Sadly the time has come to pack up our rucksacks for the last time. What a great 4 months we've had away from the short, cold and gloomy, days back home in Scotland. Every day has been very different from the one before and we haven't seen rain since 2nd January in Costa Rica.

Elaine's two years of planning has been a great success and my "package tour" has been better than anything that Thomas Cook has to offer. We've met a lot of like-minded ageing backpackers, many of them older, mostly Canadians, Americans, English and Germans but we've not met a single fellow Scot in all this time away from home.

We've had to get used to 6 different currencies and at least 6 very different Spanish dialects, but in each of the six countries the locals have been very honest, friendly and helpful. Even the street dogs have had impeccable manners. The only violence we saw was during breakfast at our hotel in Honduras when we witnessed a brutal attack by a woodpecker on a defenceless squirrel, who for the previous 30 minutes, had been innocently gnawing his way into a coconut. Neither were injured in the brief exchange but the squirrel was robbed of his breakfast.

The only mishap (unreported until now) was when Elaine slipped at Managua Airport resulting in a deep cut to her forehead . We were eventually allowed to board our flight after a first aid dressing was applied by an airport medic who had been called to deal with the "emergency". Six hours later after 2 short flights and another hour taxi journey from Guatemala City airport, we were in a moto-rickshaw being driven through the dark and dimly lit streets of night-time Antigua, Guatemala, looking for a hospital. That story is for another day but the happy ending was that 3 stitches were professionally inserted by a non-English speaking doctor and only a small scar is now visible to remind us of that day in late January.......

All that remains now is our three flights home; Cancun to Detroit (4 hours) Detroit to Amsterdam (8 hours) Amsterdam to Edinburgh (1 hour 30 minutes)

My package also includes a trip on the new Edinburgh tram to Haymarket, a train to Perth, a bus to Blairgowrie and a taxi to our front door around 7:30pm. There's even a Chinese takeaway meal I'm told, but I have to order that myself. A sure sign that I can now be trusted with some of the arrangements.

PS.... Planning about to commence on new adventures..watch this space