We’re back in the wonderfully humid Brisbane.  It’s amazing that after one month of little or no humidity (Amazon excluded) that you forget about the humidity.  Hit us like a wall when we arrived home.

Our South America adventure was a great one and our heads are still spinning trying to absorb all that we did and saw over the past 5 weeks.  One of the most common thing we saw was airports!  Our travels saw us in airports 23 times (in/out of 12 different airports). 

We now have the task of sorting through approx 3000 photo’s (between digital and film from our SLR) to decide which ones qualify to go on the website.  Hope to have this all sorted by the end of the week for your viewing pleasure.

Our Spanish lessons beforehand paid off.  While we are nowhere near fluent, through nouns and verbs we were able to communicate.  We plan to continue our learning for future travels.  When we landed in Sydney after nearly 30 hours of travelling time since we left Rio, the brain turned back flips wondering what time of the day it was and how to say hello .. “hola, buenos dias/tardes/noches, allillanchu” and strangly enough “hello” came into your mind last. 

Here’s some other things we forgot to mention in our blogs:

• Brian’s bike crash - that’s right, we both managed to prang a pushie …. the day we were leaving Galapagos Islands, we borrowed the very worn out push bikes from the hotel to duck down to the post office.  As we reached an intersection at the top of the hill Brian stood up on the pedals to turn the corner and “bang”, his chain came off and he somersaulted over the front handle bars into the middle of the oncoming traffic.  It was very slow motion … you saw him tuck his shoulder under to dive roll and come up on this feet.  A dismount worthy of an 9/10.  Of course this was before the Inca Trail and we were very worried about his back when this happened (he was feeling a little tender afterwards, maybe a little pride induced) but his back came good on the trail.  Of course he was my knight in shining armor because the bike he was on was the one I had first but we swapped.  What a husband!
• The children of South America, even in the most remote places were the same as children all over the world.  Happy with what they had whether that was a soccer ball, empty coke bottle on a string or throwing broken cds (we hope they were broken) like frisbies and turning into tantrum throwing tots when necessary.  Hey, who doesn’t like a good tantrum !  Always fun to watch when the child is not with you.
• Brian being the one constantly stared at, especially in Rio!!!  ha ha ha !!!  In most of South America I think it was because of his height, for me most of the people were around the same height as me which was great. 
• The Starbucks Pilgrimage – we have recently joined the ranks of the World Tour of Starbucks challenge (thanks Ash & Annemeike) where you must take your photo outside an “on the street” Starbucks (malls & airports don’t count).  We found two on the street Starbucks in Lima on one in at the airport in Santiago.  And yes, no matter where it is in the world, inside a Starbucks all looks the same (except for the language on the menu).
• And lastly, the Corona beer index study.  Firstly, it wasn’t as widely available as many of the countries have their own (like Cusquena in Peru which tastes quite similar to Corona).  But the average price in hotels/pubs was US$2.75 and yes, they served it with lime.  Even The Ref (our travelling Rugby referee jersey wearing bear, no doubt you’ve seen his picuture) had his picture taken in Lima Peru in a shop with a six pack of Corona to record the price – $23.10 Peru Sols equal to approx US$8 !!

We’ve been asked a few times what was our favourite thing.  Hard to decide when we experienced so much but we both agree the Amazon was hard to beat.  Galapagos runs a close second (not number one due to sea sickness!) and Peru was just magical.  Seeing the Inca ruins and understanding how they were made without machinery is just mind blowing.  We managed to see all types of terrains on this trip – beach, mountains, snow, mountains, islands, ocean, mountains and jungle.  Would we go back to South America again? – in a flash.  But it’s very unlikely we’ll opt for more travels involving trekking at altitude.  We’re proud Australians and happy to live in a country with “no worries mate” about altitude sickness (our highest mountain Kosciuszko is only 2228m high).  Next big potential trek for Team Kealey …. the Kokoda trail.

A big thank you to our friends and family that helped look after our home and our babies while we were away.  A special thank you to Jan who stayed at our place for the entire time.  It was a pure joy to come home knowing that everything was cared for and even better maintained than when we’re home.  You are an angel.

So it’s Team Kealey out for our South America journey.  Back to our exciting lives and on to the next adventure!

Hasta luego Suramerica !