We chatted a lot about our adventures over the last 18 months around the Americas as we drove that week. We reminisced about how green we were when we first left on our journey, about all the friends we had made so far and how many more we will make as the trip goes on!

We wondered at how we had managed to pull of 33 weddings in 18 months! That is almost one every 2 weeks on TOP of driving around the continent and dealing with the day to day drama’s of travel, on TOP of writing all about it and hijacking wifi to share it, on TOP of dealing with going viral and the haters, on TOP of missing out on some of our closest friends and families biggest days of their lives and on TOP of doing it alone. Just the two of us, side by side, 24/7, going through everything together, dealing with everything together and growing together as a couple…sounds like a marriage to me, and a great one at that.

We had just one more stop on our tour of the Americas, one that we would never have imagined being a possibility on this trip, with our budget, and of course with Peggy BUT, believe it or not, our next stop was The Bahamas!

We couldn’t believe it when we heard from Kwanza from Chat ‘N’ Chill in The Exumas. She had e-mailed asking if we had ever considered going, we explained our situation and she sorted it out! We had 5 days of heavenly bliss to look forward to and our final wedding of the Americas, number 34 on the last vanity day 12/12/12.

We had so much to do of course between leaving Myrtle Beach and arriving in The Exumas. We had to drive to Baltimore and get Peggy on a ship to England! We had decided after going through so much with her already we weren’t giving up on her now and that we would try and get her all the way to Australia with us!

It was a long arduous week, we were still so tired after the Myrtle Beach Wedding Extravaganza and the 5 days of partying afterwards and we had a lot of ground and paperwork to cover. We stopped at a few camp sites on the way, we would have wild camped but were worried that we were so tired that if someone HAD tried to get in the van we would have slept right through it!
We even met a couple of Brits, Matt and Sarah who had been on the road for 3 months and they were also tired so we didn’t feel so bad admitting it after chatting with them over breakfast one morning!

When we did finally arrive in Baltimore we thought our souls might die. Grey sky, dreary, drissling weather and plenty of sullen faces. There was a place to camp but it cost the same as a hotel which happened to be right on the port which was exactly where we needed to be. We checked in and began the difficult process of packing up Peggy.

We have trinkets everywhere and EVERYTHING has to be secure inside the toilet cupboard the same as it was to ship from Brazil. It seemed we had expanded in our belongings quite a lot! Alex had gotten excited at the price of parts for Peggy in the US and had stocked up with plenty of things, quite sensibly but much to my annoyance! We don’t have a great deal of space for spare brake pads, exhaust pipes, discs, tubes or wheels at the best of times…anyway, we managed to downsize quite a bit and left our old cheap bedding at the side of the street for the homeless to help themselves to. It was such a sad place to be and it drained the soul from you but we knew we weren’t there for good.

Surprisingly we got Peggy checked in to the port quite easily and we were told she would be on the next ship and would be arriving in England on New Years Day! We happily packed up our things, booked a cab and hit the airport for our flight to Florida and on to the beautiful Exumas!

Our flight was the last to leave Baltimore that morning due to low lying fog and cloud, everyone else was stranded and we were on our way to heaven! I still couldn’t believe it even when we got onto our connecting flight over to the islands. The 30 seater plane (or there abouts) took off into the grey skies and within an hour we were transported to another world.

We sailed through the air over water that is indescribable in words. you must see it to believe it. It was so beautiful I cried!

The blues are out of this world, the sand beneath the perfectly clear water looks like the sahara desert underneath a sheet of perfect blue crystal. The sunlight bounces and shimmers off the waves, sand bars  appear and disappear, perfect little islands in the vast unknown expanse of water. Mountains and valleys present themselves like you have never seen or imagined before, all in every kind of blue beneath the waves. I could go on forever trying to tell you what it was like, but it is no use. Words will never come close.