Day 100 and counting down.....
We've been "calendar watching" for what seems like years. Looking back, I beleive the first conversations about this trip were a mere 723 days ago somewhere in the middle of Peru. My goodness, how time does fly...smile! Our cut-off date was January 15, 2010, and at that point we still had 318 days to go. What happened in the last 215 days to make it all seems like a dream?
We started out with a barage of curiosity seeking emails. That began shortly after our return from our last South American adventure in 2009. Then came our commitment, signed agreements, and deposits. That was this last January. Next was the confirmation of airfare and the final negotiations of the tour elements. The simplest was the Amazon Cruise; one phone call, two emails, and it was done. The longest was the land tour from Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls. That has taken almost fourteen months to get done and only a few days ago, we discovered an error that needed to be corrected....oops, we had no place to sleep on our first night in Manaus.
Next up was the dubious task of getting eveyone on board with their passports and visa applications. Neither Brazil or Paraguay accept applications at their US consulates. That meant hiing an agent (this one in Texas of all places) and the processing journey. As you can see from previous posts, we still don't have our passports and visas back. This is to occur beginning this week.
Once the main elements of the tour were set in place and dates were firm came the time time to start filling in the blanks - those free days and what to do in each major desitination. That was the fun part as early morning (3AM...you all see the times I write these messages) forrays on the internet revealed yet another "something" we simply could not pass up.
The gifts from all of this is that we will have "traveled" to these places a million times in our thoughts and dreams...and now, soon...the reality of actually being there will unfold. In addition to the anticipation have some some really cool spiffs - five star hotel upgrades in Ushuaia and Buenos Aires, all double private room and tents on our Pataponia Trek, upgrades on airlines to better seating, public to private tour busses for some of our land adventures, and many other surprise acitivities that no one knows about but Tom. And all of this set into place after the final price was quoted at no additional charge. It's magic.
Stay tuned for more as we begin our official countdown to December 1st!
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