The Plan

I detailed this a little bit in the 'About' section but it's buried amongst a whole heap of other stuff, and seeing it's probably the main thing people are interested in, and the most common question, I thought it deserved it's own post.

Leg 1 - Auckland, New Zealand 

We leave Perth on Friday and spend about a day and a half in Auckland. We could have had a 12 hour or something stopover, but added another 24 hours, as no-one really wants to be stuck in an airport for 12 hours.

Leg 2 - United States/Canada & Leg 3 - Caribbean Cruise

After we arrive in Los Angeles, the plan is to head to Las Vegas, then south to San Diego and Tijuana, then heading back up the west coast of the US (San Francisco, Portland, Seattle) until we hit Vancouver in Canada.

From there we've booked an RV to drive across Canada, before ducking back over to the States to see Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit. After visting Toronto, and Montreal in Canada, we'll head down the east coast of the States (Boston, New York) until Washington, before heading to Nashville to catch up with Harry's brother Rob. 

From there, New Orleans and Atlanta are on the cards, before ending up in Miami, from which we will set forth on a cruise through the Caribbean, touching down in locations such as Conzumel (Mexico) Belize and the Cayman Islands. 

[Click to enlarge]
Photo credit: Michael Farnell

Leg 4/5/6

Once we arrive back in Miami, we'll fly to Europe and see how things go. We have additional and flexible stop-overs in Dubai and Singapore on the way home, and there's a high likelihood of extensive side-trips off of those stopovers, but that's a long way down the track yet. 


Personally, I hope to visit a lot of Central & Eastern Europe (Turkey, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Poland etc), as I didn't get to explore too much of it on my last trip and it's always really interested me, but we will see how things pan out.

Five things I've learnt preparing for this trip.

As departure day looms closer, I thought I'd share some realisations I've made over the last six months or so.

1. It's amazing what you can make out of things in your cupboard when you put your mind to it.
The end result might not taste amazing, but when you have limited resources at your finger tips, you can deal with it. It was almost like I had created my own version of a Mystery Box challenge, trying to utilise all the items in my cupboard before I leave. I didn't push the boundaries too far but a combination of tinned tuna, cheesy packet rice and frozen vegetables is something you probably wouldn't find in any conventional recipe book.

Gadgets and gear

My previous post segues quite nicely into this one, in which I thought I'd go into a bit of the gadgets and gear I'm taking along. I know when researching for this trip that reading about what other people packed or used to get the footage they did was a great help, and saved me a considerable amount of further research. I also fondly recall on my last trip in 2008 talking about how my new phone for that trip was pretty special, in that it could "send and receive emails". Amazing! I'm sure I'll look back on this list in the not-too-distant future and laugh at how primitive this all this stuff is.

Travelling then and travelling now - for the better or for the worse?

I was talking with a middle-aged gentleman at work recently about my upcoming travels, and he mentioned that he undertook a similar expedition down the east coast of the US and into Central America when he was about my age, in the late 1970's.

We discussed the experiences he had and the places he saw, and most notably the pro's and con's of travelling then in comparison to travelling now. How do they compare?