Around the World in 90 Days

Finally, it is almost time for us to depart. 8 more sleeps and we will be off. Pretty much all of the planning  we are going to do has been done. Now it really is just a case of getting on that plane next Thursday evening and going.

As it turns out the first half of the trip is pretty much planned and booked for to the day. Flights, accommodation, car rental and other transport for this part of the trip has mostly all been booked. In some ways I feel this is cheating a bit as the original idea was not to plan too much. In any case, we will see if we can leave the second half of the trip up to a bit more of an ad hoc nature.

Planning a 3 month trip around the world including skiing, kite surfing, scuba diving as well as an elegant Caribbean cruise is logistically challenging at the best of times however we decided to make it that bit more challenging by also throwing in a half ironman event. As it would prove too difficult to try and transport our bikes we opted to hire  bikes when we are there. The problem is the only person we could find who was able to rent us decent bikes does not speak English so we think we have secured bikes but due to the communication problem we are not 100% sure what we are going to get. We arrive in San Juan late on a Thursday evening and the race is on the Saturday so we have one day to sort out our bikes. We are hoping that the bikes we get are decent and we will not end up having to do a 90km time trial on a bike like the ones in the picture above.

Denise and I both did a ultra triathlon (same distances as half ironman) this past weekend and we felt terrible on the road. We were both fighting off a cold so we are hoping that is the reason why we suffered so much. We didn’t suffer that much in East London, did we? Or are our memories just too short?

I am looking forward to the whole trip but right now can’t wait for the first leg – skiing in Whistler.

Andy & Denise before the start of the Ironman 70.3 South Africa 2011

We survived the cold, rain and wind to complete our first Ironman 70.3. With close to 2,800 entries this was a record for South Africa in a sport that seems to be gaining popularity very quickly. The conditions were tough on a course that many claim to be one of the hardest in the world. We are hoping that the San Juan Ironman 70.3 we are taking part in on 19th March is a little easier going.

We were both a little disappointed with our times clocking in with totals of 5h41 and 6h34 respectively. Respectable times but a little off the pace we were aiming for and still a far cry from the pros with the winners crossing the finishing line in 4h06 (male) and 4h39 (female). Amazing!

Denise & Andy the day before Half Ironman

Now our focus shifts back on to world tour planning. Flight bookings, hotels, packing lists, travel insurance (ugh!) and plenty of other logistics. Having said that we still need to keep up the training as between now and then we are participating in a number of other races and of course still need to stay fit for our Caribbean Ironman 70.3 début in San Juan whilst on world tour. At least we can do so knowing that we have already earned the title of “Ironman”. Okay, okay – “Half Ironman”.

This weekend sees a slight detour from the world tour hype for Denise and I. We are off to compete in our first Ironman 70.3 in East London, South Africa. That means on Sunday we will be starting off with a 1.9km swim followed by a 90km cycle and then a 21km run. This event is also known as the half ironman (the full ironman is double those distances).

We are flying down to East London on Friday night and return on Monday morning. Good luck to all participants especially to Denise, Bryan, Jade, Mark, Jo, Marc and Sonja. Swim like there is no cycle and cycle like there is no run and remember pain is temporary but your personal victory is forever!

Today Denise and I took the plunge and registered for the Ironman 70.3 in San Juan, Puerto Rico taking place on Saturday March 19th. We don’t know what bikes we are going to be using so that is a problem still to be solved. The entries were apparently filling up and we did not want to miss out. We only just managed to get accommodation at the hotel where the event is taking place (its always so much better to be staying where the event is taking place).

Things have moved along quite rapidly since our last posts. Yesterday we finalised our itinerary and booked our tickets. While the Star Alliance website is great for planning a trip (I can’t imagine us having used a travel agent to do this), when it came to actually booking the flights we had to do it manually through Lufthansa in Germany as when we got to the final payment step it failed (probably because the amount was quite large). After a bit of back and forth and getting an authorisation number from the bank to debit the credit card we now seem to be all booked.

The itinerary can be viewed here. A lot of thought and planning went into this. In the beginning we thought we would leave our options open and not plan too much so if we liked a particular place we could hang around or change our plans as we felt like at the time. However in reality we were both eager to fit in as much as possible within reason (which probably demonstrates both our attitudes of not wanting to miss out on anything but we also realise this could be a flaw) so in the end we have had to plan most things down to the day. For example, some flights like the one from Honolulu to Nadi only happen once a week so in such cases there is little room for too much flexibility with the dates. A side note on that flight; we cross over the International date line and loose a complete day. We are simply not going to have a 16th of April in 2011 at all. Thank goodness that is not one of our birthdays!

When I met Andy, he told me that he likes to travel.  But that’s what everyone says, right?  But Andy makes it happen.  At the end of the evening we met, he asked for my number, so that he could keep me informed about the “dive trip he was arranging”.  There was no actual trip planned at the time, but he quickly made it happen, and two months later we found ourselves on a yacht in the Mozambican channel with a bunch of our friends.  But we started dating long before then.

His love for travelling and adventure resonated with me.  And so, early on in our relationship, we starting dreaming of travelling to the far ends of the earth.  And hence, the idea of “Around the World in 90 Days” was born…

Hello World!

This is the first post of this blog going live on the eve of 6 months since Denise and I have been dating. Yes, we met at Tanz Cafe on that Friday night 7th May 2010 when that band Mantis Moon was playing and have been dating since 23rd May 2010.

Happy 6 month anniversary, Denise!