Next trip thoughts

Mon 1330 Had a bit of a poke on kayak and skyscanner flight maps the other day. It looks like in South America the reliably cheap flight destinations are (from memory) Buenos Aires, Rio, Sao Paulo and maybe Lima. I don't want to spend a lot of time in Brazil and while it's tempting to maybe head up towards Colombia (loads of people raved about it while I was in Guatemala), I would also like to revisit Chile and maybe see what Concepcion is like. I don't have any really strong plans so I'm kind of thinking I just want to get to the continent as cheaply as possible and then play it by ear. With 90 days at my disposal I could easily bus (or plane, depending on price) it round a bit - though I don't want to go nuts on expensive travel for the sake of it. I haven't booked anything yet but I'm thinking I'll probably get a flight to and back from BA for mid-Jan.

It's not clear and I haven't called to check but I don't know if travel insurance requires me to have a return ticket before I leave the UK or if that return ticket has to be from same airport. I could in principle fly into (say) BA and out of Lima, but that feels a bit more like committing myself to a certain amount of long-distance intra-continental travel, although I guess that's a bit irrational.

Need to mull this over a bit more but I'll maybe book a flight in the next week or so. I'm hoping my impression that (if I'm flexible on approximate date, eg willing to fly Mon not Sat or whatever) there is good availability of cheap flights to BA is correct. To be fair, I didn't go out of my way to check flights with my actual return date in 90 days - kayak etc seem to semi-max-out at 14 day trips for their map searches. But I will probably start to investigate in more detail over next couple of days. I am going to have to return to London within 6 days for insurance reasons anyway so that naturally puts a cap on the "meh" drifting along without making plans over Christmas phase.

Been very lax re Spanish study but Christmas again provides an easy excuse, combined with staying with my parents making it easy to get distracted...

I do want to get away during the UK winter not spring and I have minor reasons for wanting to be back in the UK "early" in the new tax year, but I have realised I'm a bit less time pressured on this trip than the Guatemala trip, where my procrastination on booking combined with needing to be back for Christmas did squeeze me a bit. I am thinking I will go for nearer 90 days away this time; while of course longer holidays cost more in absolute terms being able to amortise the flight cost over more days is better value. Plus having 90 days may help me feel more relaxed and reduce any self-generated pressure to hare around doing "as much as possible".

I may well do some Spanish study abroad - in Colombia? Concepcion? -  but it will depend how things turn out and if I find somewhere I like and what the costs etc are.

Oh, I also did some quick web searching re Argentinian peso exchange rates and it turns out what that Argentinian barman at Tropicana told me was right/that I understood him correctly - the nonsense "official" exchange rate was binned a few years back (2015 from memory, ie after my last trip) and nowadays you can withdraw cash at ATMs at the floating rate, so any concerns that visiting Argentina means being fleeced on foreign exchange at ATMs or carrying wodges of USD cash are gone. It may or may not be an expensive country, I don't know, but that's a different matter.

Tue 1914 Been poking at flights. Also trying to sort out exactly when to return to London. There are lots of Lufthansa flights LHR-Buenos Aires for about £440, changing in Frankfurt, but there also seems some availability (bit worried this will sell out) for direct Norwegian flights LGW-Buenos Aires at about £480. I also saw those direct flights at £515. £40 extra for direct feels mildly frivolous (it would cover an extra day's holiday, for example) but it is very tempting. Gets into LGW 4am but by time I got through customs there'd probably be a train. Quick poke at web suggests first "ordinary" train is 0528 which is a bit shitty in terms of waiting around but borderline OK, though when you're paying extra to fly direct delay is a bit annoying. [Later note - there are trains from 4:20ish for no higher than midday prices, though a bit infrequent.] OTOH I might well have a checked bag on way back which eats some time, and a direct flight is nicer in terms of only having to go through the stress and indignity of security and customs once.

Since I do want to push this trip up to 90 days I am actually a bit constrained by being back in UK for Easter. That isn't essential but given how late Easter is and that it does just about work out naturally it seems a shame not to do it, particularly as (not that we're really close) it's one of the few points in year I see my brother and his family. This kind of mandates flying out 15th Jan give or take a day or two, or earlier of course.

Torn about getting bus back to London to save ten quid over train fare to put towards direct flight. Gut feeling is will probably indulge in the train and the direct flight though.

Bit scared about booking the flight, both in general "travel can be nerve-inducing" sense and in the sense of regretting my decision to fly to BA rather than elsewhere. But I already waffled about that. A quick poke at Bogota flights around my dates suggests they are a bit more expensive and a lot more painful (longer flight times and/or more changes). Not saying I won't wander up towards Colombia this trip but if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen, another trip in future could be focused on northern South America and Panama perhaps. Except for a vague prospect of cheap Spanish lessons and people raving about Colombia I have no strong reason to want to go right now.

I see on Google Maps there is a train from BA to Mendoza; if so that might be a cool thing to do and it would get me most of the way to Santiago, plus I don't believe I've actually done the road crossing of the Andes between Santiago and Mendoza before.

1937 I've splurged the extra £9.20 (assuming there's no hidden saving by only needing tube from KGX to home instead of from Golders Green) on the train. Was worried it would sell out and also price might go up tomorrow for the annual price rises. Feels a bit weak but although it's not driven by work for once I have found myself returning to London at same time as usual after Christmas under mild pressure and it feels a bit bleak and crap and maybe that makes me less inclined to deal with the modest extra crap of the bus. I had fantasised I would be leaving Skegness after parents gone back to work for once.

Might book flights tonight but more likely will do some more poking tonight and book tomorrow.

Wed 2212 Haven't booked flights yet. Luckily noticed the direct Norwegian flights are true budget airline flights - not only do they not include checked baggage (which I could mostly live with), they don't include seat choice (including, AFAICT, at online check in - though in fact online check in is probably not an option on this outside Europe flight anyway) or any food or drink on the flight. Reserving a seat is about 25 GBP each way or a non-budget-airline fare is about 50 GBP extra each way. This pushes the price of the direct flight well up compared to the 1 stop options and the premium starts to look poor value, even without factoring in the more expensive journey to Gatwick than Heathrow.

I am on the cusp of booking flights outbound via Frankfurt with Lufthansa and return via Zurich (to London City, which is nice) with SWISS, but I'm having trouble finding completely reliable confirmation the return flight will let me choose my own seat at online check in (I'm prepared, as usual, to gamble on getting a good seat at that point to avoid paying a fee to reserve earlier) as it's operated by Edelweiss and their website doesn't seem to clearly state this. seatguru.com seems to suggest you can do this, and indeed I'd expect it for any non-budget airline (and TBH I personally feel long haul is a bit different and I don't really expect to suffer budget short haul wank like this) but it would be good to know; I have e-mailed them but don't know how soon/if they will reply and I just may find myself booking soon for fear of price going up or tickets selling out. The price is likely to be a hair under £430 which isn't bad at all really, and also gives me a checked bag allowance so duty free is back on the radar. :-)

As I write this I really am thinking I should just book. Nothing except total Norwegian-induced paranoia makes me think Edelweiss won't let me choose my own seat at online check in.

2304 Booked the flights, went for the non-direct ones waffled about just above. Felt a little hasty but I was getting worried they'd sell out or whatever (lots of variants but I had formed a preference for some specific flights) and I'm pretty sure it's OK. I will be away for 89 nights and so it's (depending on definitions) at most a 90 day trip as I will be flying into London on the day after the 89th night. So I am now definitely at least starting and ending the trip in Buenos Aires/Argentina, and I guess I'll send this a bit later and any more directed waffle can go in another post.

I may want to book a coach ticket to come up to Skegness on Good Friday or something now while I remember and it's cheap. Or I could book train but I suspect you can't do it that far in advance and/or I'd risk paying for a train journey which gets turned into slow hassley part-bus journey due to engineering work not being decided yet.

I have been developing a sore throat over last couple of days but fingers crossed it will have gone, or at least be on the way out, by the time I fly on 17 Jan.

I did have a last minute panic just as I was about to click the submit button after entering my credit card details; the dates I had picked were influenced by Norwegian's flights getting more expensive if I pushed the dates forward a day or two due to the Mon return flight moving into a weekend, and I suddenly wondered if I should have tried doing the same with these flights. I did a hasty Google Flights search in another tab (that was the site which had indicated booking directly with Lufthansa was joint cheapest option for the flights I was buying on the Lufthansa website) and "fortunately" shifting the flights two days earlier pushed the price up by about £100, so it was still sensible to be using those dates I had settled on.