Bloggin'tastic - 9 days to go!

Hello

 

So here I am, back in bloggin business after a fairly long gap since the last one. As the title might suggest there is now only 9 days to go til I leave for South America.. WOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

You may notice some photos appear on here of my trip to Norway/Sweden/Finland last year in the next few days as I will be testing it's capabilities. If you haven't seen these yet, hope you enjoy them!

LIVE

 

Right now, I'm feeling good - 5 days of work left to go before I finish work, why wouldn't I?! Other than that, I'm feeling pretty relaxed which is good as I have almost everything in place for the start of my travels. I've just got my malaria pills and a couple of things to buy and I should be done! People seem suprised that I'm not nervous, but I feel that I have everything under control. Maybe it'll be different in a weeks time?

 

LISTEN

 

In the past 24 hours, I've heard: my alarm clock loudly ringing in my ear; Audioslave on my walkman as I walked to and from work; customers moaning about bath screens; colleagues voices; the pouring rain in fits and bursts; the modem connecting to the internet; the Beastie Boys latest album; cars passing by outside; the news; the sad news that Marlon Brando died; my mobile phone ring; my family's voices.

 

TRAVEL

 

Tomorrow evening I'm travelling to Liverpool to see my friend Mark's band - Blind Frog Ernie - http://www.blindfrogernie.co.uk play at the Cavern. They're great and I reckon they get better everytime they play.. do check out the website! If you're in Hull, keep an eye out for their gigs, they play in a wide range of places and definitely worth the effort to go and see them.

 

So, South America travel plans.  After some further consultation with people on the Lonely Planet forum (very helpful indeed!), once I've finished in Buenos Aires, I'm going to go to Uruguay. The reason being that Uruguay is just too difficult and expensive to get to from any other country and I really don't want to miss out on visiting it.

 

Once I've finished in Uruguay, I'll actually re-enter Argentina in the north and then work my way south down to Ushuaia from there. Then I'll cross into Chile, go up Chile and into Peru, then to Bolivia, then Brazil and from Brazil fly to Nicaragua.

 

I've decided to throw Nicaragua in as it sounds an interesting country and according to the foreign office fairly safe. From there it starts to get a little cloudy. I may make my way through Honduras to Guatemala or I may get a flight direct as Honduras does have its fair share of problems. Following Guatemala, I'll travel overland to Belize, somehow get to Cuba, back to Mexico and then into the U.S..

 

Canada is currently looking unlikely due to the fact that I underestimated the costs of U.S. accomodation. I would prefer to travel the U.S. properly rather than rush it and then rush Canada. I'll definitely go to Canada someday though, as it sounds just too good not to!

 

 

 

Well that's me done for now. The next blog you read will most probably be from Buenos Aires or Uruguay, but if I get chance to blog again in these last few days, I will!

 

Thanks for reading.