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[mklong]

Hi there,

I am going travelling with my girlfriend in january and thought i'd post our trip details here to get some advice on places we are visitng or just general travelling advice.

The trip is as follows.

January - Fly to Nairobi, 43 day tour down through africa arriving in Cape town. then plan to spend a week in an aprtment in cape town to explore the area and catch up on washing and sleep after our tent exploits. We will then drive up along the garden route ending in Port Elizabeth.

March - fly From Jo'burg to Hong kong for a few nights before joing a tour through china, for around a month. We'll then fly on to Japan for a couple of weeks before flying down to Hanoi.

- We dont really have more specific details but we would then like to travel down through Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and onto thailand before spending another month around Islands in south east asia with short stays in Bali and Borneo.

- After asia we fly from Singapore on to perth where we plan to spend a month driving the west coast, from enjoying the Vin yards of the Margeret river all the way up to Broome and onto Darwin. We had planned to catch the Ghan train from Darwin to Adelaide with a stop in alice however cost is looking expensive for these 3 days..After arriving in adelaide however we do it, we plan to travel along the great ocean road to Melbourne where we'll stay with family for a short time. after a week in Tasmania we plan to fly to Brisbane and then again drive and tour the east coast up to cairns.

Flying down from Cairns to Sydney to catch our connection to Christchurch we plan to spend a few nights in sydney as we've both been there before but would like to see a few thigns we missed. A month after arriving in christchurch we are flying out of auckland so will travel around the south island for a couple of weeks before spending some time on north island.

October - Chile, and down the west coast of South america, bus-ing our way around back up passed santiago and onto Bolivia,Peru and the Inca trail. From here we Fly down to buenos aires, traevl through montevideo and up through brazil as far as El salvador, before returning to Rio to Fly back to London 363 days after leaving the uk.

Sorry if ive rushed through the itinerary but i hope this gives an idea of our plans and enables people to offer any advice they have.

Thanks.

Marc

[rbisset]

Jealous

[starlagurl]

I think this is more of an "around the world" topic than an "introduce myself" topic, so I moved it.

Ask us a more specific question and we'll be able to help you better!

[barsie]

I'm very envious! Sounds like you've got a LOT planned. Have you planned it taking weather into account?

I'd highly recommend doing Malaysia while in asia- it's often forgotten country on tourist trail so is so much more rewarding because of that.

[mklong]

To be honest we havent planned this with the weather in mind as we're going to be in Australia during july and August, a long way from summer however we both really wanted to go to AFrica first, and also as we are doing an overland tour it will break us in to the year away gently so by the time we get to South America, we are seasoned professionals...Im sure everywhere we go can be amazing without relying on the weather and im sure we'll pick up a tan at some point

[barsie]

Tan's a funny thing- in Thailand I found myself as time went on acting like more of a local. You end up avoiding the sun rather than trying to get a tan.

[huckabmm]

January - Fly to Nairobi, 43 day tour down through africa arriving in Cape town.

So what kind of an expedition is this? Are you rafting or taking land rovers? I'd love to raft down Africa someday!

[mklong]

We are looking at Acacia tours, 43/46 days overland in a converting lorry/bus witha tour group of about 14 in a different place everyday camping all the way through with the exception of a 2 night retreat in zanzibar

[kilgiraffe]

A few things that came to mind..

*Brazil to El Salvador, what route do you plan on taking? The most common South to Central America route is through Ecuador and Colombia, but you'd be doubling up on yourselves. Is there a route through coastal Brazil/French Guiana/Suriname/Guyana? An idea is start in Brazil, come down through Uruguay to BA and Patagonia, across to Santiago and then just keep going up? You probably would have to connect through Santiago to get to Brazil depending on flights but that just seems to make a bit more logistical sense to me Also, are there no flights from El Salvador/Guatemala to the UK? I notice you omitted Mexico entirely also..

*I agree with Louise, don't forget Malaysia! And overland from Malaysia/Singapore to Indonesia IS possible.. but you said that you didn't really figure out SE Asia yet so

*Darwin and the rest of North Australia is in the tropics, so winters will be very mild there I never thought of that route through Aus though.. you miss everything between Perth [assuming that's your start point] and Adelaide but you fit in the red centre.. not bad

*It's possible to boat from northeast China [Beijing and nearish cities] to South Korea, overland through S Korea and then S Korea to southern Japan! Another omission I noticed, but I don't really know your tastes so I'm just working with what I can here

*I've lived in Barbados for almost 10 years and I have the most pathetic excuse for a tan ever. It's not guaranteed! But yes you'll probably get a bit brown, haha.

I've never done a RTW so I'm also very jealous So that's just coming out of research I've done. Hopefully it helps

[rbisset]

Did you mean El Salvador as in the country or Salvador, Brazil? I'm assuming Salvador, Brazil.

[mklong]

yeah my mistake, i meant Salvador, think i had the song in my head.... So after salvador back to Rio to fly home.

[kilgiraffe]

Ooooh that makes a little more sense I was really confused cos El Salvador is like thousands of miles from Rio! Okay you can ignore my switcharound then, that seems to work a lot better