When travelling goes wrong - Part 1

Travelling in places you don’t know well always means that things can go wrong - and quite a few things did go wrong for us during our first few days. Luckily, all turned out fine in the end. I would like to share a selection of the worst things that happened to us in the following section to warn you all that traveling is pure evil and you’d better not try this at home.

• On the very first day, as Judith and I were cheerfully strolling along the avenidas of Buenos Aires, we decided to stop to get some cash. Unfortunately, while the ATM did provide us the money we had requested, it decided to keep Judith’s credit card in return. Of course, it was a Saturday and the bank branch was closed. This gave us the pleasure of spending most of Saturday afternoon spelling Judith’s card details to an (admittedly very nice) Visa call center employee called Al probably located somewhere on the Philippines.  
• What I didn’t mention about the superclásico match yet is that the rain was really, really strong and the pitch was in a miserable state with puddles all over the place. As a result, the referee decided to suspend the match 8 minutes into the first half (aaaaaaarrrrrghhh)! It had been very difficult for Esteban to get ahold of a ticket for the die-hard supporters section of the stadium for me in the first place - and I had spent a small fortune on it. Of course, the match was to be repeated on a day when I would already be in Patagonia. 
• I don’t know what it is but insects love me. Usually, this results in small and itchy bite marks on my skin, which I have gotten used to over the years. This time, I believe I fell victim to a what I now deem the ‘inverted insect’. The bite marks I got were not itchy at all, but they turned out to be the biggest bite marks I had ever seen. It felt like my lower left arm and my right elbow had increased by roughly 50% in size, really. Brushing my teeth felt like having small weights attached to my arms. Anyway, after some medical treatment the swelling reduced significantly - phew!
• My poor mother got a painful virus infection since her immune system had been weakened by a yellow fever vaccination the week before. On top of that, she managed to get attacked by a baby Guanaco (a small Lama), after the milk bottle she fed it had depleted. Fortunately, baby Guanacos are not particularly dangerous predators, so my mother wasn’t hurt. The picture below shows Judith feeding the very same aggressive beast in an act of insanity.

• Finally, Judith's sister Lene had originally planned to fly in from Panama to join us on our trip to Patagonia. When checking in in Panama, the guy at the counter told her "sorry lady, your ticket has not yet been paid for". When Lene insisted that she had in fact paid already, the guy slowly went to check whether this was true. After 25 minutes, he concluded that she actually had been right all the way. Too bad that in the meantime boarding had closed and Lene missed her flight. What an %&/Ä+*!!!

That said, all things turned out fine in the end. My mother is recovering well, Judith got a spare Visa card, my insect bites are gone, Lene managed to take the plane the following day, and I will never forget the great atmosphere of the Superclásico.

The next post will be uploaded soon, this time with a lot less useless text (apologies for today), but with many great, thrilling, two-thumbs-up pictures from the Southern end of South America.

The first few days

Stepping out of the plane in Buenos Aires came with a very nice surprise - temperatures of 20-25°C after the harsh winter back home felt like finally reaching the bus terminal after a long bus journey with a stretched bladder.

After we had stored our bags at the hostel, Judith & I headed down to La Boca where our friend Esteban prepared an amazing barbecue/asado for us. His place has a truly beautiful roof terrace overlooking the city's skyline and the Boca Juniors stadium. There might be some things Argentines do not do well (like accepting a defeat in a world cup quarter final), but they certainly know how to prepare the best barbecues in the world - apologies to my American, Australian, Brazilian & South African readers. 

The next day, we spent wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, and preparing for the legendary Superclásico football match between Boca Juniors and River Plate. Preparing here actually meant buying a baseball cap to cover my blond gringo hair in the stadium. In the evening, we met up with my parents, whom we were planning to travel to Patagonia with for the next two weeks.

On Sunday, Esteban, his brother Nico, and I finally went to the match. Judith didn’t come along because, well, the Superclásico is notorious for its ‘roughness‘, and years back, some 70 people had been trampled to death in a mass panic. Not so good for the ladies. We spent roughly 2 hours in the rain waiting in the queue in front of the entrance. After passing the ticket and lax security checks, we waited another two hours in the fenced area of the stadium dedicated to the hardcore supporters of Boca Juniors. Waiting actually is the wrong term - we sang, danced, jumped, and consistently accused the River Plate supporters of being sons of women who belong to a particular profession. I’ve been to many stadiums in Europe, but this was a completely different level. The number of chants, the cleverness in finding items to throw at the pitch, the way the pitch was prepared (due to the rain, they actually had a guy with a basket of paint and a brush consistently re-painting the white lines), the age and state of the stadium - something you would never see in the Premier League or the Bundesliga. Fabulous!

The equipment

So this is it. This is the first blog post that I am writing not sitting on my couch but on the road. We are on our first flight, to Buenos Aires, where our friend Esteban is waiting for us with a proper Argentine asado. Hmmm, beef.

Sitting on a plane for 13+ hours gives you time to reflect and recap recent events. The past few weeks have been both very busy and very exciting. We spend virtually all of our time planning, packing, sorting out our apartment, doing paperwork (health insurance, visas, taxes, backup documentation), watching shockingly shitty but addictive soap operas, and saying farewell to many friends and our families.

Saying farewell was the hardest part. Many thanks again to those who made it to our parties, or who we were able to meet individually. I’m a bit poorer now financially, but this was definitely worth it! Apologies to those whom we weren’t able to say goodbye to in person - as mentioned before, we’ll be back!

Anyway, I actually wanted to use this post to write a bit about packing our backpacks in order to have a point of reference when I pack for my next big tour. ;-) Judith & I have spent a lot of time discussing what stuff to take along, trying to find that stuff, and trying to fit it all in one (!) backpack. The fact that we are sitting on this very plane means that at least we managed to get that done in time. Having done similar trips before (albeit with a shorter duration), and talking to friends with extensive travel experience helped us to come up with an in my view sensible list of things for the road. One thing that stroke us was that if you want to do more of the outdoorsy, self-sufficient type of traveling in developing countries and across climate zones, roughly two thirds of your bag is used for stuff like sleeping bags and the likes. Clothes then only really make up less than a third of your baggage. Wow. The list on the right hand side provides an overview of the things we deemed worthy of joining us on our tour. A few very important items are still missing here, though, like my metal Schnapps bottle (‘Flachmann’), a global power adaptor, or warm fleece pants for trekking in Nepal. Purists might argue that taking a netbook & two mobiles is too much, and they might have a case. Nevertheless, the 1990s are over, face it! Having the netbook is quite handy to store our pics before uploading them to our web storage space. Also, since we are both addicted to music, having our mp3s with us is really great.

OK, enough of the equipment discussion. One last thing I did want to share is the amazingly structured manner in which we managed our apartment move alongside the packing efforts.
The picture below shows how two former business consultants handle processes like this…


That’s it for today. Tonight, we will enjoy our first of many asados, tomorrow I’ll get stabbed in the back at the Boca Juniors vs. River Plate match, and on Sunday we’re off to Patagonia.

The plan

Following our far-reaching decision, the next step was to come up with a travel route. We quickly developed a long list of must-see's and nice-to-have's (yeah, that's easy) - the hard part was to subsequently cut out many destinations. Again, we looked at several factors - years in consulting and academia just kill your ability to leave things unplanned:

• availability of flights & other means of transport like buses, ships, etc.
• climate & seasons
  
• visa requirements
• costs of travelling
• general safety (ideally few coups d' etat...)
• friends & family we know all over the place - wohoooo!

And here's the list of places which made it (see the attached map for details):

• Argentina
• Brazil
• Colombia
• Panama
• Costa Rica
• USA
• Japan
• China & Hong Kong
  
• Mongolia
• Vietnam
• Laos
• Cambodia
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Singapore
• Nepal