It's a new year, it's a new day and we're finally about to leave this amazing continent to explore some of South America before we go home to Australia. Having a bed to crash on at Emily and Matts place in Calgary for the last couple of weeks made it much easier to sort through our mountain of stuff and sell the car, and we were still close enough to visit a few mates in Banff! Even with the comfort of family and familiar territory, we only just got everything worked out. We haven't even started to learn Spanish yet!

Christmas was spent with Emily and Matt, as well as a few of Emily's friends from University and Abu and Amjed, their two Islamic housemates from Yemen! Aidan and Matt cooked up a beer can turkey (that's a turkey stuffed with an open can of beer and roasted to crispy, malty perfection), Jess prepared a killer beetroot salad and Emily made her signature vegetarian nut roast. And it wouldn't have been Christmas without a homemade apple pie and pavlova for dessert! With plenty of alcoholic accompaniments we had a pretty good spread, and enough food for the next week! We also made our own bon-bons, full of bad jokes and some festive dares. With a full stomach and a bit of dutch courage Emily was putting snow down her shirt, Aidan was singing Christmas carols to the neighbours and Amjed performed some sort of exotic dance to Michael Buble's 'Let it Snow'. Abu and Amjed didn't touch a drop of alcohol apart from that which had absorbed into our turkey, but loved every minute and claimed that their first Christmas was one of the best days of their lives!

We visited Banff a few times to catch up with some mates, particularly Andrea from NZ, Jen from Nova Scotia and Tom and Kristina from Ontario. It was nice considering we had pretty much said goodbye forever when we left Banff back in September. Our excuse to make the drive the first time was to take Emily and Matt snowboarding under the evening lights at Mount Norquay. For their first time they both picked it up really well and (despite a few early frustrated tears) by the end of the night they couldn't get enough of it.

The second time we drove up for New Years Eve. We started the last day of 2013 with a short hike through the snow at Marble Canyon. With a fresh layer of soft powder, this canyon was breathtakingly beautiful and the crisp air got us all giggly as we threw snowballs and slid around on our bellies. We followed up with some tubing down Mount Norquay, which was surprisingly more extreme than we anticipated. Some of the spinning tubes had been clocked at over 70km/h! The evening itself was a hazy blast. We spent most of it at Andrea's place with a bunch of Kiwis. We all got along splendidly, and the fireworks from the Bow River Bridge were a magical end to another unbelievable year for us!

With a bit of luck we managed to sell our car a few days after the New Year. An Aussie couple from Tasmania who had recently moved to Banff were interested in exploring Canada and the States in 2014, so our makeshift RV set-up was a good seller. We were a little sad to see Monty go, but satisfied that he is in good hands and will make many more trips to snow-covered hills and along US coastlines. After finalising the transaction we spoilt ourselves with one last day at Sunshine Village, our favourite mountain resort in Banff, where we got some good use of our snowboards before packing them up to send home.

Being car-less for our last few days was a bit strange after living in one for the last few months, so we compensated with a couple of rented pairs of ice skates. Together with Emily and Matt we refined this quintessential Canadian skill and by the end of a couple of good sessions we all felt pretty comfortable gliding around the ice (at least from an Aussie perspective). Emily was hands down the fastest, Matt the best at spinning, Aidan mastered the ability to look awkward and not fall over and Jess was best at skating on one leg!

Emily and Matt made us feel totally welcome at their place and their housemates didn't seem to mind either. At the end of two weeks we have finally dwindled our possessions down to a couple of backpacks and feel ready as we pass through US customs for the last time for our flight to Lima, Peru. Adios Canada, vamos South America!