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Nic writes…
When I was younger, my parents took me to Florida on a couple of occasions to visit Disney World. They were amazing holidays, and I loved Disney so much I have wanted to go back ever since (particularly as I was too scared to go on the 'big' rides when I was younger, and we didn't visit the Universal parks). Unfortunately, I have never been able to convince anyone to go with me (and I've tried very hard). So, when we planned this trip, I told Rich that I would be spending my last two weeks in Florida and that he was welcome to join me. Thankfully, he didn't take too much convincing as he knew how much I wanted to go, and he doesn't mind theme parks. To make it even better, my sister and her boyfriend decided to join us (although they decided that going to Disney was a step too far).
Our long journey from Fiji was actually ok, and we were surprised how 'with it' we felt when we arrived in Miami. After picking up our hire car (this one named 'Piwi'), our first stop was Naples. Here we met up with Beck and Andy, took a trip on one of the airboats on the everglades (something my family didn't do on our previous trips to Florida) and went gator spotting. We then travelled up to Orlando to commence our theme park visits, whilst Beck and Andy travelled south to the Keys.
Disney was awesome, and I really enjoyed visiting again, but it has changed in the last 15 years. Although we were there in a quieter period, it was still pretty busy. Probably due to the sheer volume of visitors, everything has become a lot more controlled in the last 15 years and you need to be very organised with 'fast passes' or you spend a lot of times in queues. Thankfully for us, I am very organised (!), but even then we needed to get to the parks 45minutes before they opened each morning just to avoid the big queues. This meant the days were very long and pretty tiring. It was still as magical as I remember, but I wonder how the parks will look in another 15 years.
Universal on the other hand was great and not that busy, and the rides were much more cutting-edge. One of the Harry Potter rides was so clever that we had no idea how it worked and had to google it when we got back to our hotel!
We also met up with Beck and Andy again in Orlando, where we enjoyed some retail therapy, mini golf and just generally being tourists!
This brings us to the end of our trip. I cannot believe how quickly the nine months have flown by and how much we fitted in. We were concerned to start with that we were attempting to cover a lot, but looking back, if we had to plan the trip again, we wouldn't make any significant changes.
Our favourite place was Africa. I think the adventure in the 4x4 enhanced the experience, but the countries we visited were just so interesting. Already we are looking into our next trip out there (and watching a Top Gear Africa special today has not helped). We loved many other places we visited including the Philippines, Nepal and Fiji; but Africa, for us, has an atmosphere that couldn't be recreated anywhere else.
Our least favourite place was probably Cambodia, and only because we visited very touristy places and felt bombarded by the selling techniques. I think Australia and New Zealand probably feature quite low on the list too, but because there was very little adventure involved. They are lovely countries with lovely people, but they are very like the UK and to some extent, it was like being at home.
Thank you for reading our incredibly self-indulgent blog. We hope it was interesting and maybe provided you with a few ideas for future holidays. If not, it will be a great reminder for us of what we got up to!
Outtakes
To finish the blog, we thought we would include the outtakes (although there are surprisingly few).
There are only two 'negative' stories we have omitted from the blog that are noteworthy. Now we are safely home, we can write them up without anyone worrying!
- On our first full day with the 4x4 in Botswana, we woke up before sunrise as we had a long day of driving ahead. We drove out of the campsite just as it was beginning to get light and got onto the main road, just outside of town. As we were driving into town, a car was coming in the opposite direction with full beam headlights on, meaning we couldn't see that well. As the car turned off full beam, we could see an elephant crossing the road in front of us, only a few metres away. Rich braked in time and we were absolutely fine, but it was a bit of a shock!
- On our first day in Cape Town, we walked to the waterfront, taking a route recommend by our hostel. Whilst walking along a busy road, a man in front of us stopped, turned round and asked us to make a donation to him. He said he was not going to beg, but we should take note of the steak knife he had in his hand. The knife wasn't going to do any serious damage, but we thought we shouldn't mess with him. Rich then proceeded to haggle with the man over what was considered to be a reasonable donation. Of course the highest value note was the only one suitable, but as Rich carries small change in his pocket, we only lost about £6. The worst thing about the whole incident was, as the man walked off, I noticed a police car stopped in traffic on the road. Rich went over and explained that there was a man with a knife threatening tourists, but the policeman told us that we should just keep walking the way we were heading and we would be fine. End of matter. With about 5 murders per day reported on local radio, I guess the Cape Town police have more pressing concerns!
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