In case you've been wondering exactly where we were over the past year, I've just finished putting together a map. You can click on regions of the map to zoom in.

Hello, I am Pootle the travelling panda. I have been all the way around the world with Fiona and Chris and had much more fun!

I enjoyed seeing the kangaroos and koalas in Australia, and swimming with the turtles at the Pacific islands. But the best bit was seeing the other pandas in China! I made friends with them, and we went out for dinner to munch some bamboo together. Yum!

Here are the photos from my travels.

It's a bit quiet now we're all back at home. I hope we go somewhere exciting soon.

We're back in the UK now and getting used to the drizzly weather. We're going to see how our house is tomorrow. Since we've reached the end of the trip we thought we'd entertain ourselves with our top 10 highlights and lowlights.

Top 10 Highlights of our Trip

1. living and working in Sydney - especially the walk from Bondi to Tamarama beach that we could do before work in the morning
2. diving and snorkelling at the Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth - seeing turtles, reef sharks, wobbegong sharks and lots of colourful fish
3. seeing lots of Giant Pandas in Chengdu - for me stroking a panda called Pearl and having my photograph taken - for Chris seeing the huge smile on my face
4. three days sailing around the beautiful Whitsunday Islands on the Queensland coast - Whitehaven beach is the most unspoilt beach we've ever seen
5. the Tongariro Crossing walk that we did with Neil and Miranda - a stunning day with great views of volcanoes, craters and emerald lakes
6. meeting lots of Australian wildlife - kangaroos, koalas, wombats, crocodiles, monitors, snakes, seals, sea-lions, penguins, dolphins and colourful birds
7. the Intrepid Essence of China tour with our wonderful tour guide Andi - this included the Great Wall, Xian city, the three gorges of the Yangze river, the limestone karsts of Yangshuo, delicious Beijing duck and Patrick being convinced to buy some indestructible socks on the overnight train
8. the sights and smells of Thailand - lots of beautiful temples and scenery and lots of mingling smells in the streets of Bangkok
9. the Westland World Hertiage Area in New Zealand - ranging from Franz Josef and Fox Glacier in the North to Doubtful and Milford Sound in the South to Mount Cook and Mount Tazman in the East - the most stunning alpine scenery and fiords
10. the Queen Charlotte Track - spending four days walking through amazing forests full of ferns, looking out over beautiful sounds and inlets and enjoying the sounds of nature

Top 10 Moments we'd like to Forget

1. skidding on gravel at the side of the road and putting our hire car in the ditch miles from any town in New Zealand
2. being scratched by a monkey on the third day away from home and having to visit a Thai hospital
3. two and a half days trying to sell our car in the dark dungeon of a Kings Cross multi-storey car park in Sydney
4. being disappointed by the Great Barrier Reef - the weather was slightly rough causing poor visibility and all the coral looked dead and not colourful
5. bad weather stopping us from seeing the Grand Canyon for a day, taking a heli-hike to the top of a glacier and going ballooning for Christmas in Queenstown
6. terrible accommodation on the first night in a country - the worst being Sunseekers in Fiji and a dorm in Perth where people came in drunk and smelling of vomit
7. the SARS virus which curtailed our Intrepid Tour by stopping us from visiting Hong Kong
8. feeling sick as the camera told us all our data was corrupted when we'd taken lots of wonderful pictures of Western Australia
9. walking to the top of Jim Jim Falls in Kakadu National Park - me because it was very difficult and I couldn't keep up with the group - Chris because he knew I was miserable
10. a shared taxi ride from the train station to the town of Surat Thani where the driver drove like a madman and tried to take us to several hotels where his relatives worked rather than where we wanted to go

Las Vegas was fun and we enjoyed the shows, the rollercoasters and the themes of the casinos, but didn't indulge too much in the gambling. We also went out to the nearby Red Rock Canyon to see mountains and limestone and sandstone rocks.

We're now in New York to visit friends and ex-colleagues. It was very spooky going into the office yesterday, we both felt like we'd never left - I'm not sure whether that's good or bad!

We fly home on Wednesday evening and are looking forward to seeing our families, friends and house again.

Here is a selection of photos from our trip round South West America.

We flew into Los Angeles from Rarotonga, and headed to Anaheim. Our hotel was just across the road from Disneyland, so we didn't really have much of an excuse for not spending a full (and very tiring) day there. We got back to the hotel after midnight soaked through from too many rides on Splash Mountain!

Our route took us on to San Diego. As well as walking around the city centre, we spent a morning at the zoo to see the pandas Bai Yun, Gao Gao, and six month old baby Mei Sheng. From San Diego we headed on through the Arizona desert to Phoenix, where we went hiking in the city hills, and learned about Native Americans and cacti at museums and the botanical garden.

On the way to the Grand Canyon we stopped at Sedona - which was an unexpected highlight! The town was surrounded by red rock cliffs, and we went for some walks with stunning scenery at every turn. The Grand Canyon was also pretty amazing, though we had a thoroughly miserable day on Monday when we spent the entire day on the South Rim unable to see the canyon itself because of cloud and falling snow. We were almost convinced we were going to leave without seeing anything, but on Tuesday morning the clouds had lifted, and we got a fabulous view of the canyon with snow settled on the peaks.

We're now in Las Vegas, enjoying the shows and lavish casino lobbies, while trying to work out what people find appealling in gambling! (We're currently ahead by 50 cents!)