26 Days Remaining

Well after long deliberation, yesterday I walked down to the travel clinic in Russell Square. As it turns out my jabs for Rabies, Typhoid, Tick Encephalitis and Hepatitis B amount to the grand old bill of £414.00 not a small amount to stomach when in perspective your car only cost £500!

As I entered the clinic (which anyone who's been there will know, it's conjoined with an STA travel) I am told to sit down and fill out a couple of forms. So I take a seat and start writing down my travel history and other interesting family illnesses in boxes that are always designed to be too small for anyone's comments. Then through the plasterboard wall behind me I hear what can only be described as a loud thump, the kind of dull but resonating thump that you associate with either someone hitting the floor in dead weight or something similar, then to follow up the thump is a bloodcurdling scream. However, it didn’t stop there this was then followed by screaming and pleading all mixed with in the cries of a young child. As the noise reaches its peak the 12 year old girl comes bolting out of the nurse’s office, quickly followed by her father who's obviously limping from multiple kicks to his legs. He then tries to calm her down, but she had the level of fear where no amount of reasoning could calm her down, she was in a total state of panic. As the father tries to drag her back into the chamber of horrors she digs her heels in and somehow manages to drag herself as well as him away from the nurse’s office, it's at this point that the nurse steps out and says she can't possibly give the jabs as the child was so panicked. This left the father in a situation where his child needs jabs to go around South America, but now the professional refuses to give them, this left one last option take the kid outside to calm her down, then like any good parent would do, you bride the hell out of them to go and get it done, needless to say 5 minutes later the deed was done and this time without screams and a look of surprise as the girl realises it doesn’t hurt at all, and her public display of distress has actually landed her with presents of some kind at the end of the line. Win win you could argue for the girl. I could only watch as the mayhem unfolded in from of my eyes, and even though I'm fine with needles and jabs, it probably wasn’t the best confidence builder just before you head in yourself.

The tiny nurse was happy to give me the jabs, but before she'd even gotten the needles out of the fridge she obviously thought that she probably wouldn’t survive should I faint onto her, so she gave me two sugar cubes and a glass of water, and we were hot to trot!

On that note my jabs went surprisingly easily, I was a brave boy, I didn’t scream or cry and 3 jabs later I'm walking out of the clinic a lot lighter on my wallet and all for what can only be physically seen as 3 little plasters on my arms. I've got to go back next weekend, as well as a couple of days before I set off on the rally for the second & third round of jabs.

So all in all the fun of repetitively getting stabbed in the arms is costing me a small fortune, my only conciliation is that I should be immune to all but a handful of diseases during my trip! So here's fingers crossed I don't have to put any of these jabs to the test!

36 Days Remaining

Well a good chunk of the remaining travels has now officially been booked!

The story goes like this....

After a few fruitless searches online for some flights which had flexible conditions (so I have the option to change the dates if need be) I had started to get a bit worried! The flights from Japan to the West Coast of the US, then from New York back to London, were all batting in around the £2000 mark, now that completely blew my travel plans out of the water. As I was walking past the STA travel in Victoria, I thought, what's the harm in going in and asking them?

So I sat down and a guy called Charlie proceeded to try and understand my travel plans, this involved then alot of fine print checking and investigations on the conditions of various packages and deals. Eventually he decided that round the world tickets and such like were no good to me, and I wasn't flying out of the UK and I wouldn't need to return to Japan.

This left only one remaining options, searching for individual flights and connections, all in all after much button pressing and 45mins of pondering, he came up with a solution! In his words "I've got some good news, and some bad news"

I figured hit me with the good news first, so "the good news is I can do both flights for only £850 there or there abouts"

So, I'm sat there thinking that's affordable, and fits in my budget of the sub £1,000 I was hoping for!

Then there's the bad news, "you've got to have a stop over somewhere!"

So instantly I remember my 12 hour stay at an airport in Hawaii and the brain numbing boredom of watching CNN on repeat as they followed Obama on his campaign trail....but least they had biscuits and fruit juice!

So I say "how long is the stop over?"

The reply "4 days?"

I have a sudden thought that that's not so much a stop over but more like a mini-break, the only question was what back water dismal destination would it be? Somewhere in Siberia perhaps?

"it's a 4 day stop over in Tahiti?!?"

My response whilst having a grin that went the entire circumference of my head "and there's a bad side in this situation where?"

Needless to say I'm booked and ecstatic to be adding Tahiti to my list of destinations this year! WAHOOOO!!!!

I'm sure things won't go entirely smoothly so we'll have to wait and see, but for now I'm like a 6 year old on Xmas eve! I'm flipping crawling the Walls!

37 Days Remaining!

Nice action shot
Originally uploaded by pezz361356

Wow well it was an interesting weekend, and I think for the first time it really hit home just what we're undertaking!

Team Swift ventured down to the Breacon Beacons in South Wales for some off roading fun with the other ralliers on this years Mongol Rally.

It was an extremely wet weekend, but that did nothing to dampen the spirits and indeed thirsts of our fellow ralliers!

The weekend consisted of an off road track, alcohol, music, dancing and a whole load of hand break turns! Perhaps not all that the same time mind you, that would be unsafe....

The car did get stuck at one poitn but a couple of equally interesting cars managed to drag us out and to safety, and luckily the car is undamaged, or at least it seams!

There's plenty of photo's of the weekend on my facebook & flickr pages so feel free to check them out, and I'm sure there'll be more to follow in the near future as events unfold!


p.s. My new boots stood up to the challenge and as such were indeed water & mud proof and a perfect fit! I'm most happy with them! I'm waiting to pick up the Selkbag so that'll be cool to try out!