The next big trip
The plan was simple, fly to Mexico (as flights via LAX are pretty cheap), then head south. Working our way all the way down to the southern tip of Argentina. And fingers crossed; Antartica.
The first port of call was to break the news to my employer. I’d been working for the last 2 years as a software engineer at Virgin Pulse (formerly Global Corporate Challenge) where I’d had an absolute ball. I’d made loads of friends (and a girlfriend), been on a few work trips (Mexico, Thailand and the States) and actually had a job that I enjoyed. It is possible. Also…. the commute was a 10 minute bike ride. A side note: I’m pretty sure that one of the keys to happiness is a short commute. With that in mind I was sad to be leaving, however, with a trip like this on the horizon it was hard to not be excited.
After breaking the news to my boss (whom took the news and was half expecting it after Kate had left) we booked the flights. We booked these through STA travel who got us a great price from Buenos Aires to Vancouver at around $1500 AUD so our flights ended up being $2000 AUD or so.
Next up was insurance. Now this was a little more tricky. Because Kate is Australian and I’m British we were unable to get the same insurance. Couple that with the fact that I was living in Australia (so was effectively already travelling) and I was actually very limited to the insurance I could choose. I went with True Traveller, with no excess, and lots of hazardous activites included!
Budget-wise I was aiming to save around $2000 AUD for each month of travelling – there were a couple of more expensive activities I had my eye on which I would try to allow for too:
Leaving Australia
Next up on my list of things to do was tying up my loose-ends in Australia. Closing bank accounts, selling my possesstions, moving out. I ended up selling my bed and mattress, and my desk on gumtree. That was the bigger stuff. A few of my treasured possessions including my finska set (the log tossing gave from finland) were given to my best friend Chris for custodianship. The rest of my stuff was moved to Kate’s parents. Much like my own parents house, there is a vast amount of space at Kate’s parents that appears to be used as storage for all the family’s things collected over the years.
To tent or not to tent
Another thing I was considering, was taking a tent. I’d heard camping was a great option in some parts of Central and South America though there were some considerations I needed to weigh up.
After seeing our friend’s tent - the “Shangri-la 5” by go-lite – we decided to opt for the same. It’s a single pole “teepee” style tent. Extremely light and packs down very small for the size of tent. Inside is very spacious, and it has dual layers including a bug net; A must for Central and South America. The best bit? Instead of a central pole you could use two walking sticks joined together, you could even hang it from a tree branch so there was no central pole at all. All meaning less weight and easier to put up.
The final sway for the tent was the chance for Kate and I to 1.) save money. and 2.) to have an another option instead of dorms. Camping was cheaper, and we didn’t need to share our space with 8+ other people.
After further investigation we found the GoLite company had actually gone into administration and so the tent was no longer being made. I scouered ebay and gumtree for someone selling this tent and found, to much to my frustration, that there weren’t many people interested in selling theirs. Clearly we were on to a winner (though we had no chance of winning at this point). Back to Google. A more indepth search yielded the MyTrail Company, MyTrailCo for short. They had apparently brought out GoLite and were now making very similar tents for $400 USD. The only issue was they were only shipping to the US and Canada. We explored our options. We had colleagues in the States that could possibly bring the tent over for us. But we felt this was a bit too much to ask. We looked for other stockists, and only found one in Europe selling for double the price. Even then shipping was an issue. Eventually I found a company - called MyUs.com - who give you a US address and then will ship anything you send them for a fee around $50 AUD. We went for this option and we found them really, really good. The website was great and you could also ship multiple packages at the same time to save money. I used the subscription service but cancelled the subscription afterwards with no issues. I’d definitely use them again. The tent arrived and we took it for a test run with some friends down in Torquay (Victoria, Aus) for the weekend. It was just what we wanted, though time will tell if it’s the right choice and tent for the big trip.
A secondary issue that was on my mind about camping was how to cook. I wanted to take something to do our cooking but couldn’t take a big stove. In addition where to get camping gas on the trip was an issue. Apparently there aren’t many people in Central America that camp, so would we even be able to get the gas we needed? A search on google said we would have issues but I decided to go for it and see what might happen. I got the JetBoil Flash.
This was an interesting one for me. I’d like a big trip like this before. But not with anywhere near as varied a climate and certainly not with a tent. So, I’ll come back to this one. Here’s some pictures of Kate struggling with packing. She even took a sharpener for her eye-liner pencil… We’ll see if she keeps carrying it!
This was a hard one. Though we were off on a trip of a lifetime it was going to be a while before I saw a lot of my friends again. Especially with the trip to Canada planned afterwards. I’d made a lot of good friends in Melbourne and also my best friend Chris and his fiance Sarah had recently moved to Melbourne too. It had been awesome spending time with them and doing our best to show them some of Melbourne before we left. There was also a work party, and a leaving party. Both were awesome and rather merry. Below are some photos of a dinner we had at our friends Rich & Char’s. Sarah has made us a pinata in honour of our trip! Thanks Sarah!!
Last time my blog went well for around 5 out of 8 months. Then it got too much hassle. Also, it became a little bit of “I did this, then this”. Though there were some good stories there wasn’t much helpful information. I wasn’t sure whether I’d do this blog or not… but I guess I’m going to give it a try.
The final days in Melbourne were spent frantically packing things up, ferrying things to Kate’s parents and trying to keep calm. We didn’t succeed in keeping calm. We had to make sure everything was in storage that we weren’t going to need and then everything in the room on Sunday night was either coming with us, or was going in the bin. We ate pizza on the floor from Bay101 in Port Melbourne, cracked open a bottle of Verve “Thanks Glenn!” and got out our sleeping bags and mats for our first night of camping!The morning would bring… a trip of a life time, again.
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