30 November

Its just another day after all.....

A year ago....

A year ago I was heading on an adventure of a lifetime......

A year ago I was full of excitement,hope and optimism.....

A year ago I travelled to amazing countries and met amazing people....

A year ago I listened to stories and learnt about cultures worlds apart from my own....

A year ago I fell in love with a continent I hope to return to again and again.....

A year ago I got to live some of my lifelong dreams....

A year ago I met some of the best friends I will ever have....

A year ago I believed the world was my oyster and I could accomplish anything....

A year ago I was with the man I loved and thought I would spend the rest of my life with.....

A year ago I was happy....

Find the Panda...

So its been quite a while since I updated this…I believe the last time you heard from me we had just arrived back into London town and were settling ourselves in. Now its a month or so later and we have set up home in a ground floor flat not to far from Canary Wharf which is quite exciting for us!… it’s the first time we have had a place all of our own…. although it is a bit scary to have signed ourselves up for a year… fingers crossed for us it all pans out!!!…. The place came furnished but without everyday essentials so we are now the proud owners of…get this…drum roll please… a KETTLE, TOASTER, VACUUM CLEANER, WATER FILTER, and so on and so forth! That shopping was rather fun what was not fun was the actual getting it from point A to point B and my legs are covered in bruises from bags swinging into me (I have to wear my long pants at the gym as members keep asking me if I’m abused) We have set up all our gears except our paintings which are waiting patiently to be framed I cant wait to see them up on the walls!…. Below are some pictures of our new pad I thought it might be fun to play a wee game….

This is Jonty Moo-ma very kindly knitted him for us for a flat warming present and he has fast become the third member of our household (no pets allowed Jonty you shall fill this gap)so the game goes like this in every picture I have hidden Jonty for you to find sometimes he’s right there staring you in the face other times you will have to look a bit harder hope you like it enjoy!!!

This is our lounge/dining/kitchen area its all lovely and open plan and opens up onto our (tiny) garden.

here's our kitchen (the kettle and toaster are ours!!)

here's a view of the lounge from in the kitchen...

and here's one from out in the garden.......

now this is exciting this is our entrance way and hallway!!! I'm standing in the doorway to our bedroom the second bedroom is off to the left and the main bathroom is off to the right...

this is our delightfilled bedroom...our ensuite door is next to me on the left....

this is our wee bathroom..excuse me shower room....

This is the second bedroom its about the same size as ours but looks huge at the moment as its a single bed in there...

And this is the main bathroom....(both bathrooms have dunnys i chose not to include them in the pictures cuz that would be gross)....

So did you find Jonty in each shot?

We have only been living in our new place for about 2 weeks but already we have a wonderful house guest (well not currently as she is off seeing Europe lucky bugger) but yay I got a week on holiday to show her round!…. Monday and Tuesday last week we finished moving and then last Wednesday I picked up Lisa from the airport at ridiculous o’clock and we spent several days hanging out catching up and eating pineapple lumps… (she also brought Burger rings and cheezles which LP ate so fast you would never have known they were here.)….. She arrived on the Wednesday so we didn’t really do a lot just chilled, put away our sainsburys delivery (I dropped bag of onions on Lisa's foot) and had a little wander around the shops… Lisa set up her bank account and somehow managed to come away with an awesome deal where most Nzers (us included) have failed!… On Thursday we did some jobs including setting her up with a nanny agency and me introducing her to the amazement that is hummus bros…. on Friday we braved oxford street (I got new boots woohoo) and then met with another Nzer and went for dinner an to see dirty dancing at the Alydwhich theatre…we pretty much had the time of our lives…Saturday we mostly chillaxed and had a wonder round Covent garden then I left her at the Contiki basement where she was to meet for her Europe travels…. Sunday it was back to work!!!

And so onto other news from our world LP has just applied for his new visa …INDEFINITE LEAVE TO REMAIN!!! This will mean that he is no longer required to get another visa…. in simple terms he will have permanent UK residency!!! The plan is to hang about for a wee while longer and get him his UK citizenship…. after that the world is our oyster and who knows where we will end up… (the dream is some land some dogs some pigs and to never have to wear shoes again…not in a hippy kind of way more the way of only Jandals and the occasional gumboot my feet were born to be freeeeeeee)… more LP news he is leaving his current job to work in LONDON ZOO! How cool is that!?! He will be part of the catering team but will spend everyday surrounded by all the animals hopefully I will get discount so I can go and take pictures and generally embarrass myself by acting like a child (as I do when around animals I cant help it they are just so cool…like me!)….

Any who hope you enjoyed find the panda and the catch up of our lives…. peace….

A wee catch up on our lives...

Outside waiting for the taxi...

Sitting waiting for the train (outside the gates) with all our bags...

And we are off...

So for those of you who don't now we are back in London we arrived here on Tuesday with mounds of baggage (two (big) backpacks, two suitcases,LPs cricket bag,a giant blue Ikea bag and our laptop don't judge we just moved our entire lives from Truro to London they are five hours away from each other)... but as usual I'm getting ahead of myself....

the last few weeks we have spent editing our thousands upon thousands of photos, packing up all our worldly belongings and of course spending time with family and friends that's you all caught up on our lives from when we got back until last Tuesday....

I'm gonna set the scene here.... its Tuesday morning Leigh is up before 10am for the first time in weeks we have huge amounts of luggage and we arrive at Truro train station in a taxi...when we get there we find that annoyingly they have built a huge barrier around the platform so only travellers can get onto it we also find that the train has changed time...no wait we just always had the wrong time so have to wait a further 20Min's....so we sit just off the platform chatting away until its time to make our move the train was quite busy so we had to hurry on and get space for all our luggage luckily our carriage was full but everyone just seemed to have small bags so we could fill up the luggage rack all by ourselves so the next five hours go by and hey presto we are in London...where we decided to taxi to our accommodation rather then lug all our shite on the tube the good news was it was our first ever ride in a black cab in London the bad news was it almost bankrupted us as we got stuck in traffic...oh dear... well anyway that was the excitement that was travelling to London now what have we been doing since then???....

Well...Leigh got himself a job and starts on Tuesday, i have started to apply for jobs (that i don't really want as in reality i just want to be a permanent traveller forever!), we have spent time in the sunshine, got frozen yoghurt, shopped at Waitrose our local (budget breaker!!!), we got LP some new Jandals and us both new sunglasses, we have written lists, lists and more lists and crossed off a few things but mostly added more, we have made discs of all our photos to send to peeps in NZ, we have unpacked and repacked and then unpacked again followed by one more repack (to try and get stuff out of the way), we have looked online at somewhere more permanent to live, we have looked at new cellphones (since the 4 on mine refuses to work do you know how hard it is to send a text without the letters G,H and I in it? if i have to write Leigh I'm screwed!) and we have spent ALOT of time on FB and watching the IPL (Leigh is in heaven with the sports news channel) and now LP has just applied for us to get tickets to be part of the audience for The Rob Brydon show, QI and A league of their own....well that was a wee catch up on our lives now i better head off and do something productive...PEACE....

The lessons Africa tought me...well a few of them...

as you can imagine five months in Africa has tought me alot. Far more then i could ever fit into one teeny tiny blog post so here are a few of the things i learnt along the way... starting in South Africa because that's where we started....

South Africa opened me up to my family history. its where my moo is from and i never quite appreciated until recent years how it would have been like to grow up in apartheid south Africa i think i now have some understanding of the way things were. We went out to Robben island (Cape town) and to the Nelson Mandela museum (Mthatha) which stand to show us and the coming generations the many horrors of apartheid and educate to stop something like it ever happening again. I also learnt to ALWAYS carry our camera no matter how annoying it seems... in Tsitkamma after walking for an age and not seeing anything cool we put the camera in our tent and wandered through the campsite only to stumble across a massive male baboon just chilling on the grassy verge! argghhh how frustrating!....

Swaziland tought me that sometimes jandals just don't cut it...(not often)...when we were playing football against the locals (and that's the local football team not just kids! they had football boots and shin pads and i had bare feet!)shoes would have been a good option jandals don't allow for quick manoeuvring and turns out not only was the ground nice and hard there were also a ton of camel spiders hanging about oops!....

In Mozambique the lesson about reading instructions first was learnt as in "take one seasick pill at least an hour before activity" this would have been helpful instead i took it about 30 seconds before activity and so fed the whale sharks as well as snorkelling with them...

ALWAYS KNOW WHERE THE RHINOS ARE....seems simple but in Zimbabwe we were almost trampled by a big bull...We were sitting quite relaxed watching a group of four rhinos when suddenly (thankfully) someone spotted a fifth coming up right behind us lucky for us they have poor vision so the big beast probably didn't even know we were there!....

Now this ones for LP and it seems pretty basic...in the Okavango Delta we headed out to an island on Makouras (dug out canoes) and LP rolled his sleeves up to his shoulders without any suncream....he still has a funny tan line....so Botswana taught us to always SLIP SLOP SLAP...AND WRAP.....(Emily this may be Kiwi thing....ill explain when i see you )....

In Namibia we learnt that given the chance sand goes anywhere including places you didn't even know it could go. Much to the hotel cleaners disgust after a morning of sand boarding we filled the shower with sand collected in clothes in shoes, in ears, nostrils and mouths... (ill let you imagine where else).....

Zambia taught us to follow your gut instinct... even if it means getting up on new years day before the sun has woken up. Alas this was a lesson learnt to late we didn't follow our intuition and wake up to go on a game drive and so missed the wild dogs and the only spotting of them on our entire epic Odyssey...poo....

Malawi...oh yes lake Malawi... the lake of near death by drowning...it was here that i learnt that I'm really not to keen on small boats if i cant control it meaning i like kayaks and canoes but almost all other small boats are out...i also learnt that if it looks like bad weather to me then being in the middle of the lake on a small island is not the place to be....

In Tanzania we parted ways with some friends for a short time and in that short time i learnt i don't like being apart from sister wife,bandwagon Mark and old Sampson (although i am very proud they climbed Kilimanjaro ! yay!) and Zanzibar taught me about the durain the king of fruits a fruit that smells so bad that Zanzibar flights ban smoking and durain's...(they taste average so I'm not really sure why you would bother with this one).....

Nairobi in Kenya taught us NEVER TO RIDE IN A MATATU (mini-bus taxi) after one shattered through the wall to our campsite killing the driver injuring another and with all the passenger's taking flight before the police showed up. This incident also taught us that we are lucky to have free health care as in Nairobi ambulances will only turn up to an accident if they are paid up front to deliver the person to hospital so most people prefer to travel there by taxi.....

On our first trip into Uganda we were staying in Kampala at a campsite which had Vervet monkeys (as we learnt staying in campsites all over Africa they can sometimes be a pest as they steal food etc this is encouraged by people feeding them) the lesson learnt was that although people shouldn't feed them the one little guy did look cute as he stole a cracker right out of Sam's hand!....

Rwanda is a great country its beautiful, green, clean and the people are amazingly warm and friendly. Despite this it has a horrific past which we learnt all about at the genocide museum in Kigali. the museum aims to educate so that people understand the realities of what went on not only in 1994 but also in the smaller but no less important genocides that checker Rwandas past. the hope is that through education atrocities like this will never be seen again. its a harsh lesson to learn that humans are so fickle as to turn on life long friends and neighbours in a spree of needless killing.... we also learnt about Rwandas beautiful great apes the mountain gorilla there are currently less then 800 mountain gorillas world wide but efforts are in place to stop the decline, including the tourism industry although permits to track the gorillas are expensive a large portion of the money goes into conservation for these great animals. seeing them face to face in the wild was an amazing experience there is nothing like making eye contact with a Silverback male who weighs over 200kg and seeing in his eyes he understands that you are standing there just watching him its incredible....

our second trip into Uganda went a ways as to teach me about Patience as I've already said i do lack patience somewhat but when you are stranded at a hilltop campsite next to the Nile as your passport is being sent to Australia for an Ethiopian visa what can you do?...i did what i had to and so spent my days lounging in the sun reading and talking to friends see I'm not to bad at this Patience lark....

our second spell into Kenya didn't teach me anything profound but it is a skill that i can probably take with me for years and years to come...it is the ability to squat and pee behind a rock that is almost as flat as the rest of the almost completely flat landscape...that's right you heard me....Northern Kenya is stunningly beautiful and pretty empty of people but my gosh it is flat!....(i can also pee really quickly as people kept throwing it out there that there might be bandits in northern Kenya so every time i peed it was quick like a ninga just in case a bandit jumped out from behind an almost completely flat rock!...

In Ethiopia i learnt that mothers probably are always right i get told to try things that i didn't like as a child and that as an adult i might like them...we went to a coffee ceremony and it would have been beyond rude not to try it so i downed a whole cup... the first whole cup of coffee i have ever drunk in my entire life and whilst you may be expecting a revelation that actually i loved it ...(i didn't)...all i can say is that it wasn't completely revolting and i wouldn't be opposed to trying other things...(please note i still hate peas and corn with a vengeance)...

Sudan is a lesson that took several days to learn Close the tent doors and windows whilst camping in the desert!!! unless of course you want to be part of a Sand storm! No one likes sand in their sleeping bag its just not cool!...it did take us a few horrid nights to realise this as sometimes the wind picks up or changes direction in the night so even though its a lovely view of the stars and a nice cool breeze in the evening you WILL regret it in the morning...

and to finish off my lessons learnt in Africa we finish with Egypt where i learnt two things. First that sometimes what you see on the news isn't necessarily the case...the protests in Egypt where still happening when we where there but all the people we met where lovely and friendly to tourists (except the leery men who are just gross) we were told not to walk around at night but as long as you used common sense Cairo was perfectly safe. The other thing we learnt and the conclusion to this blog is that mosquitoes are much easier to kill in the mornings....when they are full of you blood!......

Snap back to reality

how strange it is to think that 5 months ago we set off from Truro to head into the big wide world and take our chances in Africa.... we have now come full circle and are back in Truro!....

let me tell you the final chapter of our African Adventure...i believe we left off in Luxor....

on the 21st March we were up before the sun to head off on the long drive to Cairo we set off at 5am we followed the Nile for a while...(crocidile)....then drove to the coast and followed the Red sea road all the way up till Cairo the scenery en route is bizarre huge luxury resorts next to huge construction projects...(seemingly abandoned)...next to tumble down shanty towns next to huge resorts etc despite the fact that its coming into holiday season in Egypt the coast was deserted with a few lonely fishermen the only souls we saw as we cruised by...we arrived into Cairo about 6pm but it took over an hour to drive through the hectic traffic to our hotel...not helped by the fact that it seemed to be tucked away in a maze of tiny little streets we had a bit of time to sort our stuff out and clear the truck before we headed out for a final meal...it was at the top end of the price scale but the food was AMAZEMENT we went to a little Lebanese place me and LP shared 4 appetisers which turned out to be far more food then was required (but it did provide us with a meal the next day also!) after the meal we headed to the hotel where we watched a slide show of photos from the entire trip which was hilarious and stirred up memories..... South Africa seemed so long ago! the next day we headed off to see the Egyptian Museum and also the mighty pyramids at Giza we had a mini bus and a guide for the day which was great Waleed is an Egyptologist and really knows his stuff at the museum he showed us around for a few hours telling us the history and setting the scene for the pyramids in the afternoon as we were driving there we could see them from ages away its really quite bizarre as they are almost swallowed into the city just a patch of desert surrounded by city we started off at the GREAT pyramid this one is missing its top it used to be tipped with gold but this has long since vanished we struggled to find a place to stand where you could fit the whole thing into a photo and also tried to avoid all the touts who rather then hassling seem to hustle one guy gave LP stuff to hold then took the camera from around his neck took a photo then demanded baksheesh for it LP offered him an E£1 in the spirit of get this man away from me and he wouldn't take it he kept demanding E£10 so we walked away and he got nothing....we got back in the mini bus and drove around the side of the pyramids to a point where you can see all three at once and get a crazy photos pretending to hold them...very cheesy but cool....(don't judge me ha ha)....then we went to the third and smallest pyramid which still retains some of the granite casing that originally covered it now its just on the bottom few tiers we even went inside...its quite creepy in a way we were the only people in there its the kind of place that if you were even just a tiny bit claustrophobic you would freak out!...the ceiling is super low to walk in you have to bend double as you walk down the stairs and although it is all lit up you cant actually see the bottom it just goes on and on and on until you get to the bottom...then you can stand up but only for a moment as you then have to duck under a stone beam and walk bent over through a tunnel then you get to a room where you can stand there are more stairs going down and then more again until you reach a room divided into little sections the whole thing is completely empty and free of decoration its all just bare stone walls but it is amazing i felt like an explorer...(you have to pretend not to see the air conditioning unit and the lights and stuff)...when we came out we took a look at the middle pyramid this one still has a white limestone casing but only right at the top as it was stripped away in the search for the entrance...that night we said our first goodbyes....the next day we got to hang out with sister wife Teri and Old Williams...(they were split from the group after visa issues for Sudan)...we met outside the Egyptian museum where like something out if a movie we ran to each other with open arms...much to the amusement of a group of Egyptian students who filmed it on their cellphones and then interviewed us on the Egyptian revolution and on the state of countries in the middle east...it was all pretty surreal...our day went coffee lunch coffee all the while chatting away filling each other in on the last few weeks since we last saw each other!....Next day was sad goodbyes first of all Sam and Lynley in the morning then after spending the day together in Alexandria we said goodbye to Mark and Teri, Sue and Dave and Zan....the next few days it was just me and LP in Cairo we went to the Islamic quarter to the mosques, the bazaar and to Al-azar park a beautiful spot of green away from the hustle and bustle of the city, we went to the Coptic quarter and visited the hanging church and the indoor overpriced souk and other then that we just hung out eating a load of falafal then our flight was cancelled and we had the option of staying another day or leaving early we chose to leave early as we already had our train booked and it lost us less money...So early on Monday morning we got up and sped to the airport arriving there in about 10Min's...(that's with the taxi driver doing an insane 140km an hour right behind a bus and weaving in and out of the traffic!)...we boarded our BA flight and realised why our original flight was cancelled...there was no passangers! the plane wasn't even at 50% capacity! we arrived into London where we chilled out at Hazes flat... (thanks heaps!)... and went out for a gorgeous meal... (thanks heaps again!)...the next day...(that's yesterday)...we met up with Dave and Sue and picnicked in St James park...(and yes the picnic was from waitrose)...where we got attacked by pelicans... in the afternoon we said our final goodbyes to Sue and Dave and headed to paddington to catch our train to Truro so here we are full circle its been a crazy, amazing wonderful challenging brilliant fun five months lets hope the next 5 will be as exciting!.....

Egypt our last country booooooooooo!!!

so we have arrived in Egypt our 15th country in 5 months and the last on our epic adventure booooooooo!!! after spending about 17 hours on the ferry from Wadi Halfa it was quite fun the boat claims to have a capacity of 600 people and thats how many are crammed on at times but looking at it i think its more like a capacity of 300! luckily for us not many people are going ointo Egypt they are all heading out back to Sudan mostly from Libiya so we only had to squeeze in with about a hundred or so passengers we boarded and almost immdiatly got served dinner which i took one lookmat and ran away (taking my orange with me) we camped out on deck in the fresh air all snuggled up in our sleeping bags (except LP in his 2 season who was just a tad cold in the night) around 10pm we sailed past Abu Simbil which was all lit up and looked spectacular unfortunately we didnt manage to get a photo by the time we grabbed the camera it was to late! after that we settled down to sleep...in the middle of the night i woke up chocking on fumes it seems a tiny hole in the wall by my head was some sort of exhaust so after poisining myself for a while i decided to put my head at the other end this worked in that i didn't die of fumes poising but i was no longer sheltered from the wind and so had a bright pink wind burnt face for a few days! any who next morning we woke up and chilled on deck until we arrived by which time there was almost no shade nd the sun was intense we had to wait on board for ages whilst our passports were taken to be checked through immigration eventually we were on our way in a bus to our hotel (the truck goes on a car ferry so we are without it until about Sunday) so anywho in Aswan we checked out the Nubian museum well worth a look especially the section about moving all the tombs and temples to escape the rising waters of lake Nasser (we have seen the temple of Isis in Madrid that was moved from here) we also went to see the unfinished obelisk very cool but not worth the E£30 entrance fee! and we walked through the Fatimid cemetery unlike any cemetry we have ever seen its very cool but there is absolutly no logic or order to where graves are! in the afternoon we checked out the souk and got a things (including a new bag to carry home all our new stuff haha) the rest of the time in Aswan we spent wandering along the Nile and eating frigging cheap and tasty falafal! then we bused it to Luxor yesterday we went to Karnak temple in the morning spending hours just wandering around the site feeling absolutely in awe of it all! after a long lunch in the shade we went to the souk and got some saffron and indigo...the indigo mostly because i cant understand how washing white clothes with blue powder makes them whiter so i have to try it! then at sunset we went to Luxor temple we missed the good light by a matter of minutes but it did look really impressive all lit up in the dark! tomorrow we head for Cairo and then back to London in about a week....my how time flies by!!!!.....