New Orleans

Hey y`all...New Orleans was hot hot hot...and then some - people were so friendly and food absolutely fantastic (tried the traditional Po`boy and muffalatta - the biggest sandwiches you`ll ever see - blackened Catfish and Redfish...Jill even had crab chowder, and liked it!...and the hurricane cocktails got a thumbs up and mint julep a thumbs down... - oh and the best steak Anthony`s ever had! ..mmmm)

After walking along the banks of the Mississippi and up the world trade centre to another revolving bar for some great views, we went on trip on the only working steamboat down the Mississippi in true Mark Twain style. This really gave us a feel of the size of the river, and it`s over 200m deep in some places! A welcome breeze helped to keep us cool in the unbelievable humidity.

Took a trip around the French Quarter by day and night, looking at all the colonial architecture and listening to all the sounds coming from the bars. Saw the house where Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, and of course caught a streetcar too.

Listened to some great Jazz in the evenings in two or three different places, avoiding the cheesy Bourbon Street - bit like the street of death in San Antonio! The atmosphere was so chilled and we were in no hurry to move on...so stayed an extra day.

Spent a day out on the plantations - named so because they had over 50 slaves working on them - learning about the deep south and slavery, and seeing a couple of beautiful plantation houses - though Br`er Rabbit and Br`er Fox didn`t pop out from amongst the sugar cane!

Unfortunately the extra day we gave ourselves got rather taken up with trying to replace over 60 photos we discovered we`d lost the previous night when trying to upload and save them in an internet cafe, so hopefully we`ll add some more photos when we`ve sussed it all.
We won`t tell you about our mammoth journey via taxi, Greyhound bus, taxi, train, shuttle bus, normal bus, plane and shuttle taxi, to get to LA.

First Stop - Atlanta

Us at Gatwick for the start of our journey

Well, how y`all doin?? Atlanta seemed really nice tho` we didn`t have much time to look around ... just a walk to the Martin Luther King tomb and memorial where a homeless drunk called Jamie Lee tried to become our first friend ... then wandered through a let`s say slightly downmarket patch of town till we got to a huge high rise hotel, then zip-whoosh up 73 floors in an outside elevator (Ant freaking out!!) to a revolving bar with amazing views of the city all round. Then off to bed as up early for train to New Orleans.

Just landed in Atlanta

Train delayed for an hour coz the longest freight train in the world was in the station and not moving! Eventually got going only to find more freight trains holding up our progress, plus broken tracks to fix, plus our train hitting a (very small) tree! All in all only 2 hours late (= 12 hour trip) as we pulled into New Orleans, so straight to bed with room service din-dins. So many nice people on the way - first impressions of the deep south very good...off to the Mississippi to see the steamboats, see y`all later

The Plan

We have 12 months and no ties - here`s the plan of action...take a seat as this may take some time....
To start, we fly to America, stopping off in Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas and then LA, where we pick up a motorhome and tour through Arizona, stopping in and around the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. We then make our way through all the canyon lands in Utah, before coming back through Vegas and Death Valley as we head up to Yosemite NP. From there we take in San Fran and the Redwood forest, before making our way back down route 1 to LA.
From LA it`s over to Hawaii for a couple of weeks stopping off at Oahu and Maui islands, hopefully learning to surf on the way (though not literally `on the way`!).
It`s down to Mexico from there exploring both the east and west coasts, taking in as many Aztec and Mayan temples as possible.
Next stop is Costa Rica where we hope to take in a canopy trail through the rain forest, as well as taking some time to relax on the beautiful beaches.
To go on to Peru we need to fly back to Miami where we`ll spend a couple of days before flying into Lima. We hope to explore a lot of Peru with the possibility of an Amazon canoe trip and definitely doing the trek to Machu Picchu.
Over to Argentina for Christmas and New Year, exploring Buenos Aires and taking a trip to the Iguazu falls and bits of northern Patagonia.
Off to Brazil and Rio for a few days and then it`s on to Chile going down to Tierra del Fuego and back round the rest of Patagonia. We also hope to take an ice-breaker into and around Antarctica...money permitting!
Once we`ve had our fill of South America we fly off to the Cook Islands, staying in Rarotonga and Aitukaki, and then on to Fiji - hopefully spending around 1 month on all the islands.
From there it`s down to New Zealand where we pick up our second motorhome in order to see the beautiful scenery on both the north and south islands.
A short hop from there to Australia where we are travelling fairly quickly from Sydney, up to Byron Bay and Brisbane - then over to Alice Springs and Uluru, before ending up in Perth and taking out our final motorhome and exploring part of the west coast.
A quick stop in Hong Kong for a few days before making our way to Africa. We plan to spend some time in and around Cape Town, before heading on up to Namibia and Botswana, then on to Kenya and Tanzania for a 14 day safari through the Masai Mara and Serengeti game reserves.
Our final stop is to chill out on the Kenyan coast for a bit before returning to England some time in July 2005!