Another change of plan

The plan from Havana was to go to the Cayman Islands to spend some time with the same friends that we had met up with in Havana.  They had kindly said they would put us up for a couple of weeks, though when we got the Antarctica trip, we had reduced that down to just the one week with us then going via Miami and Buenos Aires down to Ushuaia.

Then the day after we arrived in Cuba, I got a call to tell me that my aunt had died.  Whilst I had seen her just before I left, and my family would have understood if I had chosen not to, I wanted to go back for the funeral.  Regular readers may recall that I had had a distant relative and a good friend die the previous year and had found it quite hard to come to terms with not attending the funeral, and as this was a close aunt, I felt it was right to return.

We managed to arrange the funeral for the week that we were due to be in Grand Cayman, so we agreed that we would get there as planned, then Nic would stay with our friends, and I would fly via Nassau to the UK for a week, then meet him in Miami en route to Antarctica.

We got to the islands, I checked in for my onward flight, and then Russell collected Nic.  In the downtime, I took advantage of some free wifi to log on and get back up to date after our relatively Internet free existence in Cuba.

Just as well I did, as I soon discovered that our families were trying desperately to contact us.  Rather tragically, Nic's sixteen year old niece had also died that day.  As I am sure you can imagine, a death at that age is especially hard to deal with, so the family were hoping that Nic would be able to come back to the UK too.

What followed was a very frantic hour, during which I eventually managed to contact Nic - people really should answer their mobiles - and get him back to the airport.  After some failed on line attempts, I also managed, with quite literally about thirty seconds to spare, to buy him a ticket on the same flight as me.  We even managed to get him into the seat next to me.

It was a very strange flight back.  Not only was it a journey made for two very sad reasons, but it had all happened in such a rush, and with so little time to think, that neither of really had taken it in.

Of course while we had my aunt's funeral during this week, Nic's niece's would not be for a while.  After much discussion ourselves and with Nic's mother and sister, we decided that we would still leave the UK and go to Antarctica.  Despite the circumstances, I think it is fair to say that no one wanted us to miss such a wonderful opportunity to achieve our desire to get to the Weddell Sea; in fact this very sad situation reminded us all that, even whilst remembering those that we've lost, we should be living and enjoying our lives to the full.

But we decided that rather than continuing on to South America as planned, we would then return once more to the UK, so that we would make it back in time for the funeral, and then stay with family until after Christmas.  We would then head off again in the New Year, and go to the USA and then to Canada.

Did we make the right decision to go back to the UK not once but twice.  Yes I think so.  Obviously it has cost us a lot of money, with additional air fares and insurance, as well as not getting in our cheap stint in South America, but when it comes down to it that wasn't really the point.  Clearly we can't always come back if something happens, and perhaps another time we won't.  But on this occasion, in the particular circumstances that we and our families faced, it was the right thing for us to do.

And of course both of them remain in our thoughts.

'Home' again

So how does it feel to be home after a year away?

Well, a bit strange really.  It is obviously good to see our families again.  We moved away from the Kent coast area that our families live in years ago, and with not driving and often working long hours, we are used to not seeing our families that often.  But there is a difference between not often, and not for a whole year, so it was good to catch up face to face rather than just by email, phone or Skype.

As we generally stay a few days with family when we are visiting, that felt very normal.  At least for the first week.  After that, it did seem rather strange to be spending so long there.  It isn't that we were fed up with being with family - she added quickly, knowing that they read the blog - just that we were not used to being there so long.

And because we are used to visits to family being free time, then initially at least we found it hard to get on with some of our many practical tasks.  We have tended to go into visit mode, rather than seeing it as just where we are living for now. This is slightly odd, because during the time that we have been away, we have had no problem at all in seeing wherever we were staying as our short term home.  Except of course the mouldy or cockroach infested ones!

It is strange too for us to be staying with other people in their own home for any length of time.  However much you know that you can come and go as you please, you are always conscious of being in another person's home; you don't want to disrupt their life too much, and if they are cooking for you much of the time too, then that feels a bit weird too.

While we have got used to not having the same independence and freedom as we had in our own home, because we predominantly have been either with a group on the truck or ship, or in hostels where the life is also more communal, we have still had a greater degree of independence, or perhaps it is more self-reliance, than when staying with others.

We are planning on staying with people more in the future as we try out couch surfing and staying in private homes through Airbnb (more about what that means in future posts), so hopefully we can get beyond that feeling or we will find that we won't have done any of the things we planned to and will get very behind.

But back to the point, how does it feel to be home?

It feels OK actually.  It was a bit strange to go up to London and not go to our flat.  It will doubtless be even stranger when we are staying in London, but not in our flat, and stranger still when we do go to our flat to see our tenants, with all of their furniture, and it being us that has to go home at the end of the day.

But other than that, it is just nice to be catching up with people, to be having some of the things we've missed - which I will post on separately, and to be able to understand the language fully!

Of course I do think that we would feel differently if this was the end of our travelling.  The fact that we will be going to Scotland and Germany while we are back, and then heading off for another year in a few months means that we can see our time here as a positive thing, rather than an end.