Mark and I began tentatively discussing the possibility of travel in January. I graduate with my MPH and Global Health certificate in December and have been working my butt off with work and school for over two years now. I want a break before jumping back in to the professional world. And my attempts at learning Spanish so far have failed miserably. Time to immerse myself! Mark is in the middle of his master's program for software development and web design and is learning so much about different programming languages. This is a new career direction for him that seems like it will offer many opportunities in the future and makes more sense for him to transition from an internship or directly in to a job once we're back. This 'career break' will hopefully give him some time to work on his language (Spanish and programming) skills that will set him up for an internship or a job next summer. HuffPost thinks so! Maybe he'll even make a better travel blog website for us!
There's even a company called Meet Plan Go that supports people's goals of accomplishing a career break that doesn't hinder future goals.
But most importantly, our lives are pretty chaotic and while they're full of wonderful friends, family and a bunch of local adventures, I think we'll learn a lot about each other when we're navigating the bus system in Guatemala, sleeping in hostals in Argentina and trekking in Patagonia. Others think we should do extended travel together too! Some of the articles reasons: getting to know each other, facing your fears, being stripped bare, the perspective of it's not all bad.
Extended travel isn't always easy or cheap. We've narrowed our timeframe down to 4 months. The wanderlust part of me would pack up for a year or more. But the practical realist in me knows that the allure of travel can fade after a while and you end up longing for your own bed and start missing your friends and family! Plus eventually we're going to want a house (and new skis, new mountain bikes, etc....) so keeping this trip affordable is important to us too. Our splurges will be sailing in St. Vincent and possibly some of Chile since the remote locations can tick the price up. I've read that Buenos Aires isn't necessarily cheap (we're not in Laos anymore Toto!) but Guatemala and Peru are much more affordable. We are aiming to save money in multiple ways: skipping on pricey Belize, planning DIY hiking in Patagonia versus a pricey guided tour, staying in one place longer versus frequently using transportation and choosing more affordable countries like Guatemala and Peru. Guatemala will cost us under $700 for daily private Spanish classes, homestay lodging and food for a month. That's practically everything you spend money on in a month for LESS than my rent in the US (that doesn't include food and activities). I'm budgeting for $10,000 per person for the 4 months not including air travel (since Mark will use points mostly and we're only taking 3 flights anyhow). That's an average of $76/day for the 130 or so days. That may even be a high estimate since some backpacker budgeting websites put daily average expenditures at $35-40 in Cusco, Buenos Aires and Antigua!
Since we want to be home for the holidays, Mark needs to work his 15 days at Breck and I can't pass up time and a half at the holidays, we're going to leave after the new year. At this point, we'll come home in mid-May. I love doing the Bolder Boulder on Memorial Day (have only missed 3 years of the past 13!) and Mark needs to be back to be available for summer internships/jobs. So that puts us at just over 4 months!
This blog will share our adventures, our joys, our fails, our trials, our photos and our stories. I aim to be transparent with costs and realities to hopefully motivate those to take an epic travel adventure too!
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| Mark and I hiking above Lake Como, Colorado in August 2014 |