Packing and leaving

So its finally come around.  The day of departure and oddly I am not feeling worried...well not too much.  I think the reason for this is that I have had ample time to say goodbye to all my friends.  I had some friends round for dinner just last saturday and it was just an opportunity to say goodbye, catch up on summer news and it was great! Although as someone who is not prone to crying i was shocked that when I was 'forced' by my friends to do a goodbye speech that my eyes began to water...I think this was mainly due to the fact that the entire table was shouting CRY at me - thanks guys! Thanks a lot! They loved it! Sickos!

Anyway...ive packed which was particularly testing as I thought I would not be able to fit all my clothes into the rucksack and I did have to go and buy another smaller day bag for the extras that just didn't quite fit into the main rucksack! The main bag is now enormously heavy. I have to thank Ma- my mother, as she is a very good packer and without her I probably would not have packed my bag by now!

Anyhoo! next time I will be typing it will be from a random internet cafe in Santiago instead of my sofa at home with my dog Tigs at my feet.  Got a long flight ahead to us tonight.  11.30 hrs to Sao Paulo then another 4 hrs onto Santiago although I have been told its 20/25C during the day in Santiago so thats pretty sweet! Pretty damn exciting!!! All for now.

Me and my Massive rucksack!

Planning and Packing

So this is my first ever blog so i'm not really sure on etiquette or anything! So forgive me for poor spelling, punctuation etc - although there is spell check so I might be alright! So 3 weeks today I will be in Chile Santiago starting out on the first part of my travelling with fellow intrepid explorer Tasha Lippold.  Currently I am sat at home in West Meon sorting, packing, photocopying useful bits of paper and generally trying to finish off tasks I should have done years ago. Such as my photo albums...AH! The process is slow but getting there on the sorting front.  Its just the packing to go and I have a 65 litre Berghaus Jalan - which I bought because it has wheels which is great and I'm going to drag it around most of my travels to get full use of the wheels but I am wondering whether 65 litres is enough? Now I know that i'm not that bad at packing i.e. be a typical girl and bring way too much! But i have a real weakness for shoes and handbags and I just tried to get my sleeping bag into my rucksack and it pretty much takes up most the bag! this could be a disaster!  Tricky! I haven't even started looking at what clothes I'm going to bring which is also going to be tricky because I'm going to want to bring everything! But that won't be possible! Anyway the brief outline of our travels is as follows  - now this is most probably going to change - fly into Chile and mooch around South America for 3 months visitng - Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Boliva. then hop on a plane and scoot over to Los Angles for a week in the US of A.  Then catch another 'short' plane ride down to New Zealand for 2 months and then onto Australia for 1 year.  Now I know what you're thinking - its a lot! Yep well its a bit intimidating reading it all so I'm just focusing on getting to Chile with everything I need and going from there.  But that is the rough plan of whats going on with me for the next year! Ek.  The family seem very calm about the whole trip - well, Ma has already told me that she is going to cry at the airport, Tom is very skeptical about the whole trip and my future job opportunities, Babs AKA Harry seems to be jeal that I am going to South America before him - he wants to go in his gap year- mostly because of the football i believe and then there's Da who i suspect will be secretly emotional -- Awwww! So thats me for now.  Just getting ready - seeing friends/family before I go - and quietly freaking out while being super excited! All for now. J xx