Life's What Happens When You're Making Other Plans

It has been nearly three months since the last post. That's quite a gap, it's true. There are a few good reasons for this which I won't dwell on, basically the list of excuses is filled with the following: "Christmas", "Work", "Holiday in Germany", "Holiday in Italy", "Seeing family", and "Life in General". John Lennon said that "life's what happens when you're making other plans", if thats the case, then a lot of planning must have been going on.


Well, some planning has happened actually, although I have been very amiss in putting anything on here, a number of key parts of the planning process have been sorted. Firstly, the "breaking of the big news" to family and friends has happened. No longer just a whimsical idea in our heads, this simple act now means that the venture must go ahead, if only as an act to save face rather than an actual desire to go (no problem there though!). Also, we have been to a travel agents to discuss the plans, and everything we want to do is possbile- which is nice. And thirdly, we've decided to go in November!


Originally, we wanted to keep flying to a minimum, to only do it where is was 100% necessary. As is often the case, this good intention has had to be scaled back somewhat by the crushing force of reality. Two major factors went against us with this plan: firstly, time. The sheer amount of time saved by flying from one place to another is staggering and thats presuming that an overland service even runs where you want to go. What on a map looks straightforward, the short journey between Australia and New Zealand for example, its simply impossible unless you look to go by Container Ship. And whilst that in itself wouldn't present a major problem, this is where issue Number 2 comes into play; and this is the biggie: Money.


The root of all evil is the most fundamental element of the trip. Without it, you can't do anything, and to do what we orignally wanted to, it would mean robbing a bank or two. That container ship might be possbile, but the cost of that versus the cost of a quick(ish) flight pales into comparison. So the original grand plans have had to be scaled back because of it. Its an inescapable part of real life and to think we could some how get around it would be foolish. The simple fact of the matter is that the cheapest way to get around the world is to fly and so this will form a much bigger part of our final plans than we would have liked.


However, its doesn't mean we will just skip over the globe dropping in on a few cities - after all, what's the point in that??- we will just use it to facilitate our progress and still look to head overland as much a possible based on our timeframe and budget. Money can be saved in a number of ways, as we are working on a shoestring budget, so we have to compromise in some places but the basic ethos of trip remains intact, even if it means we fly over an ocean for half a day rather than sail on it for half a month. In fact, by making this decision, we have had to put our plans into order and as such, we now have our route planned out, its not exactly how we thought we would do it and its very exciting......