Across The Evening Sky, All the Birds Are Leaving...

One last look around the Happy House. ..

After eight months, eight countries, dozens of beautiful, bonkers, clever or crazy friends, hundreds of adventures, thousands of good times and a million happy memories, tonight we're leaving this dreamland of South America on a flight to New Zealand.

It's sad to look back over our shoulders into the sunset of such a huge continent - I've always been a hostage to nostalgia - but we think we've done it justice on our travels and herewith.

If you've followed the blog so far, I hope you'll agree.

I won't itemise our itinerary or recap our snaps for your bored displeasure, but for our benefit, one piece of prose to conjure some imagery, to help us look back along a road well-travelled.

If it's all about the journey and less about the destination, our story so far should be told through our many transports of delight...

Mountain biking through valleys and vineyards, white water rafting down canyons, taking jumbo jets over oceans and light aircraft over deserts at dawn.

Taking tea on Inca Railways, clanking up Chilean funiculars and swooping down several swish telefericos.

The Santiago underground and the Rio metro system, luxury international buses and underpowered three-wheeled tuc-tucs.

Horseback trail-riding, sandboarding in the Atacama, a fleet of clapped-out taxicabs, paddling our own canoes.

Long, lazy days on Amazonian cargo boats and Peruvian reed rafts, power boating under the Iguazu Falls, transporter ferries across the Magellan Straits.

Braving the Sao Paolo subway at rush hour with full pack, or buying empanadas on cramped colectivos.

Rusting locomotives sleepily going nowhere, bouncing along in dusty 4x4s to lunar landscapes and riding taxi mopeds to pre-Incan ruins.

Hiking through miles and miles and miles of jungle, desert, city streets, swamps, beaches, glaciers, winding trails, mountains and valleys in our Salomons, flipflops and borrowed wellies.

And best of all, being conveyed cross-country in a converted Mercedes truck called Carmen...

And between all that, who knows where the time goes?