So, for all those who have been interested in just how much it costs to do this sort of crazy year-long jaunt on a motorbike, here goes…

Shipping the bike to and from the Americas with Motofreight came to a grand total of £1445 (out) and £1942.69 (back) which had a surprise £290 fee at the Heathrow end when we collected the beast.

Flights from London to Anchorage: £ 799.53
Flights from Buenos Aires back to London: £818.97

Shipping the bike and us from Panama to Colombia to avoid Darién Gap shenanigans on the awesomeStahlratte: £1360

Costs on our credit cards, used in ATMs and shops for all our day to day living expenses, bike repairs, intensive Spanish courses and the like, including all the crazy extra interest charges, thanks Santander and your "Zero" card, we are not impressed, plus all the dull pre-leaving stuff like travel vaccinations and post re-direction came to an eye watering £ 20,180.

This total does include our crazy extra once-in-a-lifetime side trip to the Galápagos Islands, which cost us rather more than we should've spent (roughly £3350 including flights, island park fees and the cruise on the Solitario Jorge)

Grand total including all flights: £26,546, or £13,273 each. Holy Smokes!

And the real cost for the experience? Priceless!

And now for the stats:
Miles: We started at 50,151 miles in Anchorage, and finished at 85,434 in Buenos Aires, so a grand total of 35,283 miles (or in new money 56,782 km)

Bike drops: 18, mostly doing about 2 miles an hour in squirly gravel.
Flats: Front tyre 1; rear tyre 4

Tyres:

Rear tyres: our first change came at Las Vegas with the awesome mechanic Tony Berluti to a Michelin Anakee 3, which ended up doing us for over 13600 miles.
At Cuzco we replaced it for a Metzler Tourance, until we had a bulge-out on the Paso de Jama, so a new rear was sourced rather hurriedly in Calama, Chile to a ContiEscape (shame, as the Metzler had only done 6000 miles!)
The front tyre we first changed in Nelson, Canada for a ContiEscape, which lasted us to Cuenca, Ecuador to yet another ContiEscape, this one doing over 17,500 miles, which lasted us back to the UK on 11,000 miles. Yay to Continental!

If anyone wants our full packing list, just let us know.

"Hombres" poos: James 0; Imogen 3
Live volcanos peered into: 1
Penguins swum with: 1
Swimming with Hammerhead sharks: 1
Turtles and sea-lions played with: several!
Scorpions in tent: 2 (and that's 2 too many)
Campsite kitties cuddled: too many to remember

We crossed four of the five circles of latitude, starting with the Arctic Circle, then the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator and finally crossing the Tropic of Capricorn in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, due to our crazy up and down route we were doing. We also crossed the Equator 4 times whilst on the Galápagos and on the Ecuador mainland.

Some of our highest passes included the Abra Malagain Peru (14,160 feet, or 4,316 meters) and the Paso de Jama, crossing the border from Chile to Argentina, at 4,800 metres or so, with an average elevation over 3,000 metres (nearly 10,000 feet) along the altiplano, breath-taking indeed.

We were away for a grand total of 365 days (!) spending 179 nights camping, with 85 of those wild camping and the rest in more official sites, ranging from a ritzy RV park in El Centro just north of the Mexican border with a most welcome Jacuzzi, to Thompson's Eagle's Claw biking campsitein Tok, Alaska, which had no showers but a steam bath and a huge campfire, to a majority of the campsites having just a drop toilet and a water pipe.

We spent 167 nights in hostels, apart from a fabulous 2-roomed love hotel in Mexicali, and a dirty and dingy love hotel on the Nicaraguan/Costa Rican border, we mostly stayed in simple bed-in-a-room places with a shared bathroom. If we were lucky, some had breakfast thrown in - we made sure we stocked up on eggs and toast, with Imogen trying to drink her body weight in coffee, although one of the last places we stayed in offered us a dry bread cracker for our "breakfast". Sad times!

Six nights were spent on boats: the rightly famous Stahlratteand four nights on the Solitario Jorge, as we spanked what remained of our budget on a 2-week side trip to the Galapagos Islands.

One night was spent on the plane coming home (yes, it counts!) and we sponged twelve nights in people's homes/gardens, from the wonderful four nights we spent in Barranco, Lima, courtesy of academics David and Claire, and four nights in Panama with family friends Annie and Bob, where we drank many welcome gins and washed every item of our filthy gear. Our hugest heartfelt thanks to everyone who made us welcome, fed and watered us, some of whom are still pals on Facebook - we're looking at you Belmont family ;-)

Countries visited over the year:
Alaska (well, they believe it's a separate country!); Canada; Lower 48; Mexico; Guatemala; Honduras; Nicaragua; Costa Rica; Panama, incl. San Blas Islands; Colombia; Ecuador (incl. Galápagos); Perú; Bolivia; Argentina; Chile; Paraguay; Brazil and Uruguay.

The longest we spent in any country was Ecuador at fifty-nine days, which includes our time on the Galápagos Islands, and the shortest time spent in any country was in the largest country on the continent, Brazil, at one day!

People always ask us our favourite place, well, it's just too numerous to mention, but the fact that we spent 59 days in one of the smallest countries speaks volumes. We also loved Colombia and Alaska - we'd certainly go back there, and also to the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, which we didn't quite manage to get to. Least favourite place was Perú, apart from having our things stolen there, the general vibe and the people were the least friendly, but yes, the scenery and archaeology were fabulous.

A lot of people have asked how we're getting on with being back in Blighty, especially with going back to work after such a big break. Our home coming was eased somewhat by spending our last week in Buenos Aires in a small apartment with some home comforts like a nice bathroom and even a little kitchen, but it's still been a big shock to the system to go from carrying all our possessions on our bike to unpacking and filling our house again. Time will tell if we can just slot back into our old lives and be content with 'normal' life again. An English sunset is just as beautiful as anywhere else in the world, and our gentle rolling hills may not be as dramatic as the Andes but for now at least, it's home sweet home.