Home at Last

Ah, Manila to Vancouver is a long haul. We were up at 5 am to get to the airport where after check in we spent three hours waiting for our flight. It always seems silly to check in so early, but then we look at the line up behind us and are thankful. I'm a very impatient liner-upper so Geordie has to suffer my complaints as we stand waiting and waiting. Our flight to Narita Airport in Tokyo took another four hours, but it arrived early so we had even more than our alloted four hours of waiting time there. When we arrived we had to transfer to the terminal which took another interminable line to snake slowly through a new security check.

Finally we got to take off at 6 pm Tokyo time (7 Manila time) and a matter of 8 1/2 hours flying to Vancouver. It was a long night of little sleep, since there was turbulence and the staff couldn't clear the traytables which meant that they had to keep the lights on an extra hour. I amused myself by watching Where the Wild Things Are, while Geordie played Solitaire or read his book - which he finished and left on the plane. We breezed through customs and immigration - it's so nice when there are so few people there - we were first in our line-up - which is a first in itself. Outside we headed to the new Canada Line terminal and got a cheap ride into the West End - well, Yaletown anyway, and then a bus down the street from which we hopped off to have a late and much tastier breakfast at The Dish (instead of the pretty awful food of Japan Airlines). John whom we saw in Manila just over a week ago was working, so we had a lovely reunion with him and the rest of the great staff there - and I got a wonderful warming bowl of oatmeal - it was after all only 5 degrees and we were wearing only t-shirts and a long sleeve shirt on top of that - no, we don't travel with jackets, although I did suggest to Geordie that it was a perfect time to buy a nice warm fleecy hoodie at the Olympic shop right there in the arrivals hall. He didn't go for it.

After our breakfast we walked, yes, walked, down Davie Street and home, shouldering our backpacks - which were lighter on the return journey than on the first leg - 6.5 kilos for G and 7 for me.

At home it was a little like Christmas, because we found gifts from our house guests to open and then a stack of Christmas cards and letters to read. And the tree outside which is always lit for Christmas is still beautifully bright with coloured lights. Looks like they've decided to extend the lighting through the Olympics. Speaking of which, we also found out today that the official Olympic Torch Relay will pass directly in front of our building - we won't even have to go outside to watch - well, we will go outside, but still...

And then we went to the library - we had books we'd reserved ready for pickup, I had a package at the post-office (origami stuff), and Geordie did a little shopping while I walked up the hill to Melriches to have a nice knitting session - my first since we left on November 6. Although come to think of it, it was more of an un-knitting session since I discovered an error six rows back after I'd knit two rows and I couldn't just leave it alone so had fun ripping back the stitches and picking them all up again. Really, I do like knitting!

We have a busy weekend planned. We should be zombies by the end of it. We are going out for a special Steak dinner at our favourite place, the Hamilton Street Grill (Steak frites for $20.10), then on Friday we will have lunch with friends James and Terry, then dinner with Marje who is arriving from Calgary along with our friends Steve and Karen. On Saturday we're having lunch with Kimm from Calgary too, and Saturday night is the house warming party for Holli, Geordie's daughter, as well as a celebration of our son-in-law's big 4-0!

I'm feeling exhausted already but then again maybe it's the fact that by the time we get to bed we will have been on the go for about 35 hours total. We'll be popping the melatonin, I assure you.

The way home

We are on the last day of our two months sojourn in Central America. Today Geordie made me walk a couple of kilometers to the old fort where we explored a little (admission free!), then we walked back through the local market, very busy with folk doing their shopping. Somehow the sight of fresh meat lying on a wooden counter in the full air often makes me think being a vegetarian just might be the better way, but tonight I think I´ll still have the Alabama style ribs for dinner. (Sorry James).

After our hot and dusty walk we got back to the park and hired a coach and two for another tour of the city, taking in many of the sites we´d seen already, but in the luxury of our own carriage with a coachman and two lovely hard working horses to do all the heavy work for us. The coachman acted as tour guide too, telling us about the important sites in Spanish as we travelled the streets.It was nice to be a tourist and to have other tourists taking photos of us as we drove by.

This has been a wonderful trip for us, We have enjoyed all the places we have seen, there have been no disasters, although we have had a couple of colds which have put us under the weather for a time. I also had a long lasting cough which I didn´t talk about. It got tiring. Geordie and I laughed (ruefully?) when we saw the sign on some building that said,"if you have had a cough for more than 15 days, you may have tuberculosis." Oh, I don´t think so. But yesterday at the market in Masaya I had a coughing fit that lasted for about 20 mintues. It was a little weird.

We did a tour of Masaya, the craft town near here yesterday all on our own. We walked down to the bus area and found one going to Masaya so hopped on and paid our 20 córdobas each for the pleasure of sitting on relatively comfortable seats. But we were dropped off on the highway, and pointed to the centre of town. It was a hot dusty walk, and part way there we took a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the lagoon side so we could see the volcano across the water. Then we walked back into town, wandered the large old stone fort that has been turned into the craft market (didn´t buy anything), then found the bus station (another long dusty walk to another big dusty field) where the bus was as usual waiting for us. This was not such a comfortable bus, an old Canadian school bus with very worn seats with stuffing hanging out, and thank heaven the windows open in these buses so that at least when we were moving there was a breeze to cool us down. This was a more local bus so stopped to pick up and drop off passengers where ever they wished. It dropped us in the bus area and we walked back to our hotel and had a nice soak in the pool later in the afternoon.

So tomorrow we go home. We have only six weeks then to prepare our bodies for the Camino because once again we are setting off to walk, in May and June. Some of you will be disturbed to know that we are planning to walk separately, I´m sure. But I have wanted to walk the Camino by myself and Geordie must go at the same time so he is considering continuing the walk he did on the Via de la Plata by himself a couple of years ago. We will also take the opportunity to visit with Bertrand and Giorgio in Torremolinos again too. How wonderful to have friends in far places.

We have certainly enjoyed our travels in Central America and I think we have been pleasantly surprised by Nicaragua. It seems the country has come out of it´s bloody war with a positive outlook on the future and less of a militaristic view than El Salvador. It compares in that way with Guatemala, although we have seen fewer guns here than we saw in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. We must remind ourselves though that most, if not all, of the guns we saw were for our protection, or the protection of those who re involved in money collection in some way or other, so it is in fact a safety feature.

You´ll be hearing from us after we get home. I will be looking forward to telling you about my plans for the camino, and sharing that journey with you too.

Thank you all so much for sharing our journey with us again. It has certainly been our pleasure and thank you for your encouragement of our messages as we travelled. It is so wonderful to be able to make these connections.

India Here We Come!

On Tuesday, November 13, 2008 we will be making our long-awaited trip to India. It's a dream come true, although every now and again, like almost constantly, we think maybe it will be a nightmare. No, it won't! India is a place where all the rules may be thrown out the window. We are expecting everything to be hard to do, everything to be confusing, distracting, awe-inspiring, exhausting, wearing, exhilarating, just the perfect Nigel and Geordie trip.

We remind ourselves that we will not be the first to do this. We have been proceeded by thousands, nay, millions before us. Hey, didn't Marco Polo stop off here on his way to China? Oh, probably. There won't be a single new discovery we will make for the world. (As if!)

So this is how it will go... We will leave on Tuesday evening, our bags packed, the little plastic bag with our liquids as deemed appropriate by British Airways, maybe my knitting with the needles already holding the start of a sock to show I'm legitimate, and our passports holding our Visa to India. Now how exciting is that. We spent a morning one day and an afternoon the next sitting in the office of the Consul General of India to first deliver our application and then to pick it up - it was so exciting to hear the man at the counter as he passed us back our passports, visas safely glued in, say, Have a nice vacation. Thank you, we will.

We fly to London first, then after a short stay of four hours or so, we will be off to Delhi on our second overnight flight. We get in at some ungodly hour, but we will be met at the airport by someone from the hotel we have booked, and we will feel safe and sound as we are taken through the presumed maelstrom of traffic to our place of refuge.

We begin with a tour using Imaginative Traveller. Our tour is called Desert, Forts and Palaces.

A tour you say, Nigel and Geordie are doing a tour! What is happening in the world? Well, maybe we're getting smart in our old age. We have decided that to save our sanity, we will let someone else worry about us for the first three weeks and once we are weaned we can strike out on our own. Geordie has been very busy, doing the striking out. After a few false starts he finally managed to book us train reservations on India Railways (they move over a million people a day, so I imagine they can get us to Varanasi), and hotels in Varanasi, Bodhgaya (where the Buddha gained enlightenment and taught his first disciples, and on to Kolkata (you may know it as Calcutta, ma'am).

And he's even booked us a flight from Kolkata to Chennai (the city formerly known as Madras - anyone for some cheap cloth?) So we are well and truly on our way.

It's exciting for us. We are fretting over what to pack, other than that bag of liquids, do we need a warm coverup on the camel tour into the Thar Desert at night? Can we haggle for some cheap sweater we don't mind throwing away when we reach the beaches of the east coast? Oh dear oh, my, Lions and tigers and bears oh my!

There is so much we are expecting from this trip. We will come back enlightened, if not about life then with our weight. We are calling this our spa vacation, we expect to lose weight when we experience our bouts of Delhi Belly, and we will come back waif like and probably ravenous, after attempting to feed ourselves using only our right hand, our left tied behind us to prevent us from making the worst faux pas imaginable in India, eating with the wrong hand.

Can you tell I'm excited? Of course you can. What gave it away?

We think that this is going to be the way we communicate with you and the rest of the world from now on - Blog on! We'll keep you posted as we post our newsy notes and your mailbox will be clogged with nothing but gentle reminders that we have said something new and earthshattering and you must quickly check us out to see the latest news of Nigel and Geordie on Their Trip to India.