Epilogue

Well the trip is behind us now since a few weeks. It’s cold as hell in Finland at the moment but hopefully summer will find its way here soon.. We thought to put out one final post summarizing the voyage a bit for those interested in such data.

The Gear

Both our backpacks weighed about 10kg at the check-in on Helsinki airport. On the way the amount grew a little as we were able to use lighter clothing and also would occasionally lug around rather many books before being able to exchange them again at the next youth hostel with such a service. In addition we had small day packs of about 3kg each that contained electronics, the camera’s underwater casing etc. fragile stuff. What we packed in the big backpacks for the 7 month trip around the world:

• t-shirts, socks and underwear to last about 6 days
• thin & light windbreaker jacket + pants
• long underwear
• minimal toiletries
• tiny towels + swimming gear
• 1 fleece shirt each
• shorts
• flip-flops
• medication: anti-malaria, painkillers, antibiotics for intestinal problems, decongestants, bandaging equipment, cleansing alcohol 
• a few books

The electronics consisted of the diving computers, our camera Canon Ixus 110 IS & the underwater housing, and last but not least, our trusty HP 5103 mini laptop which great for nethack and editing pictures but also functioned as a music/movie player and saved the day on various occasions. One of them was us landing in Sydney with no cash to speak of just to notice that both our credit cards are maxed out and we can't get any money from the ATMs. The airport had a free WLAN and 10 minutes later Riikka had done some banking and her MasterCard was good to go again! Also, because of the laptop, we got into buying our Lonely Planet books online as PDFs instead of physical versions.


The Route

We purchased Round the World tickets from Oneworld alliance through Finnish Kilroy travel agent to serve as the backbone of the trip. The countries visited (in case of multientries, each country mentioned only once) in order were:

USA - Panama - Costa Rica - Nicaragua - Honduras - Guatemala - Belize - Chile - Bolivia - Peru - French Polynesia - New Zealand - Fiji - Tonga - Australia - Philippines - South Africa - Mozambique.

All in all the route was in excess of some 80000 km. A rough breakdown of the means of travel used can be found below; only bus trips of over an hour are included, tour/tourists buses are excluded totally. We totally lost count on the taxi trips of which there were dozens. 

Flights: 27
Buses: 57
Trains: 2
Boats: 20


The Budget

Ah, the budget. We had calculated a budget of around 30e/each/day averaging over the whole trip. This 30e would get us accommodation, food and drinks and local bus tickets and such for one day. While in the expensive places (USA, French Polynesia, Australia) there was no way to stretch that sum to last, in the really el cheapo places (most of latin America, Phillippines) we could easily manage with 10e/each/day, and so it pretty much evened out. On top of that expense there were the costs of flights, long distance overland transfers and all activities. Originally we estimated a total budget of around 13000e each, not including the RTW flights (another 3800e each).

Naturally this budget was exceeded; we had planned to do around 20-25 dives each, and ended up doing 50-60 dives each. And diving is costly - a single tank dive on the trip averaged at around 50 USD. The price range for it was huge; in Honduras we got by with 26 USD/tank including a place to stay while in French Polynesia / Africa we’d have to dish out 80 USD per tank. We also ended up purchasing more additional flights than planned and ended up exceeding the budget by over 2000e. But absolutely no regrets, these things had to be done in order to make the trip the perfect one that it was.

The total budget per person (including totally everything) was: 19000 e

The biggest expenses were:

1. Flights
2. Diving
3. Accommodation
4. Other activities
5. Drawing cash from ATMs at 2.5%+2e per transaction; over 1000e in total!
6. Overland & boat travel
7. Drinks & Food
8. Visas & exit taxes & other similar highway robberies at borders

To scrape the money together we annihilated our savings, sold stocks and some items from home (including my dear computer) and rented our place out for 6 months.

The Money

Most of the time we would be carrying around 200 USD in cash for emergencies (entry/exit fees, visas, bribes, ATMs not working or present) as well as a few hundred euro for the first half of the trip. It's amazing how many places in the world still do not accept euros! For credit cards we had Visa and Mastercard, which I consider to be the top pick for travel in case you're limited to 2 cards. When in "hot" places we'd stash the valuables in our money belts, but 90% of the time I'd just use my wallet. Never got robbed / pickpocketed!

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly 

Matti:

Best liked countries: Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia

Best surprises: Mozambique, Africa as a whole

Best single moment: Swimming with the whaleshark near Utila Island

Worst single moment: Getting sick with Dengue

Biggest adrenaline rush: First 10 km of the old road on Death Road

Best views: Death Road, Bora Bora from air

Best beach: Uoleva Island, Tonga

Best dive: Tiputa Pass, Rangiroa, French Polynesia

Best diveshop: Alton’s Dive Center, Utila Island, Honduras

Best airlines: Qantas

Worst airlines: Air Mozambique (LAM)!!, American Airlines

Best trip/activity: Raggamuffin Sailing Trip in Belize

Riikka:

Best liked countries: Honduras, Fiji, Philippines

Best surprises: Fiji, Bula!

Best single moment: Watching a pride of lions chasing after Kudu antelope

Worst single moment: Trying to close my SIM card after my phone got stolen

Biggest adrenaline rush: Cage diving with the great white sharks

Best views: Death Road, Bolivia and the endless coral fields in Sabang, Philippines

Best beach: Tofo, Mozambique or Matilda’s in Nicaragua or Uoleva, Tonga

Best dive: Ali Baba, Fakarava, French Polynesia

Best diveshop: Alton’s Dive Center, Utila Island, Honduras

Best airlines: LAN Chile, Air Tahiti Nui

Worst airlines: LAM

Best trip/activity: Safari in Mohlabetsi (Greater Kruger area), South Africa 

 

Books Read

Man from Saigon by Marti Leimbach
The Ford County by John Grisham
Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
Cradle by Arthur C. Clarke
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Tyrannosaurus Canyon by Douglas Preston
The Society by Michael Palmer
The Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
End in Tears by Ruth Rendell
Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy
The Treasure by Iris Johansen
Blackwood Farm by Ann Rice
The Arctict Drift by Clive Cussler & Dirk Cussler
The Book of Fate by Brad Metzler
The Bleachers by John Grisham (Riikka)
The Innocent Man by John Grisham (Riikka)
Daniel X: Watch the Skies by James Patterson & Ned Root (what a piece of crap!)
Twister by Chris Ryan (what a piece of crap!)
The Final Flight by Stephen Coonts
Screaming Room by John O'Connel
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris
Prey by Michael Crichton
Black & Blue by Ian Rankin
Sea of Fire by Jeff Rovin (only Matti)
The Good German by Joseph Kanon
The Sacred Cut by David Hewson (only Matti)
Nothing But the Truth by John Lescroart (only Matti)
Without Remorse by Tom Clancy (only Riikka)
Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy
Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R Tolkien
Journey by Danielle Steele (only Riikka)
Open by Andre Agassi autobiography

In Closing..

Simply put the trip was the best thing we’ve ever done, nothing short of amazing. And it might remain so for a looong time.. hopefully to be topped before this thing called life ends for us. Since the initial shock of returning back to the grind is starting to pass, I already have rudimentary plans for the next voyage - which won’t take place in very near future though, but it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead, does it? Anyway, next up on the menu is the summer and the festival season that it brings, and in the fall it could be a whole new ballgame.. you never know what the next season shall bring.

Thanks to everyone who showed interest in the trip and these ramblings! We hope to see more of you take the plunge and leave the safety of home for a while and go see our planet. It’s quite bloody great.


Best regards,

Matti & Riikka
 

End of the Road

After a nice 7-8 hours of taking bus - boat - minibus combo up north from Tofo we'd end up in Vilanculos, the main tourism destination in the country, and got to be with a backpacker crowd again at the awesome Baobab Beach Backpackers camp. We got a nice hut right at the beach and just mingled with the people for days before embarking on our first diving trip to the local main site 2 Mile Reef. Slight improvement over Tofo in visibility, the reef is facing the open seas and proved quite nice place for a day of sand and diving. And sand there is enough of; huge dunes cover the islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago, famous for its resident Dugong population.

Some days later we met Dave from Sailaway Dhow Safaris at our bar and got talking about the snorkeling daytrips to the islands and another day later we'd sail across the lagoon once more and spend a very pleasant day on the sand enjoying cold Manica lagers and a tasty seafood lunch. Despite our efforts, no Dugongs yet :/ Elusive creatures as they are, they are not very commonly seen as they are quite wary of us noisy humans. But several huge Potato Groupers did make their appearance, and they're just a sight to see with their enormous heads and thick lips. The boat crew stay busy while we're diving, driving the dive boat out to meet the fishing vessels and they buy heaps of fish to sell back at the shore to various establishments.

Another couple days down the road we finally got a group together to visit the flagship reef of the area, the Sao Sebastian Amphitheatre. Right at the open sea, it's the best place to view large pelagics as well as a dense reef fish population. And here we got to see a giant guitarfish rather close up. Great diving with good visibility, and the trip to the site was exciting, with having to push through what the locals call "the washing machine", a channel where the huge ocean swells meet the sand banks and come crashing down at 3 meters tall or more. And that night would continue with a Full Moon Party down the beach.

On our last day we of course went out to dive some more, visiting 2 Mile Reef once more with very nice British and German people taking their Open Water Course. And with that, our trip of almost 7 months is coming to an end. Today we'll hope to catch a Federale Air flight down to Joburg and from there make our way back home through Madrid. Cold and dark of Finland await us once more, but certainly few places on the planet would have been nicer pick for spending the last days of the adventure than the Bazaruto Islands. The mental image of the azure ocean within the enormous sandbanks should get us through what little is left of the winter. And seeing all the friends again doesn't sound too shabby either :) We're on our way!

See all the Mozambique photos here!

Tofo - Home of the Marine Megafauna

 What a couple of weeks has it been! First we were face to face with great whites, then saw the big savannah animals and now we're here in the whale shark / manta ray capitol of the world, Tofo beach in Mozambique. We arrived without any luggage as LAM - Air Mozambique - had decided that it's ok to leave all of that extra weight in Johannesburg (looks like I found my "real Africa"..) and found a pricey yet cozy residence on the beach right next door to the Marine MegaFauna Foundation that do research on whale sharks and manta rays in the area. It was said that out of the 1000 or so whale sharks identified world wide, a whopping 300-400 are from Mozambiques coasts. We'd dive and hang around the researchers quite a bit, them having thrice weekly presentations & talks about the animals, and ended up learning a lot about these big creatures that have fascinated divers for ages.

Diving is obviously what draws people here, and about half the tourists seemed to be divers from all over. Diving itself seemed a bit poor in my opinion, with the seriously high amount of plankton in the water kills the visibility down to only 10 meters some days. Then again the amount of big things you see on every dive is staggering; we saw at least guitarfish (a prehistoric looking shark-ray), potato groupers of 2m in size, leopard sharks, manta rays and of course the good old whale shark. The other half of the tourists are families from South Africa (South Africans seem to run the place anyway) and where families go, prices climb and nightlife is nonexistant. Surprisingly very few backpackers are around.

The beach is just fantastic. Really wide (50-100 meters easily at low tide) stretch of packed squeky blonde sand so hard that people actually play golf on it in the mornings. And it better be, as there is little to do when not diving but to slouch around the excellent Dino's bar by the beach and look at the seas rumble. There's even a couple of surfers here, and the surf certainly doesn't look too shabby on the windy days. All in all it's been one good leisurely 8 days despite all the luggage hassle, occasional bad weather and my encounter with a throat infection which included 2-3 days bedridden feverish and unable to eat and a visit to a hospital. All part of the travel experience, I guess. Since even swallowing my own saliva hurt blindingly lot, I had to learn to drool it out onto the pillow to be able to sleep. Luckily I'm traveling with a Jedi Master of that art, so it was just the case of watching and learning :)

Safari!

One of the main goals of the African leg was obviously to partake in a safari. To do this, we contacted an agency dealing the trips and got one organized three weeks before while still in the Philippines. We knew little about the safaris in the area and requested a standard Kruger safari which we didn't get because all of them were full. But then it turned out this was a good thing as they recommended us to take a look at private game lodges in the Greater Kruger Area. They do similar safaris but are not restricted to sticking to the roads and there are no masses of tourists around. The other main difference is the price; the private ones charge more, but then you get to stay in a 4-star accommodation where I definitely feel very out of place. But I guess a bit of luxury once a trip doesn't hurt.. we did sleep on the airport floor on the way here just to retain our backpacker credibility. :p

After an early departure from Jo'burg airport we'd drive for 5 hours on two different minibuses to the game lodge, have lunch and set off for our first game drive adventure. And only 20 minutes into the drive we find a bunch of elephants. We turn off the engine and wait for them to surround us, and just stare awestruck as 15+ big animals (and a few tiny ones) flap their ears at us and munch at the vegetation no more than 3 meters away. After the elephants we find a sleepy lioness that won't be bothered by our presence much. At sunset we stop at a viewpoint for drinks - white wine from an icebox - and continue for two more hours after dark, locating promising animal tracks and seeing the African Buffalo for the first time. Score for the first afternoon/night: 3/5 of the Big Five and countless jackals, antillopes and birds seen. Also our lodge has a nice grassy area from where you can look down to a plain with a water hole, where all kinds of animals from crocodiles, zebras and giraffes congretate. And this is while sipping on an icy cold drink.

The next morning we get up at 0530 and head off in the insanely comfy elevated Land Rover and go looking for the leopard & buffaloes. And after a while we come across a herd of 100+ buffaloes. Here we descend from the vehicle and do a small bush walk. Our tracker & ranger had been receiving tips about lion tracks, so we go take a peek and are the first vehicle to find the lion pride. With 10 animals, this is one amazing thing to see. Sitting quietly in the vehicle with cameras rolling we get to see the lions hunting a Kudu antillope, not more than 20 meters from us. So far, the amount of animals we've already seen is just so unreal that I'm getting a bit suspicious even heheh. We finish the morning's drive with an hour long bush walk back to the lodge, and come across some more zebras and giraffes very close up.

On the evening drive we first did a bushwalk with elephants and then set out to find lions again; another big pride had been spotted in the area and it was best to make the most of it. Come dark, we'd soon find them and watched them hunting for a good hour, slowly following them in their midst. Quite intense to see crouching lions from a distance of 2-3 meters in an open vehicle. Later we ran into them again, this time to find them resting in the bushes as a big pile of sleepy cats. We didn't have time to look for rhinos, but that was covered the next morning when we spent 3 hours looking for them on both the Land Rover as on foot, and finally found 2 white rhinos in a thicket, too far and too quick for pictures. So that's 4/5 of the Big Five done and 2 game drives to go! Come on, leopard!

When returning from the last afternoon/night drive we came back to the lodge to find the local crocodile in the swimming pool of the lodge! The reptile would just swim around happily in the water that had mysteriously turned greenish yellow earlier in the day, as if to welcome the scaly fellow for a skinny dip. And after yet another dinner feast and a good night's sleep we went out for our last drive and found two male lions with their great manes sleeping and lazily trotting around, and made a visit to a dam that a hippo calls home. And despite the best efforts of the ranger team we could not find the leopard. We came so close a couple of times, finding half eaten impala carcasses that had been hunted down by the elusive feline, but didn't get a sighting. Nonetheless the safari exceeded all our expectations and we could start our journey back to Jo'burg with big grins on our faces.

See all the safari pictures here!

A Splash With Great White Sharks

After a couple of leisurely days of touring the wineyards and sampling their product quite effectively, it was high time to get some adrenaline pumping again and booked ourselves a full day trip to see the Great Whites up close and personal. So we went to do a "cage dive" some 2 hours by bus outside of Cape Town to "Shark Alley" outside Gaanbai, a place known for its largest white shark concentration in the world. Now, this activity has nothing to do with actual diving; you put on a wet suit and stand in a cage while the boat staff chums the waters around the cage and try to lure the white sharks to the surface using a bait (heads of yellowfin tunas, in our case). End result is that you get to view these animals made famous by the movie Jaws from a distance of under half a meter - and occasionally they'd even brush against the cage, extracting a nice cheer of "HOOLY F*CK! SH*T!" etc from the people occupying the cage ;)

The water was rather chilly at 15C but the long hooded wetsuit would work wonders and we didn't get cold at all during the adrenaline filled 15 minute time windows you got in the cage. I was really hoping to get nice underwater shots of these magnificent hunters, but the water was really murky with viz under 1.5-2 meters, and none turned out proper. I had a few chances for a nice headshot of an approaching shark, but missed both shots. Luckily the sharks would show themselves on the surface a lot, a couple of them jumping half out of the water a couple of times, smacking the cage and the boat around a bit. Quite a sight to see. We had 5 distinct sharks around the boat, largest of them being about 3.5 meters long.

We went with a company called White Shark Ecoventures, a pioneer bunch that have done a good job advocating the need to protect these creatures. Based in Gaanbai, they've been in the industry since the early 90s. They seemed to be pretty good in luring the sharks to pass the cage several times with every bait and had very accurate information about the area and the animals. One funny thing was that the seas around the Shark Alley seem to have a peculiar wave pattern, and 2/3 of the people on the boat were throwing up over the side. And they said sometimes it is everyone. But not us! All in all, what a day, money well spent!

See all the South Africa pictures here!