Palegoldenrod

I bought my ticket last night. I finally forked out for it, and I have my little e-Ticket in my little e-Hands. At 11am on Saturday April 19, I will be leaving Australia bound for the perils and adventures of Santiago de Chile. high five!

Things I have learnt so far, and I haven’t even left yet:

• 3 months is not much time to plan a long trip
• there may be significant savings if you buy straight from the airline rather than via a travel agent (in my case, around a AU$1000 difference for the same flight on the same airline)
• round the world tickets can be a pain in the butt. I was planning on buying one of OneWorld’s 5 continent tickets, and even checked my itinerary on both of their online tools (one checks the number of legs in the right areas and the other checks that a OneWorld carrier can make a flight between those two points). This is not enough - you see, the carrier checker doesn’t tell you if the flight that is available for an airline that is available for your type of ticket. I went through 3 or 4 itineraries before I got sick of it and just bought a simple ticket straight to Santiago.
• vaccinations hurt. I think the Typhoid one was the fun one. d’oh.
• rabies vaccinations are expensive in Australia - 3 needles at about $120 a pop. And if you get bitten, all it does is buy you an extra 24 hours to get to a hospital to get a bunch more injections anyway. hmmm
• the current value of the Australian dollar (against the US dollar) makes it a great time to buy flights! Much of the travel industry is based on US dollar value, so you get more travel for your money at times like these.
• even if you get rid of clutter regularly, you will always, always have too much stuff when it comes time to get rid of it.
• I am terrible at learning languages. errr. Soy no hablo espanol muy bien.

Catch you later, you crazy cats.