South America 2008

It's official.

I left my job at CA in December, after working for almost 6 years for Niku/CA. Joanna's last day with GSRC was this past Friday. So Joanna and I are now officially both underemployed!

Not only that, but a couple of weeks ago we bought our airfare to South America. Here's the basic plan:

• We leave on February 19, 2008
  
  • We're going to fly into Quito, Ecuador and fly back from Lima, Peru.
  • We'll spend about three weeks in Ecuador, followed by about four weeks in Peru.
  • Joanna's going to travel South America for a total of seven weeks, and I'm going to travel for a total of nine weeks. Joanna's going to use the two weeks to visit her family in Phoenix and probably her mom and dad on the east coast, too.
  • We're not going to worry about "what's next" until we get back to the USA in late April.
  • We'll use this travel blog on Travellerspoint to keep all of you up to date on where we are and what we're doing!

Hang on...this is gonna be fun!

A little while back, Joanna and I went to the Adult Immunization and & Travel Clinic in San Francisco. They were wonderful - friendly and incredibly helpful.

We got Tetanus booster shots, Typhoid shot/pills, and Hepatitis A shots. We didn't get Yellow Fever vaccine or Malaria pills, since they're expensive and we haven't yet decided whether or not we're going to visit the Amazon. If we do decide to go there (and if we do, we'll likely meet up with Ryan R. in Peru) we'll have to get those too.

I was lucky since I had only one shot; Joanna's arm was sore for the rest of the day since she had a few pricks in the arm!

The other day we visited our friend Jen in Oakland to get some travel advice. She traveled to Peru several years ago and had some good suggestions to offer. One idea we really liked was to bring one of those compact Polaroid cameras that spits out tiny (photo booth-sized) prints. The idea is to take this along with our digital camera and to use the Polaroid photos as little gifts for people we meet along the way. What a clever idea! Joanna already has one of these cameras so we think we'll bring it along.

Oh, it was also a great excuse to drink some wine with a good friend.

Last week Joanna borrowed Michelle's Eagle Creek travel backpack. Michelle's so awesome - she's gonna let us use her pack for our trip! That means we won't have to spend the $$ to buy an expensive travel pack. Thanks Michelle!!

In the meantime, I've been researching backpacks to death. There are a handful of really great packs out there that I want to buy for our trip. But in the end I'm gonna stick with what I already have...an old no-frills Kelty Redwing pack that I used when I traveled around Spain a few years ago. It's nothing fancy, but it's pretty burly (and heavy), so it'll do just fine if it gets beat up along the way. And it's only about 2900 cubic inches, which is on the smaller side for a trip like ours. That means I'll have to be really conservative with how much stuff I take with me. I think I'll be fine - I used a pack maybe 2/3 the size when I was in Costa Rica a couple years ago, so I'll sure it'll work out.

Also, today I picked up our own guidebooks to consult and tear up as we see fit. I bought the Moon Peru guide and the Lonely Planet Ecuador and Galapagos Islands guide. Up 'til now we've been using books borrowed from the library, which in a few cases were a bit out of date.