Our RTW Legacy Site
We have official acceptance of my thesis application! This pretty much confirms my defense date will be September 26th and we’ll be able to leave on schedule in mid-October. I’ll spare you the nightmare details of the Swedish bureaucratic system, but I’ve successfully navigated it and we’ve got approval. So, I guess this means no more meandering stories about bears, its time to get planning. Departure date is now officially less than four months away!
While camping this weekend, I had enough time to run through the entire Peru guidebook. One down, many, many to go. In way cooler news, Bears! 
Bear, bear, bear, bear, bear, bear, bear! Times 7. We saw seven bears in five different encounters on our three day camping trip. Only twice were the bears feeling photogenic.
With the level of bear encounter discussion that occurs in Theresa’s family (with complete lack of first hand experience unless you count from a car) It was really interesting to see how they reacted to your presence. They really are much less confrontational than I’ve been lead to believe. In every instance, they were either completely indifferent to our presence or scurried off very quickly, they never found us the least bit interesting or threatening. The only time I was even slightly concerned was when we stumbled across a mother and her two cubs. They moseyed right across the trail without even glancing at the noisy people. Even the bear I got closest to, only 20 feet to my right, rushed away when Theresa said “Jeff, bear!” I never saw it, only heard it run off.
But don’t you all start chasing bears now that I’ve said this! Since bears are cool, anyone else have a bear experience to share? Your regularly scheduled travel blog posting will resume in a day or two.
We’ve all seen them, the backpacks decked out with the red-and-white maple leaf patch—a proud proclamation of Canadian citizenship…or so the wearer wants us to think. Without any interaction with the owner of this maple-leaf bedecked backpack, it’s not always clear who’s sporting this piece of cloth. Is it, in fact, a Canadian, who would rather die than be thought an American? (Because, you know, we are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people.) Or is it an American who thinks that by sewing a maple leaf to his bag he can dupe everyone into liking him, because who, after all, dislikes the Canadians? (Or knows enough about them to have feelings one way or the other.) It’s one of life’s great mysteries. But let me clear one thing up for you: if you see a maple leaf on a backpack, you can be sure it doesn’t belong to me. Here are eight good reasons why I won’t be buying a patch and getting out the sewing kit.
8. I’ll be found out as soon as the weather turns cold. I’ve been to Niagara in January and Winnipeg in February, and the weather those Canadians put up with is brutal. It was -50 degrees Farenheit outside and the man I was working with in Winnipeg was training outdoors for a marathon. Crazy people, I tell you. I don’t do well when the temperature drops below +50 degrees Farenheit.
7. I firmly believe that the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced “zee,” not “zed.” One round through the alphabet, and I’m screwed.
6. I prefer Aunt Jemima to the real thing, which would probably be considered sacrilege by the folks dwelling north of our border. Also, I like to be able to tell my bacon apart from my ham.
5. My iPod contains zero songs by Avril Lavigne, Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, or Celine Dion. And if requested, I wouldn’t be able to sing the Canadian national anthem beyond the second line (although I could sing that much with gusto). But, hey, wait, how many Americans can make it all the way through the Star Spangled Banner?
4. I don’t sprinkle my speech with nearly enough “ehs” and “you knows”, and when I’m tired a bit of a southern accent can come out. I’ve yet to meet a Canadian with one of those.
3. Hockey is maybe my least favorite sport. I couldn’t hold a coherent conversation on it to save my life.
2. I’ll go ahead and admit it, I have no idea who the prime minister of Canada is. Those real Canadians would smoke me out in a second.
1. And oh, yeah, here’s a good one. Because I’m an American, damn it, and I’m proud of it.
Let’s face it, at the current moment, America isn’t the most beloved country in the world, but if you take a moment to think back through history, you might remember that the U.S. has in its relatively short history done a lot of good for the world. Like most every other nation, we’ve had brilliant successes and startling failures; ours are just usually on a grand and very public scale. I do feel that we have done some shameful things; I also feel that we have done many noble things. As a person, I’m the same way, and I don’t disown myself, so why should I disown my country?
Additionally, in my previous travels, I’ve found that the majority of people distinguish between a people and its government. After all, not every Venezuelan agrees with Chavez, every Iranian with Ahmadinejad, every Zimbabwean with Mugabe. If we give them the benefit of the doubt, they will return the favor.
And finally, as a respectful and responsible traveler, I have the opportunity to have people associate good things with America. Why should I, with a maple leaf sewn on my backpack, give Canada undeserved credit for producing a traveler that respects cultural values, that strives to speak at least a bit of the local language, that cares about what local people want, need, believe, and care about, and that believes that every other life is just as valuable as my own? There’s no way I’ll do that. No, instead I’ll let it be known that I’m from the United States, and I’m not loud or obnoxious, don’t travel to get drunk for cheap, and I don’t so much as own cut-off jean shorts, a fanny pack, or a star-spangled bikini top.
So my fellow American travelers, I now challenge you to join me in putting on your big boy pants, just saying no to the maple leaf, and traveling as a proud representative of the United States. Let the world know that you, brave traveler, are from the good ol’ U.S.A.
(Unless of course you are a loud, obnxious, frequently drunk, navel showing, bikini-top-to-temples wearing, “do you speak English” yelling, ugly, ugly, ugly traveler. Then, by all means, please get yourself a maple leaf for your backpack, the bigger the better. )
(Sorry, Canada.)
This the third in our three part budget outline. See Part 1 – South America and Part 2 – Southeast Asia.
We’re currently planning on spending approximately three months working our way down the east coast of Africa, from Ethiopia south to South Africa. This leg of the trip has been the most difficult to nail down a budget for. There’s a couple of reasons for this. First, our sole experience in Africa has come from our amazing trip to Egypt in 2006. We found Egypt to be fantastically easy to navigate and very cheap, characteristics that do not seem to fit the rest of the east coast as well. The second is also entirely our fault, because it is the part of the trip furthest away. Therefore we’ve done the least planning for it, so we really don’t have a great idea of our must see places and our must do activities (more specific than … go on safari, and … see Victoria Falls, etc).
Among things that are not our fault, Africa has a less developed tourism infrastructure that well known backpacking destinations like Southeast Asia do. Overall, there seem to be two poles of tourism service, the “very low” and the “over the top”, but little of the happy medium for budget minded travelers like ourselves. This makes it difficult to predict how much we will spend on average. And finally, it seems there’s more variance between the countries we’ll be visiting than Southeast Asia or South America. But I won’t back down! We’ll give this a go.
Every Day Expenses
Food seems like it will be quite cheap on the whole, I think we’ll be quite comfortable assuming $10 a day. Accommodation seems as though it will vary quite a bit depending on what is available in a given area. I think $40 a day should be a comfortable number, we’ll be well under that enough that it will make up for the times we’ll pay substantially more. Transportation will be somewhat the same way, since while buses are cheap, they may not exist in some places we want to go and private transport or airplane is not cheap. I think we’ll be safe and budget $20 a day. For our daily activities then this comes to $70 a day.
Activities
This is also a very uncertainly defined area at the moment, there are a number of things we want to do, but they can also vary wildly in cost.
Gorilla Trekking $1000
Safari $2000
Climb Kilamanjaro $1500
Any number of other adventure outings requiring guides $priceless
Put this all together and we expect the costs for Africa to be quite substantial. 90 days at $70 a day comes out to $6300 and you add it our additional activities and the total balloons to ~$12000.
Now, as evident throughout this post, this part of our trip is thusf ar the most poorly planned and the most poorly researched. So there are bound to be inaccuracies in this, and we would love to have you correct them. Any experience in Africa? What were your expenses? How easily were you able to get around?
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So to summarize our entire budget and come to one big number, our entire budget comes to $32000 for two people. This presumes our RTW flights are covered with frequent flier miles and is based off of daily projected costs in each area with costs for the additional activities we hope to do factored in as well. This number does not include pre-trip costs such as insurance, immunizations, moving, storage, gear, etc. We’ll address these issues and their costs as they come up.
Earlier this year, while in Houston, I visited a good friend from college while she was also in town visiting her dad. I briefly discussed our travel plans with her dad, and as we ended the conversation, he said, “You must have gypsy blood.” I smiled and nodded. If you look at my history, it’s easy to think that.
At 14, I told my BFF that I couldn’t go to Florida with her as planned because I was going to Ireland instead. No one in my immediate family had ever left North America, yet when I was offered the chance to backpack around Ireland, then live with a host family, I didn’t hesitate. Instead I found an under-the-table job (I was only 14) helping out at a volleyball supply store to help fund my travels. At 20, I said Auf Wiedersehen to my college friends (and Jeff) to spend a year studying in Freiburg, Germany. At 22, I told Jeff that DC would have to wait a year, turned down all the job offers that came with 401ks and health insurance plans, and moved to Greece to teach English for a year. And now, at 27, I’m walking away from the federal career-permanent job that everyone in this area is dying for to traipse around the world for a year. But is it in my blood? I’m not sure.
Now, Jeff, he’s another story. I’d say that it’s certainly in his blood. Thanks to his mom, who immigrated to America in her 30s, Jeff holds two passports (U.S. and Sweden). His mom rode the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Russia and worked with Cambodian refugees while in Southeast Asia. Together his mom and dad toured Africa in a Land Rover they bought long before they were Jeff’s mom and dad or even a couple. This was the family he was born into; these were the stories he grew up with. Extraordinary travel was nothing if not ordinary.
My parents, too, have traveled. They have their stories. Funny stories, poignant stories, memorable stories. But they are stories of travel within the United States…trips to the World’s Fair, long station wagon rides from Kentucky to California.
Like most Americans, in this country of immigrants, I have that long ago brave relative who left behind the homeland to begin anew in an unknown place. Yet, since then, my family has stayed put. My parents were born and raised in Louisville. They bought a house shortly after they were married, and they still live there today. My grandparents live in Louisville. Most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins live in Louisville. I am not sure that anyone on my dad’s side of the family has even left North America unless they were on a tour of duty with the military. No, I don’t think I can claim gypsy blood.
So what is it that makes some of us stay and some of us go? Is the desire to travel something we are born with, something in our genes, passed down from generation to generation, perhaps remaining latent in multiple generations before emerging somewhere down the line? Is it something learned, some desire we acquire from the tales of others, from books we read, from movies we see? Or is it some combination of personality and experience, temperament and opportunity?
I’m not sure, but I know whatever it is, Jeff and I, despite our different upbringings, both have it. And it runs so deep in both of us that when we try to think of how this trip came to be, we can never figure out when or how it originated. There was no sitting down and deciding, no weighing of options, no official announcement to family or friends. The trip was always there, ever evolving, until at some point one of us finally said “We are doing this, aren’t we?” and the other of us said, “Of course.” And that was that.
Gypsy blood? Maybe.
Or perhaps we’re both just a bit crazy.
I tend to think of myself as a very practical, reasonable, and down-to-earth person. (Just please ignore the fact that I traded an engineering degree for a German degree, and I passed up well-paying job opportunities to teach English in Greece for something like 600 Euros a month.)
I usually consider it pretty hokey when I hear people say things about the universe leading them in some direction and if anyone asks what my astrological sign is, my response is most likely rolled eyes. But damn it, I think the universe is indeed trying to tell me something, and though I’ve repeatedly ignored it, it’s not relenting. Apparently, I am supposed to go to Bhutan.
What makes me so certain, you ask. Well, let me lay it out for you.
1. Long ago, when we first started talking about the trip in real terms, I made a few connections with people who had done similar trips. One of the first people I talked to had done a route very similar to what we were planning, except for the addition of Bhutan. She had pretty much planned her entire trip around this tiny kingdom, and she raved about it so much that I started to look into it. I’ll admit that at the time I knew next to nothing about the place, but I was soon completely enraptured.
2. Bhutan started showing up in the newspaper. This kingdom of less than a million people was suddenly being talked about in the Washington Post. Now I don’t read the paper every day, and I definitely don’t read every page of it when I do, but for some reason I started seeing news about this nation and their transition to democracy every time I opened the Post.
3. Two of our favorite magazines arrived in the mail right around the same time with feature articles on Bhutan. Smithsonian Magazine and National Geographic Adventure both profiled the country, its amazingly well preserved culture, and its holy-crap-is-that-for-real scenery. At this point, I started hinting to Jeff that maybe Bhutan needed to be added to our list.
4. This summer (in just a few weeks as a matter of fact) Bhutan will be featured at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival. This is the first time that Bhutanese culture will ever be displayed outside the kingdom (in live performances). I work at the Smithsonian. If ever the stars were aligned, this was it. After attending a special lecture offered last week to Smithsonian staff, I came home excited all over again about this nation.
Now, if you’re like most people, you’re probably wondering where the heck this country is and what is so special about it. So let me fill you in a bit. Bhutan is a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas. It’s about the size of West Virginia, has approximately 700,000 citizens, and is nestled between Tibet and India. This year Bhutan is celebrating 100 years of their monarchy, although in just the past few years a constitution was introduced and the first democratic elections took place this past March. Incredibly enough, this change was brought about by the king, and the people were very reluctant to move to any form of democracy. It’s not a complete democracy, however, as Bhutan has maintained a king. Never invaded (at least in remotely recent history), Bhutan has a very distinct culture that is very closely guarded. People still live in traditional houses, wear traditional clothes, and perform traditional labor and arts, as well as practice a very traditional form of Buddhism. The Western World has not made any cross-roads into this country, and speaking of roads, the first road leading to the outside (India, in this case) opened in 1968. The majority of the people have never left Bhutan. Environmental protection is extremely important to the Bhutanese, and they have some of the world’s most dramatic landscapes. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, the Land of the Thunder Dragon (the name of the country in their language), has declared themselves more concerned about Gross National Happiness than Gross National Product. What’s not to love about a country that places so much emphasis on happiness? (Although, as I was recently reminded, happiness (or at least the pursuit of it) was one of the three rights explicitly outlined in the American Declaration of Independence. I think we often lose sight of that…)
Do I have your attention? Are you wondering why in the heck I’m even debating going?
Well, there’s one catch. One big catch.
Bhutan is extremely difficult to travel to. Preserving a traditional way of life and protecting your environment is not easy to do if you let every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or Theresa and Jeff) who wants to visit your country in. So Bhutan simply doesn’t let everyone who wants to come in. In fact, tourism wasn’t even allowed at all until 1974! They don’t pick and choose tourists by looking at passports or screening applications or disallowing people from certain country to visit. Instead, they control tourism by charging a high cost for people to visit and having very strict restrictions on how you can travel. First of all, all travel must be done with a guide and must be arranged through a Bhutanese travel agency. At minimum, you are supposed to plan 3 months in advance. Secondly, all travel into and out of the country must be done on the Bhutanese airline, and of course, there are only so many seats available per day. You can’t just walk or drive into the country or choose from multiple airlines. Thirdly, there are only so many hotel rooms available, so if you don’t plan far enough in advance, the hotels may be booked and you then aren’t permitted to come. Fourthly, you must pay a price for each day you are in the country based on the itinerary you establish with your tourist company. The price covers everything–food, hotel, admission to museums, treks, etc.–but it is hefty at about $250 to $375 per person per day. This is not a backpacker haven, which is according to plan.
When you consider that in the rest of the Asian countries we plan to visit, we expect to spend an average of less than $50 per day (as outlined by Jeff in our last post) the cost seems even more exorbitant. We could live for months in the Southeast Asia for what we’d spend in a week in Bhutan. Money-wise it doesn’t make sense.
But putting money aside for a moment, is there anywhere else on earth that could give us the type of experience we’d have in Bhutan? And as it seems that Bhutan is in the beginning stages of changes that could lead the country in very different directions, is it possible that this is a place that we can’t just put on the “we’ll get to it some other day” list.
My practical side says no way, you just can’t go there. My “screw the engineering degree and study German” side says hell yes Bhutan should make the cut.
What do you all say?
[poll id=7]
We were in the midst of outlining our budget for our trip in three parts (see Part 1 – South America) when a week-long vacation to South Carolina so rudely interrupted us. So now that life is back on its busy schedule, its time for us to finish the last two legs. Our second continental stop takes us to Southeast Asia, where we are planning on staying approximately three months. We’re breaking our trip down into two categories, every day expenses for our daily food, lodging and necessary transport and activities for all the crazy, unique things we will want to fill our time doing.
Every Day Expenses
The region is a backpacker haven for a region: it is cheap. Most of what we’ve read pegs decent budget hotel rooms at under $10-15, cheaper in some of the less developed nations. So as we’ve been trying to do, we’ll play it safe and budget $15 a day for hotel. Eating will also not tax our wallets. Street food can be found for less than $1, with restaurants slightly more. I’m not sure I’ll ever be motivated to cook on my own when I can get some fantastic noodles for less than a buck, so we won’t budget too much home cooking in. $10 a day should cover the occasional splurge. Since the region is fairly small, we will traveling primarily by bus, which is quite inexpensive. We will likely take a flight out to either Indonesia or the Philippines (help us decide), though even those seem relatively inexpensive at the moment due to heavy competition. $5 a day should do us handsomely. That brings us to $30 a day between the two of us.
Activities
Here’s the thing. There are actually very few special activities we want to do in Southeast Asia, at least ones we will have to arrange in advance and hire guides and shell out expensive fees for. Obviously we will go to Angkor Wat, but guides can be hired just for the day if desired and access to the park costs $20. To me, that seems to fit into the range of the general activities costs. Most of the other sights we want to see fall into this category*. So we will simply budget $10 a day for our activities and consider this done. If Angkor Wat is only $20, this should be plenty to cover our adventures.
So again, adding all of these expenses together, we plan on spending $40 a day for 90 days, or $3600. Now that I get here, I’m shocked at how little that is. I’m not as confident we’ll hit this budget as I am about our South American budget. But, I guess you can’t argue with math. As I said earlier, it’s a backpacker haven for a reason.
*There is one big activity that would blow our budget, though we have not yet officially decided on it yet. Theresa will have more on it soon.
Did I ever mention on here that I am writing a hiking book? Well, I am. I have a contract to write a DC area guidebook on hiking for a major travel publisher. By September 15, approximately one month before our departure date and about two weeks after I hope to have jetted over to Sweden, my entire manuscript plus maps and photos is due. What this means is that Jeff and I spend every single weekend hiking, checking off one by one the eighty hikes that will be in this book. So if you’ve ever noticed that our Sunday evening posts aren’t all that fabulous, well I apologize, but come Sunday we’re pooped—not to mention rank smelling.
And though spending every waking moment of our free time out on the trails isn’t exactly awesome for checking things off the RTW to-do list, it isn’t completely wasted time. In fact, we’ve learned a list’s worth of stuff.
1. The gear is good to go. Do we have a comfortable and safe way to carry the camera? How will my clothes hold up to the heat and humidity of the tropics? Can I layer effectively to stay warm without taking anything heavy? Is that Light My Fire Spork going to cut my mouth or be an effective tool? No way to know but test them out, and that’s where hiking has come in. Back in March, I layered up clothes I planned to take and set out for 10 miles of hiking. Verdict: Impressively warm. This past weekend, I donned two other outfits and went out in the near 100 degree temps plus stifling humidity and hiked nearly 20 miles in each. Verdict: There’s not much to be done when it’s that hot, but if I have to wear clothes, these are the ones. Every hike Jeff slings the camera bag across his body, wearing it along with his backpack and snapping away at everything from frogs to waterfalls. Verdict: Comfy, easy to access, and secure even when we’re scrambling over rocks and tramping through water. This weekend, we threw the sporks in the bag and used them to make peanut butter sandwiches and prepare and eat Jamaican chicken. Verdict: Not just a cool piece, but functional too.
2. We’re not going to be the kids holding up the trekking tour. No, we will be the kids laughing in the face of Dead Women’s Pass on the Inca Trail. Okay, maybe not, but we’ll certainly be in shape for the many adventures we plan to take. When Jeff and I stood at the trailhead of our final hike—what would be miles 32-38 for the weekend and miles 41-47 if I also include my Thursday hiking—I can say that neither Jeff nor I were certain our legs would carry us all the way to the ridge and back. But not only did we do it, we did it in less time than what a hiking club that focuses on uphill hikes told us it would take. So if you’re thinking about joining one of our trekking tours, you better come prepared. Otherwise you’ll be seeing nothing but our dust.
3. We really do like each other. When we’re hiking, it’s Jeff, me, and that’s it for up to 12 hours per day. No friends or family members are around to provide conversation. No TVs, iPods, or computers offer diversion. There’s no one to talk to but each other, and though we’ve been doing this all-day, all-weekend hiking for 2.5 months already we’ve yet to run out of things to talk about or become sick of being together. Woohoo! We just might make it around the world for a year without killing each other.
4. Squatting, no problem. Though I will always hold the porcelain pot dear to my heart, I can do without it. I have the squatting thing down. Aren’t you glad to know that?
I’ve been raised a bit of a pack rat. I hope my folks don’t get too offended for being sold out on the internet, but my mother has plastic boxes full of ten year old brochures. Heck, she has plastic boxes full of plastic boxes that she no longer uses. My Dad saves all the old screws and nails he pulls out, in addition to everyone’s favorite, the cutout underwear waistbands. I don’t think anyone knows what those are saved for (Dad, care to chime in and clarify?). Needless to say, I was destined to be a “saver”.
What I’ve never really understood is the whole psychology of it all. I’m always worried that something I throw away will be the exact thing I will need somewhere down the line. And therefore, I figure I can just file it away for when that time comes. It’s also the same reason I’ll buy something I don’t need when its a ridiculously good deal. I figure, it’ll be perfect someday, and then I’ll be so thankful I got it when I did. But most of the time, it never actually is useful. But I guess the rare occasions I do have exactly what I want reinforces the behavior enough.
So that’s why I think the most daunting part of this trip is probably what to do with all of the stuff we are leaving behind. In four years of living in this apartment, I’ve managed to accumulate a lot of things. A surprising amount. Especially for the small amount of closet space our apartment allows. Among all the things we are going to need to do this summer, packing up all of our things is going to be a big project.
I keep saying I because Theresa doesn’t have this issue that I do. I keep finding small bundles of clothes in the corner whose presence Theresa explains to me as “I don’t wear them anymore, so I’m gonna throw them out.” I’m pretty sure I have more clothes than Theresa, but I usually wear the same ten shirts, three jeans and four pairs of shorts.o fortunately, I have her to help me out with my “affliction.” She’s got a pretty good gauge of whats useful or not and she’s more than happy to share it with me. It doesn’t necessarily make throwing it away any easier though. Of course, I know to ignore her indignant stares about my video games and other electronics.
But needless to say, it’s the one thing about preparing for this trip that I’m dreading the most. Which I guess is good, because as far as issues go, its a pretty minor one. So are you a chucker or a saver? A Theresa or a Jeff? How are you able to fight your compulsions? I’d love some psychological help this summer.
October still sounds like it’s a long way off. With summer just taking off, I think of October, a distinctly fall month, and I convince myself that we have plenty of time to get things figured out. But, the truth is, the clock is tick, tick, ticking.
Our mid-October departure date is only 4.5 months away, but in reality we have even less time than that. Jeff will be leaving for Sweden in late August, and I’ll be following him at the beginning of September (provided we get the okay next week for him to proceed with his thesis defense). We won’t return until the beginning of October, at which point we’ll tie up loose ends and take off. We’ll be notifying our landlady in just one month of our intent to move out, actually moving our stuff to Louisville in mid-August, and turning in the keys at the end of August. That’s soon!
Which means there are a lot of things to be done in a short amount of time. (And in saying that, I’m just referring to trip planning things, not Jeff’s writing his thesis or me hiking my remaining 40 trails and completing my book.) Fortunately, if there is one characteristic that I have it’s discipline. I can always buckle down and get the job done. I do what needs to be done, and I don’t accept excuses. So I’m going to lay out a couple of items here that I want to get done in the upcoming weeks. Having them here for all the world to see will provide me with the necessary motivation to get them done. I’m not sure, however, how inspiring Jeff will find this. He doesn’t seem to have the guilt issues I have.
To Do in the Month of June
1. Lay out a general itinerary for the South America leg of the trip (estimated length of stay in each country and must-see sites).
2. Purchase life insurance.
3. Reorder contacts and get a large enough supply to last the entire trip.
4. Determine what vaccinations we are going to get and when/where we’re getting them.
5. Figure out what we have to do to assign power of attorney to someone else to handle our finances. (Any lawyer friends out there want to help us make sense of this?)
6. Make a list of everything we still need to buy.
I’m tempted to continue, but I’m trying to be realistic (not always my strong suit) about what we can accomplish. Anything you can think of that I’m leaving off but should be getting around to about now?
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