It's official, Justin and I have purchased our tickets through to Africa! We've got just under two months to go, and now 80% of our locations are set. We're leaving the last several months of our tickets for purchase this summer for reasons I'll lay out below.
But first, we've now got an established itinerary (rough, but a guideline) for January, 2014-September, 2014. The two must-have destinations for us were Brazil and Ghana. Justin is a soccer FANATIC (all caps intentional) so we MUST be in Brazil from at least June 12-July 13 for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. My must-go destination is Ghana, as one of my dearest childhood friend's grandmother runs a non-profit called Anansi that assists teens in getting their high school education. Check out more on this great organization at the link below.
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| 2014 FIFA World Cup |
That said, (drumroll, please!) the flight destinations are as follows:
- San Jose, Costa Rica--Lima, Peru: June 4, 2014
- Lima, Peru--Sao Paulo, Brazil: June 10, 2014
- Sao Paulo, Brazil--Buenos Aires, Argentina: July 16, 2014
- Buenos Aires, Argentina--Sao Paulo, Brazil (cheaper to fly to Africa from Brazil): September 17, 2014
- Sao Paulo, Brazil--Accra, Ghana: September 18, 2014
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| Machu Picchu, Peru |
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| Buenos Aires, Argentina |
We are also making a slight stopover in Togo on our way to Accra, but other than that, this is our flight pattern. We'll likely be visiting additional countries along this route, including (but not limited to) Nicaragua, Panama (I'm dying to see The Canal), Paraguay, Mali and Cote d'Ivoire. We also plan to travel up the coast of Brazil to Rio and Salvador, as well as follow the US team around for the World Cup.
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| Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
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| Salvador, Brazil |
We decided not to purchase tickets beyond September 2014 for a few reasons:
1) Ticket purchases are only valid for change up to one year from purchase
2) Tickets are only available for purchase up to 365 days in advance
3) Our plans/money/situation may change!
This leaves us free to stay in Africa through January, or add a leap over to Europe, India, Nepal...wherever.
We purchased our tickets through www.airtreks.com, a site highly recommended among long term travel bloggers. Our travel planner, Chris, was incredibly helpful. He worked to get us the best deals possible. For all flights, including taxes, we paid just $2,884.00 USD each. This is a pretty screaming deal, considering flights to Brazil and Ghana alone can be more than half that on their own (especially with World Cup prices, when it comes to Brazil).
Now that we've got our tickets purchased, we've started focusing more on acquiring gear, selling more of our stuff, and getting accommodations together. We've booked a hostel in Costa Rica through hostelworld.com for our first three nights, but hope to couchsurf much of that first month (and much of the trip, to be honest). During our second month there I'll be in my TESOL training course through International TESOL and TEFL Training, which includes onsite accommodation.
We're also meeting up with some friends in Costa Rica at the end of March, where we'll get wonderful condo accommodations for a week (sooo excited).
After that, who knows. We'll go wherever the wind blows us. For now, we're just counting down:
For help getting started on your around the world itinerary, the following sites were invaluable to us
For general know-how:
- www.indietravelpodcast.com -- my personal fave, both the podcast and the site
- www.earth2eartha.com she even emailed me about packing questions--really awesome girl!
- www.ytravelblog.com -- podcast is great as well
- www.nomadicmatt.com
- www.travelhacking.org
For flights:
- www.airtreks.com
- www.skyscanner.com -- great deals on single flights. We purchased our initial tickets to CR here
- www.staralliance.com -- good for looking at true round the world tickets. I'll put a post up about these later.
- www.oneworld.com
For accommodations:
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