"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."- Augustine of Hippo

Monday, February 13, 2017

T-Minus 24 hours (ish)

Here we are- 24ish hours from our first flight! We're feeling pretty excited, with some nervousness and anxiousness mixed in.

We've gotten so much done in our week+ of unemployment. We went back to Kansas and spent several days seeing friends and family there. Mixed in with some travel planning and helping my parents around the house (to be honest, Matt was the one doing all the manual labor while I was doing the socializing and planning. Thanks, babe!).

Then we drove the 10 hours back to Madison (well, again, Matt did all the driving while I did my Open Water scuba diving certification eLearning). We spent less than 24 hours at home, doing a mad dash of packing, prepping things for our absence, and last minute errands. 

Then we landed at Matt's folks Thursday evening and have kept the pace up. We've been hanging out with family and seeing friends. We got our taxes done. I finished the classroom/pool portion of my PADI open water cert. We also soaked some of our clothes in permethrin to keep the bugs away. And then a ton more travel booking.

We've booked a few more of our NZ lodgings and all of our car rentals for there. For Australia I booked my Great Barrier Reef scuba diving excursion. I plan to complete my Open Water certification on a 3 day/2 night liveaboard from Cairns. We also booked the rest of our small Australia flights, all booked via our Chase points- yay! For Africa we've booked our car rentals, our second safari which will be in Kruger National Park, and all of our small flights there again booked via Chase points. 

I'm telling ya, if you don't take advantage of credit card points then you're missing out. We've booked $700 per person worth of flights via our points; that's like free flights! And those flights would've been more expensive if not booked with points so we've saved $1,000 (each!) already that way. Crazy!

My next post will be from New Zealand! Cheerio!

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