odysseyone

After years of dreaming, months of planning and almost a year of living it, the odyssey is over. Through 27 countries on almost 100 separate long-distance journeys, travelling thousands of kilometres via air, sea, sky and pedal power and with a very neglected bank balance, our next destination is Australia. It’s said it takes about six weeks to create a habit so after nine months of living out of a backpack, we have become very used to this temporary lifestyle. We are looking forward to a rest at home but I’m sure after about three days, we will struggle with not moving on again.

Many people have told us we are living the dream, which is true, as this is something we have wanted to do for many years. But living the dream can be a whole lot harder than just dreaming it and there are definitely some nightmares involved. I’ve never been a parent but I think it’s the best example of what long-term travelling is like. Being a ‘citizen of the world’ is a full time job, we work more than eight hours a day, don’t get weekends off, don’t get paid and nobody thanks us for it. Here is a day in the life of the full time traveller…

We get up early - after a full day of sightseeing the day before - so we have enough time to lug our backpacks to the bus station ahead of a full day's bus ride to avoid paying for a taxi. This scenario is better than the other alternative, where we kill a day in a town waiting for an overnight bus ride and then spend the evening sleeping in a seated position, usually without a chance to shower or brush our teeth. After riding on the bus all day we arrive at our next destination, lug about 18kgs worth of packs on our front and back around hostels, looking for somewhere to sleep. Our list of questions has gotten longer as we have gone along and now goes something like this:

“Do you have a double room/how much is it? Is that for the room or per person?” (The room must be inspected for simple things like whether it has a window, a lock and a light)
“Is it a private or shared bathroom?” (nb- private is not always a good option if it has bad plumbing or no window and is going to stink out the bedroom)
“Is this room available for XXX nights?” (No, we don’t want to change rooms or hostels partway through our stay)
“Do you have a guest kitchen?” (Having a kitchen at the hostel is no good to us if we can’t use it. It also has to be inspected to make sure it doesn’t look like it belongs in a refugee camp)
“Can we drink the water?”
“Does it include breakfast? What is the breakfast?” (If the breakfast looks like it could kill us, we must find a supermarket and get our own)
“Do you have any permanent guests?” (If yes, we don’t want to stay here)
“Is there a bar nearby?” (If yes, we also don’t want to stay here)
“Can we smoke inside?” (If yes, we definitely don’t want to stay here)
“Do you have WiFi/What’s the password?” (Most do have WiFi but this doesn’t mean it works)
“What time is check out?”
“Do you take cash or card?” (Cash is better because we can do a runner if we don’t like the place)
“No you can’t have our passport- could we pay up front instead?”
“Do you have a map?” (Many reception staff don't seem to know where they are)
“Where is the nearest supermarket/ATM?” (If they can’t answer this, we don’t bother asking for any other help)
“Do you speak English?” (If the answer is no, then we stop after the questions about bedroom/bathroom/breakfast/kitchen and drinking water, because that is about the limit of my spoken Spanish ability)

We are quite lazy so we tend to take the first thing we find but if we really aren’t impressed, occasionally we have found ourselves wandering around a town going in and out of hostels, trying to find something that looks even remotely inhabitable. We usually only bother with this if we will be there for three or more nights.

Once we have found somewhere to stay we then have to orient ourselves with the town and come up with an exit strategy. Usually the first thing is to grab the guidebook, go get something to eat and figure out the next destination. We then have to go back to the bus station and get a ticket out of there for a few days time. Next step is to organise transport so we can see the local attraction/s the next day if it isn’t within walking distance, then we find a supermarket so we can cook that evening (this saves money) and find water if the tap water isn’t drinkable. We then start reading up about accommodation at the next location and checking prices. After all this, we start touring around our current location for about three days, then leave the town and the process starts all over again.

I will enjoy a break from this for a little while. There are a few other things I’m looking forward to when I get home, small things like flushing my toilet paper, not having to wear my thongs to shower in a bathroom made filthy by other backpackers (in fact using the same bathroom for more than a couple of days will be a luxury), not having to change out of my pyjamas to pee in the middle of the night in the communal bathroom, not having to re-wash every plate, pot, pan etc before we use it and not having to find a supermarket or restaurant at least twice a day so we can eat. The joy has definitely been taken out of dining out and I won’t care if I don’t eat at another restaurant for a year. I’m also really looking forward to not having to do the sniff test on my clothing in the mornings, then realising I have to wear it anyway because I have nothing else, even if it smells like a wet dog rolled around in it and then chewed his way through it before I put it on.

Living the dream is not as fanciful as it sounds. But I wouldn’t change any of these things because it’s what makes us travellers rather than tourists. Its also given us lots of opportunities to meet people from all around the world and even be inspired by some of them. Meeting locals is harder when your travelling rather than living in a place, but we have had opportunities to glimpse the heart of a nation as we happened to be in their country at a time of celebration, mourning or crisis. We were in Israel for their 62nd Independence Day and Holocaust Memorial Day, when we stood at attention along with everyone else as air raid sirens pierced the air. We chewed the fat with Brits over the forced retirement of David Beckham, news that was as big as the election results, which we were also there for. We were in Belgium as locals got excited about the long-awaited opening of the enormous new Liege train station, joined the mayhem in Germany on the first long weekend of spring after coming out of a long, bitter winter, cycled through the press throngs in France as they marked the 100th anniversary of the Dunkirk landing and felt the tension in the air in Athens as protesters marched during the summer as the country battled its economic woes. We were in Europe for the World Cup, hiding our heads in shame as the Germans in Switzerland celebrated their opening match slaughter of Australia and then watched the final on a tiny TV with a sole Turkish guy and celebrated Spain’s win. We experienced the buzz in Sarajevo as movie buffs descended for the international film festival and we had a chuckle along with the Icelandics over mother nature and the volcano eruption that caused mass disruption of air traffic (we avoided a flight cancellation while in Israel and in Iceland it caused little disruption). We marked the 9th anniversary of September 11 in the USA as debate raged over a possible mosque being built near the WTC site and in South America, we saw protesters take to the streets ahead of the Peruvian elections, celebrated the miner’s rescue in Chile and mourned with Argentina over the death of the former president and husband of the current president.

We have spent the last couple of weeks of our trip speeding through Argentina and Uruguay, with Buenos Aires our final destination. We drove into Argentina from Chile on a dirt road and it looked like we had pulled up outside a farmhouse when we were herded off the bus. We went in the farmhouse to go through immigration- I think they were more interested in their upcoming lunch siesta then looking at our passports. The customs officers were busy reading newspapers and watching the soccer on TV and had a ping pong table in the middle of the customs room.

Our first stop in Argentina was the Perito Moreno glacier, the country’s most famous natural attraction. I admit we had very little hope of being impressed after seeing so many glaciers in Chile but Perito Moreno performed for us and it was the most impressive of all. It is one of only two advancing glaciers in South America and we managed to waste away six hours watching chunks of ice break off and crash into the glacier melt below. The sound is what I would imagine it would be like living in a war zone and sounds something like the crack of gunfire. We went on a short boat ride as well and got very close to the terminal face, which is six kilometres wide.

From here we went a little further north to the Fitz Roy range and finally experienced some of that infamous Patagonian weather. After so much good weather we were kind of pleased to experience the icy winds and rain because we had begun to doubt its notorious weather even existed. We had rain for one entire day and it snowed on the nearby hills and was bitterly cold even though it was almost summer. The next day was spectacular and Justin was able to hike in the range but I was forced to rest because of a nasty cough I’ve had for the last couple of weeks. We worked out I’ve probably had bronchitis, self-diagnosed thanks to a Google search.

From El Chalten we went a little further north before turning east towards the Atlantic coast. It gave us a chance to travel on the infamous Route 40 for a day. We were on a minibus negotiating a highway that is basically a goat track, which was dirt and mud with massive ruts almost the entire way and had very short patches of bitumen in random places. After a couple of hours I rationed our water because there was a very high chance we would be sleeping on the side of the road for the night if it broke down. We saw the drivers fill the fuel tank with a hose out of a plastic container before we left and got a little nervous when we stopped at a fuel station that had run out of petrol.

There were two drivers but instead of resting, the second one either had ADD or was tripping out on something because he was bouncing off the walls of the bus for the seven hours he had to wait until it was his turn to drive. He just could not sit still and was loading up on mate tea (which almost every Argentine drinks all day) and litres of Coca Cola without a toilet stop. At one point we came across a bus coming the other way but instead of the drivers just waving to each other, they stopped and blocked the road, then all the drivers got out and cracked jokes to each other while we had to wait on the bus for around 15 minutes. We were very happy to see the end of our drivers that night when they dropped us off. The next morning we walked back to the bus station to buy tickets out of there and who should come round the corner waving at us but the two mini bus drivers, still cracking jokes at each other.

It took three full days of bus rides and an 18 hour overnight ride to get to Buenos Aires. We broke the trip up for a few days in Puerto Madryn and hired a car for a day to go out to Peninsula Valdes, which has some of the greatest variety of marine life on earth. We saw sea lions and elephant seals on the beach and got within centimetres of Magellanic penguins nesting.

To avoid spending more than a few days in Buenos Aires, we left the city for a few days and caught a ferry to Uruguay. We had no idea if we needed a visa so we thought we would just have a shot at it and see if they let us in. It turned out to be one of the easiest border crossings ever. Rather than go through immigration in each country, the Uruguayan guy was sitting in Argentina at the immigration desk there, yawning as he stamped us in seconds after Argentina stamped us out. There was the reverse set up when we left Uruguay. The only easier border crossing we have had was in Bosnia, where they saw the Australian logo on the cover of our passports and didn’t even bother opening them to check they weren’t fake or stolen.

We spent a couple of days in Colonia, the closest Uruguayan town to Buenos Aires and we could still faintly see the city across the river. Colonia is a small town and has preserved its old quarter, which was an outpost for the Portuguese. The old town is very European with cobblestone streets, leafy green squares and lots of restaurants in old stone buildings. The town sits on the river that feeds down from the delta where Argentina and Uruguay meet.

We returned to Buenos Aires a few days ago to wait for our flight home. It’s also very European with big squares surrounded by lots of cafes, restaurants, European-style churches and buildings and a big pink palace made famous by Eva Peron. They have revamped their wharf area, which has lots of expensive restaurants. Justin caught his first pickpocket on the subway here when he noticed a guy with his hand on the side of his leg, about to put his hand in Justin’s pocket. If he’d succeeded, he would have scored the grand prize of a dirty hankie.

Barbequing is a national pastime here and we’ve dined at a few parrillas, an Argentine steakhouse, which are on almost every corner. We’ve also seen people barbequing on a budget, putting coals on the road and then the grill on top and cooking massive chunks of meat on their makeshift BBQ in the gutter. There is no rest when your job title is traveller and with half a day left there are still streets to be walked, markets to shop at and tango dancers to watch. Our new reality, whatever that will be, will have to wait for one more day.