New Toy

Pete has bought a new toy  which will fit neatly into the camera case, it is a Sony HD camcorder which stores all its video files on an SD card.  we think that a 16 Gb card will be big enough especially as we can download files to the netbook.  The camcorder has an integral projector so that we can see our videos each night.  So plenty of time to practise using this toy before we leave.

Two Months to Go!

Preparations

The planning of this trip started about a year ago whilst we were on holiday in France with Peter and Margaret. We were originally going approx. 10 years ago over to Argentina but the dates got mixed so it didn't happen - Pete went to Buenos Aires for three days instead.

This years trip, organised again for us by Audley, will take in Santiago, the Chilean lake district, Patagonia, the Perito Moreno glacier, Buenos Aires, a quick excursion to see Debs and family in Colon, finishing off at the Iguazu falls on the border with Brazil.

Thanks to the good money rate we decided to buy our currency well in advance rather than the week before our trip, hopefully taking advantage of our local  Batif's rates, and this time we didn't have to walk the High Street carrying a few thousand pounds of sterling, as we could pay by debit card.


We popped over to England and saw Richard our South American expert to finalise all our plans. What a brilliant place to work at Witney - the views made it hard to concentrate. the Audley office is two miles off the main road up a GUERNSEY like road  (more like the road to Icart) we were looking out for the passing places.  we reckoned that navigating in Chile will be a breeze by comparison!
We had a great time with Richard who gave us a new itinerary which is now nearly complete - just the bus times to and from Colon to be confirmed.

We went for our Yellow fever injections as we are going to Brazil for all of one day and one overnight flight. Without the certificate we might not be allowed in to Brazil!
The Nurse looked quite serious and gave us the paperwork for all the side effects, which are even worse for the over 60's.  We duly read them, with the shock we nearly held hands and both thought do we really want to do this, obviously the answer was yes! The side effects basically had three levels 1) nuisance rash 2)swollen lips, throat 3) one could DIE. So yes we had the injections plus Alison had a repeat three in one in the other arm, so instead of shopping we went home and chilled out watching the Commonwealth games, holding our arms in anticipation.


I did try to persuade Pete not to pay the final Bill for our trip just in case one of us snuffed it before the magic 10 days were up but of course he totally ignored me in typical Harris fashion No point paying if someone is going to pop off; it just causes more problems.  Of course we suffered no effects at all.  Having endured the trauma of  these injections, the doctor said we were unlikely ever to need to show the certificates.


We  booked our flights to and from Gatwick with the mandatory overnight stay on the way out and have requested our international driving licences - apparently we should have had these for New Zealand as well!  We must remember to check that these have arrived mid-September.


We were concerned that our suitcases were too heavy, so I sweet talked Pete into spending some money on new cases which are only 3 kilo rather than 7 and a sweet shade of purple; we have been told that on all our internal flights the limit is 15 kilo (though rarely enforced according to Richard) maybe  that is a problem -  no room for Christmas shopping!!!(Alison is thinking).