New blog

I've just set up this blog to be a kind of online travel journal for our forthcoming trip. We had a similar sort of thing when we were in Australia 3 or 4 years ago. Only then 'blogging' wasn't such a huge thing and I'd written a very very basic blog system myself. Now its all available for free so I may as well use it.

Plans are firming up somewhat. Nicola has put holds on all our flights, discovering along the way that Virgin only run the direct London - Cape Town flight in the winter time, which means we'll have to book an extra South African airways flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town. It's difficult having to jump on another flight after going all that way. You kind of just want to crash out. We are going for the Great Escapade fare which is pretty good value, although because of the mileage we're doing we have to pay a supplement over the base 29,000 mile fare.

The basic route will take us to Cape Town (transit via Jo'burg) for 1 month, Singapore and 3 months in South East Asia. Flying back out of Singapore we head to Perth, where we hope to walk the Bibbulmun track. After WA we fly on to New Zealand, firstly Christchurch then on to Auckland, totalling around a month. After Auckland the current plan is to spend a month in Fiji, followed by a month in the Cook Islands. At this point the dates are quite hazy and will be depending on whether we have any cash left. We'll be flying back via LA, and hopefully will have enough time and cash to get to San Fransisco for a little while. Although we have to book dates in advance, we should be allowed free date changes, especially if we are on electronic ticketing, which I hope we are.

I have an appointment with the nurse tomorrow to discuss (and possibly get) injections, etc. So it's all moving forward. Exciting.