Well, it's now 2 days before we leave and anyone's guess as to what will happen over the next 12 months. Talking this evening, we realised that it's 6 months since we first mooted the idea of doing the round the world thing. Since then, we've spent many a weekend browsing the travel books and speculating as to what experiences we'll be having. Our conclusion? Who knows?
People said we must be really excited to be going, but it's not quite that simple. As anyone who's been away for an extended period will know, this is not a holiday but (in Megan's words) "a project". So, it's not so much excitement, as curiosity which rules the day.
The travel agent (STA) rang yesterday to say that our flight from Aukland to Buenos Aires is no more. Quantas have cancelled it. However, it has been replaced with a Lan Chile flight from Aukland to Santiago (which is where we wanted to be anyway!). Apparently we're booked on to that flight now but we'll see about that when we get to Gatwick. It also leaves us with non-refundable bookings from Buenos Aires to Santiago which we now don't need. Apparently we can send them back for a refund...go figure! So that shortens that long leg across the South Pacific, saves an unnecessary trip to Brazil (we're going there later anyway) and means we don't have the hectic 2 hour connection to make.
From the itinerary you'll see we're starting off in Russia. Neither of us speaks any Russian so this will be an exercise in sign language extraordinaire[ski]. We've been reading Bryn Thomas's Trans-Siberian Handbook which is definitely worth checking out if you're thinking of taking the trans-sib. It's published (on chlorine-free paper apparently) by Trailblazer.
We'll be trying to do updates pretty frequently so please check back here from time to time. If you're on our e-mail list we'll let you know when there's an update.
Steve & Megan in Bristol, UK