However - while we have been sad to leave places, we didn't and don't, really want to stay. When we made the decision back in August that we were going to cut the trip short we had good reasons for doing so - and they remain true. Ever since, the relief of knowing that the logistics, planning and spending would come to an end in November has been a weight off our shoulders and has allowed us to enjoy our time a lot more!
Nonetheless, we've both felt this strange flip-flop of the desire to keep going versus the desire to stop and go home, which can alternate over days, hours, minutes or even seconds! It's a feeling I recognise from my previous trip when I had the same sensation in my last month or so. In my current case it's tempered by the fact that I'm not really 'going home' - my life when I get back will be in a new city, in a new flat, looking for a new job in a new career, so hardly back to the same old grind...
Back where the last entry finished off, we headed south down the last bit of the Pacific Coast Highway into LA, dropping in on Venice Beach to see what the fuss is about (a very sunny version of Camden Market, as far as we could tell) and then heading to our airport motel. The prospect of Hawaii was exciting, though we knew it wouldn't be the mythical paradise island of the postcards. Instead we found it was expensive, and it rained - a lot! To be fair the Iron Man triathlon World Championship was being held on Big Island, in Kona, just when we were there - a unfortunate bit of scheduling which meant hotels were booked up and prices high. I had only discovered this when I went to book a scuba dive with the manta rays on the one spare night we had arranged in Kona, only to find nothing would be happening because the triathlon shuts the streets! Fortunately I was still able to shuffle things around a bit, so we drove round Big Island to visit the volcanoes and admire the infernal glow that rises from the crater of Kilauea at night... very impressive. We couldn't see any of the active eruption, though if you've been following the news you will have seen that the current lava flows are slowly advancing on and demolishing one of the small towns on the south coast of the island. It was pretty weird listening to the radio and hearing, just after the daily weather forecast, the daily eruption and lava forecast, which is mostly safely ignored as it's confined to uninhabited areas.
Once back from there I did manage to get my manta ray dive, and it was truly spectacular - probably the visual highlight of the whole trip. We'd been lucky enough to see half a dozen manta rays in the earlier dive of the day, but for the night dive we saw more than twice as many, cruising, wheeling and looping directly above us, close enough to brush against us on many occasions. They were drawn in by a plankton swarm, which was in turn attracted by a mass of dive lights creating a glowing column in the dark water. The whole experience really was incredible even for a jaded old traveller like me! This isn't my video, but it exactly captures what it was like:
We then spent a day or two in Honolulu, which was mostly just a big city with a big mall and a beach, before it was time to jump the International Date Line, skip straight from October 17th to October 18th without having a night in between, and begin our Australian experience! I was keen to show off Sydney to Kate as I'd loved living there back in 2005. However it failed to endear itself to her from the start, beginning with a rail replacement bus service from the airport, poor station signage and then missing our ferry because the ticket machines weren't working and all but one of the booths were closed! Not what you need after an epic flight across the Pacific...
Fortunately our Airbnb apartment was another winner, and we settled in comfortably for a few days, but then the Australian spring weather decided to have its try at disappointing us and the skies remained resolutely grey after one sunny spell on our first day! We tried visiting the Blue Mountains but they were invisible in the mist! Still, it was great to be in a new country and we did like all the influences from the UK that are still detectable in Australia, particularly the aspects of London that still shine through in Sydney itself. We could tell straight away that it was a good plan to come here before returning home as it was a way of easing back in to things like driving on the left and using British English-isms instead of American.
From Sydney we drove to Melbourne - via Canberra, which was not as bad as everyone says, but not really a captivating place - to stay with my old friend Phil. I met him in 2004, on a minibus headed from Nairobi (Kenya) to Arusha (Tanzania), and we got talking (he's VERY good at talking) as we were both heading to Mt Kilimanjaro to climb it. He invited me to visit and stay when I came to Australia later that year, which I did, and we were invited again this year. It was a real pleasure to see him again, and his wife Ros, and they looked after us like champions, showing true Aussie hospitality. They drove us around, visiting wildlife sanctuaries (where we saw all the local superstar animals, including the duck-billed platypus which I'd never seen before) and also dropping in on his son Craig, who, with his wife Mel, run a fantastic brewery and distillery in the tiny town of Loch in the Victorian countryside. Craig gave us an inspiring guided tour of his operation and it definitely planted a seed - I'd love to have a place like his (an old brick-built bank from the 1900s) and to get stuck into the wonderful mixture of art and science that is brewing beer and distilling spirits. Maybe one day...
The weather was still rubbish though - we'd had a massive thunderstorm one night, and a good deal of cloud & rain. Soon we were headed to Alice Springs and the Red Centre - surely there we'd get good weather? You would think so, but the first day was very overcast and the 'sunset' view of Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) was a bust, and that night was a howling rainstorm! We were starting to get a little fed up with it, but over the next day or two it got better and better - only to keep getting sunnier and hotter and end up pushing well past 40C! We really weren't complaining though - after summer in the US we are well used to dealing with heat and we like it (as long as we can get a cool drink and occasionally retreat to air-conditioning!) Fortunately we had both those things with the excellent Wayoutback truck - and we had a great guide too, the effervescent Jodie, who handled everything extremely well.
Surprisingly we were the only Brits on the tour - there were a lot of Germans or Germanic people, presumably because their economy really is doing well and they can afford it! We banded together with some Belgians instead, while we toured Kata Tjuta, Kings Canyon and other spots in the Bush, camping out in the wilds at times. I had a great time taking responsibility for the camp- and cook-fire. What's not to love? Collecting firewood, preparing and lighting the fire, giving it judicious prods and feeding it fuel... all good fun and everyone else thinks you're working so you don't have to cook, clean or wash up!
After a few days we were exhausted and happy to get back to Alice Springs, where we had a day off to recover and then it was onwards to the west coast and what really was our last bit of the trip. We had a couple of days in beautiful Margaret River, trying wines and local foods, then it was up to Fremantle where we are now. We'd decided to not really do much while we were here, and just chill out for the last few days, but we did still manage to visit Penguin Island (to see Kate's spirit animal relatives) and I took a one-night road-trip up to the Pinnacles - yet more exotic rocks to photograph, but I'd been thwarted by overcast weather last time I was there, and I wanted to fix that. I almost got thwarted again, as the sunset was yet another bust, but fortunately I was smiled on the next morning and had the whole place to myself for a couple of glorious hours before I drove back.
Now we are sat in our last Airbnb apartment, our bags half-packed with just tomorrow to go before we catch our plane out of Perth late in the evening. It's an overnight flight to Dubai and then a long day back to London, where we will stay briefly with my brother before Kate heads west to her mother and I head north to mine, before I come back to London and then out to join Kate and, soon after that, move into her recently-vacated-of-tenants flat. What happens after that, we're not quite sure... it's the beginning of a new adventure!
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