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Welcome to our first round the world trip. This section is to show the breakdown of our trips itinerary, our preparations, our stories and our photographs.
Picture right - A Shepherd herding Alpacas in Southern Peru
The itinerary | Our preparations | Travel diary | Trip slideshow
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Planning our trip
Our aim was to leave on 1st September 2003. This date gave us what we
thought to be the required time in order to save enough money to go. The
original plan was to go for approximately 8 months and possibly extend
the duration dependent on money and possible additional destinations
easy and cheap to go to on route. In actual fact we extended by 2 months
and actually went for 10 months, returning mid June 2004.
Mid 2002 was when we officially decided to to go backpacking. Thoughts had entered our head to get a mortgage and stop throwing money away renting but we had both wanted to travel since leaving university. The mortgage could wait, this sounded much more exciting.
I was 26 and working for a Market Research company as I.T. Support Manager and also a part-time (Retained) Firefighter. Emily was 25 and also working for the same Market Research company (where we met) as Senior Research Executive. To be honest we are both crap at saving, but this was a real goal. We had told close friends of our plans and there really was no turning back. The saving started, cutting back on all most luxuries and budgeting already! We booked the trip 6 months prior to our departure.
Two months before leaving we had decided to tell our employers. To be honest I think they already knew through the grapevine. Both of our employers offered career breaks enabling us to return to our jobs on return if we desired. Emily I think wanted a change in her job and I was happy to return to it. I would have to refresh my firefighting work but really was pretty simple. This allowed us to relax a little more knowing we had a bit of security on return.
So then came the planning. I decided to design a website as an ongoing project for friends, family and fellow travelers. To write about our experiences from the planning stages until our travels were complete. To diary our travels and show you photographs of places we had been to and people we had met. In actual fact it played an extremely useful part in planning the trip, itinerary and logging our thoughts and plans.