Who would have thought that planning a trip around the world would take a wee bit of time......
Well it turns out that you do need to plan a bit for this type of trip, and looking at a map of the world is not going to be enough... We have spreadsheet for everything now. Visas... Do we need one? Can we get it at the border? The car... Can we use a 'carnet' or an import permit Is this country safe? The trip has evolved in the relatively short time we have been planning. We have an idea and say "that's it, we will go this way!!" Only to find it's a terrible idea because of some war or infectious disease in the area. We have looked at a lot of blogs and forums for overland travellers and some well travelled routes exist in the areas we want to travel in, so we have decided to just go for it and follow the tracks of those before us. We will finish our hiking trips in Aussie and the USA then off to the UK to get the car. We will travel a bit in the UK, catch up with the long lost relatives then we will travel to The Netherlands to visit famous friends, then Spain and over to Africa and we will travel down the west coast to Cape Town. Back up the east of Africa and we will spend some time in Tanzania and neighbouring countries. We hope to meet up with Patrick who will be able to introduce us to some of the locals. Back to Europe and off we go to Russia and the rest of Europe and down towards Asia. At this point, we are thinking we might be running low on funds, so it could be back to work then, but if we are able to we would like to keep going to Malaysia and Australia. Sounds like a plan? We think so.... Not too much planning but it's going to be enough for a good start. Once we are on the road, we are expecting to meet with other travellers and the plan may unfold more, but until then it's all just in our heads. We have had so much interest in this trip from friends family and work colleagues we hope this blog will inspire others to follow us, not just on this blog and website, but in person on the road as travellers. Life comes around only once per person so we have to do it right first time, no second chance on this. We are 'going for it'. Join us! David & Christine I am sure that when all is said and done,the hardest thing we would have done will have been selling the house at the start of this. I still shudder when I think about it. .
We sold the house by auction. We had 1 bidder.... It was stressful and we had really gone all out on getting the place ready, full repaint inside, roof and deck, full landscaping, staging furniture.... It wasn't that we were attached to it or anything like that, it was that we needed it to sell for an exact amount that would pay for all of the domino like stages of the plan. It all ended today with the purchase of the house in Nelson On 3rd April we head off to Western Australia to start the Bibbulmun Trail. It runs for 1000kms from the outer suburbs of Perth down to the southern coastal town of Albany. Now, the observant amounts you will know we have walked this trail before, all of it! When we walked it before we were living in Perth and we walked the trail on holidays and long weekends, with a final push on a holiday back to Aussie after we moved back to New Zealand. That took quite some effort on our part... When the trail as it is today was designed, it was intended to be walked as one continuous trip. They call it end to ending, and we will be end to enders.. Because we loved the trail so much, we really wanted to walk the trail end to end. We know one thing, this will not be easy, it never is walking 20+kms a day every day with 12 odd kg's on your back, maybe in the heat, or worse yet in the rain.. although unlikely. Problem is we have done this before in 2000 and know how great it can be to travel a long way on foot. It's a strange sense of satisfaction that is hard to explain. So I won't. The blisters and strains often linger longer than that sense anyway. |
it's Our Epic Trip...David & Christine are from New Zealand and are embarking on a trip around the world the slow way, on foot and by personal vehicle. This could get interesting! Archives
June 2018
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