Update:  I am re-instating our blog so you can know where we are and what we are doing.  You can check in from time to time if you are interested, rather than my invading your email space or trying to keep up with informing friends and relatives of our movements.  I will try to keep everyone informed in a timely matter.  Note:  When friends are mentioned, we did not write last names to protect their privacy.

Another year has flashed by!  We are off to Europe for 3 months from April 6th, 2025, to July 8th.

Catching up on a bit of history (the following is not mandatory reading):  Our property in the Hunter Valley is now surrounded by 'Aria', a 'Luxury Land' development.  All blocks must be 2000m square or bigger.  The developers, 'LWP', have a bare-earth policy.  They say in their pamphlet, to paraphrase, "No tree will stand in the way of your future house."  At times, so much dust was raised that work had to be stopped!  We were shocked to realise that streetlights are now in our sightline.

They have blocked our access road, and now the main Aria entrance is the one we use.  So after 40- some years, our Street address, Suburb, and Post code will change.  It will no longer be 1443 Wine Country Drive, but 30 Crown Line Drive, Rothbury, 2320.  For non-balloonists, a 'crown line' is the rope line that attaches to a hot-air balloon's top (crown) to assist in inflation and deflation.  We didn't choose this street name, and we don't know who or how it has come about.
I will send out a notification when this new address is in use.  It is supposed to be in action now, but no one seems to be aware of it yet. 

Past Travel:  A highlight of our 2023 boat season in Valence, France, was a trip to Annonay. (For non-balloonists, Annonay was the town SW of Lyon where the Montgolfier Brothers (paper-makers) built the first hot-air balloon in 1783.)  We met 'Captain Ludo' who operates Ardèche Montgolfiers.  He introduced us to other balloonists, not to mention a table-load of local delicacies and wine.  Ludo Guicherd also has a small museum full of '1 and 2-man balloons (no basket, just a single or double chair hung under a balloon), the best historic collection we have ever seen.

We travelled up the Rhone on our boat, through the Ardèche region, famous for its Shiraz wine, which we love in the Hunter Valley, where we live. The towns of Tain l'Hermitage and Tournon-sur-Rhone were interesting places for us to visit, considering we live in the Australian equivalent. The Hunter Valley is famous for its Hermitage wine, now called Shiraz.

And now on to the following '24 boat season:  We had flown over to the UK to hook up with friends,  balloonist Tony and his partner, Alison, for a 2-week trip from Bergen, Norway, up the coast on a Hurtigruten postal ship.  The object was to see the Northern Lights.  This was not successful, i.e., there was no Aurora, solid cloud cover with wind and rain, and a ship full of sick people when the Norovirus successfully arrived.  After that experience, we flew back to the UK, then onto Switzerland to stay with Sally, a ballooning friend near Crans-Montana (home of the rich and famous), then across to our favourite French farmhouse loft apartment, L'Abbayotte.  We ended the season back in the UK, visiting other ballooning friends, Chris and Phillipa, in their beautiful, stately, picture-perfect home in Norfolk.  We hired a boat on the Norfolk Broads for a week and had great fun on this 'plastic fantastic', visiting multiple pubs along the shoreline.  Following our boat trip, we visited another friend, Elizabeth, at her amazing home in London.  We immensely enjoyed her showing us her favourite haunts around Hamstead Health and other historic areas near her, not to mention a fabulous luncheon at the House of Lords!  We felt very privileged.

After two years of battling with blood pressure and pulse problems, which seemed to have a mind of their own,  I (Judy) had 3 heart ops to calm everything down. I am now back to exercising and am in good health.  Peter has been doing wonderfully well since his surprise quadruple bypass 3 years ago.

Which brings us to this year! We are planning to get serious about selling our boat.  April, May and June will see us travelling around Europe, visiting friends, and enjoying the food of France but not the wine.  Sadly, we have both become teetotallers due to medication and weight gain and what better place to test our willpower than the country of food and wine!

We both realise we are slowing down and will not have the stamina or strength to continue such a hectic pace.  Our mental Rotary index files are getting rustier with each passing year.  But when all is said and done, we consider ourselves blessed with the life we have.

The next blog update will probably be from the boat in 3 weeks.  Thank you for bearing with us and reading this.

We are in the U.S.

Peter and I are in the U.S.  My mother died on August 12th, at 4:03 in the afternoon.  It was a peaceful passing with relatives surrounding her.

We were in Switzerland when the phone call came through at 4:00 in the morning.  We were on a plane a bit more than 24 hours later.

Back home.

We are back in the Hunter Valley.  Easy trip home if you can call sitting on an airplane for 16 hours 'easy'. It is now June 11th. We crossed the timeline and lost a day, so June 10th didn't exist for us.

I will now sign off this blog until our next trip, whenever that may be.

Taste buds are weird.

Something very strange has happened to my taste buds. I don't seem to have any.  I can distinguish temperature and texture of the food, but not taste. Toast, eggs, and coffee all taste the same...awful.  I am hoping it is because of the Medecine the local pharmacy gave me for this terrible cough and cold I have.  And now Peter has the start of a cold.

We took the bus back to Lima today. 

Ataca Desert

We are in the Ataca Desert, the driest place on earth with 0% humidity. The scenery is like a lunar landscape. The town gets their water from the Andes Mountains via an underground aquaduct, over 100 kms long, built by the ancient Nazca people over 2,000 years ago and still in use! Today, we saw a sand dune that was 6,000 feet high. And deep in the desert, we visited a Necropolis where the ancient Nazca buried their dead, perfectly preserved mummies due to the dry atmosphere. But this remarkable site is in very poor condition with human bones scattered everywhere and looting still going on. 

Nazca Lines

We are on another bus trip down to Nazca. Eight hour trip, but seats reclined, they showed two movies, and the bus had wifi. 
Upon reaching Nazca, we were taken straight to the airport and flew over the Nazca Lines for an hour. The hieroglyphs, some miles long going over hill and dale, are remarkable. How and why they did it is still a mystery, although one theory for the 'why' is that they were an ancient calendar. Again, ancient civilisations and what they accomplished still amaze us. 

Another airplane.

We left our jungle lodge via trek, boat ride, bus ride, then taxi to the airport. We had 3 hours to kill before our flight left so we went into Puerto Modanaldo and found a 'Chifa', which is a Chinese Restaurant. All four of us (we are traveling with David and Roberta Levin) ate beautiful, fresh Chinese food for $5 each. Got to Lima and we are staying at the most beautiful guest house called Antigua Miraflores.