About the Journey

T: I feel nervous and excited, because we are going away for quite a long time, and I'll miss school... and I love school...

Kath: I'm very excited. Going to new places, new countries (check!), new continent...

T: Aren't you always excited about that?

Kath: Yes

T: So there's no point in interviewing you over this...

In July 2018 this circus set off on a journey to South America. Unlike travel where you have a destination, this travel is more about the journey. We are on the road to fill in a gaping hole on our family world map - the continent of South America.

The Plan
The general plan is an anti-clockwise top-to-toe loop... start up the top (Colombia) and make our way down the West (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile), with splashes on the Galapagos and Easter Islands. Then hook around up through Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and into Brazil. All this in about 10 months.

What it's About
While the journey is about collecting countries (that scratching sound is Kath ticking off another country on the list), the journey is also about learning. Beyond South America's obvious Spanish, history, geography, cultural etc aspects that we'll be immersed in, there is an immense learning that comes through travel in general, through connecting & exchange with others, through seeing the world our ancestors left us, through the relics & stories...

The youngest member of the troupe is seven turning eight. A common question asked by friends and family are "so, are you homeschooling her?" or "what will little T do for school?" Many folk follow that with "well... I guess you are both educators, so you know what you're doing!", and therefore we escape deeper grilling and harsher judgement. The reality is that for the older two, this trip will be about our learning too, as parents and educators. It's not a question of "can it be done?" - there are hundreds of families on the road, worldschooling / roadschooling / unschooling / homeschooling - it's more a question of "how is it done?", and specifically "how is it done best for us?". Inevitably this means lots of learning about ourselves, realising limits, facing fears, overcoming obstacles... in short living, breathing, learning life.

If the above is not already enough of a challenge, Kath and Andrew have always talked about going on a longer-term adventure of travel. Apparently Hong Kong to London overland (6 weeks), a summer in Morocco, a summer doing 7 provinces of Canada, a summer doing USA & Jamaica, travelling Amsterdam to Copenhagen via Luxembourg and the Faroe Islands, all these are not enough! The challenge of being on the road for an extended period of time is one we have decided to try our hand at, because we can and because we will regret it if we don't just give it a go!

T: I like this trip because it's exploring and adventurous... 

Kath: What are you licking? 

T: I normally lick my water.

South America?
So if one were to hit the road for an extended period of time as a challenge, where should one go? Why not the other side of the world? From Hong Kong, you cross the Pacific to get to Western South America (Santiago, Bogota, etc), but you'd likely cross the Atlantic to get to Brazil or Argentina. And to make things a little easier, access to South America's variety and culture can be done through just one or two languages: Spanish (and Portuguese). Oh, and anything that helps get Kath onto Easter Island (her ultimate destination), is always a bonus... there are direct flights from Santiago (Kath in no way looked into this in advance... at all... just a neat coincidence).

How are we doing it?
When planning, there was a mix of the most planning and the least amount of planning than we've done before for a trip. We did run through budgets and chop and change the ideal "daily" budget a number of times, enact savings from quite a while before the trip, downsize, offload and rethink how we were living in Hong Kong. Kath did an amazing job of figuring the best times to visit each of the countries in South America, and we are following the sun and summer. There's been a lot of minds changed over what bags to bring and what to pack (these 1st world problems!). A ticket to the Galapagos was the first actual expenditure on the trip (an "OK, I guess we are really doing this then" moment), followed by one-way tickets into Bogota via London, and then Easter Island bookings.

We are getting around mostly by buses and road, through local inter-town connections. There may be some places we will need to fly (we won't likely be building another Kon-Tiki to get to Easter Island). The general plan is to get local knowledge, weigh up our time, budget, aims and how we are feeling, and make a decision from there, for every step of the journey. Daunting, but also exciting and maximising our journey-not-destination element of the adventure.

To finance the trip, we have been saving up over the last couple of years, and hopefully that will see us through the journey outlined above, as well as maintain ongoing commitments we have back home. It will be interesting to learn what opportunities exist for us to add value to our world during our journey, with anything we earn on the road providing one form of evidence of that value.

Your support is essential
This blog tries to capture some of the adventure and share it with the amazing people we have been blessed to be a part of our lives. Thank you for your support, without which none of this could ever be realised.