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Trip to South America - how did we come to this first timer's travel adventure

By Anonymous

Travelling to South America (Argentina, Patagonia, Chile, Bolivia, Peru)

Before I start diving into details, you can check our profile to see if this even brings you anything new or interesting, as each of us is different and with different experiences. Read About us...

We got married...

We got married and then my wife Denisa moved back to Czechia (2 months after our wedding). She moved for work and family as she was not happy in London for longer time already. I didn't want. My home was London and I could call it home. Even all of my family is based in The Czech Republic, I choose London as my place to live and I stayed there for long time enough to make it natural to me. And I got naturalised at the end anyway :)

But I couldn't stay long. We should always try to follow what we need and believe into and it was logical to follow my loved wife and terminate all I have in London and go. Not an easy decision and even more difficult step to do. Harder than I imagined. Friends, work, lifestyle, flat, my amazing car... Everything.

It was a long term planned plan, with no exact date to happen. But it had one beautiful thing to look forward. Or actually two - my wife and a sort of freedom I'll gain. No monthly rent, no monthly payments for insurances and car and other services I used in London. No long-term financial and work commitments. A good life "gap" to try to do something different. We spoke about this opportunity before. That this can be the only time, the only chance we can do a long trip together without worrying too much about money and commitments. The right time to do it...

The budget

Many people do trips like this without anything special. No money, no equipment, no worries neither stress. I'm not like that. I do planning at work, I need security in my life and my projects and I'm very risk-reverse unless I'm sure and my experience and intuition tells me otherwise. And I have no experience with travelling longer than 2 weeks, neither with any backpacking nor camping. So situation like this is a bit stressful for me and the amount of time researching about what to buy and what to do is horrendous.

Where to start, where to look for information? No clue. I started with the budget. One of the things I knew we are going to need for our South America trip is the money. Before I was leaving the UK, I decided to sell my amazing car (something I loved much) and I knew the best use of that money will be for travelling. The car served me well for my travels in the UK as well as outside of the UK and it is fair to use the amount I get for selling it, to travel. Travel like travel. Isn't it? :)

Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky with the car sale and I didn't get as much as I though and asked for. Who wants to buy a convertible expensive sports car in September/October? I was lame to try to sell it so late in the year. But yea. It's done and I have the budget. I its £8650. I was hoping for £10k. So this cuts me down by another nearly 20 days of travel :(

Why South America

I don't know. Honestly. Or maybe I'm not sure. We were thinking to do some travelling some time ago. Looking at South East Asia and South America. But for some reasons, South America seemed more pleasant to us (until we started planning in more details). Argentina (Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Patagonia), Chile, Andes, Bolivia, Peru, Machu Picchu... A lot of variety which makes packing and preparation for two newbies quite challenging. Temperature ranges from 5 deg Celsius to 35 deg Celsius. It will be sunny and dry and wet and raining every day. But we want to try and go anyway.

Timings

Since I quit my job end of October 2017, and got back to Prague 1st November 2017 (nice date, isn't it), we were thinking, to go to South America will be nice in mid December 2017. So I get some time to move my things around from one flat to another and from another flat to my parent's house to store them until we are back from travelling. Also to get some time to prepare, buy equipment and plan a bit. It will be summer down there in South America. Summery Argentina, Buenos Aires and we will spend Christmas around Iguazu Falls. My wife Denisa is working until 15th December and she has an ACCA exam 8th December, so she can't help that much as someone (me) would like to. But I don't expect her as she has to focus to pass her last ACCA exam with clear head and handover everything she needs at her work before we go.

We bought the flight tickets to Buenos Aires South America already. We have them, they were very expensive and they are only one way tickets. 16th December 2017 is the date we leave Prague...
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Location: Prague, Czechia

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