Two more weeks

Hi everybody,

A last update before we are finally leaving.... I just looked at my calender and in 2 weeks we will finally be leaving! 14 days!! It seems so surreal, that in some moments I just cannot comprehend it. But it is becoming very very real. We are moving out of our apartment next weekend. We (read "I" ;-) ) packed a lot of boxes already, and next week we'll pack the last remaining things. It is very sad actually, as I love living here. The apartment is great and I will miss it for sure!
My dad will help me move all our stuff to Hasselt again next weekend. So we will move in with my dad for a couple of days while we prepare for our trip. When we are back in May, we will move in with my dad as well. Claudio will probably go to China for two months for his work, between May and July. So I decided to stay at my dad's during that period. When Claudio is back, we will have to summer to look for an apartment, and hopefully we can be back in Antwerp by September.

So the apartment is gone, all my subscriptions have been cancelled (tv, internet, gym, phone,...), my work agenda has been cleared completely, we found a place for the cats to stay during our six months (THANKS JURGEN!!), we changed our address, we got all our vaccinations, and we even went to the dentist. I feel quite prepared. To get to this point was tough though. These last few months have been crazy. Planning and preparing for the trip has been mentally exhausting. So it better start soon cause I am soooo tired. I need a holiday :D

Last weekend, I also said goodbye to my big family. We had a nice party with lots of food and drinks at my sister's place.

 

My whole family was supernice and genereous (thanks everybody!!). My sister baked an amazing cake njaaaam and baked pizza, and my mam and me prepared quiches, salads, and meat. It was an awesome day, and it seems crazy that I will not see my family till May.

 

The weekend before that, my best friend and homy for life Davinia came to Antwerp for the whole day as well. We shopped till we dropped, and afterwards had an amazing dinner at I Famosi (thanks Daviiii!). Everybody is so nice to me, I should leave more often ;-) Also this weekend we'll make Hasselt unsafe and enjoy the Jeneverfeesten. And on top of that, next week she will help me paint the apartment. Can you wish for a better friend?

 

Off course I also have goodbye dinners planned with my mam, dad, and sister. But that will be right before I leave. Hm, I hope it will not be too sentimental, cause I'm not good at it :s Claudio is also in Italy right now, saying goodby to his friends and family in Bologna. Wow, so many goodbye's...

 

In the meantime, we are preparing the trip further. We outlined out itinerary for Mexico and New Zealand a bit better. I have so many things to say, but I will limit it, else I will have nothing else to tell you anymore when I'm actually experiencing it ;) I will just say that between Xmas and NY, we booked a little apartment in Puerto Escondido and booked some surf lessons. Hopefully we will be able to learn how to surf in that week. I'm sooo excited about it! And the crazy thing is, that for that week, we are paying 375 EUR for the two off us, everything included: surf lessons, apartment, surfing gear, transportation to the beach,... Can it be any cheaper? :)

I just cannot wait to be at the beach and enjoy the sun, the waves, some cold bears and delicious Mexican food! I'm highly doubting that I will be able to resist eating meat!!

 

In New Zealand we booked some nights in Queenstown. When you look at pictures, the town looks amazing. Queenstown is also known for it's crazy sports. You can do everything there, from skydiving to kayaking, to bunjee jumping. We decided we are going to skydive. Jump from 3000 m out of a plane with a professional skydiver. Claudio is afraid of heights, so I think it will be pretty funny :D

 

So darlings, that's all for now... I'll keep you posted ;)

 

X Marj

Countdown has begun

Hi all!

It's been two months since the last post, so I thought it was time to post an update. Realizing that there are only 12 weeks, or more specifically, 83 days left before we leave, makes me nervous. VERY nervous. I am a huge control freak, so my compulsion to try to organize everything to the slightest detail is driving me insane! Luckily Claudio is helping me out, and is trying to remind me that you don't have to plan everything in advance. So I am trying to let go a little bit. But it's difficult... :) 

So what did we do in these last two months? Well, we set our official departure date: it will be the 1st of November 2013! We booked a flight from London to Lima on 03/11. So we decided to go to London two days before our flight leaves, and enjoy London a bit. It has been 15 years since I've been there, so I would love to go back. Soooo, we booked the Eurostar at 15h, leaving from Brussels South. Not so dramatic as an airport departure, but hey, it was cheaper to go with the train :D 

When we arrive in Lima, the 4th of November, we plan to stay in the city for 3 days. Then, the 7th, we will take the plane to go to Cuzco. We originally wanted to  take a bus, but since the bus is 20 hours, and the plane 1h30, and our time in South America is limited, we decided to take the plane. Our only concern is the high altitude. When you go by bus, you go up gradually, so you feel less nauseous. By plane, there is more risk for altitude illness. So hopefully it will be OK. We will probably stay in Cuzco for 1 week and visit Machu Picchu. From there, we are taking the bus to Puno, Lake Titicaca. From there, we will travel towards La Paz (Bolivia), taking a couple of days, and visit Copacabana and Isla del Sol at Lake Titicaca. 

So around the 17th / 18th we will be in La Paz. From there, we will take the bus to go to Uyuni. There we would like to take a tour of 2 days. When the tour is finished, we will travel towards Santa Cruz by bus, stopping in different Bolivian cities/towns. We will have around 1 week to do so, as we have a plane from Santa Cruz to Buenos Aires 2 December. 

Once landed in Buenos Aires, I booked a place for 5 days with Airbnb. Hopefully in those days we can also relax a little bit after the intensive month of travelling. From Buenos Aires, we will also go to Iguazu waterfalls. To go there, we will take the bus (20 hours !!!) and to go back we will fly (probably the 11th of December). The 12th of December we leave for Lima again, also with the plane. I know, A LOT of flying. Then, the 15th we leave for Miami. We are also planning to book our three nights in Miami with Airbnb.

It's such a nice concept: people offer a room in their home, sometimes with private bathroom included. You pay a much lower price than you would in a hotel. You can read comments from previous visitors, so you can see if it's reliable. When we are in Hawaii, we also booked our accommodation through Airbnb, because hotels are super expensive there! In that way, we can stay within our daily budget!

Besides the travel planning, we are also occupied with other important things. We are trying to choose/buy a backpack. We made a pile of all the things we want to take and Claudio arrived till 9 kilo's and me 8. So we are planning not to take a bag that is too big. We need to live with the bare minimum! 

In addition to that, we would like to buy a decent camera, that also doesn't occupy too much space in our backpack. So today is shopping day! Hopefully we can decide on something today, so we cross it of our list.

We are also looking for a good health / travel insurance. We are doubting between the travel insurance provided by our travel agency (Travel Nation) and the one of World Nomads. The decision will be taken next week.

And last but not least, we are making sure that our health is OK, going to the doctor, getting our shots, prescription drugs, etc. 

There is also good news regarding our apartment: we found new renters! This means we do not have to pay a fine for breaking our rental agreement. We are moving out the last week of October, and are moving in with my dad again. We are also leaving all our stuff there, so that is very convenient. Thanks dad :-)

So, everything is developing fast. Less then 3 months to go... It's becoming so real. I'm even planning our goodbye parties already! Crazy....

We'll talk soon!

Hugs XXX Marj & Cla

Tickets are booked

Hi all,

It's been a while and have a lot of news...

After Claudio told his employer that we are leaving in April, I decided that I should say it as soon as I could. It was becoming so difficult to lie to my colleagues at work. So, I told my boss last Thursday, roughly 10 days ago. I entered his office with a pounding heart and a flushed face and with all the courage I had (I talked to myself in the mirror in the bathroom to calm my nerves ;) ). To my surprise, my boss was super nice! He even asked me where I wanted to travel, and after I told him everything, he suggested we had to go out for dinner for a client... Awesome :-)
So, we agreed that I can leave in November, taking holidays for one month, and 5 months of time credit. So I can start working again the 5th of May. I also took the option to take time credit for another 4 months , which my boss approved as well strangely enough. This is because there is a chance we might move to China for 4 months, for Claudio's work. But this is not sure yet. So I won't elaborate on it, cause we don't know yet if and how this will happen.

So, now, everybody knows! Finally, after 9 months of planning and silence, I can tell everyone! Such a relief...

Since my work approved of my time credit, we were finally able to look for plane tickets. We had a discussion last weekend about the destinations, because I was not completely convinced yet. The planning was, as explained before, to go to South America, then Mexico, and from there fly to New Zealand and the SE Asia. I had some destinations that I wanted to include, such as Rio de Janeiro, Cuba, Miami or Hawaii. After a somehow heated discussion (Claudio is very stuborn :D ), we decided to see how much it would cost to include some of these destinations. So, that weekend, I started performing some research on the cost of plane tickets. You all probably know, but there are special round the world tickets (RTW). This is offered by alliances of airlines, but also travel agencies. For example:

Airlines:
Star Alliance: http://www.staralliance.com/en/fares/round-the-world-fare/
One world: http://www.oneworld.com/flights/round-the-world-fares/oneworld-explorer/
World Walkabout : http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/world-walk-about/gb/en
See also some others : http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Round_the_world_flights

Travel agencies:
Travel nation: http://www.travelnation.co.uk/
Round the world flights : http://www.roundtheworldflights.com/

In general, RTW tickets are cheaper than booking one way flights. A great website is Skyscanner (http://www.skyscanner.net/), where you can select whole months to see the cheapest prices or where you select different airports to leave from. In this way, it becomes easier to find the cheapest tickets. Also the app is really good (even better than  the website in my opinion).

We started looking for flights on Skyscanner, but it seemed to be very expensive to book one way tickets. Usually, return flights are even a bit cheaper than just booking a one way flight. I was not able to find a decent itinerary on Skyscanner, so I decided to get some quotes for RTW tickets.

Star Alliance and One World were very expensive, so I decided to contact two travel agencies, Travel Nation and Round the world flights. Travel nation gave us a really good quote! We were appointed a "travel consultant", and this guy was super! I asked for different destinations, changing it 20 times, and he was really friendly and helped me organise my trip. We planned the following itinerary:

03/11  London - Lima
15/12  Lima - Miami
18/12  Miami - Mexico City
13/01  Cancun - Mexico City
14/01  Mexico City - Honolulu
01/02  Honolulu - Auckland
27/02  Auckland - Singapore
28/04  Singapore - London

I asked to include Hawaii (Honolulu) in the itinerary and it did not seem to be super expensive! Then, first, we had a connecting flight from Lima to Mexico City, transit in Miami. We were able to postpone the connecting flight with 3 days, so we could stay a couple of days in Maimi -> perfect!
We were very satisfied about the price, the help of the agency, and our itinerary. So we decided to book all the flights. One part of the payment was done on Friday and this Monday we will booked the second part of the trip!

We also booked two flights in South America with TAM airlines. Through the agency it was very expensive, so we looked ourselves and found a formula which is called "multicity":

02/12  Santa Cruz (Bolivia) - Buenos Aires
13/12  Buenos Aires - Lima

This formula is a lot cheaper than booking a single flight Buenos Aires - Lima (700 EUR cheaper!!). So we booked these flights as well, as we noted that a lot of dates were already not available anymore (due to the holiday peak season).

So all our flights are booked :-) What a relief!!!!! And, I'm happy we included Hawaii and Miami in our plan. Hopefully when we are in Miami we can see an NBA game, let's hope they're playing then!

After this intensive week of planning and booking, we need a break, wow... Luckily it's sunny, so it's time to go outside and lay in the sun :-)

Hope you enjoyed my post, and if you are thinking about travelling, I hope the info is useful! If you have any more questions, just leave a message or email me!

Hugs,
Marj & Cla

It's official....

... We just received the confirmation from Claudio's work that he can take 6 months! We'll leave in November and we'll be back the end of April!! It's getting so real now..............
I can't wait to communicate it at my job. I think I will do it next month. Then I can tell everybody, I can't wait!

Lots of love and good vibes <3

Talk to you all soon!

Follow up (April)

Hi all,

So... it's been a while! A lot of things have happened in these last 3 months. Work was super busy, and it was difficult to find the time to organise our trip. Coming home from work at 20h every night, makes me more determined then ever to do this trip though!
Claudio already requested time credit at his work, and the response was not that great. They only want to give him 4 months of time credit + 1 month of actual holidays. This would reduce our trip with 2 months. We would leave November and be back in the beginning of April. Claudio is trying to negotiate for one more month, so we could stay away till the end of April. Let's hope it will work! 6 or 7 months is not such a big difference, but only 5 would not be ideal.

In the meantime we decided that we will start our trip in Mexico. This will normally be in November 2013. We are planning to stay there for 4 weeks. First, we want to fly to Mexico city, and stay there for a couple of days. Then, we want to visit Teotihuacàn, were you  can see ancient pyramids. After that, we want to travel to Oaxaca, and later Puerto Escondido:

Later, we will move upwards towards Cancun. On our way, we will visit the ancient Maya cities and ruins. We will end our trip at the beach, in Tulum & Cancun - hopefully without hurricanes :-)

At the beginning of December, we will go fly to Lima, Peru. After some days in Lima, we'll head to Cuzco. From there, we will go towards Machu Picchu. We are still undecided whether we are going to do the Inca trail or not. It is a 4 day hike that is rather challenging, but is supposed to be amazing.
After that, we would like to go to Arequipa, if time allows it. From there, we'll head to Lake Titicaca, and there we'll cross the border to go to Bolivia. There, we want to visit the Salar de Uyuni, which is basically a salt desert.

At this point, it will almost be Christmas and New Years, and for that, we would like to be in Buenos Aires, and enjoy city life for a week or so. After that, we want to visit the Iguazu Falls.

Here ends our American adventure. Mid January we will head towards New Zealand and we are planning to stay there for one month.
From here on we are just starting now to plan our route. We are thinking about several possibilities, different countries/cities, such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Beijing.... It will depend on how much time credit Claudio can take. We will know by the end of this month, and then we will start planning the second part of our trip. One country that we won't be able to visit will be Indonesia. There are showers every day in March & April. As a result, we chose to visit other countries, were the weather is better. Indonesia will be for another time... Maybe even the summer of 2014... We'll see!

We have also been looking for flights already. We found a round the world ticket for 2300 £ (which is +/- 2750 €). We are checking out some other options, but this one seems quite OK! Once we decided our whole trip, we will purchase our ticket.

I also wanted to say that from now on, comments are allowed on this blog! So feel free to leave comments!!

Thanks for reading, and hopefully next time and can bring some good news!

Making some decisions

I am a very chaotic person and I change my mind 20 times a week, but we finally made a clear decision on when we will leave for the trip: it should normally be the first week of October!

The original plan was to leave in the beginning of September. The reason for this was so that I could take holidays in September from work, while we are gone, so I could have 1 complete wage extra during the trip. Then I would only go on time credit in October. Since we didn't work 5 years yet, we are not entitled to any social security contribution, so we will not receive any money in that period. 

So... I went to my boss and kindly asked if I could have holidays in September. And he kindly told me ... No! I was worried that now I would have to take holidays right before we left for the trip, and that seems a bit exaggerated, right? Who would take holidays for 5 weeks right before they leave on a trip for 8 months? So, I started looking up some things, and I found out that when you take time credit, you employer actually has to pay out all your holiday pay!! So for all the holidays that I haven't taken in 2013, I will be paid out! Problem resolved :-) I decided not to take any holidays anymore this year, so I can recuperate all that money. 

Now Claudio's situation: he is supposed to get a nice promotion in April, which would also mean some extra money - which we could definetly use on our trip! Since he has to tell his boss 6 months in advance that he is taking time credit, it would be better to do so AFTER his promotion ;-) So if we leave in October, 6 months before would be April. So: perfect! October it will be!

So you can see it takes a lot of scheming and planning to make just 1 decision!!

In addition, we decided to stay in Antwerp for the whole period, and not move to Hasselt for the last couple of weeks. In this way, we will be able to keep the cats with us for a longer period, and it will be easier to go to work. 

Since we are leaving in October 2013, we will only be back in the beginning of June 2014. Right before the holidays start again, perfect ;-) 

We also formed our itinerary a bit better. We would like to do it as follows:

October: Peru
November: Argentina, Bolivia and Patagonia
December : Mexico - > So that will probably mean NYE in Mexico, because flying in that period will be too expensive
January: New Zealand
February: Australia
March - June: South East Asia, which will include Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Phillipines. We are also thinking about Myanmar and Vietnam, but that will be decided later.

We received some more lonely planet guide for Xmas (thanks sis), and now we can start our research on all the countries we want to visit. And we'll keep you posted on the progress.

Till next time!
Ciao!

Legendary

Hello again,

So now everybody know! What a relief! Clappie told his parents, I told mine already a while ago. We told our friends & family through this blog. The only ones we did not tell are our colleagues. Since we are leaving in 9,5 months, we still have to work for a while . We want to work till the end of August, and then have a couple of days to prepare before we leave. It is scary to think they might find out, so I decided to change our picture on the blog. In this way, we cannot be traced! Fake names & no pics, perfect! :-)
We both want to take time credit at work, which means we will take a leave of absence at work for 8 months. When we'll come back, we'll have our old jobs back. This will make it easier to get back on our feet. We will need the money to find a new apartment, since we decided to not sublet our current apartment. Instead, we are moving out of our apartment in the city the 1st of August. We are going to move in with my dad for 5 weeks before we leave. I feel a bit ridiculous to move in with my dad at the age of 29. Clap will even be 30 at that point (!) :-). Still, it is only temporarily, and it will allow us to save 1500€ extra!
When we come back in May 2014, we'll immediately start working again. We will still be with my dad, and this again will allow us to save up some money quickly so we can move back to Antwerp in the summer.
May 2014, it sounds so far away! I remember we used to talk about a world trip 3 years ago. We always had 2013/2014 in mind. And it seemed an eternity away. Now, it's only 9,5 more months... Time flies. And you'd better make the best of it. When I think about my life, I realise that I am a very impulsive person. I can decide to do something, and go for it a 100%. I realise that maybe I will make some mistakes along the way. But that's life. You cannot stop living just because you are afraid to make a mistake! You cannot predict the future, you can never know what is going to happen. Even if you stay in your safe world of habits and comfort, unhappiness can crawl up on you and mistakes can be made. It is the same for me with the trip we are taking. Some people give us comments such as: What about your job? Aren't you afraid to ruin your career? What about your apartment? Why don't you use all that money to buy a house? You are already 28, don't you want children? etc etc etc.
I don't live for my job. My job is there to keep me alive. A career is great, but life is more important. I would also love to own a house, but I would rather wait a couple of years to figure out where I want to live and settle down, before I become a slave of the bank for another 30 years. Children? Bwa, we'll see. I'm ONLY 28 :D ;)
My point: maybe I'll make some mistakes, but at least I will have seen the world. And it will be LEGEN - wait for it...............................................................................

DARY!!