Two months until we leave....

Daintree National Park

Our departure date is exactly two months from now.  Summer feels like it is going quickly and we have quite a bit planned from now to then.  

We have our first tickets from to Cairns, Australia from LAX and our return flight from Auckland, New Zealand back to LAX.  We are staying in Airbnb's for the first 12 days in Australia, then we will trade our rental car for a camper van and off we go.

We have sent off passports that needed to be renewed.  We are trying out hiking boots and other hiking and camping gear.  We are also researching more what we will do in Australia.  We thought at first that we would go from Cairns and Atherton Tablelands to Daintree Rainforest and then head south again staying along the east coast.  On further thought, Ivo has decided we should go further north and then West to Darwin and head south through Alice Springs, detour to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (Uluru is that great big red rock in the center of the Australia) and down to Adelaide, then to Melbourne and try to head north again to Sydney.  At some point, we'll fly over to New Zealand and spend the rest of our time hiking and camping there, possibly with another camper van.  Then back to LAX and down to South America.  It's crazy to have to come all the way back up, but it's faster and cheaper.

I'm doing a lot of research on South America.  I'm getting excited about Machu Pichu and maybe other ruins that are still being excavated in Peru.  We plan on spending time in the Patagonia region, maybe a month total.  As a biology major in college, I'm hoping for Galapagos, but we'll see how the budget is going.

Other than that, we've got our normal daily chores and we're trying to declutter anything that we can, because it needs to be done and we want our house to be nice for our friends that will be staying here.

Here's to two months to go!!!

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Uluru