JAMES

Well, here we are, back in Blighty! We've been back for a week now, have had a lovely Christmas, caught up with lots of friends and family, and have even just put the last load of washing on this evening! Still got lots of things to sort out in the next week before going back to work, but at least we have got New Year before then so can do some further catching up (and drinking) before then!

I still cannot quite get used to being home, to the fact that our trip is over. We had such an amazing time, did and saw so much, visited some brilliant places, made some new friends along the way. I haven't quite worked out how many miles we travelled, but working on the number of air miles we covered, we must have travelled nearly 45,000 miles by plane alone!

We were pretty lucky along the way as well - when you consider that we took 23 flights in total, we only had one delay, and that was just 1.5 hours. Ok, so we had the flight that was diverted from Queenstown to Invercargill, but that didn't turn out so bad - it was a stunning 3 hour drive to Queenstown, and we didn't have anything planned for that evening anyway! We didn't really do too bad for illness either - Katie had a couple of weeks of feeling a bit under the weather, but nothing that stopped us doing anything. Apart from the one minor brush with the law on the very first leg in Florida, the whole trip passed pretty much incident free.

KATIE

Having been back a week, it's still very dark here in the UK and getting far too cold! Just as I was getting used to warmer weather......

Without doubt the last 3 months travelling has been the best experience of my life, and given we weren't actually away that long, it didn't fly by too quickly either. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone! We were very lucky with travel arrangements going smoothly and actually pretty lucky with the weather when it mattered - Mount Kinabalu would have been a very different experience had we gone the day before, it would have been thoroughly miserable in pouring rain and we wouldn't have seen the sunrise in the magical way that we did. Also, thank God for digital cameras, we have over 2,500 photos from our trip to remember it by, even going through them now, some of it seems such a long time ago. I just want to go back! But then it would always come to an end!

It's been great coming back for Christmas, a wonderful way to see everyone again and catch up, and infinitely better than coming home and going straight back to work.

We have had a week to reflect on the trip now, and think about what we enjoyed and what we didn't, so our best and worst bits are below...

BEST COUNTRY

New Zealand

WORST COUNTRY

Cuba

BEST HOTEL / HOSTEL

Shangri La Tanjung Aru Resort, Borneo (Hotel)

Global Village, Greymouth, NZ (Hostel)

WORST HOTEL / HOSTEL

Gecko's Rest, Mackay, Oz and City Backpackers, Singapore (both as bad as each other for having no windows, broken toilets, dirty showers and bed bugs)

BEST MEAL

Fantastic Seafood Pasta at Capers Restaurant, Airlie Beach Hotel, Airlie Beach (James)

Amazing Yellow fin tuna tartar with Wasabi mash at Pelican on South Beach, Miami (Katie)

WORST MEAL

Unspeakably bad, unrecognisable Lamb Kebab at Al-Medina restaurant in Havana. Minced "Lamb" for some reason coated in some sort of rock hard cereal product, rolled into a dog turd shape and then cooked until not one drop of moisture remained. Truly disgusting! (James)

Dreadful chicken tagine at the above 'restaurant'. I don't think it was chicken....or a tagine.... (Katie)

BEST COCKTAIL

Bloody Marys at Capers Restaurant, Airlie Beach Hotel, Airlie Beach

BEST SIGHT

Sunrise at the summit and descending from Mount Kinabalu (Katie)

Sunset over Uluru and the Olgas from the Sounds of Silence dinner (James)

WORST SIGHT

Posing pouch man on South Beach, Miami (closely followed by a strange asian man at the Tanjung Aru resort in a similar, but yellow, ensemble....)

BEST EXPERIENCE

Sea Kayaking on Milford Sound. First thing in the morning with the place to ourselves we could really appreciate the sheer size and beauty of the place. And the cold and the bad weather really, honestly did make it more atmospheric!! Uluru is a very close second though...(James)

Milford Sound generally - it truly is just stunningly beautiful and so immense it takes your breath away. It would have to be closely followed by the Mt Kinabalu sunrise but just pips it at the post! (Katie)

BEST SURPRISE

New Zealand as a whole as I didn't really have much of an expectation, despite all the rave reviews about the country. I had always dreamed of going to Australia but NZ wasn't somewhere I was really aware of much growing up. As soon as we stepped off the plane and embarked upon the drive from Invercargill to Queenstown I absolutely fell in love with the place and soon after the people. I absolutely love it! Particularly great was Picton, a tiny little town, but so friendly and the walk we did over to The Snout was absolutely beautiful with amazing views across the Marlborough Sounds. (Katie)

Probably the Marlborough Sounds. It was somewhere we only really went because we had a couple of days spare. We hadn't really thought about going there when we were planning the trip, but when we had the spare days we thought it might be quite a nice place to spend them. In reality it was just stunning, and the day spent walking along the Queen Charlotte Track was one of the best of the trip, a stunning view literally round every corner we turned. Either that or how muc I enjoyed the GAP tour in Peru. It's fair to say I was a bit unsure as to whether it would be any good, spending time with 14 strangers, but we landed up with a great group and just had a brilliant laugh!(James)

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

The Great Barrier Reef - scuba diving there just wasn't the amazing experience I had hoped for. I was surprised by the lack of visibility, colour and fish but it was still a pretty good day out! (Katie)

Havana - everyone we had spoken before going there, without fail, had said we would love Havana for its vibrant feel, friendly people and tumbledown chic, but unfortunately we just didn't feel any of that!

YAHTZEE STATISTICS

Games played - 121

Games won - Katie 64, James 57

Yahtzee's scored - Katie 44, James 44

Well, that's it for our little adventure! For anyone who managed to stick with us all the way through, well done! You can stop spending hours at a time reading through our thousands of words! But we are going to get the whole thing printed, so if you ever want to borrow the book and read it again, just say!

Or check back this time next year for our next 3 month odyssey...