In our naivety we presumed that it would be no problem getting a flight from the UK to NZ via Melbourne. How wrong could we have been. Thanks to a tri nations cricket tournament in Hong Kong and Melbourne, as well as the Melbourne tennis, there are exactly 0 seats available between now and mid March - unless you spend £8k on buisness class. I still cant believe it - so much for growing air traffic problems. The only problem I have is that there isnt enough flipping air traffic - bring on another 5 terminals at Heathrow I say.
Our brilliant neighbour (and travel agent to the stars) Kath has spent the last 36hrs trawling through every possible route, airline etc. for us and we have now booked the following:
Leave the UK on the 21 February with Cathay Pacific
Fly straight to Aukland with a brief stop-over in Hong Kong for a bit of fuel.
Thats it - no big Jennings tour of the far East, no sitting with our Aussie relatives sipping Fosters in Melbourne. But - a flight with some decent leg room, leaving when we want and not costing a similar amount to the national debt of a small developing country.
So - the dye is cast. We now have 1 week to pack up and get out of our house, then another 3 weeks to say 'bye' to Blighty, then its chocks away. About time too I hear you say!
Quick update - we finally have a completion date for moving out of 27 Roundhay Grove. The 28 January - great, that gives us just over a week then!!!
Hopefully we can get travel sorted to so that we leave on, or around, the 30 January. The revised plan is to head straight to Hong Kong and spend 5 days there before flying into Melbourne to stop with the 'relies' for a couple of weeks. From Melbourne its a short hop to Auckland and from there we plan to travel around for 4 weeks or so deciding where we would like to live - Christchurch and Nelson are top of the list at the moment but that could all change.
Better get on with some packing!!
Snow isn't all bad - I went sledging with Buster, Joe and his nipper Max. Check out the video footage - Joe's lucky not to be getting a call from 'sue your friends for free with Accident Claims R Us' today after the near miss. Loads of fun - cold feet. Click here
So - I'm a slack 'blogger'. I think this is a pattern which is going to continue so bear with me, I'll get round to posting updates eventually.
As you can see from todays date we are back from Madeira now and I must say we were sorry to leave its mild climate, friendly locals and Mr & Mrs Jennings Snr behind. Coming home to a couple of inches of snow hasn't helped!
Some of the highlights of our two weeks on the island were (in no particular order):
Seeing white whales (can't tell you how many but it looked like 5 or 6 at least heading in the same direction) and a pod of about 40 dolphins - all with my new binoculars from the shore. We saw a few of the local tourist boats all clumped together so, with my new found love for spying, I zoomed in and saw, clear as anything, whales surfacing, spouting a few times then diving back down. Every time they did this the dolphins went nuts jumping out of the water and flying around like crazy. Great to see so clearly and a result of Madeiras super deep water just off the shore.
Mum and Dad hooking us up with a penthouse apartment in the local 5 star hotel - oh yes, just my style. Check out the photos on Flickr (click here). Buster grew to love the indoor spa and jaccuzzi so much he tried to poo in them as a fairwell gift - he is so giving.
Strolling around Funchal, the capital, checking out the amazing cruise ships that seem to dock every other day (Like 'The World' and the new Queen Mary - HUGE), the great shopping and ever so cheap lattes.
We had a brilliant holiday, got our teeth all polished up and looking like new and had a wonderfully relaxing Christmas period. We loved it and are now really reved up for the next stage in our journey to the bottom of the World. With any luck we will be leaving blighty by the middle of January.
Happy new year!!!