Monthly Archives: June 2012
The Ghan
Once the Lions tour heads back north to Brisbane, rather than following them, I’m thinking about travelling over to Adelaide and then taking The Ghan train journey across the centre of Australia up through Alice Springs and on to Darwin.
From there, I can get the Greyhound Bus again across to Cairns and then travel back down the East Coast to Brisbane for my flight to Fiji in August.
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India Untravelled
I was doing a bit of reading into India and found this website and blog written by the same traveller which has some great information on where and why to travel in India.
Also, this 20 reasons list more or less lists exactly why I want to go to India.
I’ve been wondering whether I should do much planning for India or if I should just fly to Mumbai and crack on… The latter is more appealing at the moment!
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Australia & Lions Tour
I decided to look up the Lions 2013 tour fixtures to see if I could try and see some of them and it turns out, with the exception of the first two games (Hong Kong and Perth) they are all on the East Coast between Melbourne and Brisbane.
I could fly in to Brisbane to see Queensland Reds (8 June), then use the Greyhound Bus to travel 800km to see NSW/Queensland in Newcastle (12 June), 160km to see Waratahs in Sydney (15 June), 200km to see Brumbies in Canberra (18 June) and then maybe fly the 900km to see them play Australia in Brisbane (22 June) again before continuing up the East Coast until the end of July.
Hopefully, Dad and Police Dog Pete will be going out to see the tour as well so, 6 months in might be just about the right time to blag a nice hotel, showers and some decent food!!
Other things I want to do in Australia are;
- Stay with the Claydons in Sydney (if they’ll have me again!)
- Track down Dan Hovey, presumably in Queensland somewhere
- See the Machrays in Maroochydore
- Scuba dive on the Reef
I’m most excited about seeing some people I haven’t seen for a while!!
STA Travel & South America
I had my appointment at STA Travel on Saturday morning and saw an Aussie guy called PJ. He gave me some brochures, some advice on various things and is going to get me a quote for the plane tickets…
They try to push you towards doing all these tours that you book through them but are actually run by other companies but, if I was going to do them it would cost me far too much money just in getting around so I don’t think that’s the right way to go at the moment… Except in New Zealand where I probably will consider doing the Kiwi Experience or something similar and do some extreme sports!
Unfortunately, PJ didn’t know much about South America so I asked a friend who went out there for two and a half months last year for some tips. He sent me an essay of an email telling me to;
- Get a Lonely Planet guide book
- Start in Rio, Brazil particularly Copacabana and Ipanema (best beach in the world!)
- Do the death road cycle in La Paz, Bolivia (5 hours, starting at 4.2km above in the snow and finishing in 36 degree heat at the bottom)
- Visit the salt flats in Sucre, Bolivia
- Go to the palm islands at Lake Titicaca
- Do the Inca trail (or the nature version of it) Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Peru
- Trek to the oasis in Colca Canyon, Arequipa, Peru
- Go to the beaches and do some trekking in Huacachina, Huaraz, Huanchaco and Macora, Peru
- Stay in the old town (definitely not the new town) in Quito, Ecuador
- Use buses because there’s no internal low cost airlines
- Learn the currency so you don’t get fleeced
- Don’t take your bank card out with you
- Don’t trust Bolivian policemen
So, I have an idea of what I’m doing there now anyway!
Getting going…
Today, I arranged a meeting with STA Travel, a company recommended to me by numerous people, for next Saturday to discuss what I want to do next year and what package deals they can offer.
I’ve been told that the best way to do it is to buy a one direction, round the world ticket which would include a limited number of flights. You can then buy very cheap internal flights once out there to get from place to place if you need to. On that basis, I’ve come up with this outline schedule (which I’m sure will change countless times between now and January!);
> January to March – South East Asia
> April to May – India
> June to July – Australia (to coincide with the British Lions tour – 5 June – 6 July 2013 which dad might be going to!)
> August – New Zealand (which Joe might join me for!)
> September – Pacific Islands (when the beach football world cup takes place in Tahiti!)
> October to November – South America
> December – Africa (specifically Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro!)
Despite being 6 months away, this is all getting a bit real and exciting now… So much so that I lay awake for an hour last night wondering what sort of camera I should buy!!
Anyway, here’s some men singing some song on some rooftop at some point in the past…
