Well, we made it!  Arrived on time in San Jose.  Quite a modern airport so comforting to the family... I've certainly been through much worse!  San Jose has about 2 of Costa Rico's 4 million but you'd never know it... very sprawled out I guess.  We stayed downtown at a little local hotel (Aranjuez).  Quite nice... not to 5 star North American standards but quite suitable for our budget!  Went down the street to a local bakery and fed the family dinner for $7.  That's quite the bargain!  Early to bed because we were getting picked up at 6:10am for our 3 days in Tortuega on the Caribbean.

Met by Modesto, the "old Silverback" of the Tortuega Canals in a relatively new Checy Astro van.  Our own personal guide/driver... and what a guide he turned out to be.  He should have a Masters or PhD in biology although I'm pretty sure from his background that he didn't graduate high school.  Knew the English, Spanish and Latin names for hundreds of species and knew all kinds of interesting facts about them.  During the drive from San Jose, just over the continental divide, Rachel was feeling a little carsick so be pulled over.  We.were waiting at this little pullover and looking at a tree.  He starts out by saying its a Gum tree and then points out the big Bromalid plants growing in its nooks and crannies.  Then tells us about the "blue jeans/ poison dart frogs that lay their tadpoles in the water urns of the Bromalid and how the mother goes up and down the tree to feed them pellets she finds on the forest floor and then how they get their poison (eating termites).  The whole day was like that.

It was a three hour drive to the port of Moiya (sp?) where we boarded one of his three motorized longboats for a 3 hour cruise up the Tortuega Canal system to the village of Tortuega in Tortuega National Park.

We saw a 10' Crocodile,

dozens of different bird including juevenille versions of familiar Canadian birds like Cormorants, Great Blue Herons and Ospreys.

Very cool to see them at a different stage of their life than we are used to seeing them...gives you a whole different perspective.

We also got to see quite a few "Jesus Christ Lizards" although how he picked these out on branches at 25 mph baffled me... we often didn't see what he was looking at until we were right on top of them... as in this picture.  They get their name from the fact that they can walk (or more accurately stomp) on water...  very cool.  This one is a male.

He dropped us off on the Island of... you guessed it...Tortuego where we are staying the night.  About 10+ miles of black sand beach which they tell us we can't swim in (rip currents).  It looks safe enough but there is NO ONE in the water.  Very hot here... no A/C.  We're here to see turtles... lots of holes and turtle tracks to/from the ocean but we have to take a night tour to see them.

Off for dinner.  Amazing that in a place that doesn't look like it has running water and has no cars that we get 5 bars of free wifi!  Gotta love the internet.

Love to all.

On the road less travelled!

Well perhaps that applies until AFTER we get out of Pearson.  Up this am at 5:20, caught the hotel shuttle   to the GTAA and then into the mad scramble that is US Customs/Immigration and then Security.  We managed to squeeze out the absolute last drops of my Elite status with Air Canada and get into the priority  checkin lanes and then into the lounge on the other side of customs for breakfast.  Unfortunately during the time we had breakfast (and the kids had a quick nap), Air Canada changed the gates from the far end of Pier E to the far end of Pier F.  The lounge was in the middle and of course we went right by all those big monitors with the gate info on them withou once looking at it until we got to the old gate - despite the fact that I spent the better part of a year outsourcing all of them into IBM!

Same kind of a screwup last night on the drive down.... I figured that since we were staying at Dixie/401, it would be easiest to take the 401... Big mistake.  They had 4 lanes shut down.  Poor Glenn had to put up with us for an extra 45 mins.  Big shout out to him and Gina for putting the Buick away for us.  We heard from our Teacher tenant, Tanya, that all is well.

We're on the airplane and it is on schedule.  Time to shut down.  See you next year!

Less than 24 hours now and we leave the home for 10 months

What a rush the past few days have been...  and the to-do list has been getting whittled down accordingly.  Only a few small items left now such as paying the guy who's going to store the sailboat.  The yacht club asked me to haul it out of there and I was lucky enough to find a guy who can load it on his trailer (transporter) and set it back down in the storage lot.  They'll shrink wrap it and wash it... I was over there today and man does it need it!!!  I had planned on selling it altogether but despite having it listed all summer, I never got anything other than a few internet scam offers/interest.  I talked to the local auction and they said I'd get somewhere between $|500 and $3000 for it!!!!  It's a foot shy of 30' and has every bit of electronics and roller furling jibs, new paint, etc. There is NO boat market right now.  I wish I was buying instead of selling....  I've seen some amazing boats for sale for next to nothing.  That ate up my am... and this afternoon, I was back down at the water again tying off the dock/railway so that I don't lose it on the ice like happened last year to the dock.  What a wonderful day to be down there... it had to be close to 30 degrees and sunny.

The CLS is all winterized and put away and Shawn vacuumed out the Buick... so a wash tomorrow, winterize it  and the pressure washer and then put away a few pieces of lawn furniture and finish packing and then Gina/Glenn will run us to the hotel at the airport and then put the Buick into the garage for the year...

We're both feeling like we're missing something important but what ever it is isn't on our big checklist so it can't be that important.  Saw Kirstie and Jordan today for lunch... was great seeing them - especially as we won't see them for well over a year as they leave for Australia in January for a year.  I'm hoping we'll get to stop in Australia for a bit but our schedule is already very rushed and that's an expensive place to be after South Africa.

Next post from Costa Rico likely!

So what to bring....

As you might imagine, taking off for 10 months without seeing home makes you decide what's really important and what isn't.  You can't carry the cars, the TV's, the boats, and all those other possessions you just "had" to have on your back.  Our first stop in Costa Rico has a stop at a place called Tortuguero National Park.  To get there you have to boat in on a skiff.  They have a weight limit of 25lbs per person.  We know we probably won't make that and will have to leave stuff at some hotel in San Juan but our goal is to come very close - with our day packs at least!

Clothes:
The fact that we are staying close to the equator for most of the trip (the exception being 3 days in NYC and 4 months in Europe in April, May, June and July) means we are just packing summer clothes.  We know we'll freeze in NYC in late October but we really don't feel like dragging fall/winter clothes around with us us all year.  We did learn that we need to take 14 pairs of underwear so we aren't tied to a sink....  a few pairs of shorts, long pants, sweater, rain jackets and shirts... and LOTS of socks, 2 pairs of shoes (hiking/walking and running).

Backpacks:
We did spend some money on good traveller back packs.  They are different than the hiking ones in that the whole back opens up like a suitcase when you lay it down on the frame - rather than little openings at the top which cause you to dump everything out to get at something on the bottom.  Each of us are different sizes, so we ended up with 4 completely different packs.  Two Asolo Navigators (a 75 for me and a 55 for Jen), an  Osprey Atmos 5 for Shawn and a small North Face Alteo 35 for  Rachel.   The fit was very important to us even though we don't plan on walking for several hours in them.  Its amazing how many different types there are  and how different they all fit.

Lights/Drugs/"Perfumes":
Next we bought headlights (bright LED powered flashlights on headbands) as we know we'll be doing some night hikes on Safari and many of the places we'll be staying at don't have reliable power - or shut down the generator at night to reduce noise!  We each have 30% DEET mosquito repellant (except for Rachel who's limited to 12%).  We're hoping that if she sticks close enough to us, we'll shield her!  We don't plan on catching Malaria and have both Malarone for the adults ($5/day each) and Mefloquine ($5/week) for the kids who are less susceptible to the side-effects.  We also had to get Yellow Fever shots because Tanzania won't let anyone in who doesn't have it - Tanzania isn't a Yellow Fever endemic zone and I guess they intend on keeping it that way!  We ended up with a host of other drugs and shots (Hep A/B, Polio, etc.) so that the travel doctor (Dr. Mark Wise who gave us a handy book he wrote as well) ended up being a material part of the overall budget!  We didn't really expect that when we first thought of this!  The "pharmacy" will consume about 1/2 of one of our packs (guess who's?).

Cameras:
We hemmed and hawed about getting a new fancy SLR (Nikon 5100 with wide and telephoto zoom lenses) but at the end of it convinced ourselves that our trusty Panasonic Lumix 14MP with a 16x zoom would do the trick and was less likely to get us unwanted attention.    We did buy a handful of 16GB SD cards (in addition to the ones we already had) and then I picked up an 8MP Eye-Fi card.  This thing automatically uploads your pictures from your camera to the cloud (Picasa or Facebook) when ever you get within range of a WIFI signal.  The idea of the "cloud" being the repository of our photo's and videos makes us feel comfortable that even if we do get robbed at some point, we only lose the camera.... not the entire collection.    Finally, I picked up one of those great Gorilla mini-tripods.  You can wrap them around tree's, bend them into pretty much any shape to take family pictures.  For $20...  well worth it.

Electronics:
We are taking two BlackBerry PlayBooks (7" tablet computers).  These things will double as cameras (both still and HD video), video players (plays 1080p HD video), Music (they have fantastic speakers), Video conferencing (built in HD webcam's), Internet, computers and eBook readers all for something that weighs about 2lbs.   I'm also taking my trusty BlackBerry Torch phone.  I plan on picking up pay as you go SD cards where I can so I can get internet access for the PlayBook's through the local cell network instead of constantly having to hunt down WiFi hotspots.   I had intended for this to be it, but Jen (reasonably) pointed out that since we weren't carrying our usual half bag full of books, we'd need something for each of us to read on... not wanting to spend $1000 for more PlayBooks, I picked up a Kindle ($139) and a HP NetBook ($199).  I really hadn't planned on bringing a computer but there were a few things that are yet impossible/difficult to do on the PlayBook (like reading SD cards), configuring the router using Apple's special software, and Rachel's Nancy Drew games that I figured what the hey...  it's not that much bigger than a PlayBook.    I've also got a small Apple Airport Express router that plugs into the wall and provides wifi signals so if we do end up in a room with internet by wire, we can get it to the electronics.  This will be one wired family... but then did you expect any the less knowing me? :-D  Shawn wants to learn Python and C while we are gone so we'll see if that works for him.  He sure won't be playing Minecraft!

Books:
We aren't taking much in the way of hard copy books but do have some text books for the kids education as well as some French lesson's (in addition to the ones I've got downloaded on line).

That's it for now...  If we end up with anything else, I'll be sure to tag this later.

One week to go!

OK, its getting down to the wire.  One week from tonight, we'll be in a hotel in Toronto awaiting our flight out to San Juan, Costa Rico on the 27th of September.  We have a 9 page checklist of things we've had to do before we leave and the good news is that we are down to probably less than 10 items which by their very nature have to wait until the last day or so - such as putting the cars up on block's, etc.

It is astounding how much planning work has to (in our minds at least) go into planning a trip like this.  We started out thinking that we'd keep things pretty loose but visa requirements of the places we initially plan to visit (Tanzania and South Africa) are demanding that we have outbound flights out.  This means that the itinerary needs to be a lot more locked down that we would have thought/liked.   When I get a moment, I'll post the to do list (or a subset) in case anyone is crazy enough to try this and follow in our footsteps.

The itinerary itself hasn't changed much.  We're still heading out to Costa Rico on the 27th of September and flying back to New York City (JFK) on October 29th.  We'll spend Halloween and our anniversary in NYC and fly out the 1st for Kilimanjaro with a stop in Amsterdam.  We ended up getting very good deals on the airfares both to CR and back to NYC and then on to JRO (Kilimanjaro).   One of the things we discovered about airfares is that you really need to look where AND when you are flying.  There are some great deals... and great sites to find them. SkyScanner, Cheap-o Air, among a few.  We've also come to rely upon TripAdvisor for hotel reviews.  Its somewhat comforting to read hundreds of people have done what you are doing and have enjoyed themselves.

We get into Kilimanjaro on the 2nd of November and spend two days in Moshi, Tanzania (on footsteps of Kilimanjaro) decompressing and preparing for our 8 day Safari in the Serengeti and a few other choice spots and then the 2-3 weeks of volunteering around Moshi after that.  We've found a house where we'll stay which is run by the folks we'll be volunteering with.  We haven't yet landed on the beach plans... likely Zanzibar but we may also end up in Mafia as we hear that's a bit more reasonable - which is important to a family without incomes for a year!

 After that, we plan on flying down to Johannesburg, South Africa and going on a 10 day mini-safari/guided trip, around Kruger, Vic Falls, Botswana, Swaziland, Nambia, etc.  I'm quite looking forward to that.  Then we fly down to Cape Town and rent a car and head back up the coast to Jo'Burg.  That'll take another 10 days or so and then we fly out to Singapore.  We haven't got that booked yet but it looks like we'll either go through Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) on Malasian Airlines or through Quatar in the middle east.  I'm voting for the later so I can get out and stretch.  I'm not keen on 14 hour flights in the back of the bus.

After that we know we want to see most of South East Asia.. but also would like to get to see my daughter and her boyfriend in Australia before we fly to Europe.

Enough on the plan....  next post on what we're bringing.