"The computer say's No"

I have always imagined traveling as an easy step. That everything required for travelling would just pop up when needed and all fall into place, but it is time consuming to plan and I may have under estimated the costs involved too.

To start out our trip to Australia is to top up the bank balance quickly while seeing a bit of our friendly Trans-Tasman neighbours. Get out of our comfort zone and get a taster of what the world has to offer.

We are planning on traveling until June 2014. Starting in Durban with Andrew & Caroline's wedding (which will be a blast and we are real excited about!). I'm also hoping to look for some signs of relatives that lived in South Africa a few generations ago, the Stanhope-Whites.

While in South Africa, we are hoping to do a bit of a contiki type situation with our lovely friends, we are very keen to have a decent look at what SA has to offer.  Then we want to head to Zimbabwe and do further travels through Central Africa, then head North.  Shahn is keen to go to Egypt then probably onwards to the UK and Europe.  We are likely to get working visas and hang in the UK for 3 - 6 months work (money depending) catch up with relatives in England.

We are in the process of setting out a budget for our year long trip. Traveling in Australia  while we work will just be a given so we need to start working out how much we can afford to spend. The age old travellers saying is to have a budget amount, then double it ad that will be our cost - We are thinking $50k for both of us travelling for 1 year .... Ambitious? Not enough?  well the budget is currently underway
                                                                            $10,000 flights and transport
                                                                            $10,000 food
                                                                            $ 5,000 just to make sure

I have just spent part of my day off, looking at round the world tickets and talking with travel agents. Just doing general research into whether a RTW ticket is worth it, a rough guesstimate but the travel agent was that for 9 stops it would be $8k for both of us for flights alone - to put it in perspective, for us to fly to South Africa is roughly $4k, so it looks like a pretty sweet deal and should save us a bit of money (if you have had experience with the RTW tickets, we would love to hear from you!)

I would also like to discuss some parts of the trip so far.  We have been in Aussie for 3 months now, it has given us food for though with different ideas to explore and things we have seen along the way.

Firstly, the vastness of Australia is pretty crazy (well coming from New Zealand where you can cross the country in about 3-4 hours), here we are 3.5 hours inland from Rockhampton but we are not even half way across the state of Queensland.  

Secondly, is the lack of give way intersections in town. Man it is really annoying, it is like driving around in a small town and having the main streets with out clear give way rules so every intersection you have to slow down and look all they need is to add in some white lines and make life easy.... very awkward when no one knows who gives way to who!

Thirdly, another strange thing is the lack of winter! We have grown use to snow and the cold although it is nice to have 16-25 degree days in winter and cool nights just like a NZ summer.

Lastly, Australia have awesome sunsets and sunrises, really vivid colours and because it is so flat you can see for miles. Its quite spectacular.

We have managed to get a few tramps in while we had some time off but now that Shahn has a temp/locum job and I'm working 6 days a week, we have little time for exploring and you have to drive a fair way to get a nice spot to go.  The nearest good tramping is Blackdown Tablelands (see previous posts for pics) but I'm looking forward to doing a little 4wding to places that are out of reach in the Echo. We are also looking at buying a 4wd, just waiting for a nice deal to pop up. looking at this one it old and done too many km but.......toyota landcruiser

Also now that we are planning our trip we would like people that may like a visit from us to send us a email or Facebook message. We would love to catch up with friends and family so please contact us because we would love to add you to our travel plans!

Cheers!

FYI penis anatomy

sorry no pictures this week too busy working but more stuff to come