OUR THREE MONTH TRAVEL PLANS

When this blogpost is being posted we just started our three month sabbatical! Ever since I’ve been in a relationship with Hielke I knew I wanted to do some sort of long term traveling with him. We are both avid travelers, having visited many countries together and we both did long travels before. Hielke combined volunteering with traveling in South America, while I traveled through Australia with a friend and studied Spanish in Barcelona. 

In this post I will update you regarding our rough travel plans.

Deciding where to go

For us the most difficult part was deciding where to go. Hielke has never been to North-America, while South-America was on my bucket list. We went back and forth and even discussed going to Asia instead, but then none of our wishes were really fulfilled. In the end we decided upon a combination of North- and South-America for three months. This means we do need to speed up every now and then, but we will both be able to visit the highlights that we want to see. 

Work

Hielke received three months of unpaid leave from his job (October-December) and I quit my job from September on. I wasn’t happy with my job anymore and the sabbatical will hopefully help me with figuring out what kind of job I want next. 

Rough travel plans

Our  rough travel plans consist of the following locations:

• 4 nights in Iceland. 
• 4 full days in New York. 
• Take the night bus to Nashville. 
• Start a roadtrip from Nashville to Charleston/Savannah and Florida. 
• Swim with manatees in Crystal River. 
• Visit Miami & Florida Keys. 
• Spend several days in Cartagena and explore the Caribbean coast of Colombia. 
• Visit the beautiful nature of Tatacoa and Valle de Cocora in Colombia. 
• Travel to Ecuador and explore the surroundings of Banos and Cuenca. 
• Visit some highlights of Peru: Machu Pichu, Arequipa, Huacachina and Cuzco.
• Continue traveling to Chile and doing a street art-tour in Valparaiso. 
• Explore Mendoza & Bariloche in Argentina. 
• Do some day hikes in Patagonia and visit Torres del Paine.  
• Rounding off our travels in Buenos Aires & Rio de Janeiro. 

Money

We have saved money over the years, not specifically for our sabbatical, but a sabbatical is what we prefer to spend our savings on.. Luckily Hielke can return to his job in January, so we will at least have one income. 

We made a day budget per country, therefore we researched the average hotel costs and the costs of public transport/car rentals, food and the main activities. We have a rough idea of the amount of nights we will spend per country to create the budget for the sabbatical. I will monitor our spending against the budget to be sure we do not run out of money half way.