10 June 2010

Our last day in Honolulu was a delightful one with time spent at the beach watching children and adults learning to surf, puppies being trained to balance on surfboards, and catamarans and other boats sailing around the bay.We even ventured into the warm turquoise water despite the fear of jellyfish - it was near impossible to be at Waikiki and not have a swim………….we managed to enjoy a swim without any bodily injury!It was amazing watching a young man train his black Labrador puppy to balance on a surfboard in the sea water and surf into the shore - such a cool dog!!

So as our big journey is coming to an end, we'd like to thank a few people, without whom, we could never have had such an amazing adventure.

Firstly we want to thank Karina and Tom who babysat our cats, Nelson and Suu Kyi and looked after our home in Glenlyon.Hopefully Karina and Tom will recover from the experience soon!!

Our thanks also to Dad/Ron and Terry for looking after Shan, our dog, for this period of time; we are sure Shan will not want to come home after he has had the royal treatment and care with them!!

Big thanks to Theresa for taking her ute into Daylesford each day to collect our mail - apparently she has set aside a room in her home to fit it all in!! A huger thank you to Theresa from Rachel as Theresa did the hard yards and presented some of their joint research work at two conferences while we have been away.

Thanks to Mark Dudek (a legendary travel agent) for getting us around the world again, on a complex itinerary, and without a hitch!

A big thank you to the University of Melbourne and the School of Land and Environment for awarding Lynda the U21 scholarship. Special thanks to Lisa Rodier for inspiring Lynda to apply for this scholarship.

We also wish to thank our friends who shared their homes with us while we were vagabonding our way around: Juli, Colin, Jade, Sue and Dan

Finally, we want to thank our wonderful family and friends who blogged, emailed, texted, skyped and rang us while we were in exotic and different parts of the world - technology has certainly changed the travel experience from when we travelled around the world twenty years ago…..we did send postcards from Cuba, Paris and Canada - not sure if any of these arrived….please let us know if you got one!

Signing off for now: xie xie ni, merci beaucoup, muchos gracias, mahalo and thank you

Lynda and Rachel