Turning Plans Into Reality
Preparations for the trip took much of my time in the months leading up to our departure. We had passports but needed international driver’s licenses to be able to rent and drive cars and campervans. The international driver’s license is actually just a translation of the provisions of our US driver’s license into four languages and converting weight and vehicle restrictions into metric units so that someone in a foreign country can assess our driving qualifications and understand what our license entitles us to drive in their own language. For New Zealand and Australia the language isn’t a concern but the type of vehicle we are allowed to drive is specified with a letter or our license that would mean nothing to someone in New Zealand or Australia. These are easily obtained, send in a completed form along with photocopy of the driver’s license and a fee of $15 each. We sent ours to AAA in Austin and had the required international license in hand within a week.
We did need travel visa's for Australia. These were easily obtained on the internet. Australia links our passport numbers to our travel visa and we don't have an actual paper visa, just the link to our passports. If all goes well when we present our passports the visa should be there for the customs agent. Neither New Zealand nor Fiji require travel visas for US citizens.
Having been full time for years, I’ve been handling our finances on the internet but with uncertainty about internet access, special steps were taken to ensure that insurance that renews during our trip would be paid up on time. We also set up all our credit cards to pay automatically so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting internet service to pay those bills. I searched and found two credit cards that do not charge a fee for foreign transactions from banks that we already use for other credit cards. Those are the two credit cards we will take with us for the trip. I have contacted the banks and given them our travel plans but one only accepts such plans for 30 days so I’ll have to renew that as we travel. The other accepts travel notification for 90 days and that too will have to be renewed.
We have friends who will take care of our house while gone. I’ve programmed the furnace and air conditioner settings into the thermostat and all they have to do is switch them from heat to cool as we go from winter to summer weather. We investigated and found no suitable way to handle mail other than just have someone collect it from our box and store it until we return. We should have nothing in the mail that will require our immediate attention, mostly magazines, advertisements and charity requests. Then it occurred to me that I won’t be able to file taxes so I had to file for an extension. I dropped that in the mail on the way out of town. All utilities were put on vacation hold, phones, DirecTV and the home internet service. We had our car and motorhome insurance cut back during our absence since they won’t be driven.
Just when I began to think it was all covered, I found out that the holiday trip to Target has put one of our credit cards at risk. Fortunately it wasn’t one we planned to take on the trip. I called the bank and requested a replacement. They gladly complied so that I should not have to worry about that problem.
The airline allows one checked bag per person, one carry on and a personal item. So we’re going to have to pack very carefully. We have good sturdy suitcases but we don’t want to deal with storing them in the campervan. We purchased two roller duffel bags (at Target) and ordered two carry on backpacks from LL Bean. That would carry all our clothes and gear for a four month stay. Careful packing was necessary to make sure each bag met weight requirements. We could have paid to take additional bags but that would mean dragging additional bags when we moved from one means of travel to the next. During our stay, the southern hemisphere will go from summer into late fall and our latitude will vary from 46 degrees to 15 degrees so we need clothing for a wide variety of temperatures as well as for all occasions.
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