While Away...

Relaxing in Antigua I am writing this first (and second) days blog from the balcony of our first hostel, Yellow house, Antigua. The sun is setting and the street bustle is changing it's tone from that of business to leisure. Our first day has been exciting, full of new sights and sounds. However, I would like to begin by recounting our journey.  From Gatwick our first flight was to Toronto. Thanks to a lift from my Mum (@MooGardener) we managed to get to the airport with ample time to have a coffee and say goodbye. We sailed through check-in, security and before we knew it were on the plane. However due to an imbalance in the hydraulic fluid we were not allowed to take off until they replenished it. Disaster! The Toronto connection was already a tight three hour change over. We both watched the clock with rising tension as 10 min turned into an hour. An hour and a quarter later we finally pulled away and left little old blighty for our Central American adventure. The fl

Money is always a knotty problem when one is travelling and is completely contextual to where you go and for how long. Bryony and I, as you might have gathered, are going for rather a long time and so we needed to figure out some way to access a large amount of money (relatively) without looking like Saudi princes. Partly, this is for practicality but mostly for safety, no further explanation needed. So we looked around. Most banks will allow international withdrawals, but make sure you tell them first or your account may be blocked! The issue with using ones normal current account is that there are fees associated with foreign atm withdrawals and card use. The fees and exchange rates are dependent on the bank, but generally they are quite steep. Anyone who has used an atm with a £1.99 charge will know, no one wants to pay to access their own money. For the previous generation the obvious choice has been travelers cheques. These are prepaid fixed amounts of money that will not boun

Greg looking awesome Happy 2018! We are now in the correct calendar year for the beginning of our adventure. The start of January has entailed buying a lot of kit and sorting all the minutiae of what happens when our boots are on the ground. Although Bryony and I are going for an all round minimalist approach (not booking in advance ) there are still lots of important things to sort before getting on the plane. Firstly, we sorted our visas/waivers, this is easy to do but could scupper your plans if not thoroughly researched. We are transiting through Canada and the USA. To do this we need Electronic Travel Authorizations for both countries. Both systems are pretty cheap (£14 each) and take around 10 minutes to complete. The US ESTA gives you 29 days to transit through the country, allowing us to leave the airport and check into a hotel during our 13 hour layover. If ETAs are not approved before travel, you will be stopped at the border and although it can usually be sorted there,