Travel plans are getting more precise

After not posting for a long time there's finally some news about our trip to Peru.

We finally decided about when to go. We will be flying to Lima/Peru on the 9th of January and fly back on the 29th of January.

Lan Airlines

We decided to cut back on the duration and to keep it simple: Only basic hotels and guest houses, economy class tickets for all flight sectors and there has been a change in the routing. We won't be flying via Caracas/Venezuela but we decided to take Bogota/Columbia since this is more convenient as Lufthansa has a direct connection departing from Frankfurt/Germany which takes us there in 12 hours.

It's going to be an adventure flying with Avianca and Lan Airlines in South America since I've never used any other Airline outside the EU. The flight will take 15 hours in total and after that we will be spending one or two nights in Lima to familiarize with the public transport system and of course take some time to get to know the city.

Avianca Airlines

After that our trip will take us to the coastline of Peru all the way down to the Lake Titicaca from where we'll be taking a national flight to the north to continue our journey. We are currently working on the waypoints - which spots we absolutely need to see like Macchu Picchu, the Lake Titicaca, the Urus - floating islands on the Lake Titicaca and so on. Once we figured it out I will post up a map with all of those spots.

I am so excited right now cause it really starts to come together. We will soon get the tickets and send in our vacation planning. Once this is done we can think about getting all the stuff together.

Intuition leads us...

Sometimes it's hard to see why things might be related to each other but today I want to tell you a short story.

Some time ago I used to go to the gym on a regular basis because I wanted to do something to keep me fit and in shape. Last year I quit because it wasn't fun anymore. I always felt I had to force myself to do it and so I cancelled the contract and stopped working out.

In the meantime I always wanted to do something more challenging, more satisfying. I looked around a bit and one day I thought about climbing - or better "bouldering" which is the indoor alternative. But you know how it is...sometimes you get caught up in your daily life and time flies by...so things take sometime longer than they should OR the time is not right and when the time IS right, everything just happens naturally.

During the last 2 or 3 days the thoughts about bouldering came again repeatedly and I decided to finally make the next step: look for a bouldering hall here in Munich. Yesterday, while surfing around and checking on the different websites the next step came to my mind: get the equipment to start with! And so I looked up what I needed to start bouldering. Then the next step: find a store in Munich.

Today I went to town and got shoes and the other equipment for a reasonable price. Tomorrow I will try it for the first time - and I'm excited!

What has all this to do with synchronicity? Well I'm not sure...but think about Peru...the Andes...maybe it gives me a new possibility. Maybe I get the chance to get to places I could never reach without this climbing technique. Who knows - maybe I will have a chance to climb in the Andes. Just thinking about it gives me goose bumps.

I found the photos on google...I hope that's ok. If not - let me know and I will delete them from this post.

A brief overview of the planned journey

Preparations start from this point...the raw idea of the whole trip. Refinements are of course coming in the future.

For now I think our journey will take us from Munich, Germany to Caracas, Venezuela where we will spend a night or two before we take the flight to Lima, Peru.

In Peru we decided to just use public transportation to move through the country. This might be more challenging but it will definitely be cheaper and I think with our language skills we'll get along pretty well - since I want to learn some spanish soon.

Here is a map of the general route...travelling around half the world. Pretty exciting, isn't it?

The detailed plans for Peru itself are to just follow our intuition. There will be some spots we definitely want to visit...but the biggest part of the decisions about the journey will happen while we're in the country.

Some good books...

 To start my preparation I looked for a good travel guide about Peru and the one that had the best ratings and reviews was the german guide "Reise Know How: Peru & Bolivien" that you can get at http://www.amazon.de.

The guide is very extensive and has tons of information about the country, the culture, hotels, several maps, tours and much more in it and though becomes a perfect companion on this journey.

Somebody to share this with...

I was not sure if I should do this alone or take somebody with me. But thinking intensely about it made me decide that it would be better not doing this alone. As South America is not the safest place, it is reasonable not to be alone. Furthermore it's more intense if you can share your experiences and insights with somebody.

The tricky thing was to find someone I knew I could spend 4 to 6 weeks, 24 hours a day with - without having to worry about what to talk about or not knowing if I could rely on or trust him. The only person I know, who meets all those requirements, is Chris.