The final frontier

and Amy writes:

See our favourite photos from our 10 months of travelling. Contains 75 pics.

It was a year ago today that we landed in our first destination, Bangkok. We spent an unbelievable 10 months travelling and returned home eight weeks ago. We've moved into a flatshare in west London, both started work again and are enjoying all the fresh veg and milk we can chuck down our throats.

We'd always planned to put together some stats but have only just got round to typing it up, so here goes (all links point to a relevant blog post or photo):

Countries visited: 11.
Blog entries posted: 73.
Combined weight of luggage on our flight home: 49 kilos.
No. of flights taken: 17.
Time spent on buses: 394 hours (or 16.4 solid days).
Buses that broke down: four. (pics of numbers one, two and three).
No. of UNESCO World Heritage Sites visited: 16.
Things stolen: pack of cards.
Things lost: two hats (Amy).
Showdowns with cockroaches: one.
Rats fought: three.
Shoes bought in Buenos Aires: nine pairs between us.
Most popular period of blog activity: June, while we were stranded in La Paz during the protests, tourists who were stuck in other Bolivian cities read our daily updates for news from the capital.
Most talked-about blog post: the Peruivian roast guinea pig dinner.
Strangest achievement: Getting our photos in the Malay Mail.
Aprox. spent each per day in Asia: £10.
Approx. spent each per day in Bolivia: £12.
Approx. spent each per day in Australia: £33.
Approx. no. of photos taken: 6,500.
Approx. no. of photos that were worth keeping: 500.
Christmas spent in: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, feeling out-of-place (few people there celebrate Christmas) and visiting the huge shopping centre beneath the Petronas Towers.
New Year's Eve spent in: Perth, Australia, heading to Kings Park for a great, noisy, drunk time.
Weirdest tour company that we decided to avoid: http://www.soundsnatural.co.nz/ (warning: contains naturists).

Jody's stats
Birthday spent in: Coober Pedy, Australia.
Deaths avoided: plunging to my doom in the Cameron Highlands, deadly snake-bite in the Australian outback, almost run-over in Buenos Aires (the car came so close it clipped my leg, despite me being on a pedestrian crossing).
Best food: Masaman curry (see recipe), eaten at Bee Bee restaurant, on the beach on Ko Lanta, Thailand. Trucha Rellena (stuffed trout) in Emperador restaurant, Cusco, Peru, comes a close second - posh dining for a pittance.
Worst food: Ais Kacang - Malaysia's worst dessert.
Best drink: Chica morada (purple sweetcorn juice, invented by the Incas in Peru).
Average no. of bug bites: one every three-and-a-half days.
Price of 0°C quality sleeping bag: £51.
No. of times sleeping bag used: once.
Lifespan of watch bought in Bangkok: 5 weeks, 6 days.

Amy's stats
Birthday spent in: Valparaiso, Chile.
Deaths avoided: decapitation while asleep on a Cambodian tuk-tuk, slipping off a hill to plummet into the dark jungle during a night-walk in the Amazon.
Best food: Honey Chicken, cooked by Merry Hut guesthouse owner, Noi, on Ko Lanta, Thailand.
Worst food: Stinking durian fruit in Malaysia. Actually, I hated most of the food in Malaysia: curried fish heads are not my thing either.
Best drink: Argentine wine.
Average no. of bug bites: one every 21 hours.

Our most popular photos on flickr:


Stuff we did
We've had so many great experiences that it's tough picking our favourites, but we thought we'd have a go. We especially enjoyed the weeks we spent in Sucre, Bolivia, teaching English and learning Spanish. We made lots of great friends - natives and fellow gringos alike and will always warmly remember our time there. We also enjoyed the week we spent in Ollantaytambo, exploring the beautiful, working Inca town and cooking and serving food as volunteers in a soup kitchen that served 130 school kids, daily.

We both agree that South America made our trip. Asia was great and we plan to return to see Vietnam and Laos, but having the luxury of five months in South America was incredible and we're sure to return one day to once again see all the friends we made.

Jody's best experiences:

• Watching the sun climb the mountains of the Sacred Valley, shooting beams of light onto Machu Picchu.
  
• Touching down in a tiny plane in the Amazon, before spending six days in the jungle and pampas,
  
• Exploring the lesser-visted temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, at sunrise - it felt as if we were the first people to walk through the overgrown structures in centuries.
  
• Being caught in La Paz for two weeks while the country was on the brink of civil war - terrifying at times, but an unforgettable experience that brought us closer to the locals than we would have otherwise become,
  
• Wading among sharks in Coral Bay, Australia.
  
• Eating the delicious street food of Bankok, Thailand.
  
• Wolfing down a perfect platter of meat from the Mercado del Puerto, Uruguay.
  
• The indescribably beautiful sights of the Tongariro Crossing hike.
  

Jody's worst experiences:

• Sydney - beautiful, but dull.
  
• Ayres Rock / Uluru - not that big; not that red.
  
• Whale watching in New Zealand - shy whales, foggy weather, huge price tag. Turn 'em into soap (joke!).
  

Amy's best experiences

• Eating pad thai for breakfast on the beach in Ko Phi-Phi.
  
• Sleeping beneath a perfect set of southern stars in the Australian outback.
  
• Getting drunk on wine ice-cream in Cafayate, Argentina.
  
• Aerial views of New Zealand, both from a Helicopter flying over the Fox Glacier and while falling to Earth from a plane while parachuting over Lake Taupo.
  
• Sloth-spotting in the Amazon basin.
  
• Exploring ancient ruins at Batan Grande, Peru, where we had to get special permission to view the archaeological site.
  
• Sitting awe-struck for hours, attempting to burn the image of Machu Picchu into my mind forever.
  
• Seeing lots of animals in the wild, such as capybaras, aligators, kangaroos, seals, echidnas, and lots of monkeys.
  
• Discovering foul-sounding food that was actually quite nice, such as grubs in Thailand and black pudding and 'morlecas' (heart glands) in Argentina.
  
• Making friends with so many people, both locals (hello Jen and Frank, Lily and family, Gael, Delia, Consuelo, Zulma and the other teachers at Fox, Samuel, Leo, Lourdes and Vero) and other travellers (hi to Kate, Ruth and Alex, Roberto and Cyndi, Daniela, Kaleb and Kalpna, Simon and Cathryn, Liron, Ella, Rod, Sara, Tomas, Meta, Kazumi and Rie).

Amy's worst experiences:

• Sleazy, fat men in Malaysia.
  
• Two horrific bouts of altitude sickness.
  
• Missing the Nazca Lines, Peru, because the bus failed to drop us off.
  
• Not being able to see for flies, at the Devil's Marbles, Australia.
  
• Milford Sound: one of New Zealand's most beautiful fjords. We spent £115 to visit it... and it was shrouded in thick fog.
  

So that really is it: our final blog post. I hope you enjoyed keeping up with our trip. We had the time of our lives.

Jody and Amy

Goodbye world

See our Argentina photos.

Amy and I had been together for almost three years when we set off on this around-the-world trip in November 2004. Having only spent the previous six months living together, nothing prepared us for 10 solid months of barely being out of each other's sight.

We've experienced things that most couples need years of marriage to discover. A lot of which we'd have both prefered to have remained a mystery: there's no hiding from your partner just how much that last meal of chicken-foot soup upset your innards when the bathroom is only feet away from the bed.

Thanks to all the friends who predicted we'd split up before we make it back to England, and although it hasn't always been happy travelling, it looks like our relationship still has a lot of mileage left. Besides, if we were to split, it would take ages to separate all the souvenirs we've bought.

In less than 24 hours, we'll be on a plane bound for Heathrow airport, but we've putting a brave face on returning to reality. We'll miss many things from the 11 countries we've visited, but there's also a lot of stuff we'll be glad to see the back of. Such as gut rot, wearing a money belt 24/7, putting our life on the line with every road crossing, bad coffee, mysterious food, weak beer, fearing tap water, re-packing our rucksack every few bloody days, rabid dogs, staring locals, sharing rooms with rats, con artists, electric death showers, know-it-all travellers, dorms and baggage handlers who demand a huge tip just for lifting your rucksack off a bus.

We're also longing for some home comforts upon our return (strangely, most of them consumable). I'd kill for a glass of fresh milk right now and we're both looking forward to cooking for ourselves, eating fuit and veg with a steady hand, wearing more than five different outfits, English newspapers and listening to music that doesn't involve panpipes and isn't one of the 20 CDs we're carrying. Oh, and of course, seeing friends and family.

It's incredible all the things we've seen and done over the past 10 months. Even though it was just weeks ago, walking breathlessly in the Andes seems like a lifetime away - Asia, eight months back, even further. By the time we get home, will any of it seem real at all? At least we have our journals, lots of photos and this blog to remind us that it was. And if you ever get bored of our plethora of travel anecdotes, perhaps you can all chip in and buy us another around-the-world ticket to get rid of us. Hasta luego.