General Travel Musings
countdown to the fifa world cup
The atmosphere is going to be electric! It is going to be a mind-blowing, a real once-in-a-lifetime experience to watch football in the home of football!
Getting ready for the World Cup? Here’s what we did it…
✓ VISAS
So our Brazil visas are done and doing them was pretty straight forward.
Complete the online application form at: http://sydney.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/ (this is using the Consulate General of Brazil in Sydney website)- Print and attach a passport photograph on the form, sign and date.
- Submit to the Brazilian Consulate in person (on Clarence St, Sydney) with the travel invitation letter from the local Brazilian travel agency.
- Best thing is that visas for entering Brazil for the World Cup are FREE of charge.
- Two weeks later, the visas are ready to be picked up.
TIP: Don’t apply for visas last minute.
✓ VACCINATIONS
Luckily we were all up to date with our vaccines from our previous trips. We had Yellow Fever vaccines for Peru back in 2011 so just need to remember to pack that little yellow fever certificate. The only jabs we needed this time was to “top up” typhoid and the usual seasonal flu-vaccine.
We always make sure we visit the doctor well in advance of any of our trips to make sure we have enough lead in time for any vaccinations that require repeat doses or a set timing regimen.
TIP: Visit the doctor or travel nurse for advice on what you need several months in advance to give yourself enough time to be inoculated.
A great article to read is What Vaccinations Do You Need? by Michael at Bemused Backpacker
✓ TRAVEL INSURANCE
This is one thing that we don’t EVER go without. We actually always buy travel insurance the moment we book our trip to make sure we are covered from that moment where we hand over the thousands of dollars for airfares.
We do have a credit card that gives us free travel insurance if we paid our flights with it. Too good to be true, we thought. Upon further inspection, we don’t get our own policy and actually we sat under an umbrella policy. If we needed to claim anything, we need to prove to the credit card insurers that we actually paid for the flights with the credit card. That just seemed to complicated for us especially if there was an emergency.
We have usually chosen to go for Cover-More Travel Insurance when we travel because for our first ever trip, it was recommended by the travel agent who booked that trip for us. Thereafter, we have done our research and looked at other companies but so far so good with Cover-More as they do give us the peace of mind we need. We figured that if they are “the most popular travel insurance provider in Australia” as per their website, we couldn’t really be going wrong, right? But also , we have had to call them up about things and their customer service representatives are extremely informative and helpful.
TIP: Always get travel insurance. Make sure you read the product disclosure statement of any insurance policy and understand what you are buying.
✓ FLIGHTS
We are flying with Emirates – the LONG way around. As it turns out, it was getting too complicated with QANTAS so our organiser chose the alternative option to fly around the other way to Brazil. Guess we would rather sit on a plane than wait at airports! It’s taking us about 28 hours to get from Australia to Brazil but at least we have flights!
X FAN MERCHANDISE
✓ ACCOMMODATION
We are going to be following the Australian Socceroos so we will be in Cuiaba, Curitiba and Porto Alegre – luckily the search for accommodation was the responsible of the organiser and not ours. We are in three hotels and one of which is a 5-star apparently! SCORE!!!!
We are officially counting down to the FIFA World Cup in Brazil!!
Only 23 days to go!
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walking to raise awareness and money for angelman syndrome
It’s official and now in the open. Le has resigned from her job so we can go travelling for several months! But our bigger news is that we are planning to also embark on the Camino Walk.
To some of our fellow blogger followers who have walked the Camino or are walking the Camino or planning to walk the Camino, you probably already know this news. But what we are revealing for the first time is that we are walking it for charity amongst a few other personal and spiritual (non-religious) reasons!
The walk starts in St Jean Pied de Port in the Pyrenees in France and will end 800 km “down the road” in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Yes, you read it right, we are walking 800 km – it will be over 7 or so weeks.
The Way of St James has only recently been on our radar to do. It began in 2008, when we first heard someone was doing it. It sounded intriguing and sounded like it would be an astounding achievement. Then not long after, we heard of another person doing it and it just sounded too daunting. A few years on, David read “The Pilgrimage” by Paulo Coelho which sparked our interest and before you know it, everyone around us seems to have done it. So last year, we made a pact that we would do this pilgrimage before we turned 40 at it is also on the UNESCO Heritage List. You all know how much we love our UNESCO Heritage List 🙂
After a few highs and lows of the past year, it dawned on us – we needed to do it soon…. So we decided that we would do it in September!
Now to share with you about the charity we have chosen to walk for:
Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics (FAST) Australia
Why these guys?
David’s oldest brother has Angelman Syndrome. And we want to raise not only money for research but also raise awareness about the condition. It really is as simple as that!
So all we ask of our readers and followers is to read up about Angelman Syndrome at the FAST Website: http://www.cureangelman.org.au/ and then do ONE of the following (of course more if you like):
- Share what you have learnt with someone, have a conversation about it,
- Share something about Angelman Syndrome on your social media,
- Share our fundraising page (https://give.everydayhero.com/au/wise-monkeys-abroad) amongst your family and friends
- Support us on the 800 km walk by donating – proceeds go directly to FAST (except for transaction fees taken by the banks),
- Reblog this post or share on your various social media to spread the word of what we are doing, OR
- Encourage us through your comments on our blog, Twitter and/or Facebook as we prepare and face the 800 km.
Thank you in advance for you helping us spread the word and raising money for Angelman Syndrome!
More posts to follow about the Camino itself.
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should wi-fi be free?
Apologies in advance for this wi-fi rant that we are about to unleash. We don’t like complaining or whinging but there was a moment of weakness when this was written and so we thought we best post it anyway 🙂
After only recently returning from a trip to Singapore and a trip to Melbourne, we are reminded of one noticeably different aspect between hotels overseas and hotels within Australia. We simply can’t help but compare….
Free wi-fi connectivity seems to be a rarity in hotels within Australia – to find one is like finding a gold mine. We experience these issues with connecting no matter where in Australia we are. But worse yet, the charges for wi-fi are astronomical if one is to pay. The recent price we saw was $40 AUD for a maximum 1GB download over 3 days – how utterly unreasonable.
And when there is complimentary wi-fi, there are all these restrictions such as half an hour access, available only in the lobby, up to 500MB download per day.
We think back to our hotel in Singapore, we not only got a smart phone with unlimited internet access but we also had complimentary in-room wi-fi. So maybe it was a recent experience that is making us feel a little precious about free wi-fi?
Nope, that’s not it, because we have travelled to developing countries where free wi-fi is much more accessible and readily available in hotels than it is in Australia.
Anyway, we just wish Australian hotels have the heart and offer free (or at least reasonably priced) wi-fi, help keep us connected with our loved ones and our blogging community without costing us an arm and leg.
Maybe you disagree and think wi-fi shouldn’t be free – would love to hear your thoughts.
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weekend walks: thirlmere lakes national park
Thirlmere Lakes National Park is approximately 80 km southwest of Sydney. It is part of the Greater Blue Mountains area which is listed on the UNESCO Heritage List. The National Park is open from sunrise to sunset.
It was overcast and wet – the walking conditions were very different from last week. It was a 6 km loop walk around the lakes and we were the only visitors in the National Park (or at least it seemed).
The walk was easy but because some of the track was overgrown in places, we need to push past shrubs and ferns, climbed over logs and walked under fallen trees. The vegetation was quite varied throughout the walk and it was quite clear that bushfires had ripped through at some point. See if you can spot the evidence of it. There was one section where it was like a tree cemetery.
Like any National Parks, there is also wildlife. As we walked through, we could hear so many different types of birds singing above us competing with the cicadas. There were birds of all shapes and sizes flying across the lake and colourful butterflies dancing past us as we walked. At one point, as we stopped to take some photos, we heard branches snapping and a grey fluffy animal bouncing away (we figured it was wallaby). Unfortunately, we were not quick enough to capture any of the wildlife on camera BUT we did capture a few burrows that we found along the way 🙂
As we walked, it was so peaceful to just hear the sounds of nature and nothing else except maybe the occasional plane flying overhead.
Hope you enjoy our photos this week!!
wise monkeys abroad 