Less than a month to go, and we are close to filling up the one wheeled backpack each of us will be carrying! The clothes are all simple, packable and hopefully durable, and we'll be very sick of them six months from now if they actually last that long. We've found some interesting devices in the process:
- a Steripen, a UV light device that sterilizes drinking water by waving it in the water bottle for 48 seconds ... no need for purification tablets or filtering pumps! We'll let you know if it actually works. A long absence from entries in the blog could indicate less than stellar performance ...
- the IPad, with apps for anything you can imagine to find a map, hotel, restaurant or service just about anywhere. We'll be doing all of our communicating through it, so we are hoping for no glitches and no thefts ...
- as bathrooms will undoubtedly be subpar in some parts of the world, I found a device which allows girls to pee standing up ... enough said on that ...
We have obtained all of our Visas with exception of Russia, where we fall between the rule that you have to apply within three months of travel and the rule that you have to apply in your home country. So we are hoping the Russian Consulate in Sydney will help us out, or we'll have to reroute. Pat would very much like to visit his friends in Dmitrov, so we are really wanting to work something out; we had a very good organization in Washington DC help us with the Visas called Travel Document Systems . Bolivia was our other challenge, with the same rule about applying within three months of travel, but we can apply upon arrival there.
We are so lucky to have James house sitting for us, it makes a huge difference that our house will be lived in and cared for! Poor guy is already here and I'm sure counting the days to our departure ...
