- job interviews (Martin will be attending these in a pair of borrowed shoes upon finding his are in the back of a large storage container)
- football tournament in Yorkshire - COME ON YOU COWGIRLS! - Kara playing, Martin getting his poms poms out (that's not a euphemism)
- helping with Eloise's wedding eg practising making her wedding cakes and then actually making them (nervous noises to be heard)
- sorting out our flat in Bristol (low level maintenace to be done, tenants staying on another year - yay!)
- visiting parents (equal visiting rights for both - gotta share the love)
- showing Maltese relatives highlights of our beautiful country
- eating curry
- drinking more ale
- our favourite one...going through our storage container and attempting to add more stuff to it while reducing the size of the container by half...then attending a carboot sale to flog our gear...
- finding somewhere to live temporarily...
- attending Eloise's wedding
- maybe, just maybe, doing some work and earning some money again...
So, we do have a plan for our lives (yay!) but we need to tell various people in person first. Clue: bonjour. If you're interested, send us an email and we'll fill you in.
Oscar style
Like every good film, at the end there are credits. Here are some of our awards and thanks.
Awards
Best food:
Kara: sushi eaten at fish market Tokyo. Blew my mind. Made me realise I had never eaten fish before.
Martin: Steak in Buenos Aires.
Best place:
Martin: Ummm. 3 way split between Patagonia, Tokyo and Northern Queensland, Australia. What this tells you is that I am a well rounded individual with a broad spectrum of tastes and interests, and also a chronic inability to make decisions.
Kara: Tricky. Think it has to be the Torres Del Paine, Chile. Stunning. All of it.
Best city:
Kara: Tokyo, closely followed by Melbourne.
Martin: Tokyo, then Salamanca, Spain.
Best experience:
Both of us: diving in the Great Barrier Reef; hiking the W route in the Torres Del Paine; 6 nights on the Milford Road, New Zealand; eating endless crazy food in Japan and S.Korea
The "Fatos"* award for craziest foreigner encounter:
Martin: Trauko, the eco-warrior with his own recycling in his back yard in Chile
Kara: the random S.Korean dude who got us drunk and made us take photos of ourselves wearing his glasses and holding his dog
*Fatos is one of our good friends who knows a lot about crazy and a fair bit about foreign
Most unexpected pleasure:
Kara: couchsurfing and hanging out with new pals Karin and Richard in NZ
Martin: Salamanca. Thought I was going to a dull town full of museums to keep the missus happy, turned out to be spectacularly beautiful party central. Can't wait to go back.
Thanks
So many people...here goes:
- all the friendly, kind, interesting fellow travellers, hostel owners and randoms we met who are the people that make a year out fun and great
- Chile - Peter Bauer for giving 2 randoms a lift across half the country then letting us hang out with him for a few days.
- Chile - Celiane and Fabian for giving us a great couchsurfing experience and ensuring we didn't get mugged in Valparaiso
- Chile - Trauko for being obsessively, kindly mad but also supplying us with the only blizzard proof tent in the Torres
- New Zealand - Karin and Richard for giving us a place to stay, making us laugh and providing dog therapy.
- Tasmania - Glen and Masumi for providing an AWESOME road trip. Guys, we owe you one...
- Tasmaina - the crew we met on our tour. They were great
- Australia, Melbourne - Elisa and Josh for sharing their home and city with us. And some strong cocktails.
- Australia, Wollongong - the Chambers family. Guys, you were great. A warm welcome, a cold beer and a fast internet connection... can't wait to see you when you are back in the correct hemisphere (we'll make do with Kit in the meantime)
- Australia, Brisbane - Vince for letting us couchsurf and buying us BurgerKing...Riley for not killing us on his driving lessons...
- Australia, Cairns - Mal and Sarah for letting us stay, for helping us out with the whole "rail pass" saga, and for making us part of their family
- Japan - Jo and Nate for MAKING our stay out there. We loved being shown round, we loved finding out what we were actually eating, we loved hanging out with you guys...see you and DeWitt Junior in October...
- S.Korea - Matt and Sophia. THANK YOU! You shared your (small) home with us for such a long period of time (we know it stressed you and you probably thoroughly cleaned the flat when we left!), showed us the full range of S.Korean food, and took us for the most hard-core foreign eating experience of our trip
- France - Rob, Em and Jenny in total 2 weeks of us on your sofa, eating your food, talking crap to your guests, tormenting your cats, and amusing your child. Loved every minute of it.
- Italy - Justine and Fatos for arranging for us to stay in that beautiful home and being consummate hosts. Great to spend time with you.
- Spain - Marisol for being the perfect host family, the teachers at ISLA, and all the Salamanca crew for being such fun (except crazy Irish girl)
Other thanks:
Kit and Nicky for giving us a home before we left and then coming out to meet us in Australia.
Graham, Kate, Luke and Owen for enduring the worst weather northern Spain has seen in decades with us.
George for letting us stay in her home (that we didn't even know where it was as she'd moved) for our week in Bristol.
Our friends and family who have fed us, let us stay with them, sent us emails, kept in touch and been supportive about it all.
Finally...BIG THANKS to our lovely parents, who have been supportive, kind, flew to the other side of the world to meet up with us, keep giving us places to stay and food to eat, taking us out for meals, being the best parents and parent in laws, and generally giving us more than supposedly independent 30 somethings have any right to expect... THANK YOU. xxxx
