It’s the sort of thing many people talk about doing, but most of the time, the plans never eventuate. Life has a way of throwing things into the pot that make long term travel difficult or impossible; mortgages, work, children and even pets. Some people would rather spend their money on other things, or they just don’t have that travel bug. And that’s fine if that’s what makes you happy, but right now, it’s not for us. So before mortgages, work, children and pets start to complicate our lives, we’re off round the world on a footloose and fancy-free adventure.
In the coming months we plan to sell most of our household possessions, give notice to our landlord, stock up the Landcruiser and give Canberra the big finger as we make tracks for Cairns. Then on the 28th of December, its goodbye Cairns summer, hello London winter (which is probably not the ideal start to a trip, but hey, at least we’ll be used to living in a cold, dark, beachless city).
In a nutshell, the plan is simple: land in London, do a few months work to help finance the extended trip, mosey around Europe for the rest of the year before heading over to South America for several months, and finally fly home.
Our ticket is a Qantas-British Airways round-the-world fare, courtesy of STA, that takes us on a merry sojourn something like this:
Cairns – Sydney – Bangkok – London – Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) – Buenos Aires (Argentina) – Sydney – Cairns
There are a lot of great things about this ticket. The first is that it allows us to travel for up to 18 months - most RTW fares are limited to 12 months. A RTW ticket means that we won’t have any worries about buying a return flight, had we opted for the one-way ticket to London. When it comes to entry/exit and visa requirements for some countries, having a definite ticket and date out of there makes things easier. And despite having never been a huge fan of Qantas or British Airways, this will mean we rack up mega points on our newly acquired Frequent Flyer membership.
Now we just have to cross our fingers and hope there won’t be a burst oxygen cylinder on our flight…
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