Worrying advice

I'm a fool. I thought I'd be smart and read the Foreign & Commonwealth Office advisories on the countries I'm thinking of going to. So now I expect to catch malaria by being bitten by a rabid express kidnapper posing as a bogus taxi driver the minute I step out of the airport. Sigh.

I take some comfort from the fact that the advisory for Spain makes it look nearly as bad, and I wouldn't really think twice about going there.

"The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions." -- Alfred Adler

Displacement activity

I'm supposed to be sorting out my itinerary, checking if I need any vaccinations or malaria tablets (I suspect not, but I need to check) and sorting out the change-of-address hassle related to giving the flat up. So of course, I've managed to 'find' a load of e-mails I sent to friends while I was in Mexico back in 2007 and am now re-reading all those. I suppose at the very least they are making me think about travel. :-)

What I can't believe is that a recurring question is "How do I know where street X is in this big city which I'm too tight to buy an A-Z for?" And it just hit me, about two and a half years too late, that I could have (gasp) looked it up on Google Maps. I don't even think I tried and then found they didn't cover the city I was in. The idea just never entered my head. Google Maps did exist two and a half years ago, right?

Spontaneity

Need to sort out the dates I book the tickets for this weekend. It's cool and they will be flexible but it's not quite as dynamic and spontaneous as I'd hoped. It sort of puts a default assumption on how long I'll be away, where I'll go and how long for.

I guess it's inevitable and I am deliberately keeping things open within each country, but it's not the carefree "I've had enough of place X, I'll move on to place Y" I originally had in mind.

I'm sure it'll still be good though. And I'm still a bit nervous about the whole thing even with this level of planning, so maybe it's for the best I'm not going out with a completely blank slate.

Does make it easier to tell people about the trip at least. :-) "I'm going to X, Y and Z" is easier that "Well, I'm going to X to start with and I might go to Y but I'm going to play it all by ear".

Flights

Finally went into Trailfinders with a rough itinerary. I proposed London->Mexico City->Panama City->Santiago->Buenos Aires->London. They can do that except that for some reason flights from Panama-Santiago are very busy, so I will probably stop off in Lima in between.

I probably intend to spend most time in Mexico in Oaxaca but I checked and you pretty much have to fly in and out via Mexico City, so I'll just book a separate return from Mexico City to Oaxaca on the web, it gives me more flexibility. Ditto for Easter Island.

I might also add in a stop at Rio de Janeiro on the way back, which apparently won't add much to the price and is more-or-less on the way.

Need to sit down with a guide book over the weekend, check up on Lima and Rio and think my initial dates through a bit more carefully. Then I'll probably go and book early next week, if my courage doesn't fail me. :-)

Flights

I called Trailfinders, although not over a beer.

It seems you can get tickets which are flexible on dates but not on location. So I can get a ticket which says I will fly from A to B to C to A and change the dates on which I fly, but I can't change to fly from A to C to D to A. (You can get round the world tickets which allow that kind of thing, but the guy didn't think they would be appropriate for my trip.)

They said it's a good idea to have a flight out of a country booked when entering the country. This includes the case where, for example, I have a return ticket from the UK to Chile and have bought an additional single ticket to go from Chile to Argentina. The fact that I have a return from Chile to the UK won't necessarily convince Argentinian immigration that I intend to return to the UK - I 'need' a ticket out of Argentina to show them. (I picked those countries arbitrarily. I have no idea how strict they really are in Argentina.)

They said the next step would be to go into one of their shops with a rough itinerary in mind and have a chat with them. I am inclined to get a circular ticket with flexible dates for just a few key stops and then buy additional flights while I'm away if I have the time or inclination to visit anywhere else. I definitely need to put in some time with the guidebooks and brush up on my geography this weekend.

Bad advice

Just told my friend Chris about this blog. He said it was boring and also advised me to call Trailfinders in the evening over a beer instead of going in to see them at lunch. Because I always make my best decisions over beer...

Removal survey

Just had one of the removal guys in to do a survey. Seemed a very nice chap. Said it would be an easy move, he'd send me an updated price quote and it would be a fixed price job. Sofa no problem, TV no problem, happy to disassemble the flat pack wardrobes. Also January is apparently a very quiet month for removals, so I have no worries about being able to get them in in early January.

Will wait and see what the other company say before making a final decision but I am very favourably impressed. Of course, maybe they're complete incompetents and just talk the talk, but there's no way I can possibly tell that in advance.

Vague plans

While I am still waiting to arrange another survey by a second removal company and I haven't yet visited Trailfinders to see what they can do for me in terms of flexible flights, my plans are forming a little more in my head.

I had been thinking of Chile as my primary, or at least initial, destination. My Spanish teacher has advised me, among other things, that a flight to Chile will be insanely long and that if I'm planning on visiting a few countries in Latin America during my trip, I should maybe stop off somewhere else first.

I've had the idea of visiting Oaxaca in southern Mexico in mind for a few years anyway. So I am quite tempted to fly into Mexico City, spend a few days there being mugged at gunpoint or short-term kidnapped, then go out to Oaxaca for a month (there's at least one Spanish school chain I've studied with before out there, although I don't know if they'll be able to offer the accommodation I want) and then go on to Chile from there.

The timing seems good. It will be mid-winter in Oaxaca if I follow this plan, so I'd hope it won't be insanely hot and the spiders will be relatively dormant. Then after a month there it will still be late summer in the southern hemisphere so I can enjoy a pleasant climate in southern Chile (I hope to visit Tierra del Fuego, for a start). Then after a bit of travel around Chile, it should be getting on for Southern hemisphere autumn and I can visit Buenos Aires when it isn't too insanely hot there. (Another recommendation from my Spanish teacher, both in terms of having a good time and weather - he says it gets up to 40C in summer, i.e. January.)

I'm sure none of these plans will be realised, life being what it is, but that's how I'm seeing things right now.

Progress

One of the two removal companies has got back to me and they're coming to do a survey at 7pm on Wednesday.

Not exactly fascinating I know. This is mainly a test of making an entry via e-mail instead of on the website.

Moving out

I should be in bed but it's more fun playing around with this...

E-mailed a couple of companies to arrange 'free, no-obligation' surveys to get a quote for moving my stuff out of my flat into storage. I need to get a move on so I can actually start planning my trip; I haven't booked a flight or read more than a page or two of a guide book yet. I've already given notice to my landlord so once I get the removals sorted out that's the last major obstacle here in the UK dealt with. I'll need to do all the usual change-of-address stuff, but that's just tedious, not difficult.