(new) Testing my patience and my innards.

My stomach still wasn’t feeling great but it was definitely better – perhaps Adrian’s cure worked. However I still didn’t feel up for going to far and decided to make use of this imposed break to take care of all this business, starting with our airline tickets. Argentina was nice but it was starting to lose its charm the more we thought about Africa.

Today started much like yesterday. I woke up at 7am and hopped on Skype to phone SAA, hoping to resolve our ticket issues. I was pleasantly surprised when my call was answered after only 34 minutes of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I liked to think this was directly related to my nasty, erm, firm email to customer service but seeing as I had still not received a single reply I think it was most likely luck. But the shorter waiting time did lift my spirits and I resolved not to take whatever out on the poor person who answered the call. When she answered, I gave my reservation number and asked about our tickets. I was then asked for all the same info I had given yesterday. Apparently, no one had bothered to charge my card in the last 24 hours or issue the tickets. So I had to wait another 10 minutes for what should have been done yesterday to happen today. Once again my knowledge of international phonetic language was tested as I had to spell Adrian and I’s full names out which I’m pretty sure now qualifies me as an air traffic controller. The woman promised me that now that the credit card had been charged, the tickets would be issued in the next 24 hours and that I was done. As much as I wanted to trust her, I decided to reserve judgment until I saw them in my inbox. Until then, I amused myself by sending a third snarky email to SAA customer service filling them in on the new developments. I decided I’d send them one after every phone call until I had the tickets or until they responded.

With that sorta, maybe, hopefully resolved, I felt like I was on a roll and decided to call American Express about their decision on our stolen Ecuadorean travelers cheques. It had been 5 months but we still hadn’t received any notification from them. At least this call would be free. For some reason North American toll-free numbers are accepted by Skype but not South African ones. However, I would have paid for the call to get a better reception. The operator who answered seemed to be at the bottom of a well during a hail storm. She assured me she could hear me fine and that was more important. The good news was that our claim had been accepted. The bad news was that it was only for $220US as opposed to the $320US we were owed – the rude operator from our emergency call had obviously not entered the right amount. However, we could reopen the claim for the missing $100US but only by snail mail – not email and not even fax. Well I hope the Argentinean mail system was better than it’s well, actually everything in Argentina seemed to run fine so I’ll correct that by saying that I hoped the mail system was as good as everything else. As for the $220US in cheques, well they’d issued a refund cheque and since we hadn’t received it, they would have to stop payment on it before they could reissue another one. Oh boy. But the good news was that would only take 5 business days. Then we could call back to arrange pick up the cheques in person at an American Express office. I thanked the woman for all her help. And I meant it. She was as nice as could be and polite, especially compared to the cow I had spoken to when we were robbed. Despite the pleasant phone call it was still a bit exhausting and I had one more call to make.

I took a break to respond to a months old email from a big UK publisher asking permission to publish one of my travel photos. I’d been hemming and hawing about it since the price was a bit lower than one would expect but I finally decided that something was better than nothing. Plus they offered me a free copy of the book and having sold most of our books before we left, our library will need a boost. Oh if you were wondering it was one of the photos from Mexico City – way back in the first week of our trip – when we visited the creepy Doll Island and the book is one of the Ripley’s Believe it or Not ones. Kinda cool and since we’ve only made a few dollars from this site (thank you to whomever bought that computer using the amazon banner ad) we could certainly do with extra cash help.

The final thing on the to do list was to call Rogers Cable about a refund they owed me. But I decided to save that until tomorrow. By now Adrian was up and I was mostly awake and feeling about 75% so decided to do an easy walking around tour. We’d seen most of the city yesterday but now we’d be able to see it in the light. And without divulging too much information, I just hoped that there would be easy access to washrooms around the city.

Our first stop though was the bus station. We had hoped that our night buses were over and done with but a quick check online revealed that the only two-day buses to Buenos Aires were already sold out. Le sigh. But there was a night bus that was cheaper than the day buses and it was only 10 hours. I think we can handle that, if my stomach holds up. The clerk at the station confirmed everything we had found online so we bought our tickets before they too were sold out. Then it was time to explore the city.

We headed to the Museo Sobre Monte – an old colonial house in the old part of the city. It was nice but more importantly it was shady which was all that really mattered. By the time we were out on the street it was high noon and it was hot – not sweaty sticky hot like in Iguazu just plain old frying an egg on our arms hot. We then headed to the main square. The cathedral was under a layer of scaffolding being renovated and restored but we were able to take a peek inside. It was beautifully painted – well, what we could see since much of it was also under protective plastic and scaffolding as well. But all together pretty impressive for 400+ years of use.

Cordoba was one of the oldest cities in Argentina (much older than Buenos Aires). It may even be the oldest but I’m too lazy to look it up. But surprisingly it doesn’t look that old. With the exception of the three square blocks in the centre with old university buildings and old churches, much of that history had been buried under fairly recent buildings. It wasn’t an ugly city it just didn’t look like what you’d expect for such an old town and wasn’t what you’d call pretty. But this lack of old and pretty made it easy to slowly take in the handful of sights (and avoid becoming big sweaty messes). What also slowed us was those handful of sights being closed for a siesta or just plain closed. We weren’t able to pop into the old convent or the Jesuit chapel. A bit disappointing since the descriptions talked about the fantastic interiors. Although I’m sure we’d probably seen many like them already.

After lunch in an air conditioned café, we headed to the art museum (photo above) down near the hostel. Museum was a bit misleading and in fact the name of the place was the Palacio Ferrerrya. The building was built in 1911 for a single family and was called a palacio for good reason. The grand entrance hall easily would have fit two of our old two bedroom apartments in it. And the rest of the rooms were just as grand. The art was a small collection of mostly Cordoban artists from the last 200 years but in such a beautiful setting it all looked fantabulous – like a mini-Louvre. As we were about to leave Adrian realized he’d misplaced his hat somewhere in the Palacio so while he went to retrace his steps I sat and waited and contemplated asking the ticket desk if it had been turned in. But decided to wait until he came back which gave me a chance to compose the request in Spanish. When he returned empty-handed, I asked and indeed it had been turned in which just made Adrian cranky because I hadn’t asked before he went off to search for it. Whoops.

Oh well, it was just a small palace he searched needlessly. But I wasn’t bothered my calls with South African Airways had taught me infinite patience. And my stomach had managed to hold on to its contents and that made today pretty awesome.

After a day of bookkeeping, it was time for a hot bath.

Most non-Spanish speakers will recognize the word baños – because you should always know who to ask for the toilet in a foreign country. Baños was not a great name for a town and frankly, our thoughts about the town so far were better suited for the toilet than this blog. We knew it wasn’t fair to blame the entire city for being robbed but can you blame us for being cranky. It didn’t help that I had to spend the morning talking to the credit card companies to arrange delivery of our credit cards to my sister’s place. Then it was time to start the arduous job of filling out insurance claims. Actually the filling out of the forms was easy, the supporting documentation they wanted would prove more difficult. (A hint to those of you planning your own trip: before you go away, find receipts or proof of ownership of everything you’re taking with you scan or photograph it and email it to yourself. Just in case). Finally, I phoned American Express to report our travelers’ cheques stolen and get the replacements. To cut a long story short, American Express Travelers Cheques: do leave home without them. It turned out that the canny thieves had somehow managed to cash the cheques (shocking since they are the hardest things to cash when they’re actually yours). This meant that we couldn’t get replacements because American Express had to launch an investigation to make sure we were telling the truth. They asked for the police report number and the investigating officer’s name (hah, like the Ecuadorian police were actually investigating this crime) so they could follow up. This investigation would take a month and they would mail us the results. And with that, they said goodbye. So once again American Express totally disappointed me with their brusque almost rude brush off and it made me realize we were truly lucky that the thieves only got their hands on our backup funds or else we would have been totally screwed.

It was all very draining but Adrian had snuck out while I was doing all that and signed us up for whitewater rafting. Not only would it be the perfect thing to take our mind off of all the crap, it might actually be fun too. But that was tomorrow. And we still had half the day to spend in Baños. So what to do? Well, Baños was not a reference to the toilet but to the local baths fed by a hot spring. The baths were reputed to have such great healing powers that the church had dedicated a virgin to them in the cathedral. We decided to investigate this – after all, if any one needed some mental healing it was us.

The cathedral was just off the square near the hostel. The virgin was safely encased in her shrine but paintings around the cathedral told the story of the miracles attributed to her. Something about people being saved after falling off of donkeys, the town saved from destruction by earthquakes and volcanoes, nuns being cured by a bath, and of course someone rescued from a car crash and brought back to life. Or something like that. The descriptions were all pretty vague as to how the spring figured into these miracles. But the faithful seemed satisfied.

Then it was time to check out these miraculous springs for ourselves. I’m not sure if it was the depictions of the springs in the paintings or my own desire for some peace and quiet in nature that lead me astray, but I was kind of expecting the springs to be set amongst the lush green hills, a natural pool in nature. I was sadly disappointed. The spring was actually more of a public swimming bath and not a particularly one. It may have been located under a waterfall of crystal clear mountain water, but the baths were actually two pools of murky brown water (photo above). However the water was hard to see for all the families crowded into the pool. It wasn’t particularly appealing but everyone else seemed to be enjoying it so we gave it a try.

We slipped into the water which was indeed warm, piss warm in fact, and it had certain sulfurous aroma. Combined with the brown colour and all the kids floating around, our minds immediately turned to that South Park episode where Cartman is forced to stay in shallow end of the pool with all the grade one kids. Needless to say, whenever our bodies felt a particularly warm spot or an unknown object in the water, we alternated between being grossed out and laughing as Adrian did the worst Cartman expression ever. We made our way to an empty corner in the deep end as soon as possible and spent the next hour and a half in the mineral rich (although probably pee and poo rich too) water melting our worries away. Despite the inherent grossness of it, it was also just what we needed.

Happy Mother's Day. And Awesome Sister's Day too.

A private bathroom plus a nice clean room equals a deep sleep. But we still woke up a little groggy. It could be because we were sleep deprived after our week in Xela. Or it could be the firecrackers and M80s that the kids in the neighbourhood started letting off at 6am to celebrate Mother's Day. That´s right. Who needs chocolates or flowers to show Mom you care when loud explosives are readily available. I wonder when Hallmark will get in on this. Um, never I hope.

Since no Keebler elves showed up with my bank card overnight I went online to make sure it was still lost and not stolen. Nope, no missing money from our account. No weird transactions. Nothing. Time to cancel it and put our contingency plan into action. Our crappy bank (which starts with Scotia and ends with Bank) only gives cards out in branch or so we were told the last time we were there. So much for making banking easier. But expecting a bank card to get stolen, lost or eaten in our year on the road, we had added my sister onto the account so she could get a replacement for us. I emailed my sister to let her know that her services would be needed (albeit a lot sooner than we expected). Thank goodness for family. Although the hard part was still to come. We had to find a phone to call to cancel the card. And find a way to get a new card into my hands. FedEx doesn’t have many shipping options for Guatemala or Honduras. And it was going to take 2-7 days to get here. Adrian wanted to panic I reminded him that he still had his card and we still had our credit cards and traveller´s cheques. And frankly what's done is done. So let's move on.

Maybe breakfast would calm him down. We headed through the gauntlet of tourist tack towards the lakefront (picture above), stopping for an obligatory photo op with the worst souvenir we could find – a three foot tall sombrero – which seemed to cheer him up. With the sun out today, all the touts were out. It reminding me of Khao San Road in Bangkok (minus the prostitutes and lady boys, as far as I could tell). Plus there were plenty of gringo hippies with their homemade necklaces and silly devil sticks walking shoeless through the dirty streets. The lakefront was full of even more touts so we headed back up the main drag finding a place where Adrian could get an almost proper English breakfast but first stopping to book our seats on the Copan shuttle for the next morning. It’ll be 8 hours of transportation but that’s fine and not too expensive and I need a break from the chicken bus.

Then we went to the phone centre. Despite being gringo central, Panajachel had the worst phone connections. I cancelled my card (i think) and was then asked when they could mail a replacement (i think). What they now mail cards? Great, mail it to my sister´s place. Nope for some reason they only have our old address on file (i think), despite having changed the address to hers before we left. The customer service rep was getting really confused by my questions (i think) so I just told her to cancel it. My awesome, wonderful, amazing sister was already on top of it all anyways.

Now it was time for the most important part of the day. We called my Mom and through the static wished her a Happy Mother´s Day because, as we discovered today, family is pretty darn important.

Moving on up to the east side to a deluxe apartment in the sky

That's right folks for the first time in our lives, we are moving east of Yonge Street. For you non-locals, let me explain. Ask any Torontonian; this is a big deal. If you grow up on one side of Yonge Street chances are, baring any extenuating circumstances, you stay on that side of Yonge Street. No idea why but it's the truth. But after 35 years, west of Yonge I'm making the move east. Sure it's only for 17 days but it's still a pretty big deal.

In order to get here, we had to purge our apartment of 1024 cds, 843 books, 165 dvds, 42 playstation games, and all our furniture. We did it. But through a combination of craigslist, donations to goodwill and the furniturebank.org we did it. And all our remaining worldy possessions now reside in a 5x10 storage unit. We made almost $3000 from our sales. And there were a few tears shed as we packed up.

But that means that tomorrow when we check into our temporary far east deluxe apartment in the sky, we'll truly be starting over with just the packs on our back.

So where are we now?

location: Toronto
departure: March 17, 2009
savings: $49,540
return fund: £7,455

Making a list checking it twice

a peek into my obsessive compulsive planning mind 

No this isn't a post full of the Christmas spirit. Rather this post is a list of lists. No, wait! Come back! Actually, I'd like to run too. 

We've entered the home stretch. Less than 3 months to go and so much to do, hence the lists. Lots of lists. 

But you've already seen the first one. The "Where are we going?" list. And that only took a year to compile. And it's only rev.7. 

The second list is medical. There's the list of doctors to visit. Travel Doc. Family Doc. Eye Doc. Dentist. 

Then there's the list of shots to get. And their prices. Oy-vey.

Yellow Fever - $75 - already have 

Typhoid - $30 - right before we leave

Hepetitis A - $120 - already have

Hepetitis B - $90 - first shot done, second shot due now, and the last shot we'll have to get on the road (the Doctor reco'ed Costa Rica as a good country to seek medical attention in)

Menengitis - $130 - right before we leave 

Flu Shot - FREE 

Japanese encephalitis - $270 - yikes, but not until we're getting ready to head to Asia. 

Between this and all the blood I've had taken, no wonder I'm feeling like a pin cushion, a very poor pin cushion. 

And let's not forget Malaria. Oh Malaria, we've never met and I already hate you. For the first year we'll be travelling in and out of at risk areas for the first 6 months and then solidly at risk for the next 6. That's a whole lot of medication to carry around - and let me tell you, it's not cheap. Malarone, the one with the least side effects and the most effective, is also the most expensive. That's about $20 a day for 365 days which means for the first time in 30 years I've written to Santa.

Dear Santa, 

I have been moderately good this year. For Christmas,  Adrian and I would like a year supply of Malarone. And if you can't afford the whole $6000 we'll take half of that. 

Thank you,

Liz.

P.S. I'll leave beer and peanuts out for you. 

Rather that visions of sugar plums dancing through our heads, it was dreams of a sugar daddy to pay the way. Good news. There is a cheaper drug option. Bad news. It's been known to cause severe depression, violence and hallucinations in a very small amount of people who take it. So let's hope my insurance covers the other one. If not, I'll give you the heads up before we start taking the cheaper option so you can take the appropriate cover. 

And if I wasn't feeling poor already, there's the third list. Packing. 

Yes, I have discovered despite an apartment full of crap, we still need (or want) so much stuff for our trip. It's a reminder of how much our lifestyle is going to change once we're on the road. 

There's the techie stuff:

laptop - $600 on craigslist - so I can update this silly little blog 

camera gear - $2000 and counting - so I can take purdy pictures

hard drive - $250 - so I can store all those purdy pictures

iPod - FREE with airmiles - for music and movies on long bus rides to nowhere

PSP - FREE with christmas present - so Adrian can be amused on long bus rides to nowhere

There's the clothing: 

I'll spare you the list this time (although if you really are interested, I've added links to my lists over there on the right under Odds and Ends). Even unfashion plates like us are struggling to come up with a year's wardrobe that fits in a small back pack. The key appears to be multipurpose clothes, i.e. pants that turn into shorts, sweaters that turn into vests, bras that turn into emergency flotation device. okay, I made that last one up but you get the idea. 

To the manufacturers of these travel clothes, I have a couple of complaints. Must everything be made of fleece? And have you not received the colours of '09 from Pantone? Or any of the last 10 years.  I don't recall hunter green, plaid, or tropical prints appearing in any of the swatches. I wish Fluevog made some footwear appropriate for jungle treks. 

And finally there's the travel gear, the things I've never had a use for in the last 35 years but have been assured by every resource that we'll need on the road: 

multitool - 100 tools in one, for only $75 

headlamps - for midnight trips to the loo, outhouse, hole in the ground

silk sleep sheets - for avoiding bedbugs and bugs in general, 2 for $50

portable clothesline - $10

travel towels - remarkably like a sham-wow (without the creepy sales guy) 2 for $50

compass - hoping to find a dollar store keychain one with a thermometer

universal drain plug - ?

and... 

What am I doing here? What are you doing here? It's Christmas and there's turkey leftovers to pick at, sentimental movies to cry over, alcohol to drink, cakes to snack on, family to fight with and presents to return. 

See you in 2009 with (hopefully) less lists and more fun. I better put that promise down on my to do list before I forget.

Edit: Good news Malarone is covered by my insurance. New eyeglasses and contacts however are not. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. 

AC 993 now boarding, well, soon anyway.

A very quick update to say the first tickets have been bought. Woohoo! Yippee! Yay! No turning back now.  

And that's it really.

I was reminded that it had been a long time since I'd written anything. It may appear that way but behind this wall there are many entries waiting for me to hit spell check and publish. But all in good time, my friends. 

So where are we now?

Location: Toronto

Departure: March 17, 2009

Savings: $46,290

"I love it when a plan comes together"

- Col. Hannibal Smith, The A Team.

View Larger Map

If people could be classified as one of the A Team, I would say I was Col. Hannibal Smith with a dash of BA Barcus. My friend Cheryl is a bit more like Murdoch, loveable but slightly, um, well how do you say it - insane. She's the delusional one who is convinced that Vancouver is a nice place. And she's also a crazy lady that demand I post more often even though I'm not convinced I have much to say at the moment.  See, told you she was crazy. 

The biggest news to report is the new map up above and to the right. It's all new complete with multi-coloured route markers - ooooo, aaaaahhhh - that show the new itinerary we've decided on. After my momentary panic of what to do and where to go I think I've figured it out (well for now at least). So here's what we've got so far.

Central America:

Southern Mexico: 3 weeks

Belize: 2 weeks

Guatemala: 3 weeks

Honduras: 3 weeks

Nicaragua: 3 weeks

Costa Rica: 2 weeks

Panama: 2 weeks

South America: 

Ecuador: 3 weeks

Peru: 3 weeks

Bolivia: 3 weeks

Chile: 3 weeks

Argentina: 5 weeks

Paraguay: 1 week

Brazil: 5 weeks

Africa: 

South Africa: 4 weeks

Lesotho: 1 week

Namibia: 3 weeks

Zambia: 2 weeks

Malawi: 3 weeks

Tanzania: 6 weeks

Rwanda: 2 weeks

Uganda: 2 weeks

and then

Ethiopia and beyond.

And that's where the dots on the map stop. Not because that will be the end of our travels. I hope not. But because that's as far as I'm allowing myself to plan at the moment. And by planning I mean, filling in an excel spreadsheet that looks a lot like a day planner. We still hope to carry on travelling on into Asia via Russia. But there's no need to get ahead of ourselves (that's a note more for me than you btw).

As it is, I've already been collecting tonnes of hostel, tour and adventure links in my del.icio.us profile. You can check them out there. Yes, I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to planning.

Another list I've started is things I'd like to do. This trip is completely selfish for me, in the sense that it's all about trying things I want to do. Here's a list of the top 10 in no particular order.

1. Learning to scuba dive in Honduras
   
2. Seeing the Galapagos
   
3. Seeing Easter Island
   
4. Getting competent in Spanish (and revive my French)
   
5. Taking the slow boat through the glaciers of Chile and Argentina
   
6. Cage diving for sharks in South Africa
   
7. Searching for gorillas in Rwanda
   
8. Climbing Kilimanjaro
   
9. Seeing the big 5 on safari (although I'm sure I'd settle for 1 out of the 5)
   
10. Experiencing the world with Adrian
    

Out of these 10, the closest to being ticked off is the language thing. I've been teaching myself Spanish off and on for about a year. And how's it going? You tell me.

Puedo hacer los phrases basicas. Y puedo leer despacio los libros sin el diccionario. Pero hablo muy malo. ¿Verdad? 

Well, I'm working on it, okay. I've finished my intro spanish tapes, I mean mp3s. I'll soon finish my beginner's book before I undertake the first year MIT spanish course. So hopefully I'll improve before I have to put it into practice.

As for the other things on the list, some of them are pretty crazy and I'm not even sure if I'll actually go through with them. But if I do, I hope Cheryl doesn't mind if I start classifying myself as crazy Murdoch. 

And with that it's time for an update ( I actually first posted this without it).

So where are we now?

location: Toronto, Canada

ETD: March 15, 2009

savings: $36,498

Let's start at the very beginning - wherever that is.

Excuse me, do you know the way to... to... wait where are we going? Good question and one we thought we'd answered.

However, circumstances intervened - Adrian found himself without work for a few months, our anniversary trip required an expensive detour, pre-trip expenses are adding up - and our savings haven't accumulated as fast as we hoped. But we're not too far away. In fact we're only a couple of months behind. But all these hiccups made us realize that we should probably over save - justincase (justincase of natural disaster, justincase of a tough returning job market, justincase we need to pay ransom to our kidnappers, etc) .

Unfortunately, this means redoing our itinerary. Now understand, I'm a closeted control freak (okay, maybe not so closeted), so I need the security blanket of a planned route. But I know that these itineraries are never set in stone. And thankfully, when we've had to deviate from past travel plans, Adrian has stepped in to take care of stuff while I sit rocking in a corner clutching my itinerary.

So here I sit, once again looking at a map of the world and wondering where to go. And there are so many options it's a little dizzying. In fact I just starting typing out a list of options and when I got to number 11, I deleted the list for fear of losing the few readers I have. So this post is far less informative than I hoped it would be.

I posted to Lonely Planet's Thorntree looking for advice, and only got one response, from Donna, my virtual travel friend. (thanks Donna! lots of great tips and I halfheartedly blame you for introducing options 6-11 ). But I'm realizing that Adrian and I are the ones that have to make the decision.

Our requirements are complicated.
The only must do things on our trip are South America (Adrian) and Africa (Liz). So these our priorities.
I've been learning Spanish and would hate to lose it before we can use it.
We want to fly on as many StarAlliance carriers as possible to capitalize on Aeroplan points.
We don't want to spend more than $1000 on any airfare leg.
Our savings will probably cover 500 days (at $100/per day)

And this is where we've ended up (mentally): either Central American to South America to Africa to ?, OR South America to Africa to ?, OR Africa to South America to Asia to ?. Each have their pros and cons and each time we think one is in the lead, something makes us change our mind.

Feel free to add your two cents. Literally (if you visit any of the google links on the righthand side). And figuratively (by adding a comment).

Oh and slightly good news. Adrian's contract has been extended for another 4 weeks so we have a bit more cash to look forward to. And I finally got a retroactive raise (only 6 months late).

So where are we now?

location: confused in Toronto
ETD: March 15, 2009
savings: $30,998 (but hoping for a big jump in the next month)

I know this priceless antique says 25¢ but how about a nickel

(not our car boot sale but close enough, thank you wiki)

People are cheap. That's all you need to know about garage/yard/lawn/church/car boot sales.

Oh and that they're a helluvalotta work. We spent two weeks of scouring the apartment for things to sell then polishing, scrubbing and cleaning the crap to make it look good, pricing it way below the 30% what we paid for it, and packing it all up to survive the trip to the sale in one piece. Then loaded up the van the night before for the trip out to a park in the almost burbs.

And this was just for stuff we couldn't be bothered to list on ebay or craigslist: vases, vhs, books, junk jewelry, children's toys, kitchen crap, assorted small appliances, as well as a couple of things we just wanted to get rid of, like mismatched speakers, an air conditioner, our 100lb tv with reception issues, and a box or two of magazines and comics.

Oh and did I mention we're on the third floor of the walkup. My body aches just thinking about it.

But sell we did. Not a lot and not the things we expected. VHS tapes and ugly jewelry were a hot commodity. While books and and any nice looking or valuable knickknacks weren't. I sold a dirty table cloth but not Royal Daulton crystal wine glasses (2 for $15). So I give up.

And after 4 hours of the sale we had made $245.

More than the $150 I wanted just to make it worth while but less than the $350 I was hoping for. And after the van rental, gas and parking ticket, our net was more like $175.

We dropped off the worthless stuff at goodwill as well as the heavy tv that we almost killed us to carry. We kept about 4 boxes of stuff to try again at a later date or keep.

So where are we now?

location: Toronto
savings: $30,175
ETD: March 15, 2009 (or earlier)

(and it's time to start thinking happy thoughts for Adrian - his current contract finishes Oct 3 and he'll need a new one)

so much to do so little time and money

Before I post about our Storm Watch Tour 2008. I have a big change. 

I'm going to do this post backwards, starting with so where are we now?

location: Toronto

savings: $28,600

ETD: March 15, 2009 (although we may go earlier)

Yes, you'll notice a new date there. 

No, we're not getting cold feet.

Our trip to New Orleans and the resulting flight changes not only ate into the savings but also made me realize that emergencies can cost a lot more than you realize. And for The Big Trip™ that meant saving up for a bigger resettlement cushion and boosting the ever important just in case buffer.  

A later departure date also means a rejigging of our itinerary - either starting in South Africa and pushing South America to the end of the trip or adding Central America to the itinerary. But that's another post once we have a better idea of when we'll actually be leaving.

Answering the question: So where are you going?

Recently, we've started telling people about the trip. Not just casually mentioning "ya, I'd like to travel the world someday" but "we're leaving in November and we're not coming back, are you going to miss us". After the slack-jawed shock wears off, invariably, the first question is where are you going?

If money weren't an issue, the answer would be where aren't we going. But this is real life. And time and money are an issue. 

Although we've always wanted to see the world, the Big Trip™ became a real goal just over a year ago. We were chatting about where to go for our next little trip, and I said it was time for us to hit Africa again. However, air fares for Tanzania were about $2500 each or $1700 if we flew to London and then hooked up with a charter of some sort. But with only two weeks vacation time available that was too much money or too little time to make the trip worthwhile. 

Doing a little more digging at Airtreks, I discovered that you could get a RTW ticket from $1600 (albeit with a generic route London, Bangkok, Sydney, New York). Wow around the world for $1000 less. And then I noticed their trip planner tool. 5 hours of playing out dream scenario after dream scenario and seeing a total that was only $5000 I was in love. I knew that we had to go RTW and we had to do it now. 

Of course, nothing is that simple. After figuring out the financial plan, we had to adjust the time frame. But once we were well on our way to getting the money together, we started the "where do we go" discussion. Actually negotiation is a better phrase. We both like to travel, but our lists don't always match. Previously, we alternated picking trips. Adrian's choices were Tunisia, Cuba, Peru, and most of the US destinations. I picked Gambia, Buenos Aires, Cambodia, and India. But now we'd have to combine dream destinations. 

We each made lists of must sees. 

Mine: Africa, Russia, and China

Adrian: Brazil, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Italy and Egypt. 

Combine these lists and you'll see that this is 6 continents (including Canada) and a lot of miles. This makes it the most expensive RTW itinerary and not really feasible. So the first to go were Australia and New Zealand. Too far and too expensive and easy to do when you're older. The next to go Italy. Too expensive and easy to do when we're living in the UK. This left us with South America, Africa, Russia, Asia, which is slightly more manageable. 

The next step is how to go. I looked at Air Treks and then to stretch the airmiles I looked at Oneworld and Staralliance. Using Staralliance, was the best bet. They fly from South America to Africa and we already have 50,000 airmiles with them. Using their trip planner helped us establish a rough itinerary.

• Toronto to Santiago 
  
• Overland to Sao Paolo. (via Chile, Bolivia, Argentina Paraguay and Brazil) 
  
• Sao Paolo to Johannesburg.
  
• Overland Johannesburg to Egypt. (via South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Jordan) 
  
• Egypt to the UK for a visit with Adrian's family. 
  
• UK to St. Petersberg overland to Beijing via the Transmongolian. (stopping along the way in Russia and Mongolia) 
  
• Overland to India. (taking in China, Tibet, Nepal and Northern India).
  
• Calcutta to Bangkok
  
• Overland South East Asia (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia - still not sure where)
• Singapore to Tokyo
• Tokyo to Toronto

Phew, that was a mouthful. Hope you're still with us. Of course this is all subject to change - so don't get married to anything (that was more a note to me than to you). Already we're looking at the finances and we may have to drop off everything after India. Or simplify Africa. But at this exact moment the map on the right there shows are desired route from Santiago to Calcutta. 

In order to catch good weather in all the locations (nothing that requires a winter coat) we have to leave by mid-November. Or change it completely. (the qualifiers come out once again)

This is the plan. But no tickets are booked yet. At the moment, we're planning to buy along the way. But that could change too. 

Now when you ask "So where are you going?" I think I have an answer. Although it comes with a huge asterisk. Because you can plan all you want but life can always throw you a real curve ball. 

I know this city like the back of my hand. Hey what's that there?

I love Toronto. I really do. However, my heart is set on living in England once we've travelled around the world. 

But before we leave this city, we thought it was important to try and see as much of it as possible. Sure there's the philosophical reason: experience your own country before you experience others. But there's also the economic reason: it's cheap. 

Since we're saving for the Big Trip™ free has become our favourite word. And we've discovered that Toronto has a plethora of free stuff to do. 

• We've seen great free concerts - Ladytron and many others at Harbourfront, Dragonette and tonnes o' other bands at Pride.
  
• We've learned about different neighbourhoods on free walking tours - ROM walks have taken us to Rosedale, Cabbagetown, Front Street, Parkdale; Heritage Toronto taught us about the 60s folk scene in Yorkville. 
  
• We took in a day of free cricket at Sunnybrook Park. 
  

There's lots of other stuff that we're looking at doing, like Frommer's self-guided tours, Afrofest, Masala Mendhi Masti, all the Taste of festivals, more walking tours. So we scour the listings in NOW for fun free things. Never mind, the pay what you can events like Shakespeare in the Park. 

The only downside is the more we see the more we realize that we'll miss this city when we're gone. 

In the words of Pepe Le Pew, le sigh.

I guess it's time for an update. Adrian did indeed find another contract and the savings continue. However, I've started purchasing gear for the trip (fancy camera, laptop, etc) so there's no big jump since the last update.

So where are we now?

location: Toronto

savings: $22,100

ETD: November 15, 2008

And the score is taxes 0, liz 1000.

I know, I know. I haven't posted the London or Vancouver trip reports. I'll do it this weekend, I promise but not if it's really beautiful out or I have to work again. Okay I promise nothing. Works been rather nutso lately and I haven't slept much. So how about a financial update instead. 

So where are we now?

location: Toronto

savings: $19,400

ETD: November 15, 2008

Adrian may have found a contract - nothing is signed yet so please cross your fingers. You're probably wondering, if Adrian hasn't been working and we haven't won the lottery how have we been able to save money? Actually, you most likely weren't wondering but I was. So I went and looked at the bank statement to figure out what we did. And then I remembered. 

Co-workers told me that I was able to write off some things as employment expenses. Curious, I did a little digging and found out they were right. My job requires me to have a mobile and internet access, so I can write them off. I went back and adjusted the last three years worth of tax returns and found $1000. Not bad. And that money went into the Big Trip™ fund. Moral of the story? Read every line of the tax return booklet; you might just find some money in it. 

Picture perfect

It's the long weekend so I've been using the time to scan old pictures from the prehistoric days of film cameras and upload them to our flickr page. Feel free to have a poke around there. 

Thankfully (or not) there aren't as many photos from these earlier trips. I used to take photos as punctuation now I use them like narrative. Don't know if this new way is better. 

Just this week, I was having a conversation with a co-worker about people's facebook photos. Craig hates vacation photos. He says he prefers memories to pictures. I totally agree, especially when travelling. It's important to put the camera down and pick the brain up and remember to experience not just document. 

Unfortunately, I take pictures because I like taking pictures. A lot. So I'm constantly trying to keep the snap happy part of my brain contented while remembering to experience stuff. It's probably why I'm so torn about what camera to bring with me. I have a 4 year old point and shoot digital that has done me very well. It's been to Moscow, India, South East Asia, the UK, France, the US and Canada. However I know it's getting old. So before we go I will probably want to get a new one. So I get a fancy schmancy DSLR and try to take much better photos (snap happy says yes)? Or do I get a new and improved point and shoot digital? (traveller says please)?

When we get closer to leaving, I'm sure how much stuff we have will help make the decision. Adrian already wants to take his PSP. I just got a new 160GB iPod (free using my airmiles). And I'm also contemplating buying a laptop. So more gear seems kinda dumb at this point. 

Plus there's the money issue. All this stuff costs money and will we have it? 

So where are we now?

location: Toronto

savings: $12,200

ETD: November 15, 2008

Getting into the 5 figures feels good - we're officially more than 20% there. 

Money makes the world go round (or us go round the world)

Money. If you're going to travel around the world you need it. And at the moment it's our biggest obstacle. Unlike other trips which we charged and then paid off on our return, the Big Trip requires cash in the bank before we go. 

In June of 2007, we had planned to leave in January but some quick calculations revealed we had a huge deficit. Too much of our savings would be needed to pay our student loans. So we refocused our money on paying them off. We did and I can't tell you how awesome it felt to be free of them. I think I was literally skipping and jumping around the day I saw a big juicy zero on the student loan website. Then in January we started saving to get the hell out of Dodge. 

How are we saving? Very simply we have a budget. Budget. Budget. Budget. I can't stress how important this is. Budget. Budget. Budget. And I can't repeat it enough. We wrote down what we needed to pay our bills, feed ourselves and have a bit of fun. Everything beyond that goes into a high interest savings account with President's Choice Financial that we can't touch. Almost daily I'm at the spreadsheet tracking our expenses - not because I need to but because it helps me stay motivated. I may post a simplified one here later so you can check follow along.

We also re-evaluated our day-to-day expenses to see where we could trim them and we stuck to them. We shop at No Frills not Loblaws (savings of $100/month). Rather than do take out we've learned how to make our favourite Thai, Mexican and Indian foods as well as homemade pizza (this costs less than $10 to make as opposed to $30 take out). I take a lunch to work - everyday (savings of $160/ month). No more cabs ($20/month).  We keep a minimum balance in our chequing account so we don't have to pay bank service fees and we only use our own bank's ATM machines ($40/month). These small changes add up to at least $350 a month or $4200 a year. Not bad for doing nothing. 

We also gave ourselves an allowance. $100 each every week. That's fun money for whatever we choose to spend it on. On paper that sounds generous and that was deliberate. We didn't want to be miserable; if we started hating saving then there's a possibility we'll loose sight of our ultimate goal. However, $100 doesn't go all that far - one night out with friends can easily eat up more than that. But recently, I've actually been underspending my allowance and socking the money away to take with me to the UK and Amsterdam later this month. 

Of course it helps that Adrian and I don't have kids. And that we're at a point in our career where we actually make money when we go to work. But I've met lots of 20-somethings travelling around the world and they find the money. I think it really adds up to if you want you'll find a way to make it happen. 

We've also started gathering up belongings to sell. Adrian got rid of 30 playstation games. And I've got 200 books to get rid of. The money is incremental but every little bit helps. Plus, selling things now is helping us get ready for the great purge before we go. 

I've also looked at other ways to bring in some money. You'll notice the google ads on the right hand side. Clicking on them ads pennies to our savings so feel free to click to help us out. We'd really appreciate it and we'll click yours. Currently we've made exactly  -42¢ and, yes, that is a negative sign. 

So where are we now?

location: Toronto

savings: $11,200

ETD: November 15, 2008

We've determined that $50,000 is what we'll need to get away so we still have a way to go. Since Adrian is still looking for a job, the savings have slowed down. The good thing is that they haven't stopped. I'm confident he'll find something soon and we'll be back on track.

Oh and here are some great resources on saving and budgeting:

• Allround great budget advice

• Dave's detailed budget from gobackpacking.com
  
• Megan's budget from past trips
  
• How much will you need

• How to make money on the road courtesy of nerdynomad.com
  
• How to make money blogging links

• How about couchsurfing on the road
  
• Or volunteering at an organic farm
  

This is just a quick list. There are also countless other travellers out there who have offered invaluable advice to us via the Lonely Planet Thorntree and their blogs. I just wanted to thank all of them. You guys rock.

Getting closer

Adrian still doesn't have a new contract started so I've been freaking out about our plans and budget - particularly since I'm headed to London at the end of March. 

A month ago that seemed like a good way to use up my vacation time. A month ago I also thought the flight would be free thanks to air miles. D'oh. I didn't read the small print which limited my gift certificates to holidays not travel. So I'm stuck with AirTransat. Hating them as much as I do, I've paid for the upgrade to their club class ($600 cha-ching or six days of rtw travel, ouch). Hopefully, comfy seats and free booze will offset my hatred.  

While I'm in London, I may try to visit another friend in Amsterdam if money allows. But he's already warned me that he may be moving to Barcelona which is a longer and more expensive flight so it's looking increasingly iffy.

Anyhow here's the budget update promised. 

And where are we now?

location: Toronto

savings: $10,700

ETD: November 15, 2008

1-800-how's-my-blogging

adjusting my mirror, checking my blind spot, signal and pull out...

I've never blogged before. I've never kept a diary. But I do write. A lot. Because I'm a writer. But hopefully by November 2008, I'll be unemployed. That's right I hope to be unemployed. 

Adrian and I are saving fast and furiously to take off and travel the world.

Of course certain things keep getting in the way. Like Adrian needing a job. Going to Cuba for a much needed vacation. Using up vacation time to visit friends in London and Amsterdam. But I've still got the eyes on the prize. But more on that later. 

Perhaps you're wondering why we're going. The short answer is why not. Both of us love travelling. We love the chaos of trying to figure out bus routes and meals and accommodation when you can't read the alphabet let alone speak the language. And our meagre vacation time has made it difficult to see as much of the world as we've hoped - although many would disagree. 

We've been to Ireland, Buenos Aires, Tunisia, Gambia, Moscow, India, Bangkok, Shanghai, Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh City, Paris, Cuba, many places in the US, and of course the UK and Canada. And every time we have to come back we get depressed and spend weeks talking about how great it would be to just keep travelling. Finally we actually stopped just talking about it and just started doing something about it.

So in June 2007, we did some calculations and by we I mean me (although adrian is an accountant, he hates doing our finances). And quickly discovered that leaving in January 2008 was not going to happen. The dreaded albatrosses known as student loans were just too big. in the words of Pepe le Pew, le sigh. But those same calculations also showed us that by January 2008 we could pay off our student loans - all $35,000 of them, 7 years ahead of schedule. And we still managed to sock away a bit of cash for the big trip. We're pretty chuffed too. 

Now with 9 months to go, I've started this blog to write a little a bit about our planning and preparations but also to get used to this whole blogging thing. And this is the place where we'll be writing about our adventures. That should be easy right? I'm a writer. Unfortunately, coming home to write this blog after writing all day is sometimes hard, hopefully it will be a lot easier once we're on the road. And this whole html blogging stuff is new to me. Hence the title of this post. So be patient. I'm learning. But I'm almost ready to take the "L" off the back windscreen.

And where are we now? 

location: Toronto

savings: $8500

ETD: November 15, 2008