43,678 kilometers, 24 cities, 10 countries and 60 days later and we are back in Auckland. Had a good flight with Air NZ and arrived in Auckland a bit ahead of time at 0510 after a 13½ hour flight. We were not the first flight to arrive as others were arriving from London, Los Angeles, Beijing and Raratonga. It only took us 20 minutes to get through immigration and then the problems began with the baggage. We waited 40 minutes before the first bag came off th...

After saying our goodbyes to Bruce's mom and brother we set off from Penticton for Vancouver using the Crowsnest Highway (Hwy 3). In the past we have driven out on the Coquihalla Highway but thought this would be a nice change. The Crowsnest highway is not a divided highway but has lots of passing lanes and today we had a couple of long stops where some of the rock faces were being cut back to minimise rock falls onto the highway. The trip was picturesque, when...

We arrived in Penticton to reasonable weather with the forecast for higher temperatures and general improvement. We stayed with Bruce's mom (Beth) and when Neil, his brother from Calgary, arrived later in the week he stayed with Bruce’s other brother Greig, sister-in-law Lorrie and everyone’s favourite dog - Jethro. Neil managed to get holidays for a week but Lisa was unfortunately unable to join him. Rather than get into everything we did here are ...

We took our time heading for Penticton and stopped at Revelstoke for the night. Revelstoke is located in the Mt. Revelstoke National Park and has some history associated with it along with some great scenery in the Rockies. We had some heavy intermittent rain during the drive over the Rogers Pass so we did not have the most scenic of trips. Upon our arrival at Revelstoke it was heavily overcast so instead of driving up to the "Meadow in the Sky" to view the sur...

We had a really good flight from Warsaw to Calgary. We flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt and had a 2 hour connection with Air Canada to Calgary. The Air Canada flight was excellent. The plane was a new Airbus 330 and the distance between the economy seat rows was probably the largest we have ever had. The meals were also good with not too much food being offered. Picked up the rental car from National Car Rental (we had booked with Eurocar) and headed off to our frie...