My adventure over, I had one last ascent to make with my trusty backpack...

West Africa and the former Gold Coast of Ghana was to be my final destination on my voyage and was to be a voyage of discovery for Ama who was returning to the country where she was born after nearly 27 years. As the plane landed in Accra and everybody clapped, we just knew it was going to be fun! Although Ghana is considered one of the more stable countries in West Africa, it's still got an inflation rate of about 12% and the first of many power outages we e...

Thailand, the land of amazing beaches, Buddhist temples, crazy tuk tuks, great food and all the fake designer goods you'll ever need!It was nearly midnight when I stepped outside the airport in Bangkok and it seemed the air had been sucked away; it was still 30degC and the humidity was nudging 90% Driving into the centre, I was surprisingly impressed at how modern and wealthy the place seemed - in South American terms I'd been expecting a Bolivia but got ...

The South Island is known as 'the mainland' to the South Islanders, to whom the North Island equates to Auckland - and they don't like Auckland very much! There's less than a million people in the whole island and vast tracts of it wild and uninhabited. My arrival point was Christchurch, which has the moniker of 'the most English of cities' but I found that, like an English city it wasn't at its best in the wind and driving rain so after two days of waiting fo...

New Zealand - Land of the Rings, the volcanoes, the mountains, the sea, the sheep, the kiwis, the rugby, the adventure activities; I've encountered all of these in my first week here but have learned that there's much more to the country than just that. I arrived in Auckland on a cold, wet winter's morning in July and was thinking it might have been a bad time to come here, but I've since been proven wrong. Winter in the north island on a bad July day is a bit...