First of all, some very good news, Bekki decided today to buy a new laptop for the trip, which means 1.2kg less weight for Micha! Yaay ;-) But now to the actual topic, today you get an insight into the development of a realistic travel route. It actually takes quite a long time and you often need phases where you let the project rest to then look at it with a fresh perspective.During the first research, we came across a wisdom that turned out to be true in the end: 'Write down all the countries you want to see, cross out half of them, and then consider if it's feasible.' In the first draft, India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Maldives, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hawaii, and South America were all on the plan.17 countries in 26 weeks? You can only take a look at the capitals in peace... The question that came up was, more time for the trip or fewer countries? Since more time means more money, we decided on fewer countries and quickly decided to skip Asia completely and chose to travel only to Argentina and Chile in South America.If you're wondering why, Asia can be easily visited and explored in a separate vacation and in a few weeks, especially if you have acquaintances there.In South America, the political situation has become more tense in the last year, especially in the northern countries, so we decided to travel to the safer southern countries. So, the final route slowly developed: Argentina/Chile -> Canada -> New Zealand -> Australia -> Return flight via Bangkok and Dubai (thus, we have 6 weeks in each country) In the past few days, we finally found the time to come up with a rough (and realistic) route for Argentina and Chile.You wouldn't believe how long you can spend on a bus...From Idea to Route First, we marked all the places we would like to see (legend of the markings on the paper).Now it was about putting everything together (which of course doesn't work...). Yesterday, we created a realistic travel route, taking into account the transfer times by bus. Unfortunately, we had to strike out some places; Argentina and Chile are quite large in their north-south extent!The route marked with a marker pen is now our master plan (unless winter ruins it for us). Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't snow too much in the south! Greetings,Bekki and Micha
