Brisbane - tickets are booked

  Brisbane, Australia
Friday, April 27, 2007

YEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOW!
The big kahuna (the ultimate trip) is approaching quickly. The excitement cogs have begun rolling around inside of mine and Katie's chests and sleep is becoming more like a slumber then an actual restful sleep. This always happens when you start to get excited before one of these big adventure loaded trips - restfull sleep slowly becomes inexistent and the mind races all night.
 
Tickets have been purchased and we scored a fantastic deal. One way to Milan via LA for around $1,500.00. When we get to LA we can fly down to South America for up to a year before continuing the mighty journey onward to Italy. We have a years restriction because the plane tickets become void after a year.
 
The plan thus far (for South America) is to fly out of LA to Sao Paulo (Brazil) and cruise up around South America, hitting Cuba and then coming back down the other side until we reach Santiego (Chille). Along the way we'll play it spontaneous but probably try to do some of the following activities:
 - A one week intensive course of Portuguese whilst in Brazil and a course of Spanish whilst in, probably Cuba or somewhere.
 - Stay in Rio De Janeiro over the carnival (early Feb)
 - Visit our sponsor child near Forteleza (Brazil) for a day
 - Smoke Cuban cigars in Cuba with the locals
 - Hang out in Ecuador on a picturesque beach resort
 - Do a 5 day hike through the Andes (probably to Macchu Pichu)
 - Visit the islands on floating reeds on lake titicaca whilst travelling from Peru to Bolivia
 - Spend anywhere from 4 weeks to 6 months doing volunteer missions work to help build an orphanage in Bolivia.
 - Visit the Iguassu falls
 - Visit my old Argentinean friend from Montana whilst travelling through the back country of Argentina.

The itinerary will be planned and booked up to the carnval as shown below:

Brazil - itinerary

So once we are satisfied that we have
 - hung out with as many locals as possible;
 - gotten to know the culture, people and area well enough;
 - had all sorts of adventures;
 - experienced new and wonderful foods, drinks and other strange phenomenon; and
 - have had a pet monkey for a while, hehe
We'll return to LA to continue our adventure in Europe where the good times will definately continue, a little differently.


We will fly into Milan and then work in a medium sized town / city somewhere depending on the month we arrive. If we arrive around Sept - Nov we'll probably go straight to the snow fields and live and work around the snow and do some snowboarding. If we arrive around May/June we'll probably go to a beachy place before we change locations to the snow town (in Winter).

We have been studying Italian during this year (2007), but we'll probably also do a week or two of intensive Italian to refresh our memories and learn a bit more.
 
At some point, we'll travel around Europe for a couple of months depending on what we can afford. We'll probably also do mini trips from Italy to hit different nearby places and festivals.
During this time, we'll visit Megan and Phil in Scotland, hit the tomato festival in Spain, maybe run with the bulls in Spain, maybe head far North to witness the aroras lights in the sky etc. We'll see what happens and see how much money we have left by that time.
 
After travelling around Europe, we'll return to Italy to live and work for another 5 months-ish in a different place probably. Then We'll leave Europe for Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam where we'll stay for a couple of months just chillin and hiking. Then back to Oz...

The overview of the trip is like this (estimated dates) - We'll see how we go though:

South America - Jan - July 2008
Italy (live and work) - July 2008 - Jan 2009
Travel around Europe - Jan - Mar 2009
Italy (live and work) - Mar - Aug 2009
Asia - Aug - Nov 2009
 
The original itinerary map is shown below:

World map - Itinerary