This One's Goin' out to the Fans!

Finally, we have returned. It was a relief to step off the plane and plant our feet on Australian soil again. And just to please the punters, we made sure that the last leg of our journey was no walk in the park. We couldn't finish this story without a final chapter of travel trouble now, could we?

Uruguay was a lot of fun. It was nice to spend time hanging out with Andrea's family. She had a chance to catch up on the ten years that had passed since her last visit, and Dennis got to meet the people he had been hearing stories about for years. We both enjoyed spending time sitting around the nice, warm fireplace in the loungeroom, swapping stories and eating 'dulce de leche' (caramelised sweetened condensed milk - YUMMM!!!) while the freezing weather was locked outside. We also spent two cold, but sunny, days at the family farm in Durazno, central Uruguay. It was fun to see where her mum's family grew up, and we especially enjoyed all the hilarious stories about Ines (Andrea's mum) and how naughty she was as a little girl. Apart from the incident where we were taken advantage of by a crazy, uncooperative horse, we had a great time. Stupid horse. After almost a week, we said our teary goodbyes to the family and started the return leg of our journey.

Friday night and the city dwellers in Montevideo were getting ready to party the night away. Not us. We left Uruguay and headed for Argentina on a ferry. When we arrived, we headed straight to the airport where we spent the night, before flying to Chile. We waited at Santiago airport for our 14 hour layover to end. That really hurt. We were delighted to hear that our flight had been delayed for two hours, and became almost ecstatic when we were finally allowed to board the aircraft, only to be informed by the pilot that there was a problem with the landing gear. This shouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that we were 5000 feet in the air when the announcement was made. We spent an hour dumping fuel before landing safely back at our starting point. Santiago airport.....again. It's nice but not that nice. Eventually we reached Auckland before starting the final leg of our lap of the world. Sydney was showing on the navigation channel.

It was somewhat of a relief to step off the plane after spending 54 hours travelling without being able to wash our stinky bodies (and Dennis' feet) or brush our teeth because of the ever-tightening travel security that is hitting airports worldwide. We both felt like we'd run four marathons as we left customs and re-entered the land we love most. We expected cameras, waving, screaming fans, banners and more. It seems though, that our blog was not quite as big a hit with the public as we thought it had been. Rent-a-Crowd could have made a killing if they had a branch at the airport! We sat down and tried to figure out our lack of popularity. Then it clicked! Our return to Australia had been overshadowed by the unfortunate deaths of Steve Irwin and Peter Brock. The country was obviously in mourning.

So, we dragged our weary bodies home to Strathfield. Home, sweet home. And here we plan to stay at least until the New Year. No more blog, we guess... well, until our next mis/adventure anyway! It has been a blast.

So before we go and settle into life in the big smoke, with work and bills and responsibility and all the other junk that constitutes life in 'The Real World' (whatever that is!), we would like to thank all of our supporters, our detractors, the weird guy who warned us about the dangers of the Moroccan desert... there are so many other weirdo's to mention. Tim and Treen for getting this whole blog-thing started. Harves and Rach for keeping us updated on the weekly scores and happenings in The Hill. Dave and Peg for keeping Gran in touch with our adventures. Kel and Gav for looking after the mutt. Kris and Al for looking after our gear. Carlos and Ines for spreading the glorious word of the blog to any stranger they could corner. To everyone who logged on or left a comment, housed, clothed or fed us, thank you all very much. This blog has been one of the best memories we have of our trip. We have had so much fun putting it together. It was such a common experience to be standing, awestruck by some wonderful sight, and finding ourselves thinking of how we would explain it on the blog. What pictures would we put on? What was the title going to be? It became a bit of an addiction for us. Thank you all for keeping in touch. We hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have.

We hope to catch up with you all soon, and hope that everyone is well. Don't be afraid to drop in or contact us, we'd love to see you.


Dennis and Andrea.

THE END