laughed at what 2 old women had ordered: all the meat Bec and me had had between us they had EACH plus, chips, salad and a mega sausage. I had to find room to eat my words as they polished everything off no problem.

Apologies for another topless shot of me but it´s the only one that shows the view from our apatrment!

PS See O´Shea´s last minute winner in injury time to explain title, apparently not everyone will understand it!?!?