Here we go, the first three weeks of our journey are gone – and we had some great experiences already and covered a bit of ground as well. Time for a first recap…
We thought a lot about attending a Spanish language school as everybody told us that we will struggle without any Spanish language knowledge. Due to time constraints we didn’t attend a school in the end but started to learn the basics a few months in advance through an app and books. No question, speaking Spanish would be much easier and I think we missed out on a few good conversations and tips due to the language barrier. Technology is a great thing though, the Google translate and conversation app works pretty well! And it is amazing how much you can still have a conversation with a few words, hands and gestures. Finally, a lot of people can speak at least a little English and between our little Spanish and their little English it works out pretty well.
The kids are holding up really well and are having a great time so far. They are in touch with their old friends over messages and Facetime and also get the odd picture or video of Jumper.
We had some long flights, bus trips and full on days, but we now also had close to a week in a nice apartment in Cartagena to recover. I think this will work well for us going forward. The next few weeks will be pretty full on with family, going to Santa Marta, Pereira and then Bogota – but then we have 12 days on the Galápagos Islands to have a bit of downtime again. For the kids, and probably the adults as well, it still feels more like a “normal” holiday for now. I think we will all get tired at one point and need to take our time to recover and recharge. It also became quickly clear that we just can’t cover every cool place, thing to do or whatever. A year is a long time sure, but there is so much to see and do that we have to pick our key things we want to do and spend some time there. In South America, these are the Galápagos Islands, Maccu Picchu, Iguazú waterfalls plus anything we can fit in around these big ones going forward.
Cash is king in South America so far either local currency, US$ or Euro work. The state of the economy is pretty dire in some countries, e.g. Argentina, and inflation is right up there. Hence the locals prefer US$ if possible or paying by credit card in foreign currency like NZ$ as well. The queues at the ATMs were huge in most places and getting a few hundred $ can take a long time as we can only pull NZ$100 at a time (in Argentina at least). I got a new credit card for the trip through Transferwise, and so far so good – it seems to get us a good exchange rate with low fees for each transaction. Budget is still on track so far, fingers crossed it stays that way. Overall South America is quite affordable to travel.
I am starting to get the hang of WordPress and this blogging thing. The kids are doing great as well and start to make notes of things they want to write about. One thing I learned the hard way is that a quick internet connection is key to share some pictures. Here in Cartagena we have an awesome fibre connection and it makes things so much easier. Fingers crossed we have this now and then at least going forward. I have now added a few widgets in WordPress, the subscription and translation ones are the key ones. Hope this helps family back home to follow our English blog.
South Americans are overall very friendly and helpful. Their lifestyle is quite different from our one in New Zealand. They eat very late and seeing kids running around at 10pm is normal. We are starting to adjust to that and have more sleep ins as well – we are on holiday after all. You read a lot about theft etc. and for sure we are mindful and cautious and (touch wood), so far all went well and we felt safe in every location we were in. The police presence is noticeable in every location so far as well though.
We haven’t lost anything, packed pretty tight but still think of getting rid of one bag now. Actually Jennifer lost her phone and water bottle by now but we got both back through luck and the friendly people down here. And yes, we all just have one bag but think we can get rid of one more to make travel easier. Quite amazing with how little stuff you can get around comfortably.
Last but not least, travelling as a family of 5 is a bit complicated sometimes. I am referring in particular to taxi rides. A couple of Uber drivers refused to take us in Buenos Aires, and taxi drivers were reluctant too. Santiago Uber had the option to schedule the Uber X for up to six people but this seems to be only available in large cities. We had to oder a few vans to get to the airport or from bus stations to our hotels – not a cheap option! Here in Colombia it couldn’t be more different – jumping in with 5 people into tiny taxis seems normal and is not an issue at all. I am sure that we will have this problem in other places again though. Booking accomodation through any of the big websites or AirBnB is working without any problems so far, and there is plenty on offer even for our family of 5.
That’s it for the first recap. Any tips or tricks you are aware of, please let me know.
