Well now that we're back home (and mostly settled) I finally have some time to write up a trip report about the second half of our trip. It's kinda long but it's the last one :-) Last I wrote we were in Bali (and it was the beginning of November). We spent 6 days in Bali which isn't nearly enough time to see the island. Instead of trying to cram too much in we chose to stay put in the town of Ubud which is inland (i.e. no beach access). The town originally began life as an artist colony of sorts but these days it seems primarily focused on tourism (and well-heeled tourists at that). The upscale aspect of it is unavoidable in the main town of Ubud but it doesn't take much effort to escape it and explore the nooks and crannies of the Balinese countryside. Although Bali is part of Indonesia (a Muslim country), Bali is strongly Hindu. The Hinduism practised in Bali is more primitive than the Hindu practiced in India or Nepal. That is, it's more "animistic" and the worship of animals still exists. Balinese Hinduism is also an integral part of their culture and everyday life. People make offerings, pray and perform rituals for their gods on a daily basis. It's not something they do for tourists either, it's a serious devotion. We would often see (and trip over) the daily offerings left in front of shops on the sidewalks. We bumped into a temple ceremony our first evening there and it was clear that this wasn't something that they were doing for tourists since we were the only western people in sight. On Bali you can't separate the religion from the culture -- they're so intertwined that there is no distinction. Thanks to Linda Ackerman we got in touch with Gantas, a local wood-carver, dancer and gamelan musician. He lives nearby Ubud and graciously took us around and explained the things we were seeing. If there's one word you'd use to describe their music, their art, religion and food it would be "intricate" so Maria and I greatly appreciated the assistance. Any small thing you see often has some cultural significance. Gantas patiently explained each of them to us -- from the position of a dancer's hands to the position and form of a carved god to the alignment of houses, and so on. This complexity seems to pervade all things Balinese. Gantas took us to see a cock-fight, a temple ceremony (where he performed with the gamelan band he plays in), and a gamelan factory. The cock-fight was the genuine article -- two agressive male chickens battling it out to the death. What happens to the loser of the event isn't always quick and painless and I doubt the SPCA would be too happy about it. Of course cock-fights aren't legal -- except during temple festivals. Fortunately for the Balinese (who love cock-fights) there's a temple festival nearly every day of the year. The temple ceremony Gantas took us to required donning full Balinese regalia for both Maria and I. That means that we've got some funny looking photos of me in a sarong and head-wrap. The ceremony itself involved lots of gamelan music (a chime with either 4 or 5 tones), lots of offerings and some mysterious chanting/praying by a priest clad all in white. I got obsessed with the gamelan instrument and Gantas took us to a gamelan factory. Here they build the entire instrument from forging the metal for the chimes all the way through to carving and painting the stands the chimes are mounted on. Young and old guys work on all the parts in a family compound. It's a "factory" but not a sweatshop. More like a craftsman's guild. Food is another aspect of Balinese culture that we enjoyed a great deal. First off it's astoundingly inexpensive to eat in Bali. Even trying our hardest we had a difficult time paying more than $20 for dinner for two people. And it was possible to pay $10 and still eat well (and in some cases better than the more expensive places). Places like Ary's Warung and Batan's Waru make superb food that you almost feel guilty for getting so cheap. Eating in Bali is a great experience. We also took a cooking class one day and sort of helped prepare a fantastic lunch of fish wrapped in bananna leaves, a fragrant curry and several side dishes. It's too bad that most of the ingredients aren't exactly easy to come by here (kaffir lime leaves and torch ginger just don't find their way into Safeway :-). Our 6 days in Bali was far too short. It's definitely a place we want to go back to. From Bali we left Asia behind and went to Brisbane, Australia. We planned to work our way up from Brisbane to Cairns over the space of about 3 weeks. On the ground in Brisbane we relished being back in more familiar surroundings. Even just walking out of the baggage claim area we could feel that this was more like America than any place we'd been to so far (including England/Ireland/Scotland). It was also nice to not have touts trying to get your attention at every step. Up till now we'd had amazing luck with the weather -- we'd not had any significant amount of rain anywhere. Unfortunately our weather luck began to turn sour shortly after we arrived in Brisbane. We rented a car and began to drive up to the town of Airlie Beach. At the same time a storm was doing the same thing. This provided us with two things: the ability to create rain and to predict what every motel owner would say when we arrived. All we had to do was put on our hiking boots and it would start to rain and in each town all the motel owners would say the same thing: "this is the first rain we've had in 8 months". It became comical. The wet weather wasn't great but the presence of leeches definitely put a damper on our enthusiasm for hiking. Still we made an effort to get out and see/hear things. However Maria was a leech magnet and after plucking 5 of them off of her in the space of 15 minutes we decided maybe it would be best to lay off the day hikes. To be fair I wasn't exactly thrilled either when one of them attached itself to my cheek. Yuck. One thing we noticed a lot is that the woods are filled with the sounds of a wide variety of tropical birds. It must be the heat that does it, but tropical birds don't sound _anything_ like birds in the temperate climates of the northern hemisphere. We heard such a wide variety of strange calls that it felt like we were on another planet. Further up the coast we stopped near the town of Bundaberg (also famous for Bundaberg Ginger Beer, mmmm). From November until January sea turtles come ashore to nest an Mon Repos beach near Bundaberg. There's a nature center there and you can go out with the rangers at night to watch the turtles nest. Even though it was pissing down rain one evening, we stayed outside for 2 hours watching a female loggerhead turtle deposit about 120 eggs into a sandy pit she'd dug. It's quite something to see -- just like the Discovery channel except in real life. Fortunately for the progeny of this loggerhead we also helped move the eggs higher up the beach so that they won't be destroyed by the salt water if the tide should come in a bit higher. Unfortunately for me I can't tell you what a loggerhead turtle omelette tastes like :-) We finished the drive up to Airlie Beach a few days later. In Airlie Beach we booked passage on the "Romance", a dive-sail boat that would take us out amongst the Whitsunday Islands and then further out to the Great Barrier Reef. The brochures for this trip were quite slick as was one of the dive masters who managed to, ahem, "romance" one of the Swedish girls on the boat. Unfortunately the boat and the aforementioned dive masters were the slickest things on the trip. Calling our quarters cramped and the food uninspired would be too generous. Fortunately the crew were friendly and the diving at the Great Barrier Reef was great. We even saw a white-tip reef shark and I managed to snap a photo of him as he swam by. Next time though I'd definitely look at the boat before selecting a cruise. Next up we spent 4 days hiking Hinchinbrook Island. It's a huge island with a 3,000 foot mountain that overlooks a large mangrove swamp (and amazingly there are no leeches). It's all rainforest and isolated beaches and the trail winds along the west coast of the island, dipping down to the coast and back inland. They only allow 20 or so people on the island at a time but you can only camp in fixed places so you tend to have the same companions each day as you hike along. The weather didn't cooperate much though and we had quite a bit of rain. We got a bit of a reprieve from the weather as we reached some waterfalls and swimming holes on the third day. That made up for a lot. Still, I think it's far better to visit the island during the June-Aug timeframe when it's not so hot or wet. Following Hinchinbrook we took the bus up to Cairns (pronounced "cans" by the Australians). Cairns isn't much to speak of as a town but it is _the_ jumping off spot for diving trips on the Great Barrier Reef. We booked a 3-day trip on Reef Encounter. Reef Encounter is a monster sized boat that stays out on the reef for 3-4 months at a time. It's almost like a floating hotel for scuba divers and snorkelers. Another boat shuttles you out and from there you begin diving. After one or two dives at one site they move on to the next site while you're eating lunch or relaxing on deck. Everything is taken care of for you -- the most difficult thing you have to do is suit up in a wet suit and slip on your scuba gear. The diving on this part of the Great Barrier Reef (Hastings, Norman, and Saxon reefs) was fantastic. Sunrise and early morning dives were typically the best. We saw lionfish, a shark, and all the other usual tropical fish. We also did two night dives. We'd done a night dive before but it wasn't that great. Here our experience was completely different. We took our time and saw lobsters, shrimp and loads of other night-time creatures. Shutting off your light and waving your hands produced a nice display of green "sparks" (bio-luminescence). It's a little weird to be just the two of us underwater at night but it's definitely a good experience (now only if I didn't get cold after 30 minutes). We were having a great time until on our last day just before the second dive. While rushing up to go put on her wet suit, Maria slipped on some stairs. She tried to arrest her fall but her hand slipped on the railing and so all her weight came down on her shin which impacted the gnurled metal stairs. It made quite a gash -- which she didn't notice until I asked her to stop and sit down as there was a steady flow of blood spilling out of her shin and down the stairs. We were both a bit shaken up at first but after it was bandaged up she looked like she'd live. Back in Cairns (8 hours later) the doctor said that it should probably have been stitched up but it looked as though it would be fine as it was. We left Cairns the next day and flew down to Sydney. We both fell in love with Sydney almost immediately. It's a gorgeous city. It's clean, safe and well organized. Near the city center there are hundreds of things to do: exploring the botanical gardens, shopping, walking along the waterfront, musuems, poking around china town, etc. Perfect spring weather (just a little brisk, puffy white clouds and blue sky) made for a great backdrop to our explorations. Sydney isn't just the city center though, small towns line the whole harbor. Maria and I went to Manly Beach, famous for the beach and for fish & chips. We both highly recommend trying Barramundie. It's a super tasty native Australian native fish. The Manly district is quite posh too with quite a few architected homes that don't come cheap. We also went to Bondi Beach which surprised us as being a lot smaller than we'd imagined. The beaches in both places are loaded with people out enjoying the sun & surf and it's nice to just hang out and people-watch. We also spent a day up in the Blue Mountains in the vicinity of the Three Sisters. We went mountain biking and explored some of the ridges running out above the rainforest below (in Australia it seems that everything is a "rainforest" even if it's not wet). It's quite something to sit on a cliff a few hundred feet above a carpet of forest and listen to the bird calls and watch white cockatiels wheeling about in the sky below your feet. Another item of note was that we went to see the Shackleton Imax film in downtown Sydney. Now normally this isn't something I'd bother to write about but this Shackleton film is outstanding. Not only does it have lots of still-photos from the journey but there's also film footage that was shot as well as quite a few re-created scenes shot on location in the Antarctic. Shackleton's story is one of extreme hardship and courage and they do an excellent job retelling it. I highly recommend seeing this Imax film if you get the chance. Australia is a huge country and we only scratched the surface of it. There's no way you can see it all in one trip unless you have months of time. All we did was see Brisbane, part of the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney in 3.5 weeks and it still felt rushed. We left Sydney for Auckland on December 3rd. We didn't even bother going into the city of Auckland when we arrived. Although we liked Sydney (perhaps even more than the SF bay area) we were city-ed out. We wanted forests and nature. We drove our rental car down to the Taupo area and checked into a motel by a lake with a kitchen (so we could cook) and a spa-bath (mini whirlpool/hot-tub). For some reason it felt so good to be back in a temperate climate with normal looking trees and plants (and no leeches). In Taupo there is lots of geothermal activity which means there are lots of hot springs and thermal baths. We indulged in one river but found the river nearly scalding (even though the previous day we saw a whole family sitting in the water for quite some time). There's some Yellowstone-like sulphur pools and geysers not far from Taupo and we spent one morning shooting off a whole roll of film, none of which came out all that well unfortunately. They advertise a geyser in the area and it erupts each day at exactly 10:15am. I found it a bit surprising that it was so regular. What they do though is "induce" the eruption by dumping a kilogram of soap into the geyser's mouth. The soap reduces the surface tension of the water and causes it to boil more easily which in turns causes a good sized (30 feet or so) eruption. That's cheating in my book but it was kinda cool. We also visited a reconstructed Maori village and learned a bit about Maori culture. The "guide" and two "actors" were all young and given that we were the only two people there, it wasn't as cheesy as it would be if you were in a big group. They talked a lot of "former times" and "days past" and their distaste for European colonization was pretty clear. However they were a bit evasive when I brought up their massacre of the Moriori people that inhabited New Zealand prior to the Maori. Still it was great to see the weapons, musical instruments, games and medicines of the Maori. I also learned that their tattoo process wasn't so much a tattoo like we think of one but rather it was a scarification process and the dye was added to the wound to help heal it and to dye the skin. Whoa. Driving south from Taupo led us to Hawkes Bay, a major wine production area of New Zealand. We sampled quite a few wines (Te Mata and Esk Valley were the standout labels with Te Mata's 2000 Chardonnay being one of the best I've ever had). New Zealand definitely produces some fine wine and with the dollar as strong as it is, a fantastic bottle of Merlot only sets you back about $8. The wine production, climate and lay of the land make Hawkes Bay feel a lot like Napa or Sonoma (only not quite as dry). Again, spring time weather can make any place nice but I think the beauty of Hawkes Bay runs deeper than a veneer of nice weather. Oh yeah, did I mention how cheap housing is there? That definitely adds to the beauty of life. Anyway we had fun cooking, playing on a trampoline at a motel we stayed at and sampling Rush Munroe ice cream (locally produced and luscious, even at 10am when I got a double scoop). One could easily spend a month in this area. We unfortunately only had 2 days. Heading east and north to circle back up towards Auckland we passed through Gisborne and then Mt. Mannagui. In Gisborne we were treated to a fascinating display of light one afternoon. It was late afternoon and heavy rain clouds covered most of the sky but not all of it. Looking out across Poverty Bay near Gisborne we could see several ranges of backlit mountains and the sun assumed a monochromatic glow with tinges of light golden yellow. It only lasted for maybe 10 minutes but it was an eerie thing to watch the world turn shades of grey tinged with yellow and then back to normal. Fortunately this is something that our camera did manage to capture. In Mt. Mannagui we had the good luck to find a motel with a private thermal bath. The sulphurous waters make for smelly soak but it's terribly relaxing. A nice way to end a day after a lot of walking, hiking and driving. Arriving in Auckland we expected to find a gorgeous city set between the two natural harbors that lie on either side. Unfortunately Auckland is more of a mish-mash of poorly zoned neighborhoods. Next to residential buildings there's a big ugly brewery. Flanking a nice old style Queenslander or Victorian home you'll find an ugly circular high-rise. Too many things seemed incongruous and poorly planned. It's not a bad city and in the Ponsonby district where we stayed there are loads of great restaurants. However it's inexcusable to have two natural harbors and instead of parks and walkways along the waterfront they have freeways and boat docks with no pedestrian access. Some things about Auckland are nice but the layout and poor planning seemed to ruin what would have otherwise been a great place to build a city. Next we flew to Christchurch on the south island. This was definitely the part of the trip I was looking forward to. New Zealand has 3.8 million people and is about 3/4 the size of California. 80% of New Zealand's population live within 100 miles of Auckland. That means that the south island is virtually empty! We fell for Christchurch almost immediately. It's situated on the east coast of the south island, at the edge of the plains that trail off from the southern alps. It's well layed out, has an enormous botantical garden & park right next to the city center and some old gothic architecture university buildings sprinkled around near the downtown area. It's easy to walk around and it's just a pleasant place to be. We wished we had more time to spend but the weather was nice and the mountains were calling... I dragged Maria up to Aurthur's Pass where we set out for a hike. On the map it looked simple, ford a river, hike along side it for a while and then find a place to camp before traversing a pass up by a lake and then head back down the valley on the other side. The problem is that the blue lines (representing rivers) on the map don't seem to mean much to the Kiwis. When a waist deep river needs to be crossed they just plunge right in and walk across it, boots and all. Being soft Americans we would painstakingly stop, pull off our shoes, find a good place to cross, cringe as the icy waters rose up our legs, get to the other side, dry off, don our shoes and then keep going. Well if we only had to do it once it wouldn't have been so bad but well, one blue line on the map may in fact require 2 or 3 crossings to actually get all the way across. And then walking "alongside" a river may in fact mean walking in it as we also found out. This made for a miserable first day. Then on top of that after hiking for about 7 hours we encountered some people headed in the opposite direction. They were running (clad in shorts and running shoes). We chatted for a few moments before they rushed on. Apparently there are people that will run a 25 kilometer stretch of this trail in about 2.5 hours. I asked these two fellows how far they had to go and they said "oh about another 1.5 hours or so". After slogging for 7 hours to get where we were I found it a bit depressing to hear that they planned to do it about 4.5 times faster than we had. Well my pack was pretty loaded. The next day we struggled up (off-trail) by the lake and then over the pass. This was difficult and we had to pull ourselves up handhold by handhold through the thick brush until we got high enough that there was only tussock grass and then scree. At the pass we looked down into a completely empty valley and off to mountains and more mountains. Views like that make it all worth it (at least to me, Maria might have other opinions :-). We descended into the valley and camped a bit further down. We had the entire place to ourselves and the clouds held off leaving us with blue sky that faded to pink and orange as the sun set. After all the hiking that day our meal of spiced up pasta and tuna tasted so good! The next day we hiked out and finished the drive to the west coast of the south island. Here there are a string of towns down the coast that get smaller and smaller as the mountains crowd closer and closer to the coast. We spent two days in Hokitika at a nice place up on the hillside overlooking the coast. We were treated to some phenomenal sunsets, good food and a relaxing stay at Villa Polenza. The next week somehow worked out to be "adventure week". We went horseback riding along the coast & beach; caving & underground rafting; heli-hiking up on a glacier; and then another backpacking trip. Horseback riding is pretty darn fun. I thought it would be tame but when you get your horse into a full gallop it's quite a charge (although it's not terribly dangerous). The caving trip was fun although honestly it was so safe that you'd have to try to hurt yourself. The heli-hike we did by Fox Glacier was definitely a great experience. You fly up to the glacier in a helicopter, walk around on the glacier with a guide for about 2.5 hours and then a helicopter comes to take you back down. They provide hob-nail boots and in-step crampons and that makes it pretty easy to navigate the ice. At Fox Glacier the icefall moves about 5 meters per day and the lower half of the glacier only moves about 1 meter per day. This speed mismatch produces all sorts of ice caves and tunnels where the upper icefall meets the lower half. Our guide took us around, through and by all sorts of them. That coupled with the helicopter flight is definitely a great way to spend an afternoon. We wound up our "adventure" week with a backpacking trip up a valley to the base of Mt. Aspiring. This wasn't a particularly arduous hike but the views were something else! It's such a great feeling to set up camp with no one around and just huge mountains draped in glaciers all around you. The 200 foot waterfall off to the side didn't hurt either. The next day on the way out I hiked up a small valley as a side-trip and got to see the Rob Roy glacier calve off some big chunks of ice (and I got it on film, check the web site for the photos!). We spent Christmas in Te Anau at a cottage that's on a small farm. From the minute we arrived we started cooking up a storm. Over the next 5 days we made numerous loaves of of bread (3 just the first evening), desserts galore and all kinds of main dishes (including a ginger and shallot sauce for salmon that's most excellent). It seemed like all we were doing was cooking but it was loads of fun to experiment. Some things were duds but a few sauces came out great and Maria refined her bread makings skills quite a bit (mmmm, focaccia!). On Christmas day, the owners of the farm invited us over for desserts and we spent about 5 hours eating dessert and talking. Definitely a memorable way to spend Christmas afternoon! We took a day trip from Te Anau to Milford Sound. The drive is perhaps one of the most scenic I've done, ever. The mountains thrust up from the flat river valley, clouds and mist drift about the peaks, snow and ice cover the upper reaches and it's all so untouched that you feel like you're somehow observing a primeval state of the earth (despite the fact that you're _driving_ along a nice highway :-). If the drive there is good, Milford Sound itself is even better. Glassy still waters reflect the slick black rock of mountains and ribbons of water plunge off the mountains into the sound everywhere. They say that when it rains they have over 1,000 "waterfalls" in Milford Sound. We took a boat out to an underwater observatory. They've constructed a floating platform where you can walk down about 10 meters under the surface of the water. The amount of fresh water coming off the surrounding mountains creates a brackish fresh water layer that blocks off most light. This enables creatures that can normally only survive in 100 meters or more of water to be able to grow in as little as 5 or 6 meters of water. We got to see black coral (which is actually white) and red corals -- something you normally don't get to see unless you dive extremely deep (100 meters is way beyond the limit for recreational divers). And what was better was that we didn't have to get in those icy waters to do it! On the boat trip back we also got to see some Dusky dolphins playing about in the bow of the boat and off the side. A regular National Geographic moment! Unfortunately black flies and rain made us head for home earlier than either of us would have liked. Sadly our time in Te Anau was over and it was time to move on, back to Queenstown before flying to Auckland and then the Cook Islands. The reality that our trip would end soon was starting to set in. We noticed how we'd regularly talk about subjects that were taboo until now. Things like painting the house, looking for a job (Maria), and thinking about work, all began to creep back into our consciousness. Although we didn't go bungee jumping, flying down the Shotover River in a jet boat or some other high-adrenalin activity we did go up to the lookout above Queenstown where you can watch people bungee jump, take in the view and partake in a mild bit of excitement on the "luge" course. You hop in a little 4-wheel luge/cart and then head down a twisty concrete course. You could get quite hurt if you didn't make use of the handy brake they include on the cart. Fortunately both us made it through unscathed although I came close to dumping it at speed a few times. The next few days were a bit of a blur. We flew to Auckland on the 29th of December. Spent the night in a dumpy motel by the airport, flew from Auckland on the morning of the 30th to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands where we arrived mid-day on the 29th! Whoa. The dateline can throw you for a loop. We got to our beach bungalow in Rarotonga and the weather was classic south Pacific: blue skies, some clouds floating about and a gentle breeze. The turquoise waters in the lagoon out front of our place were tranquil and the surf crashed against the reef fringing the lagoon. It seemed like we'd found a perfect place to end our trip. It was all downhill from there though... soon the clouds massed against the mountains of the island, rain fell and it got hot. Each time we went to do something it seemed that the clouds would darken and the rain would start. We managed to get in some snorkeling and some walks along the beach but it wasn't looking good. The heat made sleeping uncomfortable and then on top of that I kept smacking my head at least once a night against an exposed support beam above our loft "bedroom". Ugh. There were two notable exception to our bad luck. First was finding "Fruits of Rarotonga", a smoothie stand down the road. They sold tasty fruit smoothies as well as numerous chutneys and jams (all made with locally grown fruit). Of particular merit was the starfruit chutney which we polished off in short order. The other saving event was New Year's eve which we spent watching the stars and then the full moon rise over the lagoon in the company of a bunch of locals who were talkative and interesting. After 5 days with no letup in the weather I wanted out. I'd spent more time and money at the Internet cafe than I'd care to think about and mentally I'd switched out of travel mode. Maria acquiesced to leaving early on the condition that we make a foray over to the island of Aitutaki for 3 days. Aitutaki turned out to be the saving grace of the Cook Islands! It's a small blip of an island (7.5 square miles of land), a fringing reef and a huge lagoon. The plane lands on a runway that's little more than ground up coral and the airport is just a single thatched roof structure with no walls and a bunch of people milling around. If you want remote south pacific, this is it. We'd booked a room at a place called Are Tamanu (which has only been open since April 2001). It's a fantastic place situated right on a prime snorkeling and swimming spot. Everything is new, the staff are friendly and our first evening there produced a spectacular sunset over dead calm waters in the lagoon. Wow. Aitutaki doesn't have larger mountains like Rarotonga so it doesn't catch the clouds and trap them. This made the weather much more pleasant. My mood improved considerably, especially given that I wasn't smacking my head on a wooden beam each morning when I got up. We spent the next three days enjoying every moment. The highlight of our stay was a scuba dive we did outside the reef. The dive starts in about 25 meters (80 feet) of water and you can clearly see the bottom and the reef off to your right. It felt like being suspended in the middle of a large theater. We started swimming out along part of the reef which drops off slowly. Then all of a sudden the reef just plunges away and you lose sight of it where the blue water turns to black below you. At this point it feels like you're suspended in mid-air in a stadium. To your right the coral reaches up maybe 20-25 meters above you. To your left the coral drops away for forever and the water is this intense blue that's hard to describe. If the scenery wasn't amazing enough, I was definitely blown away when Maria tugged on my fin and pointed up. Above us an eagle ray (maybe 2 meters across) flapped silently past on its way somewhere. That was a perfect moment and it's etched in my memory. The scuba dive alone made the trip to Aitutaki worth it. My only regret was that we didn't have the time to go a few more times. We left Aitutaki on the afternoon of January 8th and flew back to Rarotonga. From Rarotonga we got on a plane at 11pm that flew to Tahiti. We landed at about 1:30am, waited in the Tahitian airport for about an hour, got back on and then flew to Los Angeles where we got in around lunch time on the 9th. Another wait and a short flight and we arrived at the San Jose airport around 4pm. 24 hours of travel isn't exactly the best way to do things but we were home! Settling back into normal life and getting our lives organized into a normal routine is probably the weirdest thing about being back. We're not planning where to go or what to do next. We've both made the transition back to normal life, at least on the surface. It's going to take a little while to completely get ourselves out of travel mode though. The funniest thing about being back is when someone you haven't seen for 6 months asks you "how was the trip?". I never quite know what to say... Anyway that wraps it up for me. It was definitely worth taking the time to do this trip. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance -- it's not as expensive or as difficult as you might think.