Old and New

Me and some loser I went and visited once...
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So I'm a 26 yr 'old' from Sydney, Australia and this is my blog for the trip I've been thinking about ever since I first heard the fantastic travel stories of my parents as an impressionable 8 yr old.

I remember sitting there as a wide-eyed youngster listening to how my father had travelled the globe, going from what sounded like adventure to adventure. Stories about; waking up surrounded by turkish troops on Cyprus, wedding dresses in Bucharest, living on a kibutz in Israel are all fertile ground for a young imagination.

An impressionable 8yr old with big teeth
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Eventually my father found a less nomadic form of adventure in the shape of my mother in Australia in the mid 70's and decided to stay. At the time my parents met, my mother was on a travelling adventure of her own, she had decided in the free spirited way of thinking of the time that it would be a good idea to travel around Australia in a Kombie. Her 2 year odyssey included taking my older sister who was 2 at the time along for the ride (yes, she was a hippie and I have the photo's to prove it).

As a family when we were growing up we would go off on trips, camping in national parks across the country side, seeing things that were outside our usual comfortable suburban world.

All of this has fueled a desire to see the world, not neccessarily places, more people, I think. the differences, the similarities... particularly the similarities. Living in the world we live in, similarities are important. For me, the goal of this trip has shifted and changed over the years. As I got older I was always interested in the obscure and this included places people never or rarely went to. Thus my interest in travelling through Russia sprung up, I always saw it as intruiging, misunderstood and magnetic (a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma) and it is with hope that I set off on this trip to see some part of that 1/6th of the worlds land mass.

But to start... AFRICA and CATHY

Ask me 18 months ago if i had a desire to go to Africa, and I would have named ten places I would have gone to before going there. Ask me now and I tell you I'll be there in 21 days!!!! Why? A seed. The plantation of an idea and the watering of that seed by experiencing someone else's passion for it.

It is at this point a big shout out must go to the Putt putt golf attendant in Victor Harbour in South Australia, if you know him shake his hand for me and buy him a beer.

Long story in point form..

• met girl
• girl lived along way away in a big country town
• girl visits big city
• didn't see girl for a long time but chapter not closed
• decide to take a risk and visit girl
• goes well...
• road trip
• putt putt golf and a pub crawl involving drunken conversation with above attendant
• he says something out loud, that girl and boy are both thinking, making it sound like the most natural thing in the world.
• Boy and girl decide to travel together
• Cathy and I are going to Africa... March 28 2007

So i'm off  in 3 weeks to the worlds largest and poorest continent with Cathy, there is still so much to organise and pack and stress about that I'm sure that the next couple of weeks will be but a blur of a blurry memory by the time it comes to board the plane. Here's to the trip of a life time and... Cathy being sick on the plane to teach her a lesson.