Leaving for home

The next few days are to be devoted to closing up our stay in Lanzarote before we return home to start our world travels.Maureen thinks the garden needs cutting back and any washing of clothes for the trip will be done here so hopefully we get plenty of drying time between now and Thursday. We are taking leave of our Lanzarote friends but are confident that with our security guard all will be well when we return.

Seriously David and Carol do a sterling job for our little community and we will miss seeing them during the winter, not forgetting Lucy either whose welcoming is always guaranteed. Woof woof!!

Planning for it all

This is the trip we promised ourselves when we retired but things just got in the way .

Then we had a chance to follow Vicky who went downunder in June 2011 with Gianni and it just grew from there. At first it was meant to be South Africa, Australia,New Zealand and returning via South America but that was getting out of hand and things got in the way again!!

So after resetting the budget an alternative was sought and this is it, most of the trip well 66% of it is now planned and booked just some fine tuning here and there and a big bit in North Island of New Zealand to come up with at the end of our stay there.

We booked our flights with Qantas in September before we left for Lanzarote where most of the planning for the stay was carried out.The wonder of t'internet as some might say.

We changed  totally our original plan and are now going to visit SE Asia before Australia and New Zealand returning home via Los Angeles.

Travelling before the middle of December helped to reduce the flight costs which peak from around the 16th onwards until the middle of January, this has meant that we could spend more time in SE Asia an area we have never ventured to....in fact until we get to America it's all new!

Sadly we will miss out on Christmas this year with family and friends but we hope that by keeping in touch this way it will make it easier for us to let you know what we're upto, as we turn back the clock and head off as the young'uns do. (only with a bit more comfort....we hope).

During our planning we've had a variety of hurdles...flooding in Bangkok really looked to be a major concern and when they started to put a bounty on the capture of crocodiles it seemed at bit too far to go to get a cheap handbag.Then Qantas had industrial problems which hopefully will not cause us too many issues as we make our way round the world.Trains in Thailand which seem to be fully booked as soon as they become available but hey who said this was going to be a walk in the sun.