Baders on tour are officially BADERS BACK HOME!

So our journey is over and a new adventure begins.

We've met so many lovely people around the world: local people and people on journeys both around their own countries and abroad, many of whom we'll be keeping in touch with.  

We've been fortunate enough to experience how incredible nature is - at times harsh, fragile, adorable, deadly, vast, inspiring, awesome, frightening and beautiful.

Louis and Frankie, in particular, have been learning, not so much from a formal curriculum, but more from the experience of exploring and adapting to different places and situations along the way. They've learned things about people, about geography, about history, about language. They've been adventurous with food, both eating it, sometimes cooking it and - when it came to a fish-market in Borneo where people choose their own 'live' dinner - avoiding it. They've learned a lot about making choices and the implications of sticking to a budget (not that they've always liked the outcomes!) both our family budget, and spending their own hard-earned money. 

They've met some wonderful children in village schools in Brazil, Ecuador and Fiji and learned about what it's like for those children and their families to grow up in these places.  They've realised that children can be happy, friendly, welcoming and prepared to share, regardless of their background.  

They've picked up a whole bunch of mementos along the way, from Louis' not-so-portable sand board, a nevertheless very thoughtful gift from his instructor in Uruguay, to a boomerang from Oz, wood carvings and pottery that the boys made in Nepal and blowpipes in Borneo.

As a family, we have an abundance of memories of shared experiences that hopefully our photos, videos, journals and our blog will help us remember more vividly.

Our trip has been everything we wanted it to be, and more.  And finally, after approximately:

• 67,000 kilometres by air
• 25,000 kilometres over land and sea, (by bus, car, train, pick-up, lorry, motorbike, horse, bicycle, rickshaw, zip-line, motor-bike, sand-board and on foot, and by big boat, rowing boat, long-boat, jet-boat, surfboard, canoe, raft, rubber ring and swimming)
• 350 days away
• 119 blog entries
• 110 different locations slept in, including hostels, hotels, B and Bs, estancias, log cabins, inns, mountain lodges, buses, jungle camps, friends' houses, planes, a farm, an RV, a car and an airport lounge
• 70 km by train (A Brazilian mountain train with free alcohol, arriving nearly 3 hours late, best train journey ever!
• 35 take-offs
• 34 landings! 
• 12 countries
• 5 foreign languages
• 5 overnight bus journeys (longest was 33 hours in Argentina!)
• 3 village schools attended (excluding the Bader Travel school, the boys' least favoured option!) 
• 2 huge spiders on pillows
• 1 orang-utan adopted

Baders on tour are officially BADERS BACK HOME!

Thank you for your many comments and messages over the last 12 months, it's been really good to keep in touch and we look forward to catching up over the coming weeks. 

Leaving Heathrow Airport

Back at Heathrow 1 year later!