The Preparation

Christmas, Noels & Caroline's Irish Wedding in Derry and then New Year gave me plenty of opportunity to procrastinate on fleshing out a plan and preparing for my big adventure. On the 3rd Jan i finally made some decisions and booked my flights.... leaving on 14 Jan.

First stop would be Costa Rica for 2.5 weeks to unwind and settle into the backpacking life - thinking sun, chilling, beach, chilling, lying in a hammock (you get the idea). From Costa Rica i'd booked a flight to Medellin in Colombia on 1st Feb (with a connecting flight in Bogota, the capital). I plan to go to spanish school there for 4 weeks to get a base and then explore rest of Colombia before heading onto Equador, Peru, The Amazon, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and finally Brazil. I will be flying back home from Rio at the end of the year but hoping to be there for Christmas and New Year. The plan is very flexible depending on how much I like / don't like places. Definitely will be a lot of 'winging it' !!

With flights booked and a few lazy days enjoying watching everyone go back to work it really started to sink in that i did not have to go back to work for another year. I really gave myself little time to prepare for a year away from home as well as cram in a million of goodbyes! (ok well not quite a million). The snow and icy roads meant all plans on riding my motorbike to a safe home went right out of the window. This became my biggest challenge but luckily thanks to my kind bro we were able to sort something with a day to go !!

I spent my last night with the bucks goons in a lovely Spanish restaurant in Clapham which was a great final farewell. I'd had many boozy farewell nights leading up to that so was absolutely shattered. I'd been pretty relaxed about the whole trip until that night when i started to worry about the initial airport transfer in San Jose during the early hours on my own. I'd read some bad stories on the internet and in guidebooks and with the exhaustion it had started to weigh on my mind.

I joked with my friends about having not quite finalised my packing... well the truth was that night i still had yet to pack with my flight due to depart at 9am the next morning!! I slept from midnight to 2am and then spent the next 4 hours through the night trying not to wake my housemates up while with a sleepy head figuring out what I might need / not need until 2011!! I just about made it and left the flat for heathrow airport at 6am. Gary our new lodger was up early and gave me a big man hug! It was raining, dark, cold and slushy in Balham... hard to contemplate by my next sleep i'd be in a very hot and sunny Costa Rican climate !!